By Suzan Kantanzi Amumpaire

What happens when love for one’s country exists alongside anger, disappointment and pain? In Loving My Country Hurts!, Suzan Kantanzi Amumpaire draws on the ancient story of Orpheus and Eurydice to explore a different kind of difficult love: love for one’s people and homeland.

The speaker describes a patriotism that persists even when it hurts. Through images of imprisonment, protest, betrayal and sacrifice, the poem wrestles with the tension between loving a country and feeling wounded by what happens within it. Ultimately, the speaker does not abandon that love. Instead, she asks how to continue carrying it through frustration and pain.

Oh, Orpheus, Orpheus!

Have you yet learnt
how not to love?

How does my heart harbour
love and hate just the same?

Glass half empty,
with resigned rage
and hope just the same.

Arms too heavy
to throw a punch,

but I will my hand
to form a grip.

Oh, Eurydice!

What a dream
to be loved so fiercely,

for your love to open
the gates of hell
by mere will,

and to offer his heart
at the table for the feast,

just for the reward
of seeing your face.

But for that love,
ridiculously beautiful as it may be,

to still not be enough.

Oh, Orpheus!

I have done it now.

I have cursed myself
to the fate of love—

my love
that cannot save.

The one that I have been abducted for,

thrown to the wolves
of humiliation,

eaten out by hypocrisy
and blatant betrayal,

sprayed with pink tear gas
at my arrival,

held by bars and chains
because I sang.

My voice and body
together hang.

Oh, my love.

Oh, my beating heart.

I will fight
with all that is left in me.

All the soul that I have
is yours.

Even such that I may borrow,

it is all yours!

For you are all I have.

You are all I am.

Now, Orpheus…

My heart may not be hostage
to a beautiful nymph,

but this love
hurts just the same:

love for my people,
for my country.

I stand for the blood
that sings red,

for the tears
that boil hot,

for the soil
that birthed me,

my piece of earth
being defiled

by the very people
that vowed to defend her.

Dear Orpheus,

teach me to hold love
even while my spirit sings
hurt and betrayal,

when my skin itches
with rage and irritation,

when Ugandans are not getting
what they are owed.

This is my second year imprisoned
and at the edge of the end,

yet I still fail
to compromise my great love.

What a life!

— Suzan Kantanzi Amumpaire