A LIGHT GOES OUT FOREVER

We all agree that no matter how happy or successful we may claim to be, no person is really without regret. ”There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story”. Maya Angelou.

Today I am compelled to write a painful story that I bear; a story about my childhood role model; whose light is now gone out forever; never to shine again; whose burial I could not bring myself to attend because I felt I wasn’t strong enough to listen to the eulogy and see his body being lowered 6 feet down the red earth.

He studied at Makerere University and was in his second year. He loved books and discipline. Now his light is gone out forever. Some regret befalls me whenever I remember the Friday he called me as I walked from job- Lutumu primary- at 4pm.

He was chatting with a friend at Kiki’s, 20 metres from where I stood. I just waved and smiled but didn’t go to greet him.

We were neither friends nor were we enemies but I loved and admired his sweet personality and lifestyle- liberated, outgoing, disciplined and above all a top achiever; he and Keli being the only survivors of the 2003 Masaka Massive Moral Erosion which rendered many of their primary classmates brainless and useless.

Kidney failure took away took away his precious life on that fateful Sunday; two days after I refused to shake his hand; (God forgive my silly behavior. I was a teenager anyway, and bred in a rotten society where greeting boys meant something else).

The mother cried, the father grieved, the siblings (twins) looked as though a very precious flower had been plucked away from their youthful life; Makerere students mourned their colleague.

This was the third time I paid little/ or no attention to someone only to learn of their demise a while after. I remember when Dani’s sister was ailing and he kept requesting me to visit her and I never did. She just passed on today and i feel so crushed.

I also remember when my cousin kept pushing me to go visit grandpa before it got too late; poor me, I never listened and in 2014 I was slapped with the news of his departure.

Master Morris, babu and sister Dan, your departure has taught me that I should not only love and value people, but I should also show them that I do.

Gone but not forgotten. Rest in peace Master Morris.

This is the diary of Mutei as she relives the memories of June 2011 when she was a volunteer at Lutumu primary school.

History has a way of repeating itself. It did. “People who do not know their history are doomed to repeat the same mistakes”.