Conrad Jessy the Poet

I have taken off time to appreciate the literariness and ethical bent of Misarch Semakula's song, "Ani Mukwano Gwo, (Bwete)". In this song, Semakula tells a sad but educative narrative that is symbolic of the betrayal of President Sir Edward Muteesa II by his prime minister, Dr. Milton Obote. In this analogous narrative, a man in the village of Bugunda, who is called Walugembe raises a helpless child, educates him and shares with him almost everything of value, including his authority.

But Bwete did not understand the value of the relationship and love. Whereas Walugembe focused on the intellect of the boy and what he would be in the future, Bwete used his new self to turn against his benefactor and eventually stole from him all his authority and killed him.

What a telling of history! When Bwete grew up, Walugembe brought him closer and gave him his daughter, Maria to be his wife. This was a guise of cementing the relationship but Bwete did not value it too. His laughter was deceptive and he used the shared power to plot against his benefactor. Foucault (1969) argues that the author delineates a range of facts in a story some of which are his own. It becomes difficult to separate fiction from facts. Montgomery et.al (1992) also postulates that in the construction of stories, facts work with fiction to form both the narrative content and style.

Because Obote attended Makerere university after his High School at Busoga College Mwiri, and the fact that he married Miria Kalule, we can safely say the story fits very well in the demands of fact and fiction. Semakula uses the story to instruct us on being careful with the friends we make because those we least expect turn against us. You need to listen to this song again, the story of the 1966/67 Republican constitution.

Herman Basudde Ssemakula Ssalongo, the son of the late Eria Kizza Katende and his wife Dimitri Namyalo was a song weaver, the parrot that in 10 years of actual practice from 1987 to 1997 had recorded and performed about 62 songs some of which were dramatic duets with members of Kabuladda Professional singers. It is now 26 years since he departed from us in a fatal accident he had at Kabaale Bugonzi after Lukaya in Masaka.

Basudde had just bought a new Toyota Land Cruiser a few days after his return from Rwanda where he had had a spirited performance that gave him over 70 million Ugandan shillings of that time. This was a landslide success that he had not had in time in Ugandan performances given the reasons he best described in his song, "Mweraba Ngenze". Basudde realized that events organizers and managers were sucking dry the t**s of artists yet they were giving them back a pretty nest egg. The biggest problem was that most of the Kadongo Kamu music performers had not had good education, and the few like Livingstone Kasozi were also greedy opportunists.

Before he died on 11th June, 1997, Basudde had produced a song within days after the burial of his 'friend' Livingstone Kasozi offering insight in how music artists whom he had categorized in three could be archived. He suggested coming together of song artists, buying land and creating their space, that would be a cemetery that would act as a tourist attraction and a place of reference where visitors would be told by curators the stories of these fallen artists and explain that when Ugandan music artist die, they are buried in the same cemetery because they are teachers of the nation.

What Basudde suggests is in line with the theorizing of the French philosopher, Michel Foucault who in The Archeology of Knowledge (1969, 1972) identifies archival spaces that he had spoken of as other spaces in a seminar presentation in 1967. These spaces like the cemetery, prisons and rehabilitation centres for the runantics need serious study as they are great archival repositories. The peasant intellectual and philosopher Basudde saw this as he considered the death of Kasozi. He claims that the burial of Kasozi was fun because they had cleared their differences and musicians had contributed to his well being while he was sick. This was majorly through performances organized by Charles James Senkubuge and Bakayimbira Dramactors, dubbed "Dunia Weeraba" one of the last songs of Kasozi.

Basudde wants in this song, "Abayimbi" to organize his fellows to pull resources in a joint SACCO to help support artists that fall sick and to help their children when they pass on. Before he could drive this idea home, Basudde died. This song was not the first one addressing music artists, he had sang about his trade long time ago warning against obscenities that some artists were singing. He also noted that some were not creative and just kept copying and repeating what he had sang about women. In Uganda where some artists sing songs like Okwepicca, Bijjanjalo, etc Basudde seems the prophet who had lit a torch into the future to watch the deteriorating creativity and morality among the song artists.

The very fact that we today have his songs played and TikTok users keep coining videos our of his songs shows the magnitude he is influencing generations. I offer myself from today until 12th to celebrate his life by analysing some of his most intriguing song discourses. Rest in peace Basudde.

I want to get back to the person I were
Caring about whatever happens in my country
Writing lines on those pains of us the downtrodden
I want to be the voice I used to be.

