Banange is my favorite Luganda expression. Football fans mutter it when their favorite team concedes a goal in the ninetieth minute; teachers let it fall from their mouths when they return from short call, a bathroom break, to find their pupils wrestling on the desks; elderly women whisper it to their travelling companions – though loud enough for the driver to hear them – when their taxi driver nearly runs a boda-boda driver, a motorcyclist, off the road. Banange expresses frustration, fear, and other negative emotions, yet native speakers tend to deliver it ironically, aware of the inherent humor in an unfortunate situation.
Ba is the plural-subject pronoun for people, and nange is the singular-possessive pronoun, i.e., my. So, banange translates roughly to my people, which is also funny. Like, next time something in life runs afoul of its desired course try muttering, sighing, or mouthing my people. It will be funny, even if only to you.
Banange strikes me as an individual’s appeal for sanity among a group of people who have run off course. In the case of a wayward taxi driver, the track is less metaphor than literal, but the phrase invokes and questions, among other things, the driver’s competency, wherewithal, empathy, and awareness. It’s as much a call for wisdom as an acknowledgement of life’s misfortunes.
Like many peoples throughout the world, Ugandans are familiar with misfortune. Climate change, for example, has disrupted typical rain patterns. To the detriment of farmers, markets, and families, the wet season is no longer so wet, and crops are failing. A farmer, unsure when to plant or harvest crops because the rainy season has become somehow unpredictable, does not utter the phrase in question. She says a prayer.
But in public spaces banange remains a common phrase. And this is a testament to grace, that humor grows so plentifully. When life gives you lemons: banange.