Juliet Bibangambah: The Queen of English who abdicated her throne too early

It is just that there are things that the Lord, for reasons best known to Himself, keeps from us. But how I wish I had known that the very first Happy New Year message that turned up in my WhatsApp, a few moments after 2020 had given way to 2021 would be the very last time the sender would inbox me ever!

But see, the tension about the forthcoming election aside, the New Year seemed to be taking off just fine. Everything looked good. I figured there would be plenty of opportunities to link up, sip a coffee, munch on a muffin and talk.

And when I saw her post an interesting Bukedde Newspaper front page on our lawyers’ WhatsApp group – “Advocates Ug 1” – at ten o’clock on Sunday 3rd January, 2021, I acknowledged it casually, certain that it was something we could discuss after church.

So you can imagine the shock when Counsel Goddy Muhumuza, still in the same chatroom, announced the demise of Counsel Juliet Bibangambah, about lunchtime. Julie had just collapsed and died shortly thereafter.

The Americans call it “a thunderbolt out of a clear sky”. It took me a long while to process the news. Julie, from the pictures we had, was a lovely young lady – but then again, what would you expect from a native of Ntungamo town? Interestingly, Julie and I had never met, but, thanks to the stupid illusion that social media has sold to everyone on earth, of “meeting” or “knowing” people just because you are always linked up with them on social media, I had bonded firmly with Julie.

Some people may not readily appreciate the importance of distilling the messages you send out on social media – be it Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, or whatever – but truth is that those messages offer the world an insight into our heads and testify about the quality of our brains. Through what we post, the world gets excellent x-ray pictures of what we are made of and the kind of hearts we have…or whether we got hearts at all. Our messages, small and insignificant though they may seem, are the windows through which the rest of the world peeps into our souls. And the summation of our messages that we leave in cyberspace, is really the sum total of ourselves. The theory cats, no doubt in an attempt to sound learned and sophisticated, call this a “digital footprint”. Footprints, like fingerprints, don’t lie!

What struck me when I read Julie’s posts is that I had met very, very few people in Uganda who had as powerful a command of the English language, as Julie, whom I’d playfully crowned “Queen of English”. English was in her DNA. We spent hours on the phone discussing literature and she became my writing partner, the first person to look through my manuscripts, before they got to any other editor.  It wasn’t all peaches and cream by the way; we had a few skirmishes… so on two or three occasions, she quarreled, like only a woman can – as I patiently listened without a word in reply - and then ruined her day completely, each time, by laughing at her, something which she found really exasperating!

We had tried to meet several times, but kept putting it off – there’s no hurry in Africa! It is only when she was gone that I realised what an idiot I had been and, drenched in shame, made my way to Ntungamo, where I found her in a casket. I quietly wondered whether anyone in the crowd knew just how much English was going down to the grave!! Probably the most painful bit was when I tried to work on the manuscripts she had edited. I failed miserably; for every time I saw her comments, my writing brain froze. I had to admit that a young lady I had never physically met had had such a profound impact on me, in life …and in death.

Lesson? As 2022 begins, let’s fear God, for He holds us and tomorrow in his hands! And let us love people today, not tomorrow…and do not let social media fool you - meet people and do so as oft as you can. Rest you merry, thou Julie, Queen of English; and Happy New Year to y’all!

Mr Tegulle is an advocate of the High Court of Uganda

[email protected]