It was a cold Thursday night, in 2014. I had been writing poetry for public consumption on social media for about five years. Thus, in the poetry circles, I was known as the proverbial coming man. That Thursday, at a Kampa suburb of Bugolobi bar and restaurant called Gatto Matto, I was slated to perform.
My only issue here was that I had never performed poetry; I only wrote it. Moreover, I had never written poetry for an exclusively poetry audience. Facebook, my primary vehicle for sharing my poems, was a mishmash of famous unknowns, friends, poets, poetasters, mischief-makers, and trolls. They loved my poetry because they mistook it for something of a lesser vintage. Erotica, possibly.
At Gatto Matto that Thursday, Kwivuga Poetry Session was staging its Christmas show. The place was packed to overflowing. Linda Butare Umuringa, affectionately known as Nunu, invented Kwivuga in partnership with the late Cedric Babu and some other ‘cat’ called Agaba Tumusiime. Their names were already a fixture in Kampala’s blue book, its social register. So, the show was full of people who knew them, people who knew of them, alongside poetry and party lovers. There must have been 1,000 people in attendance, if I am to understate matters.
First impression
A sorority of sashed and sashaying female ushers channeled the flood-tide of attendees to where they could take in the verse of Kagayi Ngobi, Jason Ntaro, Lindah Nabasa, to name but three. Poets were typically backed up by a band and often accompanied by a musician and a microphone. Each performer grew 10 feet tall after every performance, indicating that the stage was not for those short on performance skills. Yet there I was, going for my freshman stage performance with no notes or memory of what I had written in my notes. In short, I was going to have to read my poem on a stage where nobody read unless they were reading the room.
Terrified, I clutched my precious poem. I was sixes and sevens about what to say and what to leave unsaid. I had not read the room, hoping for a recital, not a performance. Big mistake. After prior performances by better-known performance poets, I was left shaking in my boots. Literally. Beads of sweat collected on my brow like some liquefied ornament, crowning my starkest fears. That’s when David Mulindwa Butare, Nunu’s younger brother, sidled over to me as I stood by the bar, petrified.
‘Matogo, what’s up?’ he asked. ‘Man, bro, I don’t know. I am damn scared,’ I replied. ‘Eh, my poet. Let’s take a shot of tequila. It will calm your nerves. My treat,’ David said. After assenting, I gulped down the tequila. I was hoping for calm to wash over me. It did, momentarily. But the fear resurged to stoke the maelstrom within anew. ‘Take another,’ David offered, after he saw that tequila had as much impact on my sobriety as a Mirinda Fruity. I gulped down another.
One shot too many
Again, my fears defined me wholly. David offered a third. I was apprehensive about that because of a certain phrase. The phrase is the title of a song that humorously refers to drinking multiple shots of tequila until you fall. It has been used in multiple songs, such as ”1 Tequila, 2 Tequila, 3 Tequila, Floor” by JD Walker and Mark Cooke, and ‘3 Tequila Floor’ by Josiah Siska. Still, since my abject fear was a clear and present danger, David bought me a third tequila. At this rate, it was either the audience or I that would be floored, performance or no. After knocking back the third, the MC, Agaba Tumusiime, announced it to me. David escorted me partway to the stage, then I climbed onto it and completely fell flat; performance-wise.
The MC said my performance approximated a frightened man reading the news on a very slow news day. I was crestfallen. David, on the other hand, reassured me that first-time performers usually crashed and burned on stage. This emboldened me. To him, I was a diamond in the rough. For some reason, his opinion of me shaped my opinion of myself. His enthusiasm was that infectious. It was on this basis alone that I decided to try my hand at performance poetry again. That’s when David’s faith in me was parlayed into fine but somewhat forgettable performances. At that time, the mantra was ‘poetry is performance’. So, my becoming a performer turned me into a poet, all thanks to David. If you think that’s a stretch, try going on stage without a wingman like David. You’ll rue the day you never came close to being floored by tequila.
Troubled mind
That’s the sort of friend David was. Someone who knew my craziest stories but would be a part of them with a comedic twist. He lightened the mood. To be sure, he had dreams of becoming a stand-up comedian. Even though his sister, Nunu, gave comedians stage time and thereby boosted their careers, David only took advantage of this opportunity once. The rest of the time, he was just like me on that sweat-swept Thursday night in 2014. I tried to encourage him the way he encouraged me.
But I couldn’t reach him the way he reached me. He had the gift of friendship that I lacked. A good guy to the core, I felt he was often too hard on himself when he felt he fell short of the values that imbued his self-worth. This sent him on a downward spiral toward unrestrained self-harm. I wondered what made him essentially sad. Losing both his parents might have played a role. Being fatalistic could be closer to the mark. David spoke about death as an unavoidable release. He didn’t talk to me about the hereafter, but you could see it preoccupied his mind to the extent that he viewed this life as a straw not worth clutching to. ‘Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know,’ wrote American writer Ernest Hemingway, which is a fitting epitaph for David Mulindwa Butare.
Friendship
He had the gift of friendship that I lacked. A good guy to the core, I felt he was often too hard on himself when he felt he fell short of the values that imbued his self-worth. This sent him on a downward spiral toward unrestrained self-harm.
Brief biography
David Mulindwa Butare was born on May 10, 1983 to Tito Butare and Rosette Kyampaire Butare. He died on November 3 and was buried in Kasangula- Namungo, Mityana District on November 6. He is remembered as a ”great brother, father, uncle, and friend”. Also described as ”a warm spirited man! Kind and loving and passionate about children”.
He had two children. Mulindwa Butare attended Kampala Kindergarten, Nakasero Primary School,Kabojja High School, Green Hill Academy, Namasagali College and University of Pretoria, South Africa.
Mulindwa Butare worked as a business developer at DHL International Ltd.