By Isaac Christopher Lubogo (Suigeneris)
It began not in a palace, but in a whisper.
My friend Tim, bright-eyed and curious, had just shaken the hand of the Kabaka of Buganda — a moment he would later describe as “electrically calm.”
As he stepped aside, still caught in that invisible current of awe, an old man appeared — one of those ancient sentinels of culture whose eyes have seen centuries packed into seconds.
He leaned closer, his voice soft but weighted with ancestral gravity:
“Seebo, tonaaba ngaalo okumala ennaku ssatu.”
(Young man, do not wash your hands for three days.
Tim stood puzzled. Dirt was not his creed; hygiene was. Yet wisdom often hides in paradox.
Later that evening, another elder explained, “When you shake the Kabaka’s hand, you carry blessings not meant to be washed away. For three days, you are a vessel — the hand of the Kabaka becomes your hand, and whoever touches you, touches royalty.”
That saying haunted me. It was not superstition — it was metaphysics clothed in culture. The handshake was not skin meeting skin; it was kingdom meeting man.
So I sought to test the philosophy of the palm — to explore what flows when mortal hands clasp power.
The First Hand: Bobi Wine — The Hand of the People
When I shook Bobi Wine’s hand, I expected fire — the electricity of rebellion, the heat of the ghetto, the pulse of resistance.
But what I felt was… emptiness.
Not absence, but exhaustion. His hand bore the weight of a million expectations, of a man loved by many but trusted by few. Those around me celebrated — “Lubogo has made it!” they said. But I knew I hadn’t.
Fame, I discovered, is a hand that glitters in the sun yet trembles in the dark. It blesses you only with applause, and applause does not feed the soul.
The Second Hand: The Kyabazinga — The Hand of Divine Heritage
Then came the Kyabazinga of Busoga — my own royal bloodline’s mirror.
When I touched his hand, there was calm, almost like the lake before dawn. Yet within thirty minutes, reality began to unfold like prophecy. Favors flowed — small mercies that had been withheld suddenly came alive.
People who had ignored me turned gracious; doors that had refused to open slid ajar.
It wasn’t the hand that worked the miracle — it was what the hand symbolized: unity, legitimacy, blessing.
The Kyabazinga does not only reign; he radiates.
That day, I remembered what my ancestors said:
“Omwami bw’akukwatira mu ngalo, emikisa gikwata ku mwoyo.”
(When the chief holds your hand, blessings grip your soul.)
The Third Hand: The Zibondo of Bulamogi — The Hand of Lineage
When I clasped the hand of the Zibondo of Bulamogi, I felt the ancient veins of my blood vibrate.
It was not the blessing of status, nor the luck of proximity — it was identity.
That handshake was a reminder that I come from a people who built kingdoms before nations existed.
It was as if my forefathers whispered through that contact: “Remember whose son you are.”
And truly, favor followed — not from men, but from within. Confidence was reborn, and clarity replaced confusion.
The Fourth Hand: The President — The Hand of Power
And then came the last — the hand of the President of Uganda.
The palm was firm, heavy, deliberate — the kind that does not shake, but tests.
Promises were whispered. Doors were hinted open. I was told, “Your time is coming.”
But in the days that followed, I learned that not all power blesses — some power consumes.
That handshake was not royal; it was political. A trade, not a transmission.
I became a pawn in a board of grandmasters.
Meetings behind closed doors turned into manipulation. My words were borrowed; my hopes, mortgaged.
It was not a blessing. It was a bargain sealed with an invisible price.
The Philosophy of the Palm
From these four hands, I learned that not all power sanctifies.
The Kabaka’s hand gives grace.
The Kyabazinga’s hand restores identity.
The Zibondo’s hand awakens ancestry.
The President’s hand negotiates destiny.
The royal handshake, therefore, is not about the royal — it is about the receiver.
It is the meeting point of spirit and structure, of energy and authority.
And sometimes, the dirt you are told not to wash away is not dirt at all — it is divine residue.
So when I think of my friend Tim’s story — of the elder who said, “Do not wash your hands for three days” — I understand it now.
The man was not talking about hygiene; he was talking about heritage.
He meant, “Do not wash away what you have just received. Let it soak into your destiny.”
For hands are sacred. They write, they build, they bless, they betray.
And perhaps, in every handshake, there hides a sermon.
“Not all blessings come from above. Some travel through the warmth of another man’s palm.”
— Isaac Christopher Lubogo (Suigeneris)
What Is in a Hand: Between the Material and the Mystical
What is in a hand — and why across cultures we use it to bless, curse, or divine — is a question that moves between the material and the mystical, the biological and the symbolic.
From a purely physical standpoint, the hand is one of the most sensitive, dexterous organs the human body possesses.
