Voyage of Discovery

Award winning journalist Arti Lukha recently returned from a four month trip researching her roots in Uganda. Her travels included working with refugees, volunteering in a home for abandoned babies and counselling young people about HIV. Here she tells us why British Asians should also take that voyage of discovery.

“I’ve always questioned my family’s allegiance to India – a country which until 25 years ago they hadn’t even visited. When I quizzed my parents about where they came from they always talked passionately about Kampala, hanging out in Bakuli Junction and picking fruits in Nsambya. My family used to speak to each other in Swahili, yet for years I misunderstood where this third language came from.

When I was growing up my school friends would ask if I had family in India, and I would proudly respond: “no my family is African”, but I could never comprehend why my parents had no desire to return to their birthplace.

Of course those questions dissolve away in accounts of the horror and mayhem of 1972 when the dictator Idi Amin announced new “economic policies”. All Asians had 90 days to pack up their lives and leave the country or face imprisonment. Ask any Ugandan Asian in Britain to cast their mind back to those dark days and the emotional scars are clear. With military checkpoints at every turn, indiscriminate looting, locals attacked by soldiers with machetes and people tied to trees and left to die.

These horrific scenes continued well after Asians left and the political instability which ensued and the war against the Lord’s Resistance Army in the north left Uganda broken and unsafe for both expats and tourists for more than two decades. Now with the support of the country’s President Yoweri Museveni the Asian Diaspora are being invited back to their homeland to restart their businesses.

Paradise Re-Found

When I arrived in Uganda I was surprised to find it green and breezy with a mildly tropical climate. Bordered by the diamond mining highlands of the Congo, it’s where Africa’s eastern Savannah meets the jungle in the west and is also a home to humankind’s closest relative, the mountain gorilla. Kampala had changed the most. Uganda’s cosmopolitan capital once a spacious city of white stucco houses and red roofs is now dominated by high rise developments, five star hotels and the Gadaffi Mosque. The streets are only empty when it rains or when Manchester United play Arsenal (the Premier League is huge here).

I went to Martin Road, Old Kampala and eventually found what I was looking for. It was an unremarkable concrete fronted building with a tin roof and scruffy front garden. Passers by asking why I was taking pictures of the austere surroundings; some of the residents even came outside to chase away this stranger taking photos of their home. I tried to explain that this was the house my grandfather was forced to give up

A Home from Home

Kampala really did feel like home for me and it took me little time to adjust to the natural chaos. I spent four months there working. I’ve encountered - the sunny laid back attitude, where you are invited to their homes after just one meeting and rewarded with a bag of fruit for taking the time to visit. I can understand why my father still calls it home.

READ MORE ABOUT ARTI’S ADVENTURE IN THE LATEST ISSUE OF ASIAN WOMAN MAGAZINE Experience Uganda organises group tours and tailor-made trips to Uganda.

Visit: www.experienceuganda.co.uk or email. info@experienceuganda.co.uk

Ugandan Tourist Board www.visituganda.com