Love Trials

Prologue

Every early morning, the sun rays always appeared like yellow-hot arrows spearing the land as if it was an afternoon sunshine.

It was in this country, Uganda where Mangweno Noah grew up and later became a science teacher. Despite his staunch cultural belief, he changed to coupling life and in his course of study while coupling, he developed a riddle theory of the world having three layers or tiers.

While executing his duty as a teacher, he committed love crimes one of which landed him into the inner prison. The agony he stumbled upon intensified the discovery that the life of a human being goes through the three layers, and that no person can describe or see a layer he or she had left or describe the next to go to.

Chapter 1

Every early morning, the sun’s rays always appeared like yellow-hot arrows spearing and penetrating the land as if it was a plentiful afternoon sunshine.

When Noah Mangweno the son of Judah Man-

gweno was still young, he and his friends of the same age used to sit on a hemmed rock to enjoy the dawn and dusk sunshine.  While at this place, he used to wave to the tourists’ passers-by who sometimes stopped and gave him and his friends some gifts like candies.

It was in this country, Uganda where he grew up and later became a science teacher. Despite his staunch cultural belief, he changed to coupling life, and in his course of study while coupling, he developed a riddle about the world having three layers.

While executing his duty as a teacher, he committed love crimes one of which landed him into the inner prison. The agony he stumbled upon intensified the discovery that the life of a human being goes through the three layers, and that no person can describe or see a layer he or she had left or describe the next to go to.

Chewido valley found in Kasanja village became a natural arid locus due to constant burning sun rays that hammered the valley year after year. The denizens of this locus had creative cultural skills for their survival. They practised peasantry on a small scale which most of the time helped them to overcome severe hunger and sometimes famine. 

The people who lived in this locus were Basanja. Countless people, who used to tour the national park found in this locus, were amazed and pondered in their hearts why these people loved to dwell in this place despite its aridity although the geographical areas themselves were still virgin. It was the same for the people who dwelt on the outskirts of Mount Nelgona. This mountain used to erupt whenever there was a hefty rain in that locus, and the mud could flood the whole outskirts burying people alive six feet under the ground especially when it came during night.

However much these people eyeballed at the death causalities, the survivors were always reckless by not running away, but hung around rather than to immigrate to peaceable loci. The regime provided free land to them, but they seemed to have little appeal to shift from this locus as it is said, one man’s meat is another man’s poison. 

Possibly, it was the cultural or ancestral belief such as not leaving cassava tubers of their dead laying in the bone yard and emotional state of belonging that gnawed their emotions similar to Masaaba people who used to face drought and famine nearly every year, but never had a soft spot for calling off their locus. Such kind of life exposed the human agony that could crop up to someone from birth and could even be passed on to life after death. For example, a person could start his or her agony ball that could roll from within the womb such as the impairment of the foetus that could be brought to earthly life until death do part and the reversal could be true too.

Chapter 2

Mangweno Judah and his family were one of the people who lodged in Chewido Valley, however, the agony that denizens coped within this locus was not a burden to his family, for he was an industrious man in the community. He used to work as a village chief, a title equivalent to current Local Council I. A Local Council I leadership meant leading ten homes, but due to population evolution, the number of households could reach twenty or thirty. 

The Kasanja community was sparsely populated as it was a desert area. Aridity was the dominant problem that the village inhabitants wrestled with each year resembling the Masaaba’s area. The Kasanja chief and his family lived without much throb unlike the denizens because he survived on the outlays of the culprits. This came about because the anguish was severe. The adult youth could not bear it, but used to break the legal laws through stealing, raping and slaying as a way to hunt bucks and to voice their disapproval against the regime’s recklessness towards their livelihood. These crimes snowed in the area due to land eviction as there was hardly any fertile land in the valley, yet, as polygamy was the order of the day, the population was shooting up every year. This turned out to be a major reason why the chief had to wear a distinguished security uniform, a jacket and a cap on his head to penalize the culprits. 

