Uganda

This section deals with Uganda – the place and its people. I will post my Ugandan illuminations here, even if many things about this country frankly leave me groping in the dark… dangerous pastime if done with reckless abandon.

A quick look at the place is afforded below:

A Ugandan “Rolex” is a precision instrument. It encases a fluffy, light omelette seasoned with salt, sliced onion, tomato and cabbage (depending on local availability) within a robust chapatti exterior. The collected works are rolled into a tight cylinder, sealed with cooking oil of questionable origin and served straight-out-the-pan in flimsy plastic bags or old newspaper.

‘Roll-eggs’ are emblematic of everyday Uganda: a country sandwiched between much larger neighbours and enfolded by layers of tumultuous history and culture. A Uganda that lives quite apart from the mythic land depicted by tourist brochures: tree-climbing lions, the source of the Nile, the glaciated equatorial Rwenzori mountains, wide-eyed gorillas and placid Lake Victoria.

Most Ugandan citizens have never seen a lion in the wild. The lower slopes of the Rwenzori are terraced fields of tea worked by farmers whose vegetable plots are occasionally trampled by buffalo, and who have learned to preserve gorillas for lucrative eco-tourism. Lake Victoria is over-fished and its water contaminated by industrial effluent.  Northern Uganda’s vast swamps and fertile plains ought to be East Africa’s breadbasket but it is barely recovering from 20 years of rebel insurgency that have denuded the land and embittered its people. Meanwhile in Karamoja, Uganda’s dusty and restless Eastern edge, numerous pastoralist peoples still search for peace and prosperity. Though blessed by natural resources and regularly dosed with international donor funding, Uganda struggles to meet its citizens’ basic aspirations, increasingly strained by population pressures on land, water and employment.

But it all changes as you step off a crowded bus at Kampala’s Old Taxi Park. Having survived hours of bone-jarring potholes, retching babies, and assaults by sellers of roasted goat meat and cassava, you feel the heartbeat of the capital. The skyline is low-rise, dotted with imposing CHOGM hotels (those built for the Kampala Commonwealth Summit in 2007; some remain unfinished, others unoccupied). The tarmac streets an orderly flow of 4x4s and crazily veering motorbike taxis. Students throng famous Makerere University’s lecture halls and neat lawns, and swell the workforce of a burgeoning service and IT sector. Beer barons, property sharks, sugar kings and telecom princes make deals in between rounds at the golf course and lunch at Fang Fang. Media-savvy politicians of all ideological hues vie with Big Brother Africa celebrities for a spot on the radio talk-shows, as ubiquitous NGOs host endless workshops on HIV/Aids, or good governance.

Of an evening, the whiff of grilled pork wafts in the evening air, past the drooping silhouettes of sinister marabou cranes that inhabit the rooftops. The Afrigo Band keys-up at Club Obbligato where avant-garde artists, bureaucrats, supermodels and expats make time for Tusker beer. And when the party’s over, by the dim flare of hurricane lamps, the Rolex vendor is still hard at work.

Uganda is a country of stark human and geographic contrasts, full of a restless energy that has an amazing ability to accommodate and compromise. Best of all, it’s a place where everyone can have their own Rolex.