But it seems safer to look on
Everyone does that
We don't actually seem to display our pain
We chose to spectate
We are loners
We internalize our pain
We live with it

I don't want to be such a Ugandan
I want drums and loud hailers
To broadcast my and our grievances.

© Jessy Conrad Ssendawula
28th August, 2022

Byebyo

Mbu wamma eyafa luli kati kituufu yafudde?
Ani eyamubise?
Nga mba ono eyali yafa luli?

Mbu wamma amaziga gaakulukuse
Mbu nga bakkiriziddwa okukungubaga
Nti kati kyekiseera alangirirwe mu luse lw'abafu?

Nnyumizaako wessibadde
Mhmm so nga ddala afa!
Ndowooza yayimba n'akayimba
Okutiisa walumbe
Afunvubidde yeerwaneko
Asese amajeemulukufu
Walumbe amulippye enkalu
Wano teyali kafulu
Obwakafulu bwagwa
Yalina okuggwa naye
Bamulijja enkalu
Enkoona neenywa
Kituufu yalangibwa
Oluvannyuma lwa byonna.

Obulamu twafuna butyo
Sibwa ddembe Kafeero bwabityeka
Oba olyawo yabiraba
Nti n'abanene abadaaza!
Naye bwekiba kityo,
Lwaki okubika kwanditutte enzingu nnyinji?

© Conrad Jessy Ssendawula

Hello Uganda
Do you feel the cost of living?
The cost of burial is higher anyway.

WHAT IF A WOMAN WERE A PADLOCK
The frustration turning keys
As she looks at you motionless
Trying out from a bundle
That not every Yeti, Tricircle, Tara circle
Name any padlock brand
Would be just unlocked
By a synonymous random key
But would yield to the exact one.

Sometimes a key fits in the turn
But cannot actually open or turn
Imagine the frustration
Being able to go through the gate
But you are stuck at its edge and perimeter
I hope master keys would be sought
And some women would be solex
Once rusted would give way to any key
But I would lubricate my padlock
And my key alone would open.

I would buy the best padlock
It would make an alarm to uninvited screwing
And like a wounded lion
Or lioness with cubs
I would turn my fierce eyes
And make a horrendous howl
The youths would s**t in their briefs
Those key cutters at kisekka market
Kiyembe lane and Nakasero
And the owner would emerge with pomp
To proudly open the lock with no struggle.

My choice would be limited
But my jealousies too would be terminated

©️ Jessy Conrad Ssendawula

You sang a new song
The lyrics fell through your mouth
The lup-dup palpitations raged
The rhythms spread to the ears
They saturated the atmosphere in the room
It was like Fr. Damian playing one to Mama Oby
Yes, I saw you in every word
I felt you in every high and low tune
You were the perfection of evey every syllable
I just loved to have you make convulsions
As the music blazed in the air.

I am still hearing the rising and falling rhythms
They get regulated like waves
Hallucinations perfect my mind
Apparitions do cover my eye sight
Your presence is here felt
Yes, I love you and love your music
Give me plenty of it
I can't have enough.

© Jessy Conrad
March 10th, 2021
14:29

I know, the mind chooses its world
Yes, I also choose my friends
But when I imagine,
All the beauty there is in nature,
My heart misses but a beat
You could be the model of excellence!

I know, they have their choices
But am talking of me
And I know my choice is universal
Its what you would choose too
And I know deep inside you
You envy me and want to posses what I do,
But she is mine,
Yes, mine all through
Let me celebrate her
This beauty be magnificent.

Irregularities of Youthful Love
Youthful relationship carry greatly;
The conceptual ages of infatuation dash greatly
Love makes wondrous things amorously;
Everything is funny - too funny for life!

At times when love grows,
Partners in a joint account deposit differently
Weekly, monthly or quarterly
And the amounts too vary
Love grows too irregularly:
You deposit as she withdraws
She deposits as you become reluctant
The one way traffic gets congested
That love becomes funny and abnormal.

We waste lots of time with such people
But when we decide to move on,
We find one who deposits as much as we do
We contemplate on the loss incurred
We weep for our huge loss
Oh love, how can one enjoy you?
How can the scale come to balance?
If love in youthful affairs could balance
All these abnormalities would be off!

Jessy Conrad
5th February, 2007

2020.3 Literature Lesson 003
The Pearl: Chapter I
Early morning at the beach among the brush houses, Kino wakes up to find his wife Juana gazing at him the very way she has always done. In his mind there is a song playing plaintively; its a good song, the music of the family.

