Tombstones and Banana Trees by Medad Birungi

little extra energy. I forgot that sugar cane was a favorite place for female mosquitoes to lay their eggs. Without knowing it I was eating malarial eggs. Within a few days of arriving back at home I started feeling uneasy, then a little sick. Eventually I lost my senses and was at risk of contracting cerebral malaria, from which there is no full recovery. I came to and found my grandmother crying. She thought I had died.
    The first time I walked to Makobore High School in Rukungiri my mother came along too. I had no mattress, no bedsheets, no shoes, no trousers—just a spare set of clothes and provisions for the journey—but I was happy. Most women in Uganda still wear a brightly colored cloth that has many uses—warmth, protection from the elements, carrying loads—and my mother used hers to make me a sort of mattress. It was like a sleeping bag, and when I reached school I could fill it with dry grass. At the end of the term I threw the grass out and took the bag home.
    My mother joined me on that first journey so that we could talk. I remember only this of our conversation:
    â€œDo not do anything to bring further shame on our family.”
    â€œYes, mother.”
    I loved my mother so much. She died a few years ago, and I am glad to say that although I did not honor the promise I made to her that day, she and I were always close. When the time came for me to confess all the ways in which I had brought shame upon her, she was gracious, loving, and forgiving.
    Once we arrived at the school on that first journey, she spoke with the head teacher, Mr. Stanley Munabi, who was a good man. She told him about the troubles we had been through as a family: Peninah’s murder, my suicide attempts, the abandonment by my father, as well as how he had not even returned home when Peninah was buried.
    She had raised enough money for the basic school fees but not enough for my board and lodging. She pleaded with him to take me in.
    â€œWell,” said the headmaster, “if he is hardworking I will give him jobs. He can earn his keep that way.”
    Like I said, the headmaster was a good man.
    So I started. I turned my hand to whatever manual jobs needed doing. I would dig pit latrines and make temporary kitchens out of stones and iron grills; I would wash dishes, cut the grass, dig the gardens, wash the school truck. Some of these jobs I carried on throughout my years there. My mother would add in what money she could, and eventually one of my older sisters, Winnie, got married and moved to Rukungiri, just a few miles away from the school, so I would go there to eat and borrow money when I needed it. Winnie’s husband and mother- and father-in-law were very helpful, and I count them as good friends today.
    But I was not behaving well. At the same time I was making a good impression on the headmaster I also developed a second life that I kept hidden from him, and from my mother and family, too. I was drinking heavily. It would give me temporary happiness, but it soon turned to an addiction. And because addicts need others around them, I found others who also liked to drink. They were a group called the Kibanda Boys, a gang who were pretty rough. Together we were drinkers, but we were also dancers and fighters.
    We would go to villages whenever there was a wedding and start a fight. We would take the same type of violent red peppers that the jigger hunters had used on my own agonized wounds and would crush them up to be thrown onto the floor where people danced. It would not take long before the dancers’ feet mixed up the chili with the dust, rising to form a cloud which, when inhaled, was very painful. The dance would be ruined and we would be happy.
    The gang had a terrible reputation. Before I joined, there was one fight with a village that had started when a woman was accused of bewitching a member of the school staff, who had died. The gang called up half the school to join in and led the mob to