Rebel in a Bubble

I sat in an Entebbe - Kampala matatu today. I was on my phone, trying to keep the world out of my head, trying to be invisible. Then I heard them. And something stirred me to sit up, say something, defend someone, be the human rights activist I have been calling myself. But I did not. You see, the matatu conductor (some of you call them touts) was telling these two Germans that he would charge them 15k to sit with their back packs in the back seat. Ideally, each seat is 2500 so the three seats should have been 7500 whether there was a bag or a person in the third seat. He had tried to fix their bags in the boot (some of you call it trunk) but you see these matatus don't really have a reasonable boot you can fix a bag in. But even then, he wanted to charge them extra whether they sat with their bags or he threw them under the seats. Now, before I mention my next statement I should let you know that I know many people around me are very uncomfortable with straight up words like ra...

These Islands Will be my Death.                 By Patience Nitumwesiga Perhaps I should mention that I’m attracted to terrifying, mysterious, precarious things. THINGS, not people. I’ve also narrowed it down recently to places. And islands are some of them. Once, when I’d just left a very serene island, (Bussi Island), my boat guy was arrested for attempted murder and robbery. The other time, when I was at an island somewhere in Mayuge district, I was told that sometimes, they hide dead bodies among passengers on the boats. But once you love travel, it doesn’t matter what comes with it. And somehow, islands keep luring me. So this one time I’m in Kampala, bored to death. A friend is visiting from Muenster, Germany, and she wants to go somewhere quiet. We decide to go for a boat ride. We head down to Gabba and look at the boats. If you’ve been to that landing site, then you know that it proliferates th...

The Lovely Ghosts of Bagamoyo. By Patience Nitumwesiga The journey to Bagamoyo started with me missing my flight. So I walk onto the departures entrance and the clerk asks for my flight name. I give him my ticket. He takes one look at it and says “checking in for precision Air is closed”. I don’t believe him. For a brief second I think he’s joking. But you know how airports are. You miss your target and everyone moves on. Like it doesn’t matter that you’re trapped in one ‘time zone’ and they are rolling on with the globe. It’s like death. Just because one person somewhere has stopped breathing doesn’t mean the world will stop and mourn them. After a while, partly because the clerk has moved on to other people without hesitation or a care in the world about what I’m supposed to do, but also because enough time has passed for it to sink in, I move away. Through the glass, I can see the people I’m supposed to travel with still sorting their baggage but I’m unable to join them. ...

Stop saying shit about Winnie Mandela. You know how Ugandans think that gay people are paid to be gay so that they promote the whole homosexual kingdom and take over? Well, I wonder why they don’t think that some people are also paid to promote chauvinism especially through religion! It makes more sense. And this is what I kept thinking as I leafed through Josephine Namukisa’s book, “The Warring Princess”. Recently, a friend gave me this book to read.   It’s a religious book and I was hesitant to read it but she needed my opinion and I agreed to. She warned me though and said “I get the feeling she thinks the ultimate job of a woman is to nurture children, but perhaps I misunderstood her and you grew up a Christian so maybe you’ll interpret it differently”. I’m cautious around religion nowadays, but it wouldn’t hurt to check it out and see what people are saying out there about human existence. It’s usually just speculation, anyways. So I took the book. It’s pretty small...

Reflections of a Ugandan labourer. Working in Uganda is like being a teenager, in Uganda.   I’ve been a working Ugandan for about four years now, and the things I’ve met make me wonder if I really want to stay here and work here. First, I’ve met the Ugandan colleagues and bosses, who have absolutely no respect for time, or for quality delivery. On my first job, one of my bosses accused me of being too strict. She said, “You can’t come here thinking the ideals you studied in school will be achieved. This is reality, and people don’t always do what they’re supposed to do. Learn to live with it.” I was fresh from university, and many people said I needed a few years and I would be like everybody else, and abandon my impatience with slow paces, and join the clique. It’s been four years now, I still don’t understand why we agree to do one thing in a given time frame, and then take our time to reach there. Nobody cares, you see, as long as something is done, in the end. This is ...