Ekitiibwa ky'Obwakabaka bwa Buganda kyava dda tukikuume:

UGANDA IS IN A POWER TRANSITION QUAGMIRE:

President Museveni Has Won So Many Wars But He Might Lose the Succession Battle:

1st April, 2017

By Simon Okurut

This week president Museveni rubbished the succession debate and re   iterated his earlier assertion that it would be discussed at the right time and p probably in the right forum.

A journalist had asked him to respond to his son in-law Odrek Rwabwogo’s insistence that the country needed to resolve the succession question now or never. Odrek had written quite a number of articles which not only criticized the sustainability of the NRM revolutionary project in general but also questioned the working methods of its chairman who also happens to be his father in law, President Yoweri Museveni.

But while he was answering the journalist, he appeared bored to talk about the subject. It was like asking the pope to discuss what happens in the disco. President Museveni has won so many wars but there is sufficient evidence to suggest that he might lose the succession battle.

The Ugandan leader has fought and won wars against nations like Zaire (now DRC), Rwanda and Sudan among others. He fought and defeated presidents like Gen Idi Amin, Apollo Milton Obote, Gen Tito Okello Lutwa, Joseph Mobutu, Juvenal Habyarimana, Omar Bashir, Laurent Kabila etcetera.

In fact while most leaders usually collapse when they venture into wars with their nearest neighbors like Amin who evaporated with the Kagera misadventure, Museveni has managed to survive very many tricky wars his especially the one of Rwanda where over a million people perished in a genocide.

Under normal circumstances, and given the fact almost the antagonist forces that invaded Rwanda where from his NRA contingent, he would have been put on the spot for what happened, but the situation normalized sooner than expected.

He has defeated over forty Ugandan rebel groups that include ADF, LRA, West Nile Bank Front, UNRF1, UNRF2, FOBA, UPDA, UPA, Holy Spirit Movement, PRA etcetera. And in this process he has obliterated notorious rebel leaders like Alice Lakwena, Col. Juma Oris, Col Erick Odwar, Joseph Kony, Herbert Itongwa, Jamil Mukulu, Col Samson Mande etcetera.

He has also overcome so many political challenges that include the lifting of presidential term limits, the return of traditional kingdoms which President Milton Obote had suspended in 1966, the return of Asians that President Idi Amin had expelled from the country in 1972, the Kayunga riots, the numerous political coalitions that have usually ganged up during elections, etcetera.

He has also ‘somehow’ contained  the Buganda question, the Acholi question, the West Nile question, the Lango question, the Obugabe question, the Obusinga question, the Kyabazinga question etc. He has overcome controversial elections of 1996, 2001, 2006, 2011 and 2016.

President Museveni has also gotten away with quite a number of radical economic decisions that could have led to his downfall like hugely misunderstood currency reform of 1987 where the Ugandan currency was devalued by 30%, the massive privatization exercise, the massive retrenchment of workers, the unforgiving famine and drought that has always ravaged the country almost every two years among others.

The Transition Conundrum

Given the aforementioned challenges, you can now say that the only two issues still standing in his way, which are interlinked in a way, are the lifting of age limit on the presidency which was padlocked at 75 years and the succession question.

Both political questions are interlinked because, one leads to the other in a certain way. That is to say; if Museveni and his group manages to succeed in lifting the age limit, it will certainly prolong the succession question to infinity-perhaps beyond 2026!

If, however, it (the lifting of age limit) doesn’t happen, then he will have the opportunity to settle the succession question as early as 2021 when he will certainly step down. That is exactly what makes the succession debate very interesting.

The other aspect of it is the personalities likely to constitute a group from which he will choose his successor. At the moment, it appears as if even the president himself doesn’t know whom to choose. In the last ten years there have been constant rumors that he was grooming his son, Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba to take over the mantle when he opts to retire.

But the propagators of that conspiracy theory were shocked when he sacked his son from the relatively influential position of Commander of Special Force Brigade and demoted him to the lesser post of advisor to the president on military operations.

Having decimated, humiliated and rather obliterated the opposition and reduced it to a laughing stock, the source of the next Ugandan leader is one of the biggest challenges of our time. Constitutionally, the pecking order shows that the Vice President is supposed to takeover when the Ugandan president dies, resigns or is impeached.

If any of the above was to happen today, then the less talked about Hon Edward Ssekandi easily takes over as Ugandan President. But how come some Ugandans are asking president Museveni to show them his heir apparent to the throne even when he has a Vice President?

