June 14

Ugandan Martyrs Memorial

This week I've been to the Uganda Martyrs memorial at one of the cathedrals here. The church was built by missionaries who carried the bricks from France on their heads, and the martyrs were Africans burned at the stake for their faith. In fact, some of them were stabbed, had limbs hacked off, were eaten by dogs, and THEN got burned at the stake. Fun, huh? The more pleasant parts of that particular day were a connection with the White Fathers' archive at that cathedral (important for research) and the most fantastic veiw of Kampala I have yet seen. Good thing I will be going back there, because my camera battery was dead at the time.

Today I went to the coronation site of the Kabaka of Buganda. This king is of BUGANDA, not Uganda, which has other kingdoms and peoples. However, Buganda is the largest of the kingdoms, and at one time was the most powerful. Kafumbe's research, FYI, is in Kiganda (the adjectival word for the Baganda people) court music from the Kabaka's rubidi (royal enclosure). Anyway, the site is totally decrepit because although Uganda gets 70% of its tax revenue from Buganda, none of the money gets filtered back through the Buganda kingdom. It may also be interesting for you to know that Magoba's radio station, CBS, was founded to help preserve Baganda culture and disseminate information to Buganda. His magazine is also dedicated to that end, although they do better with aural media than with print media in a historically oral culture.

I am daily attuned to the World Cup football goings-on, and today Tunisia is Africa's last hope for a first round win. Last I heard they were 1-1 against Saudi Arabia. Go Tunisia: you can't possibly suck as much as the USA at football.