Entebbe today is the Africa base for UN relief operations. It is the home of Uganda’s most protected citizen. It is the killing ground of innocent young women. It boils and burns at the same time.
To understand the Ugandan psyche, it helps to know about the favourite dish of ordinary people, called “katogo.” There is no standard recipe for katogo, for the word itself simply means mixture. What makes “katogo” is its paradoxical character.
You just need two items to make “katogo.” They could be cooking bananas (matoke) with beans, cassava with beans, but originally, matoke with cow intestines. There is only one exception — chicken is never used in making “katogo.” It is deemed too expensive to be part of this workman’s lunch.
The paradox of “katogo” is in its preparation for it does two contradictory things simultaneously; “katogo” boils and burns at the same time. Once the pot is put on fire, the water rises to the top where it boils leaving the solid items at the bottom where they get burnt. So you must keep stirring to ensure the water keeps going back to the bottom.
In the past couple of months, our beautiful town of Entebbe has been exhibiting this paradoxical character. Since pre-colonial times, the peninsula of Entebbe was known for being peaceful. Some chair-like stones by the water gave the peninsula its name Entebbe, which means seat in Luganda.
Entebbe became the seat of the colonial government. At Independence in 1962, the capital was moved to Kampala but the presidential palace, locally called State House, remained in Entebbe. So the country’s most protected citizen resides in Entebbe. And now the country’s most unprotected citizens also live and die in Entebbe.
In some bizarre breakdown of security, young women in Entebbe get cruelly murdered after being sexually abused. Just like that.
But the katogo character of Entebbe did not start in 2017. In 1976, Uganda underwent its biggest military humiliation at Entebbe airport. A group of Israeli commandoes flew in to rescue Jewish hostages who had landed there aboard a hijacked Air France plane. The airport had been fortified by Ugandan troops with tanks.
Still the Israelis landed, did their thing for 90 minutes, torched our fleet of supersonic MiG 21 jets and slowly flew the large passenger plane and their transporters to Nairobi.
The following year 1977, after some airforce officers tried and failed to assassinate our “life president” Idi Amin at Entebbe, he instituted a roadblock at the single land access into the peninsula where the road from Kampala enters Entebbe, with the lake on the left and one of the largest military barracks in the country on the right.
The military roadblock into the katogo town was maintained by successive governments for another 14 years. During the terrible early eighties when Kampala was under virtual curfew, the urbanites would just drive into Entebbe for overnight parties and concerts at the beach. Just a paradox.
Sometime in 1980 before being overthrown, our comical president Godfrey Binaisa informed the nation the reason he was not about to give up power; that Entebbe was simply too sweet to leave.
Last year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to Entebbe and we joined him in celebrating the 40th anniversary of the (justified) crushing defeat his country inflicted on Uganda, incidentally under the command of his elder brother, Lt-Col Jonathan Netanyahu, the only reported Israeli casualty of the heroic battle.
Entebbe today is the Africa base for UN relief operations. It is the home of Uganda’s most protected citizen. It is the killing ground of innocent young women. It boils and burns at the same time.