A few years ago it appeared to be an easy subject for the Ugandan president to discuss the retirement question. When he appeared on NTV, he told talk-show host Patrick Kamara that he felt that he wouldn’t continue serving beyond 75 years.

Today, Museveni is 72 years old. And in the next three years, actually in 2020, he will certainly have clocked 75 years mark which he said he would retire. Will he abide by his word this time round? Ugandans have numerously caught president Museveni on the wrong side of his own promises.

He has broken so many promises one of which include, the one he made in 1986 that the problem of Africa was the leaders who cling onto power-which in effect was translated as pledge that he was not going to cling on power like the other selfish African leaders. Then there is another one he made in 2001 that he would not run beyond 2005, the time when his two constitutional terms was due to expire.

Today he has done 31 odd years without feeling tired-according to the vigor he exudes whenever he is challenged to prove his fitness. Well, all you can say is that while the Ugandan leader has overcome so many challenges during his thirty year reign, he still continues to find the succession question as the most challenging, most confusing and most embarrassing subjects.

It is not only a quagmire or a conundrum but it’s like a pendulum that swings from either the positive side to the negative side with unpredictable force.

Olusissira lwa Ssekabaka Mwanga II,Obote ne Amin lwe bayokya e Mengo nga 24 May 1966

Ssekabaka Muteesa II Ow'Ensi Buganda nga Yesimbyewo Okulwanyisa Obufuzi Obw'Obumbula obwa Bungereza.

Click on down:

OMUGANDA A.N. KIMALA NAYE AWANDIIKA KU BUGANDA GYE TWASUBWA BWATI:

Lost Libraries of Timbuktu in West Africa:

Until recently, many commentators on Africa claimed that African societies had no tradition of writing. With the rediscovery of ancient manuscript collections, some dating back to the 8th century AD, this perception is changing. 

Approximately 250,000 old manuscripts still survive in modern Ethiopia. Thousands of documents from the medieval Sudanese empire of Makuria, written in eight different languages were unearthed at the southern Egyptian site of Qasr Ibrim. Thousands of old manuscripts have survived in the West African cities of Chinguetti, Walata, Oudane, Kano and Agadez. 

Despite the many dangers posed by fire, floods, insects and pillaging, some one million manuscripts have survived from the northern fringes of Guinea and Ghana to the shores of the Mediterranean. National Geographic estimates that 700,000 manuscripts have survived in Timbuktu alone.

The Timbuktu manuscripts

Around 60 libraries in Timbuktu are still owned by local families and institutions, collections that have survived political turbulence throughout the region, as well as the ravages of nature. A good example is the Ahmed Baba Institute, established in 1970, which was named after the famous 16th/17th-century scholar, the greatest in Africa. 

Ahmed Baba wrote 70 works in Arabic, many on jurisprudence but some on grammar and syntax. Deported to Morocco after the Moroccan invasion of Songhay in 1591, he is said to have complained to the sultan there that the latter's troops had stolen 1,600 books from him and that this was the smallest library compared to those of any of his friends. 

Today, the Ahmed Baba Institute has nearly 30,000 manuscripts, which are being studied, catalogued and preserved. However, during the period of French colonial domination of Timbuktu (1894–1959), many manuscripts were seized and burned by the colonialists, and as a result, many families there still refuse access to researchers for fear of a new era of pillaging. Other manuscripts were lost due to adverse climatic conditions – for example, following droughts, many people buried their manuscripts and fled.

The manuscripts themselves range from tiny fragments to treatises of hundreds of pages.
Four basic types have survived:

• key texts of Islam, including Korans, collections of Hadiths  (actions or sayings of the Prophet), Sufi texts and devotional texts
• works of the Maliki school of Islamic law
• texts representative of the 'Islamic sciences', including grammar, mathematics and astronomy
• original works from the region, including contracts, commentaries, historical chronicles, poetry, and marginal notes and jottings, which have proved to be a surprisingly fertile source of historical data.

The manuscripts themselves are of special importance to their owners for a number of reasons. For example, many people who are descended from the servile classes but claimed noble descent have been caught out by evidence from the manuscripts. Other manuscripts have revealed the unjust dealings of one family with another that may have happened a long time ago but have a bearing on today, such as in disputed land and property ownership.

