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Uganda: Yes, Baganda, Banyoro Are Luo
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The Weekly Observer (Kampala)
OPINION
27 March 2008
Posted to the web 27 March 2008
Dismas Nkunda
Finally I have something to agree with President Yoweri Museveni. Indeed the Luo are the origin of many of the Bantu-speaking kingdoms of Buganda, Bunyoro and Toro.
Over Easter I was privy to a social function in West Nile. It was an opportune time to dig up more and prove that our greater leader was not making fun of these great kingdoms.
I had imagined that the Baganda would have been up in arms for being labelled Jaluo. But I later discovered that the muted silence that we received from Baganda was tantamount to accepting the truth.
That biological linkage of the kings and queens of Uganda is easily played out even on the roads that dot Buganda and Bunyoro, makes the equation pan out perfectly.
As you drive from Kampala towards Pakwach, you pray so hard that you can leave Buganda and Bunyoro very fast. In some parts of these great kingdoms, there are so many potholes per second which makes you wonder whether they were purposefully designed to slow down the inflow of Luo who could end up reclaiming their kingdoms.
Vehicles stuck along the way are the testimony that these kingdoms need more geographical linkages to the north, if anger will ever make the central government do its part.
As I hit the ninth pothole, instinctively I ask whether this country has a ministry in charge of roads. I remember way back we used to have (Pida); which was a vernacular word for Public Works Department (PWD) of the Ministry of Works.
In those olden days there were many camps along the roads where workers lived as they monitored the roads to fix any emerging problems.
These days on this Karuma highway, the only people seen doing this are kids who are supposed to be at school. They get a hoe and dig up some soil which they then push using their bare hands into the gullies.
Temporarily they cover these gapping holes. Whenever any car approaches, they put their equipment aside and hold out their hands as if to implore the motorists for something in return for doing the work of the government.
At one point a colleague we were travelling with wondered whether these kids were beggars like the ones that dot the streets of Kampala. Every driver on this road must in one way or another curse not only the people who have refused to repair such an important road that leads to one of Uganda's most war-ravaged areas, but more importantly the home to the Luo, who as per the new inferences are the fathers of the present kingdoms of Toro, Bunyoro and Buganda.
How can it be that Buganda, with the seat of the capital, the most influential kingdom in the sub-region, cannot ask that the road linking it to their ancestors in the North be perfected? I do not get it!
Truth is that some works are ongoing to repair the road, but whoever is contracted to do this needs to know that this road is plied by mainly Luo coming to check on the kingdoms down south. What if the King of Buganda decided to drive up North to visit his ancestors? Do you really think he can withstand these eleven kilometers of humps?
Colleagues we travelled with were so bored with the way these humps hampered their journey that they decided to count them. By the time they reached 193, they had been covered with dust and unable to count on.
But when you get onto the Karuma-Pakwach road, you almost forget you have just passed through Buganda and Bunyoro kingdoms.
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Arriving in Pakwach, it was then that I believed what Museveni had inferred. Yes, the Baganda have something akin to the Luo. How else can we explain the presence of matooke at every meal, women dressed in gomesi, and Luganda being spoken in the towns of Pakwach, Nebbi and Paidha, albeit with a tongue twister?
Every Alur I spoke to said they were part and parcel of the kingdom down south. One elder in Paidha had this treasured book - Grammar in Runyoro - given to him in 1953 while a primary school kid in Masindi. So when he parted with his treasure and handed it to this Munyoro friend that had just married an Alur lady, the message was clear. I know the real kings!
The author is a human rights expert and specialist on refugee issues
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