Okello’s Story

In 1983, at age nineteen, Simeon Wiehler traveled to Uganda, where the Idi Amin dictatorship of the 1970s had left many children homeless and parentless. He began working in orphanages and eventually founded his own, the setting for the incident he recounts below. In 1996 he returned to the United States to study for a doctorate in sociology at Cornell University. Simeon settled in Rwanda in 2009 with his wife, Clementine, a genocide survivor, and their three sons Peter, Joshua, and Gideon. He died of cancer at age sixty-two on June 10, 2024.

Well, we certainly weren’t stealing that corn. Absolutely not. I mean, we’d bought it quite legally – two sacks of shelled white, up in Geregere Village. We’d wrangled long and hard over the price, too, and finally agreed on something reasonable, with money passed from hand to hand, and smiles all round.

And, of course, we had to get it milled somewhere. You can’t just eat dry corn.

It has to be ground into fine, white flour before it can be cooked and made into posho.

That’s when I thought of the hammer-mill over in Kayanja. You see, I knew the electricity was off in Lugazi; it had been off for several days, which happens now and again, so the mill there wouldn’t be running.

“But,” I seem to hear you saying, “you could have waited to see if they would fix it up.” And that is true, except things are not always that simple in Uganda. I mean, tomorrow and tomorrow soon become next week, and there’s a limit to how long you can live on dodo (wild amaranth; when cooked, it tastes much like spinach). I never did like spinach anyway, and someone has to draw the line somewhere.

Besides, I knew many people in Kayanja. Not everyone, granted, but they certainly all knew me. On the other hand, that might not be saying too much; being the only white man in the whole district made me stand out like a camel in a cow pasture. Now, that can be an advantage at times, but it can be a cause for embarrassment too. Like when I would meet someone in Kampala or Entebbe, and he’d clap me on the shoulder and pump my hand up and down wildly while telling me how the wife and kids were doing and about the morning he woke up and found three of his goats dead, and that it was turning out to be a good year for the banana plantation, but that life was becoming mighty difficult with the price of coffee at only sixty shillings a kilo, and through it all I would be trying to dredge up from some backwater in my mind who this might be and where he may have crossed my path before. Certainly, it can be embarrassing. Hard on the hand too.

And so we started, six of the kids and myself, heading for Kayanja with our corn. Maybe we should have left it for the next day, seeing that the sun was nearing the hilltop, with perhaps an hour of useful light left – it’s arguable for sure, but that is hindsight for you. At that time all I could think of was that, well, there we were with our two sacks of shelled white, which needed to be milled – and I really don’t like spinach, and someone has to draw the line somewhere.

Photograph by Tracy Angus-Hammond / Alamy Stock Photo.

So we headed off, singing Ugandan songs in four languages while bouncing off the doors and ceiling whenever the old Land Rover hit a larger-than-usual pothole. Just imagine the noise: the four Baganda boys chanting away at the top of their lungs, Mwesige and Akiiki adding their bit in loud Rutooro, while Okello joined in off-key in the distinct language of the Acholi.

Whenever Okello made a particularly jarring note, one or other of the boys would jab him with an elbow. Yes, he was certainly at the bottom of the heap – scrawny as a freshly plucked chicken, a loner if ever there was one, and master of a language no one else could understand. But worse for him, he was a Northerner, one of the Acholi tribe that predominated in the army’s dreaded Anyanya units. Tolerated in our children’s home, perhaps, but never befriended – that was Okello. So there we went, singing at the top of our lungs, while banging over the potholes, off toward the setting sun.

When we reached Kayanja, we drove straight over to the marketplace where the mill stood. It was locked, so I sent all the boys out to look for the owner, Mr. Kasozi. Eventually he was found and brought over to his mill. He opened the heavy door and started the machinery while we carried in our sacks of corn and poured them slowly into the big hopper, checking carefully for rocks as we went. The big hammer mill roared and shook, clouds of white dust swirled around in the air, and slowly, very slowly, our pure white corn flour began to trickle out from the chute at the other end of the machine. Our own flour, white and fresh and clean – what a beautiful sight.

I leaned on the doorpost with the big machine pounding and throbbing behind me, and looked out over the fast-darkening market square. Enterprising stall keepers were lighting small candles in front of their carefully arranged rows of tomatoes and pineapples. Others were setting kerosene lamps near the scales on which last-minute shoppers were weighing their purchases of dried fish, red kidney beans, or big slabs of meat. Slowly the whole square became a shimmering mass of tiny lights. And as the dusk deepened, an orange moon pushed its way above the hills, making the whole scene gaspingly beautiful.

At long last, the mill behind me was turned off. Our corn was ground, our day’s work done. I took a last look out over the market square. The abrupt silence allowed me to hear the chirp of crickets and the low murmurings of the villagers as they went about their last-minute business.

Suddenly there was a loud BANG right by my head.

I have no idea how high I jumped, but when I came down I was face to face with a very angry soldier, and he was pointing a machine gun straight at my stomach.

“You are a thief,” he said. “Only thieves grind corn at night.”

“O-oh no, sir!” I stuttered, trying to gather my wits. “We bought it in Geregere just today.”

“All thieves are good liars too.”

“Please, sir, I … I’m not lying.”

At last inspiration struck: “Ask Mr. Kasozi. He owns this mill, and he knows me well. I’m his friend.”

Turning my head I called out, “Mr. Kasozi?” No answer. “Mr. Kasozi?” Only silence.

Now I was trying to keep my rising panic in check. Clearly my friend had hightailed it at the sound of the gunshot.

“But everybody in Kayanja knows me,” I said. And then I looked around the market square – there wasn’t a soul in sight. Only a couple of candles, left when the stall keepers and villagers dashed for cover, flickered in the silent darkness.

The soldier grunted. “Those two bags of corn flour will be taken down to the barracks while we investigate you,” he said.

Well, I’d been in Uganda long enough to know that what went into the army barracks never came out. Not cows or goats, often not even people, and most certainly not bags of freshly ground corn flour. The threat of our supper being taken from us and eaten by soldiers was too much for me. Without even thinking I said something very rash, and even though my legs were shaking I said it loudly and I said it firmly.

“NO.”

The soldier’s eyes bulged. Nobody said no to a soldier in Uganda. Not in those days. Not ever. Perhaps I should have let him take the flour. Certainly two bags is not worth dying for, but there is a terrible stubborn streak in me somewhere deep down, and besides, I didn’t want to go back to a supper of dodo. I never did like spinach anyway, and someone has to draw the line somewhere.

My thoughts were snapped back to reality as the soldier flipped off the safety catch from his gun with a quick movement of his thumb, glaring at me, eyes filled with hatred.

There I was, staring death in the face and more scared than I’d ever been in my life, when a child’s voice piped up from behind my elbow. I couldn’t understand any of the words, but I knew who it was: Okello, and he was talking in Acholi. The soldier’s eyes darted from his face to mine and back again. All my breath seemed to be sucked from my lungs as I waited, but the boy at my elbow spoke on calmly.

To this day, Okello has not told me what he said that evening in Kayanja. He just smiles in a shy sort of way, as if I shouldn’t be poking around in what really is none of my business. But the fact remains: with one more angry look at my face the soldier spat violently into the dust, turned sharply on his heel, and walked out of the marketplace.

Slowly I sat down on one of the bags of flour. All my strength had left me; my legs were shaking and could no longer hold me up. I put my head between my knees. A couple of minutes later I looked up and saw that I was surrounded by dozens of concerned bystanders, all watching me intently and in complete silence. I couldn’t see much in the darkness, but when I smiled everybody suddenly started talking at once, telling what they had seen, and how it had sounded, how courageous Okello was, and over and over again, how lucky I was to be alive. Needless to say, I was in fullest agreement.

Later, as we bumped along over the potholes on the road home, I noticed a strange thing: the boys were involving Okello in their conversation. They were smiling at him, including him in their jokes and laughter. They were leaning over his shoulder to ask his opinion. They were treating him with all the respect due to a very brave boy.

As I listened, I found myself pondering the events of the evening. Why Okello? He hardly stood out in our bustling orphanage setting, a friendless child whom I had tried to befriend but who hardly ever responded. What could have spurred him to such courage – to face down a gun-wielding soldier? And why me? What was I to him that he should risk his life for me – a foreigner, white-skinned, inexperienced, unable to speak his language, friendly perhaps, but more often than not making embarrassing mistakes?

Simeon at the Besaniya Children’s Home (Mukono), ca. 1984. Photograph courtesy of the Wiehler family.

Certainly there is not much in life that prepares us for miracles. Even our language has little to describe the sensation: hard and sharp and hot between the heart and the gut, a swelling in the chest, a fiery sheen on the brow and a shiver that slices from top to bottom. Perhaps this is how the prophets of old felt when they heard for the first time that still, small voice all those centuries ago. I seemed to hear it whispering to me right then, across the intervening ages.

What I witnessed that night as we drove home over our rough, potholed road was a transformation as complete as anything I have since encountered. The end of something worn and old and the dawn of something entirely new. How a few words spoken in an unintelligible tongue could spell the difference between life and death. And how, for one boy, those same courageous words, spoken steadily and without fear, could spark such a new beginning.

And indeed, it proved to be a new beginning for Okello. From that time on he joined in with the fun and games of the other boys. He made friends, improved at school, and time and again proved wrong the pessimists who said that North and South in Uganda are oil and water: two peoples who might rub shoulders occasionally but would never mix.

Yes, I owe a double debt to Okello. First for the words he spoke that evening in Kayanja, and second for the renewed vision of hope in a land scarred by hatred and mistrust. I have been back to Kayanja many times since then, and each time that I have stopped to talk with the stall keepers in the market, or visit Mr. Kasozi in his mill, a group has gathered round and soon the story of how I said “no” to an Anyanya soldier is retold.

Over the years the story has changed somewhat, stretched at the seams, you might say. Last I heard, I had shaken my fist at a whole group of soldiers, and hounded them, guns and all, from the marketplace. But you and I know what really happened that night, and you and I also know who the real hero of that story is: a young boy, scrawny as a freshly plucked chicken, a loner if ever there was one, and master of a language no one else understood. But most important of all, he was a Northerner, and his name is Okello.

Yes, that’s how it was. And when we got home with the boys and our two bags of corn flour we had a big supper of posho, cooked over the open fire. It was delicious. And there wasn’t a single piece of dodo to be seen, which I didn’t complain about one bit. You see, I really don’t like spinach anyway, and, well … someone has to draw the line somewhere.