It begs the question as to why the worth of these manuscripts been recognised before now. During the colonial period, many of the owners hid their manuscripts or buried them. In addition, French was imposed as the main language of the region, which meant that many owners lost the ability to read and interpret their manuscripts in the languages in which they had originally been written. Finally, it is only wince 1985 that the intellectual life of this region has been revived.

Origins and evolution of Timbuktu

According to the 17th-century historian Abdurrahman As-Sadi, the history of the West African desert region could be divided into the rise and fall of three great empires – ancient Ghana,  medieval Mali and the Songhay empire.

Ancient Ghana

The oldest of the three empires, ancient Ghana at its height ruled territory comprising what we would now call Ghana, Senegal, Gambia, Mauritania, Guinea and Mali, located between two great rivers: the Senegal and the Niger. Timbuktu was founded during the dominance of the Ghana empire, in around AD 1100, by Sanhaja desert nomads, who had a tradition of camping near the Niger in the dry season and taking their animals inland to graze during the rainy season. 

There are several explanations for the origin of the name of the famous city. One account suggests that, while the nomads were away, their belongings were entrusted to their slaves, one of whom was called Buktu. The campsite thus became known as 'Tim Buktu', meaning 'well of Buktu'. What began as a semi-permanent nomadic settlement evolved into town and, ultimately, into a city that, between 1100 and 1300, was a thriving economic centre.

Located at a hub of commercial exchange between Saharan Africa, tropical Africa and Mediterranean Africa, Timbuktu was a magnet that attracted both men of learning and men of commerce. It benefited from the gold trade coming from the southern reaches of West Africa – in the 14th century, approximately two thirds of the world's gold came from West Africa – as well as from the salt trade arriving via the Sahara.

The products that reached Timbuktu included textiles, tea and, later, tobacco. Judging from the number of poems about tea found among the manuscripts of Timbuktu, this was clearly a special commodity. Timbuktu scholar Ahmed Baba gave his approval to tobacco in his On the Lawfulness of Tobacco Usage, in which he claimed that it was neither a narcotic nor an intoxicant! 

However, the most profitable trade items in Timbuktu were books. Buying them was considered a socially acceptable way of displaying wealth and a great source of prestige. For instance, an old Timbuktu chronicle Tarikh al Fettash reveals that the king bought a great dictionary for the equivalent price of two horses. 

Medieval Mali

As the empire of Ghana declined, the Mali empire took its place, founded by the Mandinka-speaking people ruling from their capital Niani (in what is now Guinea). King Sundiata Keita of Mali conquered ancient Ghana in AD 1240, and two generations later, Mansa Musa I turned the Mali kingdom into an empire. Islam became the dominant religion of the Malian cities and Arabic became the language of scholarship.

Described as the 'Latin of Africa', Arabic was useful for communicating between peoples such as the Bambara, Fulani, Hausa, Mossi, Songhay and Tuareg who all spoke different languages. Just as Latin in medieval Europe was associated with Christianity, Arabic in medieval Africa was associated with Islam, and just as Europeans adopted the Latin script to write their own languages, Africans used the Arabic script to write theirs.

In 1999, the BBC broadcast the documentary series Millennium: One Thousand Years of History. The programme on the 14th century opened with the following disclosure: 'In the 14th century, the century of the scythe, natural disasters threaten civilisations with extinction. The Black Death kills more people in Europe, Asia and North Africa than any catastrophe has before. Civilisations which avoid the plague thrive. In West Africa, the empire of Mali becomes the richest in the world.'

There are a variety of ways in which the empire spent its wealth.  The Sankoré University mosque was built in about AD 1300 with funding from a woman of the Aghlal, a religious Tuareg ethnic group. The Sankoré Quarter in north-east Timbuktu became the dwelling place of the scholars and teachers. It was also where the first libraries were created. Scholars and kings acquired books during their travels. They were also bought from merchants coming from the north. Mansa Musa I purchased works on Maliki law. He also ordered the construction of the Great Mosque of Timbuktu in 1326.

There were a number of challenges to Malian hegemony. One came in 1343, when the Mossi attacked Timbuktu. A source says: 'The Mossi sultan entered Timbuktu and sacked and burned it, killing many persons and looting it before returning to his land.' Timbuktu, however, recovered and the Malians continued to rule it for the next hundred years. However: 'The Tuaregs began to raid and cause havoc on all sides. The Malians, bewildered by their many depredations, refused to make a stand against them.' Mali lost control of Timbuktu in 1433.

