This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon: June 25, 2008 - KAMPALA, Uganda - The road from the airport at Entebbe into Kampala is like those video games that kids play in which they steer the cars wildly along the road until an inevitable crash.
It's a two-lane road, but drivers pretty much ignore the yellow line in the middle. The most aggressive carve out a third lane - in the middle of the other two. It's a game of chicken. If the truck hurtling directly toward you looks like it isn't going to give, you better pull back onto your side of the road.
What makes this scene dicey is that there is more life along the side of this road than any place I've seen, except for Manhattan.
First, there are the motorcycles, many of them the ubiquitous boda-boda that weave in and out of traffic taking a passenger to a destination. The women passengers ride side-saddle, whether or not they are wearing a dress. Even grandmothers sit easily on the back of the speeding boda-boda. For a little more security, there are the matatus, minivans that carry 14 people - plus a driver and conductor - around town. The conductor, riding shotgun, operates the sliding side door as passengers enter and exit.
Then there are the bicycles riding on the shoulder of the road. Some are loaded down with huge boxes or bundles that make it appear impossible to balance or pedal. At times, the bicyclist has to get off and push up a hill.
Next on the shoulder are pedestrians. Some are women carrying heavy pots on their heads. Others are police officers standing together in groups of two or three. There may be so many of them today because there is a big soccer game between Uganda and Angola to begin qualifying for next year's World Cup.
All along the 20-mile stretch of highway are small, ramshackle shops painted in bright yellows, greens and reds to advertise cell phone providers or paint companies. Everybody has a cell phone here, it seems, a big difference from Ethiopia where we just left.
The shops sell every kind of food and goods. Slabs of raw meat hang in shops with the butchers cutting off a hunk for a buyer. Huge stacks of matoke, which look like small green bananas, are everywhere. Chickens in cages await their fate. Men work on sanding and finishing furniture. As we approach town there is block-upon-block of repair shops for motorcycles and bicycles.
Kampala, like Rome, is supposed to be built on seven hills, although the rapid development is carving them up. It is a pretty city, although the heavy traffic, smoke-spewing trucks and dusty streets turn the air yellow. A big, beautiful mosque, a gift from Libyan President, Col. Muammar Gaddafi, dominates the skyline, although the large majority of Ugandans are Christian.
My colleague, Jan Thompson, notes that the skies of Kampala are filled with huge storks circling over the city, in contrast to the skies of Addis Ababa, where buzzards circled the city. The difference seems an apt metaphor for the more hopeful Kampala.
Cross-generational Sex
The biggest billboards are vertical, instead of horizontal, and one catches my eye. It's has a photo of a bright-eyed young woman with the caption, "Not even a Sugardaddy can stop her." The ad campaign, sponsored by the U.S., is aimed at cross-generational sex.
Another big billboard on the same topic is right outside our destination, Makerere University. The photo shows a middle-aged man with the caption. "If you don't want your daughter with him, why are you with his daughter?"
I ask the young journalists in our workshop if this very direct, Western-style message is effective and whether they think cross-generational sex is a serious problem. They answer yes to both questions. Cross-generational sex is thought to be a cause of HIV AIDS, which has ticked up in Uganda after a very successful effort to contain it.
Women on campus are vulnerable to older men who can give them cell phones or cars, the students say.
There is a controversy on campus that is the flipside of this sugardaddy campaign. The university is promulgating a new rule to make it sexual harassment for a female student to wear skimpy clothes - short mini-skirts or tops that show cleavage or bra straps. The male university professors have complained they are subject to harassment of this kind by female students seeking a better grade.
I don't think similar behavior would be considered sexual harassment in the United States. If it were, quite a few of our students back home would be guilty of wearing harassing outfits. Normally in cases of sexual harassment, the harasser has more power than the victim.
A Robust Press
Compared to Ethiopia, Uganda has a robust press. That's not to say it has a free press. The government of President Yoweri Museveni controls much of the media, including the newspaper New Vision. Allies of the government also have bought a large percentage of the rural radio stations.
