Through Uganda (part II)

... and the journey continues, from east to west, through Uganda, "the pearl of Africa", as the British called it and how it had to be in the heart of the old Winnie Churchill that he considered it the dearest of the African lands of the Empire. We run towards the plain of the Nile that runs parallel to us in its timeless course. Here it is still called Victoria and it goes to marry Lake Albert. Then it will be the Albert Nile and then the White and then, after the crossroads of Khartoum and its new marriage (... but polygamy here is a rule!) with the fresh and impetuous water of the Blue that comes down from the Ethiopian mountains, it will be "just" the Nile of myth and history that we learned about the Ancient Egypt. The landscape opens into a stunning vastness. The bush gradually gives way to the literary suggestions of a boy who read Hemingway and the "Green Hills of Africa" are there, before my eyes, dotted with arboreal umbrellas, palm trees, covered with a carpet of tall and fat grass that fluctuates as long waves under the caress of a gentle breeze. The sky above us is a flock of small white clouds that run in a blue prairie like my adolescent dreams, dreams that I never gave up, and now the fate generously repays this obstinacy making them real. The farthest horizons is a curl of gray-blue mountains that are called already Congo and between them and us that great belt, which looks like a silvery lazy zigzag plate, is called the Nile. The hills are already plain, but the plain is still a fresh jolt of the land that echoes the jolt of my heartbeat. I wonder how many Ugandas I saw in nearly eight hours of travel. Answers me Damiano. "It seems impossible that in a space so small after all, when compared to the vastness of an entire continent, they are concentrated so many races and many different languages, as if this country was the crucible of Africa. t seems that nature has wanted to give him the wealth and beauty of Eden, also equipped with snake, indeed, with snakes and of many kinds ... " It's true. I am traveling in a land of extraordinary beauty where the soil seems to possess the fertility of a mythical golden age, where the absence of large mountain ranges in it would favor the creation of a network of easy communication to develop contacts and businesses, where the agriculture practiced by modern methods could not only be enough for domestic needs, but become a lucrative source of export products ... instead. Instead we are outside Jinja, where there is a dam that could produce electricity by exploiting the water of the rising Nile, but they miscalculated (!) so often the power lacks even in Kampala, and we're on a road that it looks a track, next to which there is another almost ready, just waiting to be paved. I ask Damiano "And this? What are they waiting?" Damian shrugs. "The Chinese that were building it, have thrown in the towel. They don'tmake it more with the costs: the bribes to be paid were too high!" I think of those "Iknowitall" at home, pontificating on how you should do things here in Africa, ignoring or pretending to do so that the poor and needy multitudes were also grandchildren of an often exploitative colonialism, but they are also legitimate daughters of alleged local political elites and rulers incapable and/or corrupt, unfortunately with the tacit or overt collusion of big institutions and governments of the "rich" world. I look at this Eden and I feel a snake, a thousand snakes crawl, I look at the sky and I do not find answers, I look inside myself and I find that the much that I would do cannot find adequate forces and capacity. Damian asks me if it's all right ... he seems to "hear ang guess me" always. I say yes, I say yes because that yes is a hope and those who dream can only hope. See you tomorrow, Uganda, good luck to you and to me, to all of us.

Agostino Gaglio

Go back