The Songhay empire

Once a tributary to the Mali empire, the Songhay became independent as Mali declined. Sonni Ali Ber was their first great king, conquering most of what became the Songhai empire and seizing Timbuktu in 1468. The chronicles say he 'perpetuated terrible wickedness in the city, putting it to flame, sacking it and killing large numbers of people'. The gold traders there, fearing that Sonni Ali would take control of their goods and transactions, started businesses in the city state of Kano in what is now northern Nigeria. The scholars of Timbuktu were also treated harshly and many fled.

Subsequent rulers of the Askiya dynasty adopted a gentler approach towards the scholars, offering them cash and privileges, especially during Ramadan. These included slaves, grants of land, and exemption from taxation. Major Felix Dubois, the 19th-century French author of the excellent Timbuctoo the Mysterious, says: 'To ensure them the tranquillity so necessary to a man of thought and letters, their affairs were managed and their properties cultivated by their slaves.'

Timbuktu benefited under the reign of the Askiya kings. According to the Tarikh al Fettash, a 17th-century history of the region:

One cannot count either the virtues or the qualities of [Askiya Muhammad I], such are his excellent politics, his kindness towards his subjects and his solicitude towards the poor. One cannot find his equal either among those who preceded him, nor those who followed. He had a great affection for the scholars, saints and men of learning.

T imbuktu eventually rose to intellectual dominance in the region. In the early days, Walata – 'where the holiest and most learned men resided' – and Djenné had been centres of Islamic scholarship. Djenné had a university that boasted thousands of teachers, and there are reports of surgical operations successfully performed by their medical doctors, such as eye cataract surgery. But by 1500, Timbuktu had surpassed both of these centres. Scholars and students visited it from the entire region, including Saharan and Mediterranean Africa, and there were scholarly connections between Timbuktu and Fez in Morocco. In addition, during pilgrimages, connections were made with fellow scholars in Egypt and Mecca.

According to the Tarikh al Fettash, Timbuktu was described as having: 

…no equal among the cities of the blacks ... and was known for its solid institutions, political liberties, purity of morals, security of its people and their goods, compassion towards the poor and strangers, as well as courtesy and generosity towards students and scholars.

According to Leo Africanus in A History and Description of Africa (c. 1526): 

The people of Timbuktu have a light-hearted nature. It is their habit to wander into town at night between 10pm and 1am, playing instruments and dancing … There you will find many judges, professors and devout men, all handsomely maintained by the king, who holds scholars in much honour. There, too, they sell many handwritten North African books, and more profit is to be made there from the sale of books than from any other branch of trade.

Askiya Daud (r. 1549–82), the fifth ruler of the Askiya dynasty, established public libraries and employed calligraphers to copy books for him, some of which were then given as gifts to scholars. The book-copying industry was well structured and extensive. At the end of each book was stated the title, the author, the date of the manuscript copy and the names of the scribes who copied it. Some books also named the proofreaders and the vocalisers (i.e. scholars who added vowels to Arabic), and often they mentioned for whom the manuscript had been copied, the monies involved, who provided the blank paper, and the dates of the beginning and ending of the copying of each volume. Many copyists wrote 140 lines of text per day, while the proofreaders read 170 lines daily. The proofreader of one particular multi-volume text was paid half a mithqal (1.75–2.5g) of gold per volume  while the copyist received one mithqal (3.5–5g).

Religion

Timbuktu was also a religious city. According to a West African proverb: 'Salt comes from the north, gold from the south and silver from the country of the white men, but the word of God and the treasures of wisdom are only to be found in Timbuktu.' There is a local legend that the city is guarded by 333 renowned saints as well as numerous lesser ones, and surrounding Timbuktu like a rampart are the chapels where the saints are buried. 

According to the Sufis, a saint is a Muslim mystic, usually a scholar, who has achieved such closeness to God as to possess special powers. For example, we read: 'The very learned and pious sheikh Abou Abdallah had no property, and he bought slaves that he might give them their liberty. His house had no door, everyone entered unannounced, and men came to see him from all parts and at all hours.'

The intellectual life of Timbuktu

The Sankoré University mosque was the main teaching venue since many scholars lived in the Sankoré Quarter. Classes were also taught at the Great Mosque and at the Oratory of Sidi Yahia. Most of the teaching took place in the scholars' houses where each had his own private library that he could consult when knotty points of scholarship arose. Very often a student would study under six or seven different tutors, each with a different specialism. 

