I’ve told this story multiple times. In my final year at university, the excitement of coming to the end of four years of study was marred with a little bit of anxiety. What on earth was I going to do with myself after graduation? I had already realized in the first semester that the fourth year seemed to exist just to make the discipline of studying seem more important. I barely had any classes and I was bored. I was bored on a whole with life but I was also extremely bored with my writing.
I grew up reading. I remember seeing my mother and my elder sister constantly exchange volumes of Danielle Steel, Sydney Sheldon, and John Grisham that seemed massive to me at that age. I don’t remember if I pestered my mother for books but I do remember that she bought us books often. When I was ten, I got it into my head that I wanted to write. Just like the people I saw on television, I used the work laptop my mother sometimes carried home with her and I started writing my story. It was a regurgitation of a popular day time soap I was a big fan of then. When printed, it was all of one and a half pages. It was that year that I realized that I did not just enjoy reading stories. I enjoyed writing them, and so I wrote.
At the risk of sounding very clichéd, I would like to say that I believe writing chose me as opposed to me choosing it. There are times I would be scribbling away in my notebooks and I would feel like I was just the conduit that God chose to bring this story or poem or expression of feelings into this world. I was more confident with pen and paper than I was with voice. When I joined senior one and started studying literature, I was a bit confused. I knew with all my heart that I loved the written word but I didn’t understand why I didn’t seem to enjoy the classes. I, however, found refuge in the English class because there I got to write.
Writing became my favourite thing to do to pass time. It became my favourite hideaway as puberty hit and some sort of confusion set in. Writing also became my favourite therapist.
Fast forward a couple of years later, when I was the only writer I knew and I was bored. I felt like the feedback of those I knew wasn’t genuine because they loved me and they had read my work for a long time. I didn’t trust it. I wanted a challenge. I was also desperately looking for an alternative to the construction I had just spent four years of my life studying. Could it be writing? Wasn’t I going to starve?
On 1st February 2012, a day after I had written a blog about how I felt I was in a writing rut and needed the company of writers, a friend of mine got tagged in a note on Facebook that turned out to be a poem that blew me away. So, as one does, I read more of this person’s work. His name, Jason Ntaro. I went ahead to send him a message via Facebook and we talked about writing. There was a meet happening that Sunday at the National Theatre. He invited me to it.
It was the most intimidating yet exciting experience of my life. Yes, I had wanted and even prayed to God for an opportunity to interface with other writers. I was however unprepared for the wave of intimidation that hit me as I sat within that circle. People were critiquing poetry with so much confidence and authority. Others had submitted not one but up to three wonderful pieces of work that would sometimes be shredded right there in the Meet — pieces of work I would have thought were wonderful. The Meets taught me that art is open to interpretation and many people will see themselves in your work even when you did not think you had written them in. I had always written for myself. I had never considered the place of art in activism, education, and validation.
Prose is my first love, but oh the love my heart found for poetry!
I went for that Meet with no clue what Jason looked like. I knew absolutely no one. The first members of the Meet I met were Eron Kiiza and Pascal Olupot. They were already in the CICP room by the time I arrived. After a few minutes, some more people joined us but we didn’t get into it (and I had no idea what it looked like) until OJ arrived. He was the moderator for the day. I got to find out later that Jason had told him about me. That explained why he chose the seat next to mine and kept calling on me to give my thoughts on poems. It was an exhilarating experience. I miss the Meet. It was also wildly intimidating; I walked away that day not knowing whether I would ever write again. I had listened to so much good work that I wondered why I ever bothered.
Later that year, I attended my first ever recital; Odyssey of Verse. It was nothing like the recitals I had attended at school that’s for sure. I signed up to help out with the next one and that is how I got to be selling tickets at The Broken Voices of the Revolution. I took charge of the publicity and communications for recitals from “Bitter Sweet” in 2013 until the last one “Moving on” in October 2016.
Late in 2017, the new direction we were taking was unveiled, smaller gatherings, focusing on one poet at a time called The Ibua Lounge. I was not actively involved with the Lantern Meet in that season. However, when I requested, I was allowed to participate by moderating the lounges.
I’d always boasted of having spent all this time with the Lantern Meet and never once stepping on a stage to perform. That was taken away when we had a lounge celebrating a dear friend of mine, a lover of words, a magnificent poet. You got me on stage Nev. I’m most definitely never going back, however.
The release of the popular Hollywood movie “The Black Panther” sparked a conversation on Social Media about the value of representation, especially in the arts. When I was still in school, I was drawn to literature by African writers because I enjoyed reading about scenery I could imagine, family dynamics like my own, even names that were similar to mine.
I aimed to write more stories that reflected my reality but did not seem to be very aware of many other African writers. Being part of the Lantern Meet, reading good work and seeing individuals who were as ordinary as I was, dealing with the same issues of being Ugandan and making such strides with their work made me believe that perhaps I could live in Uganda and write successfully.
Of course, there are many things we’re still figuring out on this writing and publishing journey but it’s encouraging to have others to figure this out with.
The path of a writer is sometimes lonely, thank you Lantern Meet for the company.