12 July 2008
Kampala — History has long dismissed their existence as a myth. However,in Buhweju, a mountainous county in Bushenyi District, the demigods still roam, as Tony Mushoborozi recently found out
By day, the steep bushy hills of Buhweju County in Bushenyi District are filled with goats, sheep cows, and people in their tea plantations. However, nights in Buhweju are characterised by the most remarkable signs and symptoms of invisible 'human' life - Demigods!At night by the well, after the general population has gone to sleep, one can see human figures washing clothes,
talking and laughing. Valleys are teeming with sounds of boys milking cows, and others taking cattle to drink water from a stream.
Sounds of people fishing on riverbanks can also be heard. But as one gets closer to these people, they disappear, except of course if one is drunk, according to 64- year-old Adonia Katsigire.
Apparently, the demigods kidnap drunkards who move late in the night. Katsigire is a resident of Katagata, in the hills of Buhweju. He has lived here since birth in 1942 and like all the residents of Buhweju, has had endless encounters with the Bachwezi.
"When I was a child," he begins, "Buhweju was sparsely inhabited. Tea growing had not started and all these plantation- filled mountains were bushes where we used to go hunting.
One day I had gone hunting and was shocked to find a set of black wooden gourds containing fresh milk stashed away in the cleft of a rock. I called my friends to show them what I had found.
When we came back a minute later, the gourds were gone." The old man seated opposite us in the tea shop has been watching as Katsigire talks. He says: "I remember the first time I ever saw the 'flying' drums.
It was around 8:00am in 1950 when my friends and I saw drums soaring in the air on our way to school. We heard the sweetest sound of drums wafted towards us from behind the hill. At first we thought the chief was calling people for community work. That was until we saw the drums.
"They were about eight drums of different sizes, and beautiful drumsticks held by invisible hands were playing a beat on them. The tune they played was the most beautiful I ever heard."
Katsigire says: "On another occasion in the early 1970s, my brother and I left my home at 2:00am. I had to go for a court session in Bushenyi and had to be there by 8:00am. After an hour of walking, we reached a football field.
In the field was a huge globe of flames and all In search of the
invisible Bachwezi around it were invisible people playing amahiri. We could hear them, but we could not see them."
Amahiri is a traditional game in which competitors throw a baton that goes cartwheeling rapidly along the ground until it loses momentum. The further the baton goes, the better. "Do you remember in 2000," another friend of Katsigire interrupts, "when Kamanzi disappeared for weeks? He had gone drinking on the market day.
When he finally came back, he said he had been taken by the Bachwezi who treated him using milk and told him drinking was bad for his health." Katsigire says recently, as he took his daughter to a boarding school, she suddenly stopped as if something unusual had happened to her.
"Then I saw a very tall man dressed in white clothes. He was as tall as a tree and he was standing by the roadside. We were considering taking another route, when he disappeared." These are a few of the many mythical tales that the men of Buhweju narrated.
If you are perplexed by these tales, you are not alone. I could hardly believe them either. My disbelief was apparent to Katsigire. Being a kind man, he proposed that I spend a night at his home so he could take me to a Bachwezi cave so I could see for myself.
It was 7:00pm and I had no option but to accept his offer. Nyakashaka is a small trading centre, 30km away from Bushenyi town, high up in the hills of Buhweju, and has no lodging facilities whatsoever.
After about an hour of walking, we arrived at his home. His grandchildren were playing in the moonlight. He entered the kitchen and greeted his wife and introduced me as a newfound friend. She welcomed me and gave me a calabash of sweet porridge. Katsigire's wife was not surprised to see me.
Her husband often brings home strangers. At supper, Katsigire narrated to his wife the story of how he met me stranded in a trading centre and decided to come home with me. His Christian wife was all smiles and nods as Katsigire spoke, until he told her I was looking for Bachwezi.
Suddenly, the wife turned to me and almost jumped out of her seat. In Buhweju, people who come looking for Bachwezi are always those that want to worship them. He then told her that I was doing research about the demigods, and then she calmed down.
At the table, a meal of starchy sweet potatoes and beans had been served. The wife gave a report on the day's activities and the coffee they had sold that day. Tea plucking and selling was high on the list. The family sells 3,000kg of fresh tea leaves every month at sh200 each.