At the height of the Songhay empire, Timbuktu had 25,000 students. They would pay the lecturers in money, clothing, cows, poultry, sheep or services, depending on how well-off the student's family was. Students might also work in the local tailoring industry to pay for their studies. According to the Tarikh al Fettash, Timbuktu had 26 textile factories where each master tailor employed 50 to 100 apprentices. Employment was restricted to students at a certain level of education. 

Each teacher was expert in a number of texts. This is not quite the same as being an expert in a particular subject. The traditional teaching method involved the lecturer dictating a text of the students. The students would write their own copies and would read back to that lecturer what they had written. All the students would do the same and, in this way, learn from each other's mistakes. Once the correct version had been written down, the lecturer would explain the technical intricacies of the text and engage in discussion with the students.

Among the manuscripts, treatises on pedagogy have survived. Some books tell how to learn to read and improve memory, give suggestions on what subjects should be taught and detail the qualities of an ideal educator. An ideal student was: 

Modest, courageous, patient and studious; he must listen carefully to his professor and have a solid understanding of his lessons before memorising them. The students must learn to debate among themselves to deepen their understanding of the material. They must always have a great respect and a profound love for their teacher, because these are the conditions for professional success.

The curriculum
Ahmed Baba studied Arabic grammar and syntax, astronomy, logic, rhetoric and prosody. Textbooks were purchased and copied on a number of subjects, including astronomy, astrology, botany, dogma, geography, Islamic law, literary analysis, mathematics (including calculus and geometry), medicine, mysticism, morphology, music, rhetoric, philosophy, the occult sciences, and geomancy. 

The works of the Greek astronomer Ptolemy were  basic references for Islamic astronomy. The Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle were also common. The Greek physician Hippocrates was popular, as well as the Persian medical philosopher-scholar Avicenna.

Academic standards of teaching in Timbuktu

The quality of teaching there was as high as in North Africa and the Middle East, and some scholars say it was even higher. A celebrated professor from Hedjaz is reported to have arrived in Timbuktu with the intention of teaching, but after talking to some of the students and seeing their level of learning, he was humbled and decided to become a student himself. 

On graduation. after the students had each received a traditional turban, they had a number of career options. Some lecturers issued licences that authorised their best students to teach particular texts. The ulama or scholars had a variety of roles in Songhay society. Some became judges, others became imams and some became teachers. The rural holy men became parish priests, attending to every part of the lives of their flocks.

Timbuktu books

The documents that have been preserved range from one-page fragments to hundreds of pages – one example cited by John O Hunwick and Alida Jay Boye in their masterly The Hidden Treasures of Timbuktu (2008) is a letter of 482 pages. The Timbuktu manuscripts mainly comprise Korans, Koranic exegesis, collections of Hadiths, writings on Sufism, theology, law and other closely related disciplines. By the 15th century, Timbuktu scholars were producing original works as well as compiling new versions and commentaries on established texts.

There are also commercial documents. These typically begin with the phrase: 'Let all who read this document know ...' followed by the names of buyer and seller, a detailed description of the product, a declaration of the legal validity of the sale, a confirmation that the purchaser paid the price in full and, finally, the name of the drafter and the date. Legal documents also include a statement of the validity of the contract, confirming that the parties were legally competent, free from restraint and in full possession of their mental faculties, and that the transaction was lawful according to Islamic law. They typically end with the phrase: 'Praise to God and blessings upon the Prophet.'

The reading and writing of poetry was important in these cultures. Among the Timbuktu documents are verses devoted to the Prophet and to the adoration of a particular woman or man, and poems about tea. Poetry was written when a person died, to be read at their funeral. Even works on grammar and law were rewritten in verse to facilitate ease of learning.

A number of manuscripts were written in Ajami – Arabic script used to write local languages. There are Ajami manuscripts in Songhay, Wolof, Hausa, Fulfulde and Tamasheq. These texts are concerned with botany, diplomatic correspondence, occult sciences, poetry and traditional medicine.

The end of Timbuktu's golden age

The golden age of Timbuktu came to an end with the collapse of the Songhay empire following the invasion by Morocco, whose sultan Ahmad I al-Mansur had established an alliance with Elizabeth I of England. 

The English agreed to provide the Moroccan military with firearms and men skilled in the use of these weapons. This Arab-European army invaded Songhay in 1591 and destroyed it. The invaders confiscated gold and other resources, enslaved the Songhay scholars – including Ahmed Baba, who was deported to Morocco – and attempted to confiscate Timbuktu's archives. 

With the end of the Songhay empire, the two thirds of West Africa that had previously been under a single authority split into smaller and smaller political units, making the region easy prey for invaders and slave traders.

In 1656, the great West African historian Abdurrahman As-Sadi wrote in his Tarikh as Sudan: 'I saw the ruin and collapse of the science of history. I observed that its gold and small change were both disappearing.'

TALES FROM MUTESA'S PALACE: Arriving to a new life in Buganda (Uganda):

An illustration of Barbara Kimenye’s welcome at the dock in Port

Bell, Luzira, in 1956.

By Barbara Kimenya

Posted  Saturday, September 26  2015 

IN SUMMARY

Adventures. Young and beautiful British-born Barbara arrived at Port Bell by ferry from Bukoba, Tanzania to start a whole new life after her marriage had fallen apart. It is a life that would see her mix with ordinary Baganda and bring her close to their king. In the first part of our serialisation of her unpublished book,Tales from Mutesa’s Palace, she writes about her first days in the country.

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In 1956, we docked at Port Bell in Luzira on a bright morning after a whole night journey across Lake Victoria from Bukoba in Tanzania on a steamer; the trim little vessel that plied Lake Victoria calling at Bukoba, Mwanza and Kisumu as well as Port Bell once a week.

The overnight voyage from Bukoba could have been pleasant, but it wasn’t. While the officers and crew were as trim as ever in their crisp whites, and a fantastic six course dinner was served, the few comfortable cabins had been booked weeks earlier, and the deck was packed solid with workers on their way to the Ugandan sugar plantations.

I was lucky to sleep on a chair, Topha my baby son on my knee, and my elderly Scottie, Shadrach, at my feet. Other travellers sprawled wherever they found space: mostly on the floor.

At first there was an element of fun in the way we were ‘camping’, but the joking ground to a sudden halt after a nun laid herself out on the centre table to sleep, closed her eyes and placed her hands in an attitude of prayer, for all the world like an effigy on a mediaeval tomb. The air of sanctity did for us all.

Eddie and Nancy, a Scottish couple, waited for me on the dock. We had been acquaintances rather than close friends in Bukoba, and it remains a source of wonder to me that they should have done so much to extricate me from the messy marriage breakup. Thanks to them, I was to arrive in Kampala with lodgings and a secretarial job already lined up.

Beautiful city
Kampala was then at the height of its reputation as East Africa’s most beautiful city, as well as the most sophisticated. As on previous visits, I couldn’t get enough of the smart shops displaying goods we only dreamed about on the other side of the lake. It was all a far cry from Bukoba, where the main street was either a stretch of mud or dust, depending on the weather, flanked by rickety wooden buildings housing various general stores.

There was also a victorious atmosphere in Kampala, at least among the Baganda, at the time I landed at Port Bell. Only a few months earlier, October 17, 1955 to be exact, the Kabaka of Buganda, His Highness Mutesa II, had returned from exile in Britain, into which he had been unceremoniously bundled by Governor Andrew Cohen on November 30, 1953 for refusing to accept the British government’s dictates on several important issues.

Eddie and Nancy had arranged for me to board with a retired nurse called Betty, whose rambling old house faced Makerere University. Her only other boarder was an old West Indian lawyer, and the two of them were frequently tight as ticks on pink gins. Betty, from the start, made me, my son and my dog very welcome, and fed us well.

In fact I was so grateful for having come to roost in such homely surroundings, and being sure of a job to go to next day, that on my first Sunday in Kampala, I attended mass at the university Roman Catholic chapel.

Ms Barbara Kimenye. Courtesy photo.

My new job was in a shop on Salisbury Road (now Nkrumah Road) which dealt in paint and iron bars. Betty had found a young sensible Munyoro, Joyce, to look after Topha, so I didn’t have to worry about rushing home at lunchtime. The work could hardly be termed back-breaking, and most of the day was spent in chatting to the customers who were mainly building contractors.

Worklife
Apart from me sitting behind a little-used typewriter, there was a salesman-cum-storekeeper, a porter-cum-messenger, and the boss, a courteous, reserved man who was not very much in evidence, and who ran off with the takings three weeks after I joined his staff. I gradually understood that running off was practically a disease in Uganda.

His replacement was sent from Kenya by our head office. It was one of my first close encounters with a Kenyan white, and suddenly the whole Mau Mau business started to make sense. Within two minutes of Sandy’s arrival in our office/shop, I could have cheerfully killed him.

Short, tubby and as sandy as his name implied, he made a bee-line for the Kampala Club, then strictly Europeans only, in the hope of finding someone who could wangle an invitation to State House for him. He spoke to the salesman-cum-storekeeper and porter-cum-messenger as though they belonged to a species lacking human intelligence, when he was not loudly asserting that all Africans were thieves.

He was so anxious to be rid of me – since I too clashed with his colour scheme – that he went to the trouble of getting me another job with an insurance company which paid almost twice as much. The excuse was “am bringing out a European secretary as my personal aide”!

While I still worked for him, however, we three subordinate staff hated him: not solely for how he viewed us, but because he never missed an opportunity of running down our previous boss to whoever happened to be in the shop. Our sympathies were with the chap who had run away with the takings. We considered that if he had to deal with a head office staffed with the Sandys, he was perfectly entitled to grab what he could and run.

Then I was suddenly, unbelievably pregnant! While trying to explain to Mr Burbridge, the principal immigration officer, why I believed I did not, because of family connections, need a work permit in Uganda, the room swam, there was a weird buzzing in my ears, and the next thing I knew was his secretary pressing a glass of water to my lips. On Mr Burbridge’s advice, I consulted a doctor - and couldn’t believe my ears when the man pronounced me three months pregnant.

It was the most astounding moment of my life. I mean, what are you supposed to do when you’ve made a grand exit, and two months later find yourself carrying the object of your scorn’s baby? I did what I was very good at doing in those days. I tried to put the awkward business out of my mind, in the hope that it would go away.

Meanwhile, staying in town for lunch, and usually eating at a pleasant, cheap restaurant on the Wandegeya side of Kampala Road, I met dozens of Ugandans whom I had known as students frequenting East Africa House behind the Cumberland Hotel at Marble Arch in London. I also made many new friends, regulars at the same place, including the infamous Ted Jones and his Muganda wife, Mary. These two became very special over the years. I missed them when they eventually emigrated to Australia.

Meeting friends
And all these people turned out to be real friends. Most of the old ones from the East Africa House days introduced me to their families and were there with help whenever they thought I needed it. Foremost in this respect was Joe Zake, newly-established as a practising lawyer in offices in a rickety wooden building.

He took me in hand, made me face up to the fact that another baby was on the way, whether or not I liked it, and found a house at a rent I could afford, £5 a month, to be precise, below the Roman Catholic cathedral on Rubaga Hill. He then supplied such essentials as a paraffin stove, some sufurias, and a bread knife which survived long enough to go with my youngest son when 20 odd years later he went to Aston University.

Apart from the need to-learn to stand on my own feet, if I was determined to make the separation from my husband permanent, a further reason for leaving Betty was that her house bordered a swamp, and Topha went down with a hideous attack of malaria.

It was a shock, after running down to Mulago hospital in the middle of the night with a screaming child, to be told by the Ugandan doctor that I ought to have taken the baby to the European Hospital (former Ugandan Television studios in Nakasero). Only when I argued that my son was fathered by a full-bloodied African, and that he had been delivered by an African doctor (Dr Matwale, later director of medical services, Tanzanian govt) was Topha given treatment.

Earlier, it had never entered my head that a colour bar operated in a place as liberal as Uganda. There was a great deal of mixing going on all over the place, practically everywhere. But whereas my Ugandan friends accepted me without question, officialdom seemed to have a problem reconciling my half-tone colour with my British accent. In other words, officialdom, or the people wielding it, did not know where or to whom I belonged.

Moving to Rubaga hill
Shadrack, my Scottish Terrier, died shortly before we left Betty’s place. He caught tick fever, and, being an imported dog, was past saving before it was diagnosed. He was nine years old, and losing him was the saddest of happenings. There was slight consolation in knowing that the year and a half he spent in Africa, after my mother flew him out to me in what was then Tanganyika, were probably the best of his life. It had been a time of wanderings in huge gardens, investigating strange smells and creatures, and never being shut up for hours on end in a stuffy London flat. Still, I missed him as I had never before missed anybody.

The house we rented from a true gentleman called Peter Sendikwanawa, a rich landowner who lived in Masaka, lay across the valley from Lubiri, the Kabaka’s palace, and must have been one of the earliest Western-type buildings in Buganda. It stood in about an acre of neglected garden, and was approached by a gravel drive flanked by gnarled frangipani trees.

A wide verandah enclosed six large rooms which led directly into one another: in the old days, the Baganda didn’t believe in wasting space on passages, although they never seemed to count the cost of extra doors. It seemed enormous to Joyce and me; and the fact that there was no electricity or running water, and that the outside lavatory was in a state of collapse was the least of our worries.

We soon got used to going together to relieve ourselves, so that if either of us disappeared down the pit latrine, the other could run for help. We moved into the house with a bed each, a cot for Topha, and a few packing cases draped in curtaining for seats. There was no need to curtain the windows since they had shutters. And in next to no time our household expanded to include a short, black, wire-haired dog, one of whose parents must surely have been a Scottie, who the neighbours called ‘Puppy’, but who we promptly named ‘Mzee’.

Mzee really did not belong to anybody, and everybody fed him, but he slept on our verandah and we felt that gave us rights of ownership.

Then Alex, a Munyarwanda water-carrier, who used to bring us three or four 4-gallon cans of water twice a day, on a heavy wooden barrow, and charged us five cents a can, quietly moved into a tumbledown mud and wattle outhouse which Joyce said was supposed to be our kitchen.

Extra hands
He slid onto our payroll with equal discretion. First he started tidying up the garden, and gradually the most delicate and attractive floral arrangements in jam jars decorated every room. Next he took on the washing of the floors, and produced a rich gleam which we never suspected they possessed.

But Alex really made his mark when he changed his ragged shorts and vest for a snowy white kanzu and red fez, and took to welcoming visitors at the door with great dignity. The contrast between his style of welcome, and their having to sit on packing cases, was like Claridges’ doorman ushering guests into a roadside cafe.

I was able to pay him a salary because around the same time that Alex attached himself to us, I went to work for the insurance company where the work was interesting, my colleagues friendly, and of course the pay worthwhile.

Looking back on this period of my life, I still see it as the happiest ever. Money was tight, but we ate. I walked an average of four miles a day, there and back to work. Yet I don’t recall ever feeling frightened or miserable, or even exceptionally tired.

I was exhilarated every time I entered that frangipani lined driveway, and saw Joyce on the verandah with a spruced up Topha and the teapot at the ready. It was a great day when I came back from the city with ‘Toro’ chairs for the three of us,(Toro chairs were made of a vegetable fiber and tree branches, and cost about five shillings each). I have since been in a position to buy more conventionally smart furniture, but none of it has generated so much pleasure.

Dog tales
It was her idea that we should bath Mzee, for, as she pointed out, the old dog carried ticks the size of grapes and, judging from the way he scratched, was a walking home for hundreds of fleas. Somehow we managed to throw him into a bowl of disinfectant, but he went wild – snapping and howling, and drenching us in his attempt to escape. Afterwards, he disappeared for a week, then he came back as lousy as ever. We never tried bathing him again.

Our Baganda neighbours were amused by this performance. Most of their little mud and wattle houses were screened by matooke plantations, so we didn’t see much of each other, but we often met on Rubaga Road leading to the cathedral, or on the main track running along our side of the hill. They had, of course, heard Mzee’s terrorised yells, and some had seen him, soaking wet and wild-eyed, tearing through the bushes.

They thanked Joyce and me for trying to clean the old dog – really because the Baganda customarily have a very gracious way of giving thanks for everything and anything, but couldn’t resist making a few sly jokes at our expense. One old man said bluntly that we were lucky not to have been bitten, and told us to leave well alone if we didn’t want to catch rabies.

Accommodative neighbours
The nicest thing about our neighbours was their quiet acceptance of other people’s oddities as commonplace, which may be why, as I soon discovered, Rubaga had more than its fair share of unusual characters.

Mr Macken, for instance, an Irish Catholic lawyer, who lived a spartan life on the other side of the hill, took his dogs for a walk at exactly the same time every evening, and seemed to spend more time in church than the White Fathers who manned the cathedral. He was very taciturn where women were concerned. A greeting from any of us was acknowledged with a grunt and the avoidance of eyes.

My next door neighbour, Miriam Daly, also Irish, contended that he [Macken] thought we all wanted to tamper with his virtue.... It was well known that Mr Macken had been doing the First Fridays for years: i.e. taking Holy Communion on the first Friday of each of nine months to ensure receiving the Last Sacraments on his deathbed. We were all naturally perplexed when the poor man dropped dead at the roadside, on his way to fulfil yet another set of First Fridays.