You Are Very Welcome

The Ki-swahili word Mzungu, doesn't mean 'white man' as I originally thought. They have some other word for that. Rather Mzungu translates as 'fast walker'. When Europeans first arrived during the great scramble for Africa, it wasn't their skin colour that made them stand out. It was their constant activity. They had agendas to achieve. Businesses to run and empires to administer. They had not time for idle chit chat, frivolities, or pleasantries.

Ugandan's, in contrast, are never in a hurry. Why have an official start time for a meeting? It's much easier to just wait till everyone arrives. Why get bogged down with goals, targets and aspirations? Life will just pass you by all the quicker. The aim is not the destination but the journey.

This flows on to other areas as well. On introduction to an Ugandan, the response is usually 'you are very welcome'. To guests and family alike. And over here one believes it too. The greeting is so ubiquitous I've inadvertently adopted it. Why just yesterday, I was very welcome for the 17^th time as I set up the equipment for draining a haemoperitoneum. Blood in the abdomen from yet another Boda-Boda accident. The patient and I exchange the usual pleasantries And it hits me. I'm very welcome as I prepare to thrust a 14 gauge needle into his abdomen.

Yet before I arrived Uganda was synonymous with violence in my mind. Somali militants and the LRA and Idi Amin, and child soldiers, and hijacked Israeli planes and last kings of Scotland.

It's certainly not how I've found the average Ugandan and the contrast is striking. They are gentle and softly spoken. They laugh all the time. They don't raise their voice. They don't shout or swear. At times I wonder whether they hold opinions with any conviction. They give way constantly. They are never the victims. They certainly don't stand up and demand their rights. And they always say please and thank-you.

How could such a people be garnished with chronic war and brutality? It doesn't make sense. The more I experience, the more two and two start to equal five.

A number of commentators have suggested it's precisely this mild demeanour that predisposes them to exploitation by malevolent dictators, that the meek don't always inherit the earth. I wonder if there's a hint of truth to this.

So I try to piece together the history.

Picture this.

It is the first year AD, and a group of sojourners prepare to leave their home in modern Nigeria. This will prove a watershed moment in African history.

As Mary and Joseph make a bumpy journey to Bethlehem , the party sets off. Leaving West Africa, they push south through the Sahel corridor. No one knows exactly why they go, though I guess the usual suspects could be considered. Famine. Drought. Overpopulation. Perhaps they were evicted by invaders. Perhaps they were colonialists bent on southern domination, sticking their flag in the moon.

But whatever the reason they push on, eventually arriving on the shores of Lake Victoria. And here the delegation splits and goes two ways.

Some push southwest and encounter the pygmy foragers living in the Rwenzori mountains separating central Africa from the Congo. With time they interbreed, combining the sturdy Negro frame with the petite pygmy skeleton. The heritages fuse and they give rise to Uganda's southern tribes. The Basoga. The Banyoro. The Ankole. And, of course, the most populous Baganda from which modern Uganda gets it's name.

The others head north into the Ethiopian highlands through southern Sudan. Here they intermarry with the Nilotics. Pastoralists that survive on the annual flooding of the Nile. Descendants of Nubian nobles and merchants from Punt, God's land, they are long, lanky warriors. With time they become Uganda's northern tribes. The Acholi. The Kakwa. The Arua.

What started as a single group now gradually gets forged into disparate peoples. The Southerners are true Bantu. Combining Rome's technology with the pygmy ingenuity, they create a civilisation. A complex social and political structure develops. Urbanisation occurs. Economic surpluses build. The population expands. Education and the arts thrive.

The northerners on the other hand hold fast to their pastoralist heritage. They seldom settle in one place. They stick to their villages. They embrace a warrior caste. Power remains with local chieftains. They remain rural and wild at heart.

The two live in mutually satisfying hostility for many years, gradually entrenching a pattern that seems to continue to the present day. The Sneeches with stars deride those without.

This tale could be told the world over really. But how did they both come to be part of the same country?