First Class
Uganda, 1984
There was a station in Kasese. The town was well developed with paved roads, electricity and a daily train to Kampala scheduled for four in the afternoon.
I had 610 Ugandan shillings and hoped to get a ticket but the cheapest fare was 800 Sh. From my secret belt-pouch I took an English pound note which I had left from a previous summer’s trip to the UK and which now turned out to be a blessing. It was worth 200 Sh. It was enough for a ticket, if not to buy food. My stomach was grumbling.
I went in search for bananas, all that I could afford with my last 10 Sh, but the station in Kasese appeared to be the only place in Uganda where there were no bananas to be had. Resignedly I turned back when one of the men working in the station offices called me over and invited me for tea and bread. A woman sitting at the same table shared her food with me. I felt very lucky.
It hardly mattered that the train had not arrived by nightfall. It would come. My luck would hold. While I sat on the platform, hunched over my notes, somebody stepped up to me.
“Seeester!” I looked up. A man stood there, a huge bunch of sweet, yellow bananas in his hands: “This is for you!” I was speechless.
Night passed into morning. There was no news about the train.
“However,” the guy at the ticket counter said, looking at me with a smile: “You will travel first class.”
“I don’t think so,” I laughed: “I’ve only got 800 sh…”
“You will. Someone has paid your fare!”
So I travelled to Kampala in great comfort but arrived utterly shattered after my benefactor had kept me up the entire night debating Islam with me. It was actually quite enjoyable, but I would not say it: “Allah-il-allah wa Mohammad Rassul Allah!” (“God is [the one] God and Mohammad is his prophet”). It went through my head the entire time — the statement which would announce my intent to convert to Islam. Quite to the contrary: being exposed to a religion other than my devout catholic upbringing I suspected neither of them was entirely right, how could it be? The seed of my stoic atheism was sown on that trip.
In Kampala I found shelter at the Girl Guide HQ and spent a few carefree days eating mountains of food and nursing my various scars. It seemed peaceful enough, but when I went out into the garden for a pipe — just after dark at around seven — the guides urgently waved me back inside. There was a curfew and being outside, even in the compound, was dangerous.
“You may be shot,” they whispered urgently. I did not question it.
It was impossible to ignore the tension in the country. I never told my mother this, but the train to Kampala was held up by armed soldiers who fired a few rounds of ammunition in the air and had all the passengers line up to pay a due. The army had not been paid for months, neither had the civil servants. People got by on food from the villages, but amazingly they were still doing their jobs.
I took my turn in the queue along with everybody else but was told to wait aside. Worried that the soldiers might demand that I hand over all my dollars, I waited on tenterhooks but I wasn’t asked for any money at all. My benefactor explained the soldiers thought that I was a journalist and they did not want bad press. Go figure!
Denni