The President of the Ugandan Ghetto

Bobi Wine, one of Uganda's top artists, self-proclaimed president of the Ghetto

 

Interviewing the president of the ghetto is no easy task.  Although I arrived at Bobi Wine’s office around 11 am, I didn’t leave until 5 pm.  When I finished, I was so worn out I needed 2 cups of coffee to get back to office.  I had little expectations of the man before I went to see him—though he said he was a man of the people, I had an open mind.  His actions would show me, rather than his words.  I came by boda to his office, which were a few rooms in an incomplete, under-construction building in Bukoto. Waiting for him, surrounded by dusty buildings, people living on what looked like less than a dollar a day, I saw a shiny black Ford Mustang drive up very quickly.  Inside, was the president of the Ghetto.  

Ford Mustang

Wine wore a large black studded cowboy hat, a black shirt with a white one underneath, black pants, a huge belt with a silver star, and large silver rings.  He wore a huge metallic ring that looked like a small boulder on his pinky finger.  His hair was dreaded, and there was a large black chain that hung from his belt, dangling off his hips.  I didn’t know that I would have to wait for an interview from him for almost 90 minutes.  I was led with another reporter from Sunday Vision, Moses Opobo, to plastic black chairs outside his studio to watch Pink and Mariah Carey videos.  Bobi Wine chatted with a reporter from the Red Pepper for over an hour, and then two men from his village in Mpigi came with a proposal to ask him for money.  Young kids, who looked like they belonged in primary school, walked around his office in metallic hip-hop gear.

The problem with getting an interview with Bobi Wine is that his mind can drift within ten seconds—one minute he might be reliving a moment from his time in exile as a child in Tanzania, the next minute he is thinking about ghetto youth who use ganja.  Eventually, Opobo just wandered into his office, and Wine remembered that we were there.  Come on in, he said.

Bobi Wine’s favorite president Wine’s office was tiny and plain, but decorated with some mementos.  On his black desk was a snow globe of Dubai, a small flag of the Buganda kingdom, and the Ugandan flag.  A huge painting of him, his son Solomon Kampala, and his wife Barbie hung on the wall, with a medium photograph of Ida Amin tucked inside, though he had no photo of President Museveni.  Stickers for the Ghetto Republic decorated his door and refrigerator. The interview was not easy. 

Wine has a warm, easy repertoire with Opobo, but with me, he seemed uneasy and skeptical of my motives.  We started off the interview with the basics- what was he up to? Wine said he was working on an album for next year, and trying to sensitize the police about treating youth who use ganja with respect.  “I support the use of ganja, but not the abuse,” said Wine seriously.  “I want to work on the relationship between the police and the community, and the criminalization of youth who use ganja.”  Wine said he was starting a foundation for ghetto youth, and working with Barbie on her campaign to promote healthy minds.        

We then began to talk about Wine’s upbringing.  “I have forty-three brothers and sisters,” he said.  “My father was the richest man in his county, and he had seven wives.”  Frowning, Wine then told me that his father was still producing at 69, and had a child that was younger than Wine’s kids.  I asked Wine if he planned to have more than three kids.  He looked at me in shock.  “I am a strong. African.  Man,” he said emphatically, pausing between words.  “If I still have wealth, of course I will have more children.”Wine told me that although his father was a very wealthy man, he lost everything when Obote 2 took over.  Under Amin, his dad prospered, but lost everything when the regimes switched. 

“Do you know Idi Amin?” he asked, raising his hand to the photo of Amin he displayed in his office.  “She’s heard of him, she knows of him,” Opobo told him. “Idi Amin was the greatest president Uganda ever had,” he said, gesturing towards the photograph.  Wine said that his family went into exile in Tanzania before he was born, and kept returning to Uganda, then going back.  His mom raised him in Kamwokya, and he told me that he was still traumatized by the scars of his experiences there.

“I don’t hate poverty,” Wine said, as if the word hate was not strong enough.  “I.  Fear.  It.”  The words seemed to tremble in his mouth.  We then spoke about Wine’s death.  According to our Kamwokya leader, he died at the age of eleven years.  “I was reading Milton Obote’s writing, and he said it’s good to die a bit,” he said softly.  “So you live longer.  There was a time…when I never existed.  I died—in poverty.  I didn’t have slippers, breakfast or lunch.  I had no hope.” 

He told me that most kids in schools who are bright are the one with the best backgrounds—the children of prominent doctors or lawyers.  “I was the brightest kid in my school,” he said.  “God gave me brains.”  The bright kids stuck together, but Wine felt so much pain.  He had to stay around school late in the hopes of getting free food, while his friends “moved around in cars.”  Speaking about it, Wine shuddered, as if feeling that feeling of death again.

“It is better to be dead than to be poor,” said Wine emphatically.  “A dead man doesn’t have to beg.  A dead man can’t feel hunger.”  He told me then not only did he die in poverty, but he was resurrected in poverty, when he began to work to feed his sisters and family.  “I began to rise up through singing,” he said. 

We talked about his relationship with Bebe Cool and Chameleon.  Wine said he would have never built him and Barbie a mansion if it wasn’t for Chameleon’s teasing and boasting.  “You see, if I began teasing that small man, Chameleon, for his size, do you know what he would he do?” he said.  “He would begin eating a lot of food! Well, Chameleon kept teasing me about where I lived, so I had to build a huge mansion for me and Barbie.  Now I don’t know what to do with it.  Me, I’m comfortable with cheap things.  The food I like is cheap.  The cars I own? They are for Barbie, so that she, this daughter of a rich man, can have this image that she is married to a superstar.”

The interview was intense.  At times, Wine would get up and move around.  His face was filled with emotion.  Sometimes it would crumble in agony, and then he would begin laughing like a boy.  When he smiled, his grin seemed to take up half his face.  But mostly, his mood was dark.  His phone rang constantly; he took over twenty calls during the interview.  He offered me lunch, and a waitress came to the office to take our orders.  I tried to order chicken and posho, but the waitress then refused to take our orders and left his offices angrily.  Apparently, Wine had racked up a large bill at her small restaurant that they didn’t want to serve him and his crew anymore, before they cleared it.  He didn’t want to give her cash, so the waitress stormed off. 

My stomach growling, I went to use the bathroom before I ventured to Bukoto on a food expedition.  There was a pool of urine on the floor, and the bathroom had a bad scent. I chatted for a bit with Wine before leaving, but it was clear his mood was terrible.  He invited me to the beach the next day, but everything I said seemed foul to him, judging by his expression. 

“Have you met Barack Obama?” he asked me, and I shook my head.  “What about Arnold Schwarzenegger?” “No,” I said.  “I haven’t met the governor of California.  America has 300 million people.” 

Shocked, his eyebrows furrowing, Wine asked me if I had ever seen Chris Rock.  “No,” I said.  “I could probably pay a $50 entrance fee and go to one of his shows, but I’d rather just download them onto my laptop, and watch from there.”

“You live in America,” Wine said, as if I was a four-year-old child.  “And you’ve never met Obama, Schwarzenegger, or Chris Rock?” Annoyed that Wine seemed to think the U.S. was a place where you could walk your dog and stumble upon Will Smith (there are eight million people who live in New York City alone), I changed the subject and asked him when he would visit me there, since I was heading back to New York soon.

“I go to New York all the time,” he said.  “I like being anonymous.  In Uganda, everyone knows who I am, but no one in New York, except the Ugandans there, who make too big a deal out of me.”

“Do you visit the parks or museums?” I asked.  “See our culture?”

“No,” he said snarkily.  “I like to shop there.  When I want to go shopping, I fly to New York.”  He then asked me how long I had been with New Vision, and in Uganda.  I told him I originally came to Uganda in 2007 as a student, and he cut me off with disgust.

“So you’re here illegally?” he asked me snottily, and then looked away.

Feeling irritated, I went to get some lunch next to his office with the reporter, relying on our own cash, and then said goodbye to the ghetto president.  His mood seemed warmer, and I could hear him laughing as he watched music videos on TV.  He invited me to his beach, One Love, the following day, and I caught a taxi back to town.  Although I had grown to adore Wine’s music, which seemed to capture the literal heart of Kampala, the man himself seemed emotional and troubled.

Mob Justice at a Bar in Nakawa

Hey everybody, how are you? How was your weekend? Comment and let me know.  This weekend was both horrifying and stressful.  Stressful was Sunday… was racing to get articles done that I hadn’t finished the previous week, and had been too exhausted to work on them on Saturday.

On Saturday, I went to a bar with my friends Igor and Ernest.  Two completely different guys utterly united in what I will describe as Pure Bro-mance.   One American, one Ugandan.  One likely to listen to death metal on his ipod while taking a boda-boda ride, the other more likely to groove to 80s soul over a very cold beer. 

Anyway, as I was working on my typically lame Saturday night fare (Fried chicken and french fries! a.k.a. ’chips chicken’) , people started shouting when someone outside the bar took a stone and broke someone’s car window.  We were at a place called Shell Club, where really corporate guys get together to do business, network, and down beers over pork.  They have massive SUVs worth tens of thousands of dollars in a country where most people make under a $1 a day.  Basically, they’ve made it.

Well, this is what mob justice is like in Uganda.  Common and awful.  They informally organized a search party to find the perpetrator, then these corporate guys brought the suspected man to the bar, took off his clothes, and almost beat him to death right there! He was covered in blood from head to toe, and screaming at the top of his lungs.  I’ve never felt so sick.  You would never imagine actually being happy to see the Ugandan police, but thank God they came and got the mob off the guy.  He was then arrested as a suspect for breaking someone’s window, but oh my God!

I told my friends at work about this, and they shrugged.  “Sorry you had to see that,” one said.  But the general attitude was that if you know the penalty for breaking someone’s window or stealing, why would you do it?

Back at work today.  Where I basically live.  Going home isn’t even that enticing since I can’t feed my gmail addicction in Kitintale.

I pitched a story to the Christian Science Monitor.  Cross  your fingers for me!! I’ve been working on the pitch for probably 2 weeks, rewriting the sentences over and over and over.

Conned

Conned. I’ve been living on and off in Uganda for nearly two years, and I absolutely love it, but sometimes I think I still get cheated on a daily basis. I still remember the first time someone robbed or cheated me, but it was in New York. In secondary school, I rarely had cash on me, but I had come back from my first trip abroad and had about $40 in my wallet after visiting a forex the day before. During physics class, I checked my wallet to see if I had money for lunch, and then went to the bathroom. When I returned to class, my wallet had vanished, rumored to have been snatched by a girl with a drug problem in the year before me. Now that I am living in Kampala, I’m less worried about getting my wallet snatched, but more concerned of being bankrupted in less obvious ways.
The first time I went to Uganda, my father warned me about conmen as we drove to the airport. As most young adults are, I was arrogant. I reassured him of my gut ability to discern conmen and protect myself from them, but really I was clueless. Now that I am earning shillings in Uganda as a journalist, and trying to figure out how I will pay back the loans I took out in dollars for my education, I try to protect myself by staying conscious of the different ways visitors, tourists, and foreigners get ripped off in Uganda.

1. Boda boda inflation. Although there is no sensation like sitting on a motorbike, flying down an open road on a beautiful day, doing so can come at a serious cost to your wallet, especially if you’re a foreigner. After living in Uganda and knowing the prices for many potential boda-boda trips (home to work, for instance), it never ceases to amaze me how much boda-boda drivers gouge prices. One time, I was leaving Kanyanya, a suburb of Kampala, and needed to get to town quickly. I was already at the stage on Gayaza Road, and asked a boda-boda driver who was already heading that way to take me. He slowed down, and offered his price. “Ten thousand shillings,” he said. My mouth dropped. I had been planning to offer him sh1500. “Two thousand,” I said, furious. The look of horror he gave me sealed our mutual aversion to each other. “Someone should arrest you for asking sh10,000 to go to town,” I said. “I’ll do it for sh8,000,” he replied. “Ugh!” I said, and yelled at him for trying to cheat me as he drove off down the horrifyingly dusty and chaotic Gayaza Road. The best way to figure out how much a trip on a boda actually costs? Take what they offer and divide by two, three, or four, depending on what you judge to be their potential threshold for deception.

2. Conductor, my balance? As a foreigner, always beware getting your balance. Whenever possible, use exact change, and don’t get out of the taxi until you get your balance, unless you want the conductor to drive off with your note. Although taxi drivers don’t have the same opportunity to rip you off as their more rapacious boda-boda counterparts, they will still attempt to take at least sh100 or sh200 from you. Your best defense is to argue while standing with one foot on the ground, one foot inside the taxi. Make sure you don’t fall, of course. Recently, I was in a taxi with another mzungu. The sight of us together on the weekend was more than the conductor could bear. Even though it is only sh500 to go from Kitintale to New Vision on the weekends, the conductor wanted a lukumi from each of us. We each gave him 500 exactly, and the conductor became furious. He took my 500 coin and threw it in the dirt. “1, 000,” he yelled at me, even though I had just boarded. I should have just walked away, but I picked up the coin from the ground and gave it to him. “You’re so dishonest,” I said, and handed him another sh500. Granted, if I had to sit in a taxi all day yelling out the name of the destination, I would probably try to spike the fares too. But I take taxis several times a day, and each transaction is stressful, sometimes leaving a bad feeling in my chest. It’s just sh500, I tried to remind myself. Get over it. But I was mad. Sh500 adds up over time!

3. Transport. This is not so much a way of being conned as a way of being separated from your money. Sometimes, acquaintances will take a boda-boda to New Vision and request not only money from me for their transport home, but also to pay the boda who brought them there for their loan request. “I didn’t have transport to come and ask you for money, so I took a boda-boda to your office,” one person said. “Please pay the boda and give me money to go home.” Your blood pressure immediately begins to rise as they begin asking you for a larger loan, remembering other things they want money for, while still sitting on the boda ride they took on your credit expense. The same acquaintance, I recall, once contacted a Ugandan friend of mine when I had gone back to the States, and asked for a loan, saying that I had promised to wire money to pay my back friend. Luckily, my friend e-mailed me to confirm before lending to her, which saved both of us from being scammed.

4. Do You Want a Friend or an ATM? Sometimes, people will befriend you just for the sake of asking for a loan. This is a major reason why I got an mp3 player and try to listen to it when I am alone on a taxi, or walking through town. When I first started going to Uganda, I was very outgoing. I was happy to chat with anyone. After quite a few bad experiences, you’ll find me now sitting quietly on the taxi, headphones tightly in my ears. “Mzungu, I want to be your friend, give me your number,” passengers complain. “Give me your number, I want money. You have too much money. Give me your number.” Of course, such individuals are quite obvious. Others are much more insidious. They might hang out with you two, three, four times before they reveal that they are not interested in your friendship at all. Unaware of your small checking account, they imagine you have tens of thousands of dollars at your disposal willing to lift them, their extended family, and all of their friends out of poverty. When they find out that you won’t cough up a shilling, they lose all interest in you, and move onto their next get rich scheme.

Two Special People

Zak and Ouga

 

My friend Zak, who I studied with in Uganda in 2007 with School of International Training, is in town.  I was so happy to see him, and am really proud of what he has accomplished since I saw him last.  I gave him a tour of New Vision, and we had a chance to catch up in the canteen.  He loved the passion fruit juice served in our cafeteria! These are photos of him with Sam Ouga, creative director at New Vision.

 

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Productive Reporting Day (Woot)

Hello, how are you? Today was a very productive reporting day.  I got a great interview after camping out for a bit at the World Bank-funded Butabika Hospital in Kampala, which will be perfect for some stories on mental health in Uganda that I have been working on.  I interviewed a 13-year-old girl and her mother from Bunia, DR Congo, who fled the country seven years ago.  The young woman, her name is Sarah, had suppressed her memories of the war for years, but the memories came flooding back when she was kidnapped at a market in Kawempe last month, and molested.  Thankfully, she managed to escape, but was held in captivity for a day without food, and defiled.  Since then, all of the traumatic memories of her father and brother’s deaths by rebels in the eastern Congo have overwhelmed her.  About three times a day, she said she has flashbacks of her father’s day, and imagines that men with machetes will either attack her or the people around her.  At night, she suffers from terrible nightmares.  With terrible timing, UNHCR announced that they were cutting off support to her mother (they had been covering her rent in Kampala, where her mom worked as a washwoman), and she would have to resettle to a refugee camp for Congolese.  They were given two choices of camps that offer services for people living with HIV.  At this point, Sarah discovered that her mother had gotten infected when she had been raped by rebels in 2002 (they then fled to Uganda)– the mother hadn’t felt strong enough to tell her that she was positive.  When she found out, Sarah went completely mute, and her mother took her to Butabika for treatment for PTSD.

Bathing by Bucket: My Glamorous Life

Hey everyone, greetings from Kampala.  It’s 69 degrees here, a bit cloudy, and very humid.  I’m at work, trying to nail some sources for my huge story queue.  Apparently, I haven’t been taking care of my queue (this is making me think of Netflix, but I mean the laundry list of reporting tasks that are accumulating at warp speed), so I am trying desperately to get my sources to get back to me, meet me asap, and write the stories that I finished most of my reporting for.  Eeek.

Getting home to Kitintale yesterday was a bit tricky, it was impossible to get a taxi (in Uganda, the minivan-style buses are called taxis, and taxis are called special hires or specials), all of them were full, and I ended up having to walk part of the way.  Luckily, my friend Igor was with me, since he also has moved to Kitintale, but the lack of street lights, sidewalks, and the strong whiffs of sewage that kept hitting our noses made it a less than desirable experience! Next time, I need to go to the Nakawa bus park, rather than walking to the roadside, hoping to get a seat.

It’s Friday, Kids…

Hey everyone, how are you? I am doing okay, very hectic day at work.  Moved some of my stuff to my new apartment, but it’s being painted, so I will be staying at a friend’s place while I wait for the paint to dry, and the fumes to lessen…

I went to the American embassy with a friend today, but it was closed for a long Fourth of July weekend.  It’s funny, I feel more patriotic in Uganda than I ever do feel at home.  Actually, I hadn’t felt that patriotic in many years until last year’s election, when I was hit emotionally with a huge wave of patriotism after Obama was elected.  I felt so proud to be American then, and particularly proud of how the country was evolving.  Normally, I’m pretty cynical when it comes to foreign policy, racial and economic inequality, etc., but last year’s election really moved me to tears, especially during the inauguration.  Now I’m in Uganda, and I genuinely feel proud to be not just from the U.S., but the hectic, chaotic, but beautiful city that is New York…

Bambi, This Photo

 

Hey everyone, how are you? Hope you enjoy the photo above that’s been circulating in Ugandan e-mail boxes.  The tagline in the e-mail? “How to Beat Credit Crunch.” 

At most, I’ve shared a boda-boda with 2 other people, the driver and a friend, and yes, it was tight.  No idea how seven people fit on that motorcycle in the photo! But anyone who has traveled Kampala’s streets can’t help but laugh- in Kampala, nothing can be too far-fetched when it comes to traffic.  A small car can easily fit six people (as my recent trip to Lira attested), and would be considered even spacious by some people.  Ten? Twelve? All could conceivably fit in a small car.  You could probably get six kids in the front seat alone.  Maybe one in the driver’s lap.  Car seats? Not so much….

My trip to Lira was great, I really enjoyed the conference and the opportunity to learn more about reporting on mental illness in Uganda.  It was a workshop held by Chris Conte, a Knight Fellow being hosted by New Vision for a health reporting fellowship, and it was meant to train reporters working in Uganda on how to cover mental health appropriately.  The first day was better than the second, most likely because the first presentation was fantastic.  A recent study in northern Uganda (Gulu) revealed that 80% of those seeking treatment for mental illness were pursuing it from traditional healers, so understanding traditional healers’ perspective on mental illness is really important for coverage.  An energetic woman named Christine (from a village in Gulu district) described the treatment process.  For sh60,000 (about $30 USD), or a goat, she will take about three days to cure you of mental illness, or significantly treat it.  She lights incense, rubs you with an ointment made from herbs she says spirits guided her to, and tries to help you settle issues within your family that might be causing a spirit to possess you or be angry with you. 

Other presentations were made by psychiatrists and a public health specialist, all from Gulu University.  I really enjoyed the trip– it was so great to get out of Kampala.  I visited my friend Patrick’s village, on the outskirts of Lira town, and got to meet his grandmother and great-aunt, which was exciting.  Nice to see where he grew up, and view his family’s land.  As he said, it’s always good to see where “your friends are living.”  Patrick lives in Kampala now, but he goes back and forth between Kampala and Lira as a journalist working closely with the Luo newspaper, Rupiny.

Have a bit of a sore throat, but nothing too bad.  Could be the toxic dust (ha ha), could be a cold.  Moving tomorrow to a new room/apartment that I’m renting in Kitintale, very close to work.  Praying everything goes okay.  Pray for me too, okay?

Lots of love,

Becky

Failing at Apartment Hunting, Going North Tomorrow

Kampala Life

Hey everyone, how are you? It’s seventy-two degrees in Kampala, very humid, about to have a wicked thunderstorm, if iGoogle’s weather application is accurate.  I am doing okay, relieved to have a computer after all the ones in my section and Features were in use yesterday.  Spent the whole day reporting since I didn’t have any space to write.  Not a bad thing, except I spent the whole day chasing a source that I was never able to get, this pediatrician I was trying to get an interview with for a children’s health story.

Apartment-hunting is a failure so far .  Wish there was a Craig’s list for Kampala, so I wouldn’t have to rely solely on sketchy brokers.  But shhh, that’s something I’ve been developing on the side as part of my media venture.  The places I’ve found so far have either been overpriced or don’t have toilets inside the house, and I want to get a good place since living in a not-great place for the past 3 months, far away from work, has been exhausting.  Having to spend 3 hours a day trying to get to your job (waiting in traffic jam), or not leaving work until 9 pm (avoiding Kampala’s treacherous jam), left me so drained.

This week has been all about the homesickness.  There is something about a nasty cold and a severe bacterial infection that makes you wish you were back at your Mom’s studio in Long Island.  Worse, Father’s Day was last weekend, and I felt awful about not being able to spend it with my Dad.  My parents are basically the greatest people on Earth.  The kindest, most selfless, most loving individuals.  Creative, intellectual, compassionate, you name it.  I miss them so much.  I never used to be like this when I was back in NY, I was never the kid to come running home on the weekends during college or grad school, but being a reporter in Kampala has been so challenging that I find myself missing my family horribly.

What’s new in Uganda…

-Museveni gave a State of the Union address about a week and a half ago.  Uganda’s economy is growing at a robust 7%, lower than expected because of the global recession, but much better than other anemic economies around the world.  Who benefits from the 7% is a complicated story, but it’s great than Uganda has been somewhat insulated from the economic crisis.  The president declared war on corruption, causing some tittering among parliamentarians, as well as inspiring arguments between the current regime and opposition parties over who is more corrupt… you already know my thoughts about corruption in Uganda (such a complex and frustrating issue)… it’s similar to how I feel about corruption everywhere, but the root causes vary from country to country.  In Uganda, it’s rooted in the country’s relatively young political and economic institutions, colonial history, weak economy, and to be more specific, terrible pay of police officers (think $60 USD a month after taxes) and health workers. 

-Political parties have begun planning for the 2011 elections.   I feel ambivalent about politics in Uganda, largely because it’s so disappointing.  When I first came to Uganda, I was so frustrated and unhappy with the president, but after being here for awhile, I don’t feel impressed in any way with the opposition parties either.  Still frustrated and unhappy with the president, but the opposition parties have not really captured my confidence either.  Part of me feels that if they took power, they would be just as eager to “eat” as the current power. 

-People are still talking about the ’09-’010 budget that was released this month.  No new taxes, a boost to the agricultural sector and public school sanitation (badly needed, especially for teen girls who often have to stay home during menstruation because their schools lack basic latrines, or ‘outhouses’), a seemingly unrealistic ban on used computers and plastic bags.  The Independent did an interesting analysis of Museveni’s ‘election-year budget.’  Props to Uganda’s first female finance minister by the way, who launched the budget this year.

-Jeff Jarvis clued me into this last year during a class on entrepeneurial journalism where I developed the media venture I’ve been working on in Kampala, in addition to writing: mobile money, or using your cell phone as a bank.  This has really been taking off, which I am excited about.  In a country where many people can’t afford basic bank charges or have never had a checking account, people are using text messages to safely send money to relatives in different parts of the country.

I am going to northern Uganda tomorrow (yay), to Lira.  This is the itinerary for Thursday and Friday, I can’t wait…