As it gradually becomes day, Juana puts their baby, Coyotito in his hanging box, combs his hair, makes braids into them and races them with ribbons. Kino squats by the fire pit rolling a hot corn cake, deeps it in sauce and eats. He accompanies this by drinking plaque as his breakfast. This is his only breakfast outside feast days. Mark Kino as a very poor fisherman who last had cookies, which almost killed him for his big appetite, on a fiesta.

As the long streaks of sun warm the brush house and the hanging box in which Coyotito is, Kino and Juana freeze in their position when they sense and watch the slow movement of a scorpion from the roof of the baby's hanging box. Immediately, a new song plays in Kino as he freezes in astonishment. This time it is the song of evil, the music of the enemy, of the for of the family, a savage secret, dangerous melody overpowering the music of the family which plays in the background.

The scorpion moves on, advances into the box, Juana prays to Virgin Mary. Baby Coyotito is a mused by it, laughs and reaches up his hand towards it. Kino is almost within reach of it, when it senses danger and stops with its tail rising up over its back in little jerks and the curved thorn on its tail's end glistens. Kino's hand goes for the scorpion very slowly as it senses the source of the death coming to it. The laughing Coyotito shakes the rope and the scorpion falls. Kino leaps his hand to catch it, but it falls past his fingers on to the baby's shoulder, lands and streaks. He gets hold of it, throws it down and beats it into the earth floor with his fist, but Coyotito is now screaming with pain in the box. He screams heavily; his parents are helpless and the neighbours begin to come. The whole place gets crowded with people and messages runs to those behind _ "scorpion _ the baby has been stung," these push in but Juana Toma's, Kino's brother and his fat wife Apolonia and their four children crowd in the door way and block the entrance....

Study questions
a) What details does Steinbeck give to suggest that Kino and Juana are good people who live in harmony with their world?
b) Comment on the significance of the music that plays in Kino's mind.
c) Identify the depth of feelings Juana and Kino go through at the advance of the scorpion.

2020.3 Literature Lesson 002
John Steinbeck: The Pearl
The Pearl was published in 1947, about midway through Steinbeck's literary career. A few years before, in 1940, while sailing along the gulf of California in search of marine specimens, Steinbeck heard a story that interested him enough to be recorded in The Sea of Cortex (1941), his co-written nonfiction account of this expedition. This story he hear concerned a poor Indian boy who found a magnificent pearl that brought him nothing but misery. Steinbeck transformed this simple piece of Indian folklore into his novel, The Pearl.

At its opening, he calls the story a parable _ a brief narrative intended to teach a moral lesson. Taking an example of the Biblical parable of the Good Samaritan which instructs readers universally to care for one another, the story of The Pearl makes the lesson so convincing and memorable and the characters radiate a meaning larger than themselves. The story tells us the truth about people's eternal search for happiness in the things outside of themselves.

"You have defied not the pearl buyers, but the whole structure, the whole way of life, and I am afraid of you." When Kino discovers the magnificent pearl, he thinks he has the security and comfort for his son and wife but because he refuses to be cheated, the pearl instead brings sadness. Many times in life we are cheated, actually we may be cheated even on the nails driven in our coffins when we die; standing out against this may cause us untold despair and so we live life by accepting such things that Kino refused to go to bed with. The novel for our study therefore is a story that is going to question our values and how much we should fight for what we call our rights.

The novel tells the story of how Kino found and lost the Pearl. The whole folks talk about Kino, the fisherman, his wife, Juana, and their baby, Coyotito. This story is built on every man's heart and shows good and bad things _ nothing moderate.
This is going to be our first novel for this syllabus.

2020.3 Literature lessons: 001
Literature is the study of language through all its degrees of explicitness, how language is spoken or written and what it implies. There is a lot beyond the mere utterances in a text. That's what the new O level literature set books expect to dig out of you.

The NCDC expects the study of O level literature to:
i) Provide an introduction to African and world literature through the study of works that are likely to be appreciated.

ii) Develop among students a culture of reading for pleasure;

iii) Enhance the students' linguistic, aesthetic and creative growth so as to promote an understanding and appreciation of the values national unity, patriotism and cultural heritage;

iv) Bring learners to realities of human situations, problems, feelings and relationships;

v) Develop fundamental skills and capacities to discriminate, judge and make decisions;

vi) and provide an opportunity for learners to broaden and deepen their knowledge of human affairs and human character.

