Kintu

Kintu is the first book I read by a Ugandan writer, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi. As with many of the books I read, it was recommended by a friend. The book takes you through historical Buganda, including what is now Busoga, and then flings forward to modern day Buganda.

Being from Uganda, I was very fascinated by this rendering and enjoyed the upbeat rhythm of the first portion of the book [focused on historical Buganda]. I found it to be alive with mystery, culture, and how beliefs come to be, and I did not want to get out of the lives of Kintu and his twin wives, and the curse that just won’t let up.

I was especially impressed with Jennifer’s handling of mental illness and she does the whole “show-don’t-tell“ thing well, so much so that it was easy for me to walk into the “curse“ set up. There is a scene in the book where a young boy is playing “poke-your-tongue-out-at-the-other-person“ with a snake. He is sort of daring this person because what he is seeing is a person, giggling so much and clearly having fun. On the outside, in the “real“ world, outside of this boy’s mind, are people watching the very boy playing with with what in fact was a snake. The people on the outside [of the boy’s mind] are trying to shoo the snake away, and eventually it slithers through a window and goes away. I enjoyed how these two worlds were presented in Kintu.

Other themes that I found fascinatingly placed were women in historical Buganda and the role they played in furthering clans/family in instances of infertility, the placing of homosexual and bisexual practices in historical Buganda, and last but not least, the adoption of a Rwandan immigrant into the Ganda culture. Naturally, I found myself thinking about all those Baganda who for some reason look Rwandan but say they are Baganda. It might be that we are more related than we realise, even if Kintu is a fictional rendering.

Kintu is a great read; I’d be keen to know how others experience it.