Day 4 in Uganda: Getting cuckolded as a single man in Kampala

Having pushed ourselves to the limit over the past three days, we made a late and leisurely start on the day of my departure. Our initial arrangement was that I would meet Victoria and Steve at nine o’clock, but this eventually changed to nine thirty, and we did not leave until after ten. The night before, Steve had driven his sister home and stepped in dog poo on the way to his hotel room, so he and Victoria did not fall asleep until after two: they were busy cleaning up the messy floor.

Our first stop in Kampala were the Kasubi Tombs, a site of profound importance to the Kingdom of Buganda. The tombs were built in 1882 as the palace of Muteesa I, the 35^th ruler (or kabaka) of Buganda. Although the Abalasangeye dynasty had been around for six to eight hundred years when Muteesa I came to power, Muteesa and his three successors are the most memorialised rulers of Buganda, as no Kabaka before them had been photographed. This is why most informational posters at Kampala’s historical sites only depict these four rulers, who are referred to as sekabakas – the respectful term used for deceased kabakas. We were told that the current kabaka, named Muwenda Mutebi II, will be celebrating his seventieth birthday next month but that – as he is the kabaka – he will not be seventy years old but seventy years young.

We thought there were few visitors at the Kasubi Tombs, since our car was the only car in the parking lot. Eventually, two or three other groups showed up as well; little did we know that this was the most tourists we would see all day. After registering at the entrance and paying the fee, we were assigned a tour guide, who introduced himself by his Christian name and the name given to him by his tribe. He explained that his tribe’s convention of naming people later in life makes much more sense than the Western tradition of giving names at birth: it allows people to receive names that fit their personalities. Laying aside a few practical concerns, this argument makes sense to me, but unfortunately, I did not catch the guide’s Baganda name and will have to refer to him as Michael.

To begin the tour, Michael led us back to the reception house, which takes the form of a traditional circular hut with a thatched roof. He explained that two people are in charge of the reception houses, selected from two of the fifty-six clans that make up the Baganda people, and that only they can open and close the gates. Michael boasted that his clan, the Buffalo clan, is one of these two highly esteemed clans, but admitted that his clan can only ever produce the assistant gatekeeper, and that the main gatekeeper has always belonged to the other. Michael told us that his co-clansman has served as the assistant gatekeeper since the age of sixteen and is now ninety years old. I noticed this venerable old man sitting outside the house in a bright yellow robe as we left the tombs, and he acknowledged me with his hands raised in greeting.

Michael went on to explain that besides having a specific social function, each clan is forbidden from eating the animal or plant associated with it: members of the buffalo clan cannot eat buffalo, members of the mushroom clan cannot eat mushrooms, and so on. He said that the members of the buffalo clan serve as the kabaka’s palanquin-bearers, while members of the pangolin clan are the tribe’s builders. The royal drummer, whose house we visited next, also belongs to the pangolin tribe: due to his proximity to the royal harem, he is a eunuch. Since women cannot enter the drummer’s house, we left Victoria behind for a few minutes as we bent to enter through the low door overhung by dry reeds. Inside, we saw the drums used for various ceremonies and official occasions, which were all made of animal hides and snake skins.

Finally, we walked across the large courtyard into the main building. It seemed much larger in real life than in the pictures, and for good reason: it is said that the Kasubi Tombs have the largest grass-thatched roof in the world. From underneath, the roof is supported by fifty-six rings of dried grass, each of which symbolises one of the tribes. The one at the very centre belongs to the king’s household and its circumference is based on the size of the kabaka’s head. Supporting the massive roof are irregularly spaced pillars and the building’s outer walls. Built out of concrete, these were the only parts of the structure that survived the fire of 2010. Sekabaka Daudi Cwa II had introduced these modern changes in 1938 after his transformational visit to Europe.

Michael explained that although the Kasubi Tombs were initially built as Kabaka Muteesa I’s royal palace, the site became a tomb in 1884 when he was buried there. No subsequent king would ever take up residence in the building again, as the kabaka must always be shielded from inauspicious influences; indeed, he is not even permitted to attend the funeral of his own wife. This is also why the kabaka is never said to have died: he has merely entered the sacred forest.

This sacred forest lies behind the dividing wall of the main building and is only accessible to members of the royal family. In front of this wall lie the replicas of the four tombs, the portraits of the four sekabakas, and four baskets for offerings to each king. Sometimes, the women of the royal family come to the tombs to pay their respects, or simply to doze in the presence of their ancestors: we saw two such women lying by the walls during our visit. All sekabakas since Muteesa I have been buried at the Kasubi Tombs, with sons interred next to their grandfathers rather than next to their fathers so as to minimise generational power struggles in the afterlife. Our guide told us that primogeniture was abolished after the eldest son tried to overthrow his father, and that since then, the eldest son’s role has been to serve as the guardian of his siblings, never as king.

The first royal tomb at the site, chronologically, was of course the tomb of Muteesa I. Under Muteesa, the presence of Arab traders in Buganda became more pronounced, but it was also during his reign that the first British explorers and missionaries reached Buganda. Muteesa was followed by his son Mwanga II, who began to fear the increasing presence of Christianity in the country and executed several dozen Catholic and Anglican missionaries. After several conflicts with British-backed claimants to the throne and a war against the British themselves, Mwanga was deposed, and Buganda became a protectorate. When he attempted to liberate Buganda and retake the throne, he was exiled to the Seychelles, where he died after forcible conversion to Anglicanism.

