My visit to Western Uganda

Wednesday, 9AM:

My matatu is flying down the road between Kampala and Kagadi and I am happy. Happy to be seeing more of the country and happy for what’s ahead. Outside, a man pushes a bicycle laden with jackfruit down the road and a woman works with a hoe in her garden. Red ant hills interrupt the otherwise green landscape of banana trees and lush foliage. The matatu blares music from her loudspeakers and I feel like it is the soundtrack to my life. The wind blows in through the window and a little girl dances in the street as though she can hear my music.

Tuesday was a big day for me. I turned 21 and had my second front page story in the paper (about dropout rates in girls’ education). I also received an assignment to travel to Kibaale region in Western Uganda and write some stories on the heightening tribal tensions between the indigenous Banyoro people in the area and the non-indigenous “Bafurukyi.”

Since I am not a member of either tribal group, my editors decided I could make an unbiased assessment of what is going on in Western Uganda. The responsibility of the assignment has me a little worried, however. The Bunyoro “conflict” has been at the center of the country’s spotlight for the last several weeks and I confess I haven’t been following it as well as I should have. Now I have just two days to “get to the bottom” of it all.

The articles are for the Sunday paper and my editors gave me the assignment at around noon on Tuesday. For the next several hours I frantically tried to get the budget for the trip approved (which required chasing down a bunch of signatures all over the office), read some background on the conflict, about which I knew very little, and leave for home so I could pack for the two-day trip. By the time I arrived in the taxi park right at five, with my money, clothes, and a fancy Monitor camera (yes I was also supposed to be the photographer on this trip), all of the Kagadi taxies were already gone for the day.

I had been planning to travel to the trading town Tuesday night and get an early start reporting on Wednesday, but instead I had my birthday dinner as planned with Zoë and Penny and left my apartment at 5:30AM on Wednesday for the four and a half hour trip to Kagadi.

10AM

My matatu is still flying down the road. I am still happy. I am also covered in salt from the roasted cassava root I bought in Mubende town where we stopped briefly. The matatu driver honks generously at passerby and approaching vehicles, sticking his hand out the window to wave vigorously whenever we pass another taxi.

The matatu pulls onto a dirt road and we close the windows to keep out the dust. If we slow down, I will be sitting in a small furnace. 100 kilometers to go.

10:30PM

I am sitting on my bed in Nuel Guesthouse trying to type up some of my notes and I am exhausted. I arrived in Kagadi at about noon and met up with Francis, a Monitor correspondent who knows the area and came from Hoima to help me arrange interviews around the town. From 12:30 to 8:00 I talked with people in the town – a school headmaster, the Resident District Commissioner, a local elder, the director of the NGO, World Voices Uganda, the FDC District Chairman, a secondary head teacher, and other local people in the community.

I also traveled to the resettlement village of Kasasa where I interviewed the chairperson of LC3. Kasasa village is composed almost entirely of migrant populations to the area, all worried in light of the President’s recent (very controversial) proposal that all upper leadership positions in the region should be restricted to the indigenous tribe.

Local villagers gathered around us while we talked and as more and more people arrived, I wondered about the audience, unsure as to why so many people were there. When I finished the interview, I discovered that the reason for the gathering was a village council meeting – which I had been delaying for the past 30 minutes with my questions to the keynote speaker.

We finished and I stood up, the people eyed me expectantly. “They want a speech,” Francis informed me.

“A speech?” I asked, unsure of what I was supposed to say.

“Just tell them who you are and what you’re doing,” Francis said.

And so I did, explaining in English that I was a reporter who had come to the area to find out for myself what was happening between the feuding tribal groups. Someone translated into Rukiga for me and the people listened expectantly.

When I finished, an old man stood up and did a dance. He walked over and grabbed my hand, pumping it eagerly.

I came to this place as an “objective, third-party,” but as I drove away, sandwiched between Francis and the boda driver while we bumped down the narrow dirt road and the sun set in the distance, I felt a huge weight of responsibility settle on my shoulders.

Thursday, 11AM

I am again driving down the road, heading this time towards Kibaale town. I interviewed more people in the morning and am now heading to the police station and district headquarters to get more comments.

There are ten of us packed in the tiny five-seater car and my shoulder is neatly nestled in the damp armpit of the man next to me. I try not to think about it.

11PM

My notes are spread out around me in the dim bar of Hotel Classic, my guesthouse for the night. My computer is plugged in to possibly the only outlet in the room and while several men play pool to my right, I am desperately trying to make sense of all of my notes and information and begin writing my stories. I will leave for Kampala at 6 in the morning and am beginning to feel the pressure of my approaching deadlines.

I have seen so much in the last two days and talked to so many people. My interviews have traced back through history to British colonialism and Buganda control. One man told me how his office building was burned the first day he took political office. Another related that he was beaten at the polling stations last elections.

Yet, although the country is in uproar about the President's recent proposals for the area, when I visited Kagadi I found a small town like any other. A butcher cutting meat for his customers, two women chatting in a shop, children playing together at their school. Hardly the "tribal war" some are talking of.

At the same time there is tension under the surface, especially among the leadership. One man proclaimed that the president is purposefully stirring tribal tensions to advance his own agenda, another declared boldly that tribal lines run deeper than national lines as they were instituted by God, not man. I have heard some pretty crazy stuff and taken pages of notes.

When we stopped at the Kabaale police station today for a comment from the district police commander, I saw two young men, arrested that day for hacking their father to death with a panga. Apparently he had 3 wives and 38 children and the boys wanted a share of his land…no it was not related to the stories I’m writing, but as I looked at the boys – 16 and 21 years old – sitting on the floor in the same police office as I am, my heart broke a little.

Land, oil, wealth, politics – all play complicated roles in this place, and now must also play into the stories I am writing.

How now to sift through it, understand it, and compact it into only several stories?

Saturday 12:22 AM

The special hire I called twenty minutes ago has still not arrived to pick me up from the Monitor office and I am exhausted. Including travel time, during which I read over my notes and tried to process what I had been seeing, I have worked 51 hours since Wednesday morning.

This morning, I traveled back to Kampala and met my editor to discuss the trip.

“Write four stories,” he told me, explaining what he wanted and sending me back to my desk.

I wrote, he read, we talked, I wrote some more, and some more, and some more. And now its past midnight and the stories are done – or mostly done, I’ll be returning in a few hours to meet with my editor for any last edits before the paper goes to press.

5PM

The deadline has come and gone and the stories are finished, laid out across three pages, and printed as a Special Report in the early edition of the Sunday paper. I plan to go buy one in a couple of minutes.

I know that I will look back on the last several days as one of my best experience in Uganda and with the Monitor. I have seen and learned so much in such a short time! And these are the pieces I know I will be most proud of – in spite of the probable typos that were missed as a result of the quick deadlines.

But right now, I am exhausted and glad to be home…

…for a few hours anyway. At 11:30PM I’m taking a bus to Rwanda for the next several days. Zoë and our friend Jenny left last night and I’ll meet them Kigali in the morning.

I think I'm ready to just be a tourist for a few days.