Okurut Wyclef
He was late, as usual. He seemed to always be on some errand he never quite elaborated on and only vaguely stated, with annoying consistency. “Boss bibadde bintwala.”
Now that was a tired fable, so Garry only let out a weary smile and quickly embarked on the boda boda, muffling “Tugende” as they set off.
He had been his motorcycle taxi rider for over a year now, and Garry still couldn’t decide whether he liked him or merely tolerated him. The one thing he was certain of was that Mutoto had gotten him to places and knew his routine.
On the road, their discourse was often trivial. Garry listened to him go on and on about politics with a shallowness he never thought possible. To him, everything was a conspiracy; everyone slept with everyone to get what they had. Garry was often unsettled by the crass nature with which he spoke about women, not sparing his own wife, who Garry had begun to feel was a figment of his wild imagination. This was because of how unrealistic his ranting was and how he conveniently pivoted to swearing that he hadn’t been with a woman for a long time. He rode an old, squeaky boda boda, and Garry often wondered how it never broke down completely. Mutoto had taken on the habit of his peers, caring little for mechanical checks for as long as the piece of metal could move him from point A to B. Garry wondered why he still kept him and why he just couldn’t find another rider to dump this one altogether. But then that awoke him to a flaw in his own thinking, a sort of mental laziness that made the search feel burdensome in his psyche, forcing him to subconsciously return to Mutoto. Yes, that was his name, and Garry had only found out six months into this relationship he couldn’t quite name. Garry knew he would hesitate if someone asked him what relationship he had with this rider beyond the service he offered. He still couldn’t quite figure out how he felt about him; it was as though they simply shared this functional space where definitions would obscure meaning rather than give clarity.
But something changed on this one day while on his commute.
“I won’t be around for the rest of the week,” Mutoto started.
“Why?”
“I have to go to the village.”
“Visiting family?” Garry asked, not out of concern or interest, but because he was irked that he would need to find another rider.
“No, I’m reporting to the police,” Mutoto blurted and quickly fell silent.
Garry was disturbed and did something he never usually did: he asked further.
“Why do you need to report to the police?”
After a brief uncomfortable silence, Mutoto started.
“Some murder two years ago, they say I was involved in it. I’m out on bail and it’s mandatory for me to report, so I’m doing the routine.”
Garry felt shockwaves down his spine. He had known Mutoto, or at least pretended to know Mutoto, for over a year, but it never could have occurred to him that he was involved in something as dark as murder.
Now it was out there between them, and Garry regretted why he had asked. He had been fine before this knowledge came to him, and now he didn’t know what to do with it.
“That case has made my life hard. Now I have to pay money for it to go away.”
Garry couldn’t thank God enough that at the end of the sentence they were at the destination, and he quickly disembarked. His whole idea of Mutoto’s conversation was cast in a new light with the revelation he had casually received.
And while on his shift, his mind was populated by thoughts of whether what he had just heard was reason enough for him to dump Mutoto for another rider. He stared at the ceiling with genuine doubt regarding his choices and sat there with the discomfort of knowing their relationship, which had been undefined, might have changed forever.
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Written by
Okurut Wyclef, the dynamic Ugandan writer born in 1996, crafts captivating stories that blend African heritage with modern dreams.
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