The third sekabaka to be buried at Kasubi was Daudi Cwa II, who was the first Buganda king to travel abroad. One of the major things he brought back were women’s rights; before him, women were not allowed to eat chicken or eggs as these were part of their dowry, and it was believed that women who ate poultry would die barren. He also founded and was the first president of the Federation of Uganda Football Associations. Finally, the fourth sekabaka at Kasubi is Mutesa II, who served as the first president of Uganda following its independence. Mutesa was overthrown by Prime Minister Milton Obote and died in exile. His remains were brought back from the UK and interred at the Kasubi Tombs on the command of Idi Amin.

As is the custom for men, I left the tombs backwards with my face turned toward the tomb replicas. We were told that women do not have to do this, and that any woman who enters the king’s palace could be claimed by the kabaka. Michael assumed that Victoria and I were married, and that Steve was our driver – a misapprehension we gladly seized upon at the ticket office to get Steve a free entry to the tombs. He joked that the king was free to take Victoria from me if she pleased his eye, so he must have thought I was being cuckolded in plain sight when he saw Victoria taking pictures with Steve and turning him around with both hands when he inadvertently turned his back to the tombs.

The final stop on our tour was one of the houses around the perimeter of the courtyard, where a few photos were displayed. Many of these houses were the homes of the king’s wives: Muteesa I had a whopping eighty-four. After our tour was over, we continued by car to the Kabaka’s Palace. This European-style building with a small golden dome lies not too far away from the Kasubi Tombs and marks the beginning of the Buganda Royal Mile, an avenue that descends and rises again from the palace to the erewhile house of the Baganda Parliament. As the seat of the current Kabaka, the palace building is off limits to the public, but visitors can approach as close as the second pair of guardian lions – the first pair being the lions on top of the outer gate.

The main tourist attraction within the whole compound are Idi Amin’s torture chambers, where thousands of political prisoners were executed during the dictator’s rule. Originally, these torture chambers served as an armoury, but under Idi Amin, the chambers were converted, and the main hallway with its slightly deeper floor level was flooded with water. This enabled executioners to kill masses of people at once by electrocuting them, though others were shot instead – as attested to by several holes in the chamber walls.

It was nearing two by the time we finished at the Kabaka’s Palace, and we needed to get lunch before proceeding with our programme. We ate it at a chain restaurant by a petrol station. Reflecting the idiosyncratic way in which much of Kampala is constructed, the restaurant had a layout completely inappropriate to its environment. As Victoria observed, all branches of this chain open into the street or countryside, but this particular one opened onto the motorway, allowing visitors to imbibe car fumes along with their coffee. The group was amenable to my suggestion that we eat inside.

Our third tourist stop of the day was the National Mosque, popularly dubbed the Gaddafi Mosque. The mosque stands on one of old Kampala’s seven hills, and the land on which it was built was donated to the Muslims of Uganda by Idi Amin, himself a member of the community. Amin had intended the mosque to be built all the way back in the 1970s, but the project stalled due to the country’s internal turmoil and disastrous war with Tanzania. In this war, Uganda received the support of Muammar Gaddafi, who considered Uganda a part of Muslim civilisation and reportedly inspired Idi Amin to pursue his dictatorial ambitions. When Idi Amin expelled Uganda’s Asians, Libyan businesses flooded in to fill the gap.

Despite his tense relationship with Uganda’s current president Yoweri Museveni, Gaddafi continued to support pet projects in Uganda, including the construction of the National Mosque. The building was finally completed in 2006. After Gaddafi was killed in October 2011, the mosque held a special memorial service in his honour.

As in the other places we had visited in Kampala, the visitors’ office at the Gaddafi Mosque assigned us a guide – a spritely old man who ascended its seventy-metre-tall minaret with the ease of a chamois. First, however, we had to don clothing appropriate to the place of worship: Victoria covered her hair and draped a cloth over her trousers (the latter of which she also needed to do at the Kasubi Tombs and the Kabaka’s Palace). Steve was wearing knee-length trousers, so he had to change as well. He was given a full-body grey robe.

The Gaddafi Mosque is remarkable for its size and the multitude of cultural influences that united in its construction and furnishment. The stained glass came from Italy, the rugs from Turkey, and the ceilings were designed by Moroccans, while the arched windows with their colourful patterns were meant to bring a Sub-Saharan component to the ensemble. The mosque’s most special attraction is its minaret, which offers sweeping views of the town centre and adjoining areas. The guide pointed out to us the various landmarks we were looking over, like the churches on nearby hills and the football stadium. Right under the mosque, he directed our attention to Fort Lugard, the first British building in Uganda.

I had noticed the Grecian pillars and pediment of this building as we were driving to the Gaddafi Mosque, and I insisted that we make a stop by this unusual site after touring the mosque. The exterior of the building was much more striking than its interior, or perhaps one could say the interior was striking in a different way. Hanging on the walls were a few information boards about Uganda’s different tribes, but the rest of the room was cluttered with random animal statues, crates, and what appeared to be deflated children’s toys: it was as though the place had been converted into a spare room. We learned that the building originally stood on the location of where the Gaddafi Mosque now stands. In the 1970s, Amin had the building destroyed, and it was later rebuilt farther down the road.

With my flight back to Kenya drawing near, it was time to leave Kampala for Entebbe. Traffic was not too bad, and we made it to Entebbe early enough to drink some juice at a tourist joint before Victoria and Steve dropped me off at the airport.