Monitor@25: How Onyango-Obbo’s ‘useless’ phone call saved my life

I reached Kampala late so I could not go to Namuwongo to touch base. Since my per diem had been given to Peter Busomoke (the senior photographer with whom I was going to travel), there was no need to go to Namuwongo this late.

I declined an opportunity to travel by air with Ugandan troops heading to eastern DR Congo via Arua. I preferred to travel by taxi from Kampala to Beni (in the DR Congo) via Kasese. In addition to visiting home in Kasese, my other interest in the Beni route was that I wanted to know the circumstances under which UPDF’s Maj Reuben Ikondere had died.

Mr Busomoke had booked me in Samali Hotel (I remember the name, but I don’t remember which part of Kampala it was). We would set off in the morning, spend a night at Bwera (Uganda-Congo border) and enter Congo the day after.

Unfortunately, we could not set off in the morning because Mr Busomoke was taking exclusive photos at a high security event in Entebbe: Government of Uganda was handing over Sudanese Prisoners of War to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Mr Busomoke returned from Entebbe at about 1pm; but as we were about to set off (the minibus only lacked two passengers), Charles Onyango-Obbo called me to Namuwongo. And what did Charles tell me? ‘Asuman, please let the people speak in those stories’. Only that!?

When I returned from Namuwongo, the taxi had left and we had to wait for the next. That was the time ADF rebels were a menace in Queen Elizabeth National Park. Whenever vehicles from Kampala to Kasese reached Ishaka past 4pm, passengers were asked to choose - continue to Kasese now or spend a night in Ishaka and resume the journey in the morning? Reaching Ishaka at 10pm, our case was very clear: It was too dangerous to travel the stretch from Kyambura (Rubirizi District) to Kikorongo (Kasese District). The night we were supposed to spend in Bwera was spent in Ishaka.

The next morning we re-started our journey. When we reached Kikorongo, we learnt that the vehicle we had missed in Kampala (because of Charles Onyango-Obbo’s ‘useless’ phone call) had been attacked by the ADF rebels at Kabirizi, the next village to Kiburara. (It is Kiburara, Kabirizi, Nyaruzigati, Kaleberyo and Kikorongo).

The attack left three passengers dead and several injured. Our UPDF boys killed one rebel. Since we were one of the first people to reach the scene of the attack, Mr Busomoke had a field day taking pictures of the dead ADF rebel.
And then it downed on me: We would have been in this ill-fated taxi if Onyango-Obbo hadn’t made that ‘useless’ call to me.
As we celebrate the Silver Jubilee Anniversary of The Monitor, I would like to take this opportunity to officially thank Charles Onyango-Obbo for making that ‘useless’ phone call.

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We reached Beni at midday and booked into Hotel Beni (where Maj. Reuben Ikondere had spent the night before he was brutally murdered).
After running around eastern Congo for three days as if we owned the place, I had to rendezvous with someone from Kigali at Au Bergie Hotel in Butembo.

Returning from Butembo at 1pm, we had to leave Beni immediately (you know I can smell danger 100km away). We were arrested at Beni Airport as we were negotiating to charter a small plane to take us to Gbadolite.

We were detained in our hotel rooms for three days and thereafter deported to Uganda. That’s how I appeared on The Monitor’s front page as a newsmaker (not as a newsman) some day in January 2000.
Mr Bisiika is the executive editor of East African Flagpost.