The study of literature takes into account of the major genres: poetry, drama and the novel. These styles of literary discourse have particular methods of communication and we approach them using different elements and strategies for understanding them.

I am at that moment
That set commitment
That nocturne attainment
When you and I met.

The whizzing mosquitoes
Buzzing up from my toes
And your lips ripe like tomatoes
That day you became my potato.

I still go to that day
It appears like yesterday
My life hinges it in custody
The moment that became our day.

© Conrad Jessy Ssendawula
13:32 GMT +3, 15th June, 2020

THE STRENGTH OF LOVE
A thermionic eruption shatters the heart
A fission diverges the strong waves
So hot like magma
And like an arrow they shoot at the mind
And one is obsessed and possessed
With great fancy and whims roving over.

Acquaintance grows with admiration
The brain wags ransacking over
Setting and setting of would be speeches
Utterances in total soliloquy obsessive
And like the late figs fall off their tree
You are ready to emit words of short wave length.

These fall off like swords assembling
And with rocket speed pierce the heart
No pain caused but a charge of sentiment
And like a rose flower swing in the air
The mind swings in reverberation
Its then you record strong love.

The q***r but sweet words you emit
Rupture nonviolently into chambers of the heart
Run impulsively in the nerve fibres
Making the two hearts swing jointly
Resonating like strings of the same wave length
This force of attraction between two is love.

When it sets such a strong foundation
It builds a strong fence enclosing the two
Guarding them against the arrows of jealous
That crushes may shoot to enlightenment
So it creates a bond beyond blood ties
And hovers on the scene for all eyes to see.

© Jessy Conrad Ssendawula
24th May, 2003

I can Only Imagine

"Honey," so she called
This lockdown date
The one with whom workaholic
Had denied sufficient honey moon
"Will you eat after eating
Or will you rather after eating?"

I wanted to say either way
But the dimples on her cheeks
Drills of oxbow lakes
Corrupted me
I saw myself towering in passion
Then, on her lips I sipped
Comfort and belonging
Before I could answer in words
She was quick to affirm,
"So you ate before eating
Will you eat again after eating?"

The eyes spoke the promise
The nights and day full of rigour
We didn't care whether lockdown went to half a year
Just being off that desk with calls
Getting this uninterrupted attention
Being with she that inspired every nodule
Was a dream fulfilled in corona.

As the world cursed and wailed
The moments of myself in ponder
Went to the scientists who deserved high pay
For making this unnatural virus
For fusing it all through the world
For making my work halt for months
For giving me opportunity to eat and then eat
Before eating, whilst eating and after eating.

Jessy Conrad
The Poet of our Times
3rd May, 2020

The Day I Met You
An adventurous life I led
gave me pleasure
You were near the Church
narrowing my pace
Chatting at the Reverend's home
left for another day
Wandering a village ahead
was back again
That it was a shock
to see you in the shade.

Past you I came
to attract your attention
But you noticed not
approaching near you
It became the day
we first said 'hey'
But all God had planned
we'd be two
The day I won't forget
for you were calm.

The rhetorical sound of you
displayed a better dialogue
The sarcastic language
that irony and satire
Elongating the dialogue
all the way round!

I can't forget the nestling
in the cool breeze of the shade
With the rustling of the trees _
The day I met you,
will stand an event!

J. C Ssendawula
(S.5 May 3rd, 2003)

A Damask Rose
I want to give you a flower
A damask rose flower
A flower scented just like you
These frills you leave with me
Pierce my nostrils like a damask rose
I want to give you such a rose
For the love I harbour for you.

I am going to pluck and compile a posy
It will be my present to you
To express my care for you
For you are the Queen of my life
And all I think about is you
Time has proved a perfect master
And I swagger with ambiance
Because of you my damask rose.

I want to affirm what I always said
That as long as you and I are alive
There isn't and neither will there be
And of course there has never been
Anybody as beautiful as you are
So I call you a damask rose
Not because you're fragile
But because you're splendid,
Portable, and the most lovely dear.

©Jessy Conrad Ssendawula

I will not live in fear
I am not food for covid-19
Though its not something to ignore
Corona virus is not my fret
I will be locked up
Not because I fear
But because am law abiding.

Don't celebrate yourself yet Covid
To some of us you are nothing
The God of heaven protects us
And under his arms we lie
I don't fear you covid-19.