Biira’s Drinking Place in Kamwokya, Kampala. Although it might not survive the city’s development, its legacy will always be embalmed in the memories of those who knew Kamwokya when politics did not define it. PHOTO | PHILIP MATOGO
Kamwokya, a Kampala suburb, is viewed by many as a red zone for political dissent. It was not always like that. In the early 2