Oh Sheilla!

I was in Mt. St. Mary’s College – Namagunga over the weekend for my sisters’ Blessing Mass and Visiting Day. It’s a beautiful school with more trees than buildings, lots of grass and flowers, clean roads, and girls who look almost identical. Being back there always makes me feel like I have gone back in time. Save for the new Dining hall, it looks exactly the same: same teachers, same routine, and hell even the hedges seem to be the same exact height I remember! Oh Namagunga…. I have many fond memories of this place: braving the biting cold to go to morning mass, absorbing knowledge in the library that was always teeming with books, spending long hours in the chapel in the dead of the night, watching the stars and learning about constellations, and simply feeling secure and protected from harsh reality. There was a girl named Sheilla who particularly makes me smile when I think of Namagunga. Oh Sheilla. She had a boisterous laugh that went from irritating in Form One when I hated her, to heartwarming in Form Four when I hated that she would have to go once O’ level was done. Perhaps that is why I treasured her so, recorded every moment and had it burnished on my mind for the future. I still remember her warm hugs, her big-toothed smile, her eyes that were always twinkling with pleasure and or mischief, her poetry, her impressive prose, her impeccable taste. She was like a whole new world: different from what I had known and grown accustomed to. In a place so dull, with hedges that were the same height and gossip that got recycled all term, Sheilla brought life, light and music. She looked at everything with a bright light, illuminating it so that small things became small pleasures. I remember running with her until we were breathless to catch the rising moon near the tennis courts. I remember skipping night prep with her to sit on mats outside our locked dormitory, to listen to music on her palm-sized MP3 player. I remember taking tea in the scorching sun because her cramps were killing her and she could not take tea alone. I remember hanging a lesu around her bed on the lower bunk, and sitting inside to talk until we fell asleep. I can still see the chits moving back and forth during lessons, until we had to use a code in case the teacher found the chit midway its journey. Oh Sheilla. With her I ogled men we had not seen, but made up in our minds from the books we had read. We particularly loved the character Cesare Borgia from Mario Puzo’s “The Family.” He was (in our heads), the perfect combination of Eric Bana and Orlando Bloom (we had both watched Troy many times), with a dash of Boris Kodjoe. I still remember how she made me feel: loved, insufficient because she was too cool. I remember how that evolved to thinking that maybe there was something as cool about me because she wanted to hang with me. Oh Sheilla. I remember getting high on Redds and Old Jamaica (rum-flavoured) chocolate on a school trip. She had managed to turn a boring Geography trip to Kasenyi landing site into a memorable experience.

I still remember saying goodbye.  Promising to stay in touch, even when I knew that we would never have a paradise like that again. I remember hearing about her through the rumor mill when we returned for our A-levels. I remember wanting to scream at anyone who said something bad about her. I wanted to tell them: “She’s the gentlest soul beneath her “badass” exterior!!” Oh Sheilla. I remember your loud voice, your hilarious jokes, and your uncanny ability to bark like a dog. I remember your “vampire teeth” and large eyes, and how proud you were of them. I remember. I can’t claim to miss you everyday, but I do miss you sometimes. I miss our little paradise.