On the road to economic collapse

Mahmood Hudda, 5, was blown by the winds of tumult to the cold of Canada. Roni Madhvani, 8, to a 1970s England he could hardly comprehend.

Theirs is the story of how a generation of Ugandan Asians expelled by Idi Amin in 1972 never let their misfortunes tie them down even as the country they called home was driven to ruin.

Roni's, has gone on be listed among the richest families by Forbes Magazine. Hudda's father is the honorary consul of Bangladesh to Uganda and his company, Mairye Estates, one of the largest horticultural exporters in the country.
Yet both families left Uganda with nothing.

Roni's uncle, Mr Manubhai Madhvani, chairman of the Madhvani group is said to have had only 50 pounds on him.

Wherever, they went, Roni and Hudda, were followed by echoes from a chaotic past

Sometimes it was talk at the dinner table; other times it was just a heavy silence that masked a nagging pain that they were driven into a country they hardly knew.

"There was always a nostalgia of Uganda. They thought of it as this whole good country and kept wanting to go back," Madhvani says.

"My grandfather always knew he would come back to his farm," Hudda recalls. His voice sometimes high, sometimes low, reveals emotion; fate would not allow his grandfather to return.

"He got sick and died in Canada," Hudda says..

In 1986, Hudda boarded a flight back to Uganda, his grand father long dead.
"Perhaps (grandfather's wish) was one of the reasons - to see to it that I get an idea of what he was talking about," he says.

"It is in your blood. You know it. You feel you belong here than belong there."
To Hudda, coming back was "always in my heart".
Uganda, he says, is his home.

"I always thought about the farm, about my parents' country," he says. "When I came back in 1986, the minute I stepped foot on that farm, I knew I would die here."

Hudda's grandfather also called Mahmood Hudda, started Mairye estates in Gayaza in 1952.

Then, in the 50s and 60s, Hudda the grandfather concentrated on growing coffee and sugar cane - very favourite crops at the time.***image1***

It was one of the few firms taken over by Amin in a move that started Uganda on the road to collapse.