One of the severe penalties which the chiefs used to inflict on the criminals was slavery; meaning the jailbirds were treated and given unbearable orders. This stemmed from the cultural belief that a criminal cannot dwell with the virgin meaning the flawless people. Mob justice used to be imposed and any culprit could be lynched by the people without the chief’s order. 

But by the chief’s enforcement of the law, the culprits had to fetch water to irrigate the community gardens from dawn until dusk. Mangweno had plentiful gardens that they irrigated thoroughly well. These gardens made him survive from starvation which his folks were prone to. A jailbird could be let to have a break during lunch-time and lunch used to be served late afternoon at around 4:00 p.m. and he had to ingest and finish it in just one or two minutes. Otherwise, a plate could be taken from him with five whips.

In spite of everything, the food given to the internees was not enough either, but only for human survival and their evening meal was black tea with no sugar. To them, a piece of posho tasted great like a cake which was served with bean source that was spiced with as many as five cooked beans along with a full bowl of soup just turned into brown colour. It was only the salt that one could call for to add to his soup. 

Another sentence the chiefs used for discipline was to whip the jailbirds twelve strong rods late evening at around 8:00 and 9:00 p.m. The death sentence was being used on murderers and adulterers as Sharia laws were the dominant legal laws of the community. The jail itself was also another whip to jailbirds’ bodies as from 7:30 p.m. each jailbird had to be locked in and could be called later to face the music. Each cell was short in height suitable for one person to be lodged in, but four inmates used to be locked there. The cell’s measure-ments were about 4x4 feet which means an inmate who was tall couldn’t stand or sleep on the floor, but remain sitting or stooping until morning. In other words, fetching water was a relief for the jailbirds to stretch their bodies. 

From such incidents, some of them understood the human anguish and realised what a person goes through from time of birth to death, some of which extended to life in hell. Hence, because of such a person’s fate, they wished for they had not been born or had died in their mother’s womb. 

This was the case with chief Mangweno Judah as many internees writhed under his hand. Being a chief of the village, he had a huge family with lots of spouses and kids, but some of them were against the way he treated the inmates his son Noah and Sodia Nuhata, Noah’s mother being the chiefs. Sodia had critical thinking about how to divorce him because of his cruelty, but her parents were pauper who could not afford to recompense his dowry because culture demanded that if a woman planned to divorce her husband, the parents had to return the dowry that their son-in-law had salaried them.

As it says, what will be a pumpkin is foreseeable by its stem-string, Noah was not simple to his father like his mother during his early age. Numerous kids of his age heard about the International Olympic Games’ paybacks benefits. As young as they were, they began preparatory exercises in his father’s yard and of the neighbours. The elder did not see any value of it and caned them severely because they coveted their kids to stay home to do domestic work. As for Noah, he was the worst to rebel against his father and the music he faced was unbearable. The father flogged him to the point of death as his buttocks could not sit, but lay upright days and nights. His mother just turned to nursing the wounds. 

This was the beginning of Noah sipping the three earthly layers comprising good health or peace, illness and prison. The three earth layers, according to him, were different from the three world layers which comprised the womb, the earth and hell or heaven that he thought about extremely during his adult age. 

Chapter 3

Mangweno had borrowed the tactics of treating the prisoners with heartless heart beyond reasonable doubts. He used to narrate a story to his family members and friends about Dhaluda Job who was chief of Baruti Island and Noah paid a lot of heed to these stories, but never mimicked him to hurt anybody among members of his peer group. 

In not long-distant past, he narrated, "there was a lynchpin called Dhaluda Job. He had a small round head with long hair, yet his chest was very huge whereby an observer could think that his head was cut from someone else and hybridised it with his chest. He had yellow-brown eyes and giant black lips as if he was a cigarette smoker, yet in reality, he was not. The legs were also thin but the feet were thick and lengthy like a block made of cement. He used to wear army clothes because, by then, he was a soldier. 

During his reign, he wanted his folks to be virgin or faultless similar to a baby after forsaking its mother’s mammary teats, sucking breasts becomes a disgust to that child until death do part. Therefore, he imposed tough measures that could yield to his strategy.

