What will you tell your child?

Have you ever wondered where the word “Life” comes from? From my very limited research, the word seems to have originated from older languages that contributed to the English we speak today like Old English which yes, is different from current Era English, where it was spelled “Lif ” and Proto-German which once again is also a different language from current day German where it was “ Libam “. The historical Linguists seem to agree that those were the words which meant existence and the ability to grow, reproduce, perform functional activity, and die. They believe that the influencers of language in these particular cultures derived the word “LIFE” from them. But what does it mean? And for this particular rant, what does it mean to give Life? To reproduce. To parent. Okuzara.

About a year ago, I sat down to think about life, and my mind spiraled into a chasm of depressing thoughts.

I started with positive thoughts about life. The things that make it worth it. I thought about pleasure, food, love, exercise, success, sex, laughter, acknowledgement, security, appreciation, hospitality and whatever the adjective for basking in nature’s awesomeness is. And then, with a smile on my face, I asked what exactly made these events, situations, and emotions so good. The pleasures of life suddenly started turning into compensations for the ugliness of life. A balance of the scales of the consequences of existence. Success is greater enjoyed when the task completed has been done through a series of great failures, challenges, and bitter sacrifices. The phrase, The taller the tree, the deeper the roots explains this idea best. We cannot enjoy security without facing great danger. Suddenly, my eyes were opened to the horrors of our existence. It dawned on me that we think the way we do because nature has molded us to think like this. We are all killers. We are all thieves. Set here by nature to fulfill a task in the ecosystem of energy in the universe. We are all born in deficiency of something. That is why, after a health check, a newborn baby is attached to the bosom of its mother to breastfeed. They even call it the “Golden hour”. The baby is fed instantly in order to be filled with nutrients and antibodies that they may have the energy to survive in this harsh environment.

This idea, however, doesn’t exist only among our noble species. It is everywhere on our little planet. All life needs energy to exist. To move, to function, and to grow, and when we cease to have access to this energy. We die. What forms does the energy we require come in? Other animals! Other plants and other life forms. As far as I know, the only life form that doesn’t kill or steal for energy is the sun-light absorbing plant. Everything else must take a life to sustain its own and its offspring.

Think about that for a moment. Even bacteria must feed on other microscopic lifeforms for energy. The ant must feed on the grasshopper for energy, and the lioness must hunt, kill, and feed on the calf of a buffalo to get energy for itself and its cubs. And we humans are the worst. We will eat everything. We will even eat plants and delude ourselves into believing that, because they don’t behave in the same way other organisms do, they aren’t alive, and that somehow gives us the moral high ground to judge those who eat animals. In truth, it is a very simple and harrowing fact of life that nature demands that we take life to survive. What complicates things for humans is that we have more needs than just energy. The need for space and many other psychological fulfillments bends us to become the ultimate arbiter of death in nature. And not just unto other life forms but also unto ourselves.

At this point in my stream of consciousness, I was burdened by a great sadness, but my curiosity about the matter refused to stop. My mind then ran a scenario. What if we were visited by an alien race from another solar system, that was born and evolved with the same nature as mankind. Let me call them – ABA-AHAERU -, Rukiga to mean “those from outside”. 

When they arrived, they would identify our bodies as a great source of energy and nutrients for them. And they decided to round us up and put us on farms. Of course, like any other animal that values its freedom, we would fight back and resist, pouring all our civilization’s resources into this rebellion. But our weapons would be as useful to us as horns on the head of a cow being bred for slaughter. The technology they possessed to not only traverse the void-like distance of space and turn the earth into one big animal farm would simply mean that we would perceive their tools of engineering the same way cats look at cars. With awe and wonder, but without a clue of what it does or even what it means. We would be farm animals to them. They would breed us similarly to what we have done to the dogs and plants; fitting them to our particular societal desires, be it to feed the masses, or to decorate our homes and fill our air with beautiful scents. They would develop industries that specialize in turning the residue of our corpses, like our bones and hair into fashionable attire. Some would even be novel and decide to combine our parts with plants and segments of other animals. It would be a horrifying mirror, and we would be powerless to stop it. The sheer horror of this thought sent shivers across my entire body, and I decided to end the thought there and then. But my imagination wasn’t done with me.

I decided to take a walk, to calm my nerves and just remind myself that none of that has happened to us and that we are still just humans trying to figure out life. Trying to attach meaning to our existence. After all, we didn’t ask to be born. I walked through the streets of Kampala, but the stroll wasn’t as immaculate as one would think. On my walk, I was inhaling clouds of dust that were raised by the carbon-emitting vehicles racing across our murram roads. I felt like I was inhaling the lung cancer that would eventually consume me in my old age. As if that wasn’t enough. I was constantly having to dodge the endless barrage of boda boda riders that were slowly carving out a path for their vehicles on the pedestrian lane. These boda bodas were so many that squeezing through the gaps in between the cars on the main road was no longer a sustainable route, instead, they had started pushing pedestrians off the road shoulders so that they could also move comfortably. And my little stroll through town quickly became an anthropological observation about how humans behave.

The powerful oppress the weak to feed their never-ending appetite.

Just in my little corner of the world, the injustice and unfairness, and the lack of equitable merit to gain anything, sickens me. And maybe it is because I don’t wield the influence to enact my will on my environment, perhaps I would be no different from the people doing so today, I don’t know. But whether they know it or not, they directly have a hand in the fact that the city is not built with capacity in mind, or with the impact of human activity on the environment, or with the aesthetic details that they can afford to attach to the metropolis they like to call Kampala. When I ask myself what makes me proud of my country, I fail to cite anything that I would like to associate it with. Instead, I am forced to appreciate the little things, “We have good food,” and “The weather is decent,” which are all good but have very little to do with our own input. These are all gifts of nature, which don’t get me wrong, I am immensely grateful for. But, where is our input? We are so divided by the small differences of our tribes, and the cause of the breakdown of all things that could genuinely unite us is simply corruption. The bribes and unfounded nepotism have left us playing survival for the fittest family, which will inevitably bring us to war, whether it is tomorrow or ten years from now.

After my long walk and series of thoughts and questions, and experiences. My mind then ran to one question. What will you tell your child? What can you tell your child? Will you tell them that life is good and beautiful and that they, too, should look forward to having more children? Will you tell them that you will protect them from everything that sees them only as energy to be consumed in the pursuit of life? Till today, my mind remains on that question. What will you tell your child?

Pondered by

Denzel Everd Maniple