This life

There aren’t many things that I do for fun but the things that I often do for the pleasure of it,  benefit me one way or the other; gardening, walking, jogging, watching movies/documentaries, and reading.

Gardening and reading are things that I do both purposefully and also for fun, but either way I am better of at the end. I might end up with joy and a feeling of accomplishment from gardening, and learning something new from a good book or movie, besides the tears or joys that might come as a result.

The other day I watched Cast Away, a movie that I watched more than twenty years ago and there’s a part (burying an empty coffin) that brought back dark memories in the history of my country, at a time when we are experiencing something similar. I shared that moment in tears with my daughter who was also watching. I told her how families buried empty coffins in the reign of the brutal dictator Idd Amin Dadah, because there relatives disappeared without trace. And it’s happening again nearly fifty years on in the history of my country. In my village a family buried a banana stem in memory of a beloved son who was picked up by Amin’s soldiers and was never seen again.

Sometimes the things that we say that we’re doing for fun have significant consequences – good or bad. We might have drink or have sex for fun, and end sleeping soundly or bonding, or end up with unpleasant consequences.