For all his time of rule, there was a lot of acting up in trade because the inflation of the Island economy was too penury that the essential commodities like sugar, salt, soap and paraffin were being sold by special broadcast to the denizens to come and queue to buy half a bar of soap, a kilo of sugar and one kilo of salt, yet these quantities were not enough for a family a week. The dosh was not a big deal as one could be able to buy such as a full sack of sugar, but the commodities were the major burden. They were scarce.

Because of a high plea for these items and since some of the people had dosh but could not access the goods they needed, the adult youth turned to smuggling means and were selling these items like hotcakes. They were at a high price. In fact, the regime of this chief used to sell these items at a reasonable price, but these youth multiplied ten times the normal or regime price.  The majority just turned to them and a person could buy any of these items at any time rather than waiting for the regime to air out to them as they used to broadcast twice a month.

Despite the inadequate commodities, Dhaluda couldn’t swallow pills to such lifestyles, but plunged to combatting them.  One of the measures he laid down was to arrest any smuggler and be penalized severely. A person jammed with illicit salt, sugar, or a bar of soap was told to sit there and then had to chew those items. In fact, people who were given such hammers succumbed to death. He had also banned sandals to appear in any locus of the towns especially the capital city, but still, some youth wedged and bumped into the same penalty of chewing those sandals.

The mini wearing was another curse to the lassies in the towns of the island. Despite his bar to this habit from society, some lassies still did not succumb to the law. A number of them were trapped and were put in intern. On the other hand, the culprits and rapists too used it as a podium for their means of gain. A handful of lasses were frightened by these culprits. They disguised themselves as constable men and the lassies’ items such as dough purses would be taken from them and their fragranced bodies still stood in for the false accusation."

From such harsh treatment, Mangweno too urbanised his own way to penalise the offenders. But as God sometimes mercies the afflicted, his service he rendered during his regime made his power to fall apart. An order from above for evicting the land assailed his locus which gave rise to him and his people trek to another land on the planet because they had wedged from immigrating to sterile acreage land that the regime had sited to them. This dreaded Mangweno and one who was once a brutal chief was now as feeble and terrified as a grasshopper. 

Chapter 4

A group that trekked with Mangweno and his family were confronted by Makangu tribe. Before they set to trek, they assumed to clash with such difficulties, and their tremor was true oracle because where they went, they actually bumped into a severe tribe which someone could call a man’s eater due to the animosity that was laid on them. 

As if that was not enough, they also battled with malaria and venereal diseases such as syphilis which ruined sundry of them. The Makangu tribe had stone kerbs rather limits about marriage, religious rituals, social norms, among others that could not match with them. Thus, the trekker booked another root that steered them to the Kitavi tribe a neighbour to the Nandhini tribe. 

Chapter 5  

While they were still in Kasanja, most of the Basanja families hinged on peasant means of survival, and the land was inadequate to endow with lodgings to a number of people who used to cultivate there. In terms of health, herbs were the bossy means of curing the folks as the regime had no special blueprint to see the needs of the paupers. A malady like COVID 19 could have turned out to be a great slayer to them if it had materialised during that era. 

It was the regime strategy to keep them at bay and so vacate the region for its own hound with no fee in terms of land swap because it had sited a sterile locus for them.  Some denizens carped that the kingpins of their country looked more on their guts rather than on them because the land had lush natural minerals especially gold together with oil that could be mined and assist these God’s bits of bones, but they harvested only disillusionment.  Finally, the regime defence force was fully deployed to drive out the few bone tubers that had lingered behind in that place. These two minerals were being extracted to a lesser extent until all people ran from the land. 

Still, before they trekked from Kasanja, some people sustained their lives on hunting, but others had to hook jobs which had very little return. Mining was what made them outlive. A shilling realised from this type of labour could be used as a fall for the staple food such as millet, cassava, or maize flour along with beans, but leafy greens were natural growing-plants and could be picked for vegetable supplement. Before the regime evicted people from the land, these people used to sell gold from their own mining, but the expat traders too did not pity them either by buying them at little greenbacks, yet these traders used to sell these minerals at higher prices. 

The boys used to hunt birds. They plucked and cooked them as a sauce bird-meat