It was a peaceful night in my small decent bed, until Katsigire woke me up at 3:30am. He had fetched several jerrycans of water from the well to irrigate his gardens. Apparently, he begins his day by 3:00am and is joined by his wife later in the morning.
This explains how he manages to take care of three hills covered Katsigire looks at tea plantations in Buhweju A well on top of a hill. It is said that the well is covered in flames at night in tea plantations, an orchard and acres of other crops.
And so when at 3:30am I crawled out of my warm bed struggling to open my eyes, Katsigire was happy to show me a hill opposite his house. The hill was ablaze.
"It's the Bachwezi doing that," he declared. To my surprise, the fiery hill suddenly went black. The orange flames from the burning hill had illuminated the whole valley and the sparks from the fire had flown skyward like meteors.
But now it was the blue moon again ruling the village. In the morning, the hill that was ablaze the night before was green. We set off before 7:00am with packed lunch and started a hilly 5km journey to the cave of the demigods.
After rounding about 17 hills away from home, Katsigire proposed that we rest. At 10:30am, we made a stopover at a hilltop village kiosk in which banana juice, sugar cane, yellow bananas, water and coca-cola were on sale.
"We will need more energy to find our way in the thick bush," he said. We sat down and opened our lunch packs. As we ate, Katsigire was busy doing what I believe he does best - making friends.
He started the most dramatic conversation I ever heard:
"Have you ever seen this friend of mine?" he asked the shopkeeper. The shopkeeper, who had never seen Katsigire, shook his head. "This man is a Muchwezi. He came to me the night before last night when I was in my garden.
He was dressed in black (my clothes were all black), and he growled at me. When I asked him what he desired, he told me that he was a Muchwezi and had come to invite me for a party." All this time the shopkeeper was laughing.
"So we are going to Ahaibare rya Bachwezi (the cave of the Bachwezi) to eat meat. Is the cave still there or it was taken by rain water?" Then he laughed and laughed until tears ran down his cheeks.
The shopkeeper, who had never gone to the rock, said: "For sure this friend of yours must be a Muchwezi. I have lived here all my life and I have never seen a single person going down there. Even hunters don't go that side."
Cave of the Bachwezi
The cave was just 200m away from the kiosk, on the other side of the hill, and soon we began to find our way through very thick thorny bushes.
I had been warned about the thick bushes, but not the steepness of the hill. Pushing through the bushes and trying to keep on both my legs was like pulling a bag of rocks out of a muddy swamp.
Luckily, once in a while we would stop and enjoy a break, eating sweet wild passion fruits. After hitting cliffs in the bush twice, Katsigire abruptly called out to me and told me he had finally found the cave.
Unfortunately, we had approached the cave from a cliff and there was no way to access it other than jumping 20 feet down to its entrance. We headed back and walked up a steep incline to the entrance. As I was struggling to keep on my feet, he was carefully pegging his spear into the ground and moving more comfortably.
We finally faced the entrance of the cave. It was not overgrown due to ages of evacuation like history books would imply. I noticed my friend was scared though. "A leopard lives here, we need to be careful," he whispered. Then he held his spear in ready mode and did not look back for minutes. That really scared me.
We treaded the ground with even more care, lest the wild cat was on the prowl. He was as astonished as I was, having been here last when he was a little boy.
The rock towered 20 feet above us and the cave was at the foot of the cliff. Would the leopard come out? Were demigods angry with us?
Were they watching? "Lord have mercy," I muttered. The floor of the cave was covered in dry hay like the one the locals use to cover their kitchen floors. Inside the cave nearer to the entrance, were rocks placed as stools by the walls. The roof was soot-black and the cave extended many metres inside the rock until it was too dark to see.
Just at the bend I could see what looked like a fireplace, but dared not enter. The smell in the air was that of a dump, but occupied house. He turned and looked at me, eyes wide open. "This is where they stay," he said.
For some reason Katsigire's notion of a prowling leopard had left him, but both of us knew we did not want to enter the cave. From where we stood, we could see there were no footprints in the dust on the floor and that human beings had not been here in a longtime.
Who then had covered the cave's floor in hay? Why was the entrance so neat and kempt? Why did the cave smell like an occupied house? These were the questions that I saw in Katsigire's eyes as he looked at me. "Invisibility does not mean non-existence," he said as we turned to leave.
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