Coo Too Ka ngut

As a teenager, I spent a lot of time around my maternal uncles. I grew up very close to them, and in many ways, I looked up to them as the father figures in my life -something I am forever grateful for.

One particular uncle had a lock-up shop in Gulu town, and in the late 1990s and early 2000s, his children and I often ran the shop during the holidays.

Gulu was very different then. There were bicycles everywhere. Motorcycles were not as common as they are today, and bicycle repair was serious business. Just in front of my uncle’s lock-up shop was a group of men who repaired bicycles. I still remember one of them very well. We called him Zong.

Zong handled his work with so much dedication. He had a family, took his children to school, and had a dream for them. He always told us he wanted his children to achieve more than he ever had, which I assumed meant doing more decent work or earning more than he did from his bicycle repair job. But one thing I admired about Zong and the other men who repaired bicycles was their dedication and determination to show up every single day. He was always greasy, wearing grease-stained overalls, and always smiling at his work. Zong and his fellow bicycle repairers were my uncle’s customers. But Zong and my uncle had somewhat different bonds. They called each other: “Coo Too.”

In Acholi, Coo Too literally means, “a man dies.”

But there was more to it. It was a shortened form of an expression in Acholi: “Coo Too, ka ngut.” Loosely translated, it carries the idea that a man learns his lesson only when he is already dead.

I was young then. I heard those words many times and probably laughed about them, but I don’t think I fully understood their weight. More than 25 years later, I find myself thinking about them differently.

Coo Too ka ngut.

A man keeps going.

Sometimes even when his body is tired. Sometimes when his mind is exhausted. Sometimes when everything inside him is telling him that he has reached his limit.

He keeps going.

Not necessarily because he doesn’t know when to stop, but because there are people depending on him.

There is rent to pay. There are children whose school fees must be paid. There is food that must reach home. There are parents and relatives who may need help. There are dreams he has quietly promised himself he will give his children. And sometimes, in trying to provide those things, he gives up something that money can never replace: time.

He misses birthdays.

He misses school events.

He doesn’t get to walk his children to school.

Sometimes the children go on holiday and return to school without him ever being home.

He misses anniversaries, family gatherings, and those ordinary little moments that don’t look important until one day you realise they were actually the important moments.

Some men spend weeks or months away from their families because that is where work has taken them.

Others put their bodies on the line every day.

The man climbing an electricity pole so that somebody else’s house can have light.

The man going underground to repair a sewer or drainage system.

The man on a construction site under the scorching sun.

The man driving a truck across borders through several nights.

The man working in places where his own family would probably be frightened to see him.

The man doing the dirty, dangerous, and exhausting jobs that most people often don’t notice when they are done well.

Behind many of these men is somebody they are trying to provide for.

And perhaps that is what Coo Too ka ngut has slowly come to mean to me.

There is something about a man that makes him keep pushing the boundary.

He tells himself, just a little longer.

One more year.

One more contract.

One more journey.

One more sacrifice.

Let me finish paying this.

Let me build this.

Let me educate these children.

Let me make sure they are okay.

Then I will rest.

But somehow, the goalpost keeps moving.

And sometimes a man keeps going until there is almost nothing left of himself to give.

Perhaps Zong and my uncle were joking when they used to call each other Coo Too all those years ago in front of that little lock-up shop in Gulu town.

But today, those two words mean something deeper to me. Because somewhere tonight, there is a man missing home while trying to build a home. There is a man missing his children while working for his children. There is a man carrying a burden he rarely talks about because, in his mind, carrying it is simply what he is supposed to do.

And perhaps nobody will ever fully know the things he gave up along the way.