[Hakuna Matata]

Stella Nyanzi 

THE EVICTED LAND LADY

Yesterday, I cried because I am a spoilt child of my parents. All my life at my parents’ home, we had at least one house-maid and a shamba-boy helping us with the housework; especially cleaning, cooking, laundry and gardening. I maintained this upbringing all my life in Uganda. Even when I was a prisoner, my household had a house-maid, a shamba-boy and a driver; Rhoda who lived with us for 13 years, Sharma for eight years and Badiru for 15 years.

But in Germany, I had to adjust to having nobody to do the house chores for my children and I. When it came to food, thankfully, all my children cook well. For laundry and washing up – there is a washing machine and dish washer in the house. For cleaning the house, each of us had a room to clean. This was a real hustle to juggle with school, work, socialising and the important need to rest when at home. So, sometimes the house went uncleaned when we were busy living our lives.

When the house owners came for hand-over yesterday, I was still in the process of packing and cleaning. You should have seen the mess in all the rooms in my house. It was like something a tornado had swept through and upset things onto the floor. And yet, I have been working hard to pack and slowly move our property over the last few months.

“This house is dirty,” Kay said with shock in her eyes.

“Yes, it is dirty,” I agreed, as I stuffed football boots, school shoes and roller blades into a box.

“It is not just dirty, but it is blah-blah-blah,” she finished off in German as she looked at Stevo her colleague for an English translation of the same.

“But I asked you for three more days to allow me pack, move and clean, but you denied me the extension. This is why you came before I cleaned,” I said with a bit of irritation.

“No, no, no, you are supposed to clean daily,” she replied as she swept her long finger across the top of the door frame, unsettling dust particles.

“I am not a cleaner. I am a writer. These hands were made for writing, not for cleaning,” I replied as I stretched out my short fat fingers in a fashion I have done over the years when people criticised either my burnt food or over-grown garden or some other domestic chore that was not clean enough.

“Miss Nyanzi, we all clean. Am I a cleaner?” Kay asked as she also held her outstretched hands to me.

“In my house all my life, I paid staff to clean for me. I am not a cleaner. I make money to pay cleaners to do that stuff,” I said.

“But you had money from our PEN scholarship for three years… yet there is mould on the window frames, a door is broken and the walls are dirty,” Kay said.

“The same scholarship said I would be visited once a year by someone from PEN, but none of you ever came to my house for the last 43 months. If you had done your job better, I would have shown you what needed repair,” I replied grumpily.

“Do not speak to Kay like that,” Stevo said sharply.

“Do not shout at me in my house,” I stated and turned my attention to the man telling me what I cannot do in my house.

“This is not your house,” Kay said, looking at me squarely.

“Is this your name on the front door?” I walked to the front door and pointed at the gold label with my surname painted on the front.

“It is not your house,” she repeated.

“That is my name on that door. This is my house. And I will not have a man shouting at me in my house,” I said.

“This house is paid for by German tax payers. It is not your house,” she said.

I lost it. I raised my voice because I can.

“I am getting out of your house today. I asked for a few more days to pack and clean, you refused to extend the hand-over date. So you found me still packing, still moving out and still cleaning. So what if the house is dirty? I am still cleaning. But I will not have a man shouting at me in my house,”

“Do not raise your voice,” he said.

I increased my volume for effect.

“I refuse to have a man in my house, shouting at me in the presence of my daughter,” I screamed at Kay. “I refuse to talk to Stevo because right now, I do not know him. He may be your staff member, but he is not paid to scream at me in my house.”

I walked to my i-phone from which a Ugandan radio station was playing our local Luga-flow music amplified on my daughter’s JBL speaker. I turned up the volume of the music as Rema Namakula was croonijg Gutujja, Gutujja, Gutujja. It was disco-high.

“I am not talking to you all again. I am listening to my music as I continue packing and cleaning. If you have anything to say, talk to my daughter,” I declared loudly.

I walked off to the kitchen to empty the shelves under the sink, where loads of empty plastic bottles and glass jars were stuffed. As I slowly separated and sorted that stuff collected over months, the tears started falling gently. I longed for my homeland where relatives would have helped with the packing, cleaning, moving and unpacking. I remembered growing up in a country where the middle class protected us from dirty household chores which we paid other people to do. I thought of the ways in which I handled my own tenants when they were moving out of my houses over the years. I always brought in cleaners to clean, paid professional painters to repaint the walls, plumbers and electricians to do any repairs, and a locksmith to change the locks for all main doors.

Repeatedly telling me that a two bed-roomed flat is not my house stung like a bee because I am not only a Muganda land-owner with miles of land, but I am also a landlady with properties I built from scratch to completion. Evicting me in exile does not make me homeless, I own homes back in the homeland. I inheritted huge tracts of lands in Masaka from my father, inheritted prime property from my mother in Mukono, and co-own rentals in The Gambia and Senegal with my ex-husband.

https://uganda.de.com/

[Author]

Posts