Ish and Mush

There’s nothing like a conversation with a six-year-old to make you realize that you know nothing about the world. 

 

Here’s a selection of the 100 questions that my nephew Jotham asked me over the weekend.

1. What are forks for?
2. Why are we allowed to play in sand, but we can’t play in mud?
3. Why do baby fish die?
4. Why is all grass green, but flowers are so many different colors?
5. What are cockroaches for?
6. Why are girls allowed to grow their hair and wear beads, but boys are forced to cut off theirs?
7. When I grow up, why can’t I marry Aunty Fiona?  (Aunty Fiona’s my sister-in-law)

This is what his four-year-old brother Jeffrey answered. 

1. Forks are for eating chips if your hands are dirty.
2. Me, I play in mud, but it makes mommy angry.
3. Baby fish die so that baby people can eat them.
4. God is the one who chooses the color of crayons for painting the flowers.
5. I hate cockroaches.
6. Uncle Paul has long hair and he’s not a girl.
7. Eeh, you boy.  I said I wanted to marry Aunty Fiona before you.  Eeh you boy, you can cheat!

I had a blast with the boys in Kalangala last weekend.  When I think about them leaving next month, something inside me breaks.

 

Solace

There’s one of us wherever I go.  I can tell them by the lights that are never switched off, Bob Marley playing deep into the night, the rustle of leaves in the path outside my window, the 2 a.m. visits to the hotel bar.

 

That’s where I met her.  The 2 a.m. visit to the hotel bar.

 

The first thing you noticed about her was the melancholy.  It was a deep sadness.  Not the kind you can drown with alcohol or the type you can distract with senseless TV.  It appeared to be devouring her alive and threatened to do so to anyone who crossed her path.

 

She barely acknowledged my presence as though the sight of another woman at that time of the night was commonplace.

 

The barman was humming tunelessly, keeping time with the barely audible radio near the glasses on the shelf.  I pointed to the only bottle of wine behind him and he brought it to me.

 

-  Altar wine is all we’ve got tonight, he said.  I was saving it for the church in town, but you can have it since the party in the large building milked my reserve dry.

 

He corked the bottle and I poured the acrid semi-sweet liquid down my throat.  It tasted like Ribena gone bad. 4% alcohol, it said.  So much for drinking myself to sleep.

 

-  Cocoa works better, she mumbled at me.  Cocoa with warm milk.