The most independent voice is the Daily Monitor, which is controlled by Aga Khan. Khan is a rich, powerful Pakistani mogul who also is spiritual head of 15 million Ismaili Muslims who live in 25 countries. In addition, he operates schools and hospitals in various countries. Khan says he is a direct descendant of Mohammed through Ali, meaning this is a Shia community. Khan's media group also is powerful in Kenya
Khan doesn't always stand by his reporters, though. Last year, Monitor political editor Andrew Mwenda was told his stories were no longer welcome after the government criticized an obituary he had written about a former government official who was chairman of New Vision. Mwenda was at Stanford University on a Knight fellowship when informed his stories were no longer needed.
Earlier this year, five editors and journalists at the Monitor were charged with defaming the Inspector General of Government, Justice Faith Mwondha.
About two weeks before we arrived in Kampala, the nation's constitutional court - the equivalent of the U.S. Supreme Court - nullified part of the Police Act that authorities used to stop public assemblies. The court said the law was void because it violated Article 29 of the Ugandan constitution - the rough equivalent of our First Amendment, although it is not worded as absolutely.
The court's decision hasn't stopped the police who claim they still can refuse to allow rallies in central Kampala because of the congestion. The police claim they even can ban rallies at the constitutional square, a traditional place for assemblies.
Threat of Genocide
Ugandans have a reputation for speaking softly. But we have a boisterous, spirited discussion of government attempts to limit assemblies and restrict the press. Everyone wants to talk at once. All but one of the 25 journalists in the room are strongly opposed to the government restrictions. The one, who concedes he's taking an opposite view partly for the sake of argument, cautions that Uganda isn't safe from a Rwandan situation where a radio talk show host helped ignite genocide in the 1990s. That genocide and the reality of tribal divisions in Africa heavily freight the debate over free expression in Africa.
Sometimes, the government uses anti-tribalism as an excuse for censoring good stories. George Lugalambi, the head of the Mass Communication Department at Makerere University, knows from experience. As a reporter for an independent publication in the 1990s he was jailed for a story about the government allowing its supporters to have weapons, but not its opponents. He was accused of promoting tribalism. Eventually, the government lost interest in the prosecution and he went off to the United States where he earned a Ph.D. at Penn State.
George is skeptical about the government's plan to "professionalize" the media. Professional reporters might sound like a good idea, but here it is just an excuse for restricting who can be a journalist. George says the plans are aimed at talk radio hosts who are critical of the government.
The government can try to enforce professional standards because it has a news council that licenses journalists. Licensing journalists is common in East Africa but is anathema to a free press.
Like most everyone else here, George thinks that the Museveni government is tightening controls over the press to limit criticism of his expected run for a fourth term in 2011.
Over my two visits, I've gotten close to the young journalists training at Makerere. When I'm writing email late at night in the United States, an instant message from Joseph or Gerald will pop up on the screen, asking how I'm doing, sending some news about Uganda and often closing with a religious message. These students are close to one of my colleagues, William Recktenwald, a storied Chicago Tribune reporter who got hooked on the country and its young people. He is on his fifth visit here, this time as a Fulbright senior specialist.
One evening, Reck, Jan and I jump in a matatu with about five of the young men to have dinner at a local Ugandan restaurant. (Unfortunately, this included more goat, although it was better than the goat I'd had in Ethiopia.) On the way from the taxi to the restaurant, we pass children begging on the sidewalk in front of a church. Two tiny children, so small they hardly seem able to walk, are sitting in the middle of the sidewalk, their hands cupped in a beggar's pose. The young men with us tell the children to stop begging.
Jared Ombui, one of the most promising, symbolizes the promise and danger of Africa. A Kenyan by birth, he has trained at Makerere. Early this year, after the disputed election in Kenya, he was on the phone talking to his mother back home in one of the areas where tribal violence had broken out. The phone line suddenly went dead in the middle of a conversation about the dangerous situation. It took Jared a week to reconnect with his family, which was forced to flee from its home to safer ancestral land in another part of the country.
Jared and a young man sitting next to him at dinner joke about how their tribes are often at odds. It seems irrelevant here but can suddenly become important in the wake of disputed elections or other conflicts. For now, though, Jared is focused on a promising future. He is preparing to return to Kenya later this summer to start a career as a TV journalist. A piece of video he shoots for our workshop on the child beggars of Kampala shows he has what it takes.