You have heard of Kalundi Serumanga.
You have heard of the Ugandan terror in the 1970s.
You have definitely heard of Idi Amin.
If all the above is true for you there is a chance Come Good Rain was tailored for you.
George Bwanika Sseremba’s Come Good Rain opened the tenth edition of the Kampala International Theatre Festival at the National Theatre in Kampala.
Bwanika wrote and directed the one-man show. What makes the production special is that it is written out of Bwanika’s life experience, so what he puts on stage and embodies are things that actually happened to him.
The story is that Bwanika was abducted while visiting a friend at Makerere University. Bwanika had just returned to Uganda from Nairobi, where he had exiled himself. It was while there that he met with playwright and later revolutionalist Robert Serumaga.
Unknown to him, their crossing paths would haunt him years later.
When he was captured, his main crime was being seen with Serumaga, and because of that, he was a suspected rebel.
Come Good Rain is a narration that chronicles Bwanika’s life as a child and a series of events that led him into the position he ended up in.
On November 22, he performed a folk song while carrying a lit candle and having Keith Mugenyi, a vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, accompany him. Mugenyi’s strumming of the bow harp and raspy playing of the congas formed a bad for the play’s soundtrack.
Bwanika is a good storyteller; his power to hold a story and sell it to the audience in detail and in animated ways always gets you feeling in ways you never expected. For instance, at the beginning of the show, talking about his childhood and school experience got the auditorium laughing away, yet when he started diving into his capture and torture, the atmosphere in the auditorium shifts seamlessly, reflecting the emotional journey the audience is taken on.
What makes Come Good Rain truly stand out is Sseremba’s ability to challenge preconceived notions. The audience is presented with a story they believe they know, but through Sseremba’s perspective, it becomes evident that there is much more to the narrative than meets the eye.
Bwanika’s storytelling ability is truly captivating, as he skillfully transitions from humour to the darker aspects of his experience. His unique perspective sheds light on a narrative that we thought we were familiar with, challenging our preconceived notions and leaving us with a deeper understanding of the story. It is through his animated and detailed storytelling that Bwanika is able to evoke unexpected emotions and truly connect with the audience.
In essence, Come Good Rain is more than a play; it’s an exploration of personal history, a challenge to assumptions, and a testament to the power of storytelling, something that continues to shine through the festival.
But besides the good old times of theatre, where people came to watch and experience stories, the show was also heavy for Bwanika. He has put on this particular show more than a hundred times, yet this was the first time he was acting it out in Uganda.
And his mother, whom he mentions a number of times during the show, was in the audience.
That Come Good Rain was happening at the National Theatre, a place he mentions in his narration while talking about Byron Kawadwa’s death was poetic. It is a place celebrating his art but also known for its connection to probably Uganda’s biggest assault on the arts, Kawadwa’s death.
In attendance was Rachel Magoola who in a conversation later mentioned that she is cousins with the star of the day, Bwanika Sseremba. Of course, the National Theatre is close to the Ugandan parliament, where Rachel Magoola, an artist, is also a legislator. Magoola is a singer who joined parliament on behalf of the National Resistance Movement, the ruling party.
The irony is that Magoola is passionate about having policies that regulate and benefit the arts, yet her party, the ruling party, is always coy about independent voices. For instance, on any other day, Bwanika’s play could hardly see the light of day at the auditorium had the events he narrates happened in the current regime.
Sometimes the play easily allows us to create parallels between Bwanika and a number of Ugandans we have read about or know of; for instance, he was picked from a university hall, while others were picked from their homes or places of work.
Namanve was where Idi Amin’s regime executed, or threw bodies of those executed. Every morning, when bullets had been heard the night before, residents around Namanve would visit the forests to check if one of their own had been dumped. In case they found one, they would give them a decent burial.
Bwanika was taken to Namanve, shot multiple times and left for dead. The morning ritual of visiting Namanve to inquire about any cases of torture, murder, or look for dumped bodies in the forest led to his rescue by the villagers. Before him, no one had left Namanve. Not alive.
There is no direct parallel to that, though his escape from Uganda with a fake identity card and passport is poetic and similar. For instance, he says that by the time he reached Kenya, he learned that he had lost his fake identity card, and they threatened to deport him back to Uganda. Bwanika came clean about his torture, showed them his wounds, and just like that, people at the immigration office let him get into Kenya without identification, just like another Ugandan writer lawyer, Kakwenza Rukirabashaija in 2022.
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