Crazy week in Kampala
on Random Uganda (Uganda), 21/Mar/2010 08:10, 34 days ago
The Kasubi Tombs go up in flames (photo credit: Fans of Kampala FB page)President Musaveni's security detail clear the way for the presidential visit by 'shooting into the air' (photo credit: Fans of Kampala FB page)It has been a crazy week in KampalaKampala made the New York Times last week. That doesn’t happen very often.Monday afternoon I was giving my emergency preparedness and basic first aid lecture to a large but near-comatose group of employees at Total (the Ugandan affiliate of the French mega-oil corporation). The employees at Total Uganda have their health coverage from IAA (the health insurance arm of IMG which, ironically enough, doesn’t cover air evacuation or, for that matter, even have an air ambulance), and as part of this coverage they get to have little health promotion talks from people like me who haven't figured out how to say no loudly or quickly enough. David, from IAA sales, and Lorna, from customer care, had arranged my visit. Despite doing everything but smack myself in the face with a two by four, I couldn’t get an iota of audience participation to save my life. Until I put up the slide with ‘Questions?’ Suddenly hands all over the room flew up.Wow, I thought, they really were paying attention and actually have an interest in the subject. I called on one eager looking man at the back of the room who, strangely, was holding a file full of x-rays.And the man launched into a lengthy diatribe about a knee injury several years before when he worked for another employer, seen my multiple doctors in Uganda, surgically repaired in India, now causing him pain, referred to an orthopaedist at IHK who doesn’t accept IAA and only takes cash. The man with the sore knee finished off his tirade by pointing his rolled up x-ray folder at me and asking, ‘So I just want to know if you doctors are interested in helping people or are just in it to make money?’ Not exactly the question I was expecting tocome to Uganda as a volunteer to hear, I will have to admit.David and Lorna, as you may have guessed, had set me up. My lecture hadn’t been well attended out of an interest in first aid. Instead, almost every man and woman in the room had a beef or a horror story to share about their health insurance.Monday night, the final rowdy campaigning for the student guild president of Makerere University (Uganda and perhaps East Africa’s most prestigious higher education institution) got a little out of hand at the God Is Able Guest House. The supporters of the Kenyan candidate tried to shut out the supporters of the Ugandan NRM (national resistance movement—Musaveni’s party) and things got a little nasty and the private security guard for the guest house thought that some of the car’s parked at the guest house might be damaged. The guard, who was described in the Monitor as ‘not a regular drunkard’ but ‘harsh and violent toward the students,’ discharged his rifle ‘into the air as a warning.’ Thus answering the question in all of our minds about whether or not those elephant guns left over from Ernest Hemingway’s last safari that the private guards carry are actually loaded.Yes, they are. Or at least this one was. The bullet passed through one boy’s chest, through another’s and finally penetrated a third boy’s neck. The boys lay ‘in a pool of blood for about an hour’ until their fellow students got enough money together for a ‘special hire’ taxi to take them to Mulago where the two boys with chest wounds were pronounced dead.Tuesday the students rioted. They broke into a carpenter’s shop to steal a coffin with which to parade around Makerere and into several confrontations with the riot police. At one point the word was passed that they were marching to Mulago (where I was helping take care of the students with baton injuries) to get the bodies out of the morgue so that they could be buried in the central square of Makerere. Apparently, riot police cut the march short with batons and tear gas. Students these days. No follow through.Tuesday night, as I left Mulago, I noticed a glow in the western sky that I couldn’t quite place.The Kasubi Tombs, final resting place of the last four Kabakas (Kings of the Buganda kingdom), were burning. As the‘world’s largest grass thatched roof structure,’ you can imagine it went up like, well, like a (grass) house on fire.The Baganda (the people of Buganda) gathered to express their grief at the loss of this monument to their culture, and, in doing so, reportedly blocked the Kampala fire brigade’s only two fire engines (one of them, reportedly, a tanker truck that no longer holds water) from responding to the fire. Both trucks were damaged and six firefighters assaulted.The Tombs on Kasubi Hill occupy the site of the palace of Kabaka Mutesa I—the Muziba Azala Mpanga, built in 1882—the 30th Kabaka of Buganda, who was later buried there. Mutesa was the first Kabaka buried with his facial bones intact. The Baganda believed that a man’s soul resided in his jawbone, so it was removed prior to burial and a special shrine was made to the disarticulated mandible. You can imagine what the missionaries had to say about that.The Tombs have been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and they are Kampala’s biggest (only, if the truth be known, unless you consider kabalagala at 4am) tourist attraction. I am sad to say, lameass tourist that I am, I had not been to the tombs yet. (my excuse being that I thought it would be something that Nancy and I could do during her upcoming [!!]5 week visit toUganda)On Wednesday, President Museveni came to the Tombs to inspect the damage and offer his condolences to the Baganda. As you may remember, the riots that occurred last September involved a presidential edict limiting the travel of the Kabaka, so there is no love lost between the two leaders. A large crowd of angry people tried to block Museveni’s convoy from entering. To gain control of the situation, the presidential guard fired their weapons ‘into the air, as a warning.’ Again, defying most Newtonian Laws of Physics, six men were injured by these warning shots—the two that were later pronounced dead in the resuscitation room atMulago had gunshot wounds to their chests.Things have been relatively quiet since Wednesday. But there is much speculation about the possibility of arson. Some suggest that the fire was set by the opposition in order to further the rift between the Baganda and the NRM in advance of the 2011 presidential elections, whereas the Baganda seem to be accusing the NRM of setting the fire to deprive them of tourist income and out of general nastiness.A UNESCO report from a year or so ago has surfaced suggesting that the wiring for the structure was unsafe. Additionally, part of the shrine was a fire kept continuously burning to symbolize the living Kabaka as part of the unbroken lineage dating back to the 13th or 14th century. So arson and political sabotage may not be the only explanation to what amounts to a huge loss for the Baganda and the people of Uganda as a whole.Later in the week anannouncement was madeby the Assistant Chief Inspector of Police that private security guards at student hostels in Makerere will not longer be allowed to carry lethal weapons. We can only hope that maybe they'll expand this to all of Kampala. Although I wouldn't want to be the guy who comes to take away Wilbuforce's (who guards our gate) bow and arrows...