THE FOURTH HERITAGE

There is something fundamentally disorienting when you grow up a tribal person but then your psyche gets ruptured to give room to fundamentalist Christian beliefs. Further psychological disorientation occurs when you find out that even if you are supposed to be a Ugandan, your deepest spiritual underpinnings have to shift from your people and land to some oversees people and land, either in the Middle East or Europe. I have also had to struggle with the reality that my deepest concepts of the world or universe are no longer found in my mother tongue but rather in the language of the people from England. Because I have always been struggling to find my place in this triple confluence of the tribe, Christianity and European heritages, my identity crises have not been about my race or color or nationality but rather about my intellectual and spiritual bearing. Whereas I have read that African people born in America struggle to find their identity via their racial heritage—for example that is the picture you get on reading Barack Obama's story in the book Dreams from My father—, my struggle has always been reconciling my tribal imprints with the Christian and European dominant civilizations. In my years of that psychological struggle, I was torn apart from each of my triple heritages and many a time I felt like giving in or giving up the personal journey in order to settle for a condition where the world can make its own judgment about who I am. But providence came to my rescue just as I was about to settle into a lifeless existence of being a mere Ugandan or African in America; the creative idea of a Fourth Heritage was born in my mind. By embracing the idea that I can define who I am and who I want to be, irrespective of my birth heritages, I have attained a sustaining psychological framework that has indeed bestowed upon me a truly human perspective. I don't regret my transformation. I only celebrate it however way I can. By reflecting my face in the mirror of the Fourth Heritage, I see myself as flesh and bone and more importantly I see myself as a human being first and foremost. Being a Musoga (my tribe) or Christian or Eurocentric is secondary to my human identity. I have realized that throughout my years in Uganda since I transferred to Nkumba, I have not intimately associated with people from my tribe. Furthermore, since I came to the U.S.A., many of the intimate friends I have had have not been Christians. In the U.S.A., I have been introduced to non-British non-European cultures that I have passionately embraced. There is a lot of wisdom in other heritages that a typical Ugandan who stays in Uganda all his/her life might never have a chance to know about. I am thinking of heritages like ancient South American civilizations, Japanese, Korean and Chinese classical civilizations, Zoroastrianism, Jewish heritages, Buddhism, etc. Also, I have found a lot of wisdom in researching books written before the Bible. Because of all the personal development I have gone through due to my encounter with non-tribal, non-Christian, non-British heritages, I strongly believe that it would be a sad day for human evolution if I blindly start identifying myself first and foremost with my triple heritages of birth more than the personal identity that I have grown into due to my life experiences. This and only this is what has inspired me to create the idea of a Fourth Heritage. I hope some Ugandans can find value in what I have to say and that they can also embrace their own versions of a Fourth Heritage. I also hope that a child born poor in some village in Uganda or somewhere in Africa will have the opportunity to learn how to read, access the ideas in this book, and consequently set off to develop his/her life potential anywhere on this Earth. With the Fourth Heritage we are equipped to wrestle the triple heritages, and come out victorious enough to inherit our life's purposes.