It is richly endowed with nerves, touch receptors, blood vessels, and a muscular-skeletal “machinery” that allows it to grasp, mold, press, strike, or caress.
In a handshake, nerve endings register tension, warmth, and motion.
Because of this, psychologically, the hand becomes a boundary — a liminal zone between self and world — the portal of human connection.
Across faiths and continents, the hand is the site of divine action.
From the Christian “laying on of hands,” to Hindu mudras, to African ancestral blessings, it is through the hand that invisible energy becomes visible motion.
The open hand gives, the closed hand defends, the raised hand commands — gesture becomes theology.
The belief that lines on the hand foretell destiny — from Hasta Samudrika Shastra in India to indigenous African divination — springs from one universal truth: man’s longing to decode his purpose.
Whether or not the science agrees, the symbolism endures. The creases of our palms are seen not as wrinkles of skin, but as hieroglyphs of the soul.
To bless with a hand is to authorize destiny.
To curse with a hand is to weaponize divinity.
Thus, the hand becomes both shrine and sword, sacred and secular at once.
The Lubogo-Cosmology of the Hand: When Ancestry, Power, and Spirit Converge
“Before man ever spoke, he reached out. The first word was not sound — it was touch.”
— Isaac Christopher Lubogo
In the beginning, it was the hand that God used to shape dust into man — “and He formed him from the earth and breathed into him life.”
The breath made man alive, but the hand made him possible.
Among the Basoga, the hand was never ordinary.
When an elder blessed a child, he placed his palm on the child’s head — not as a gesture, but as transmission.
In Buganda, the elder warned, “Seebo, tonaaba ngaalo okumala ennaku ssatu,” not because the Kabaka’s sweat was magical, but because his hand was the ancestral well.
To shake a king’s hand is to shake the archives of your people.
The royal palm is a living bridge between the living and the dead — between authority and ancestry.
The lines on our palms, called the “hieroglyphs of the flesh” by the ancient Egyptians, are mirrors of divine handwriting:
The Life Line reflects vitality.
The Head Line mirrors purpose.
The Heart Line reveals capacity to love.
The Fate Line speaks of destiny beyond human control.
To open your hand is to surrender control; to close it is to claim ownership.
Every hand posture carries moral philosophy: open (humility), raised (invocation), clenched (protection).
Each handshake, then, is a moral act — a transfer of vibration, intent, and energy.
And perhaps, the greatest taboo is not washing your hands too late, but washing away what heaven wrote upon them too soon.
“When you raise your hand to bless, remember that once, a greater Hand raised you from dust.”
— Lubogo, The Book of the Palm and the Spirit
The Palm Reader of Our Childhood: A Drama of Destiny and Innocence
There are memories that refuse to age — they whisper from the corners of time.
One of mine wears a faded gomesi and smells of charcoal smoke and coconut oil.
Her name was Namaganda, our housemaid — but to us, she was a prophetess with cracked heels and celestial eyes.
Evening after evening, when the kerosene lamp trembled, she would call us one by one.
“Isaac, genda olabe mu ngalo zo.” (Isaac, come and look at your palms.)
Her thumbs traced my tiny lines like sacred scripture.
“Omwana ono ajja kuba mugagga, naye alinyaga emirimu mingi.”
(This child will be rich, but his work will be heavy.)
I watched her with awe — half believing, half afraid.
How could these rivers of flesh tell stories of the future?
How could an unlettered maid read what no school ever taught?
She told my sister she would marry early — and she did.
She told our neighbor’s son he would travel far — and he vanished to Kenya.
And to me, she smiled and said:
“Your hands are restless. They are hands of creation and rebellion. They will never stay idle. You will rise high, but you will never rest.”
Years later, when I held pens instead of toys, microphones instead of stones, and shook hands with kings and presidents — I remembered her cracked palms.
She had never read Aristotle, but she knew essence.
She had no pulpit, but she ministered with fingertips.
She had no degree, but she read destiny.
Her hands were softer than all the royal hands I ever touched — because they carried truth, not title.
“Some people read stars, others read scriptures.
But the wise read hands — for they are the diaries of the divine.”
— Isaac Christopher Lubogo (Suigeneris)
Epilogue: The Hand as Poem of the Soul
From the Kabaka’s sanctified palm to Namaganda’s cracked one, from the Kyabazinga’s lineage to the Zibondo’s identity, from the President’s promise to the philosopher’s pen — the journey is one: the human hand as destiny’s manuscript.
It builds, blesses, and betrays — but it also remembers.
For in every palm lies a story heaven once whispered into clay, waiting for touch to awaken it.
And so, when next you look at your hand, remember:
You are not merely holding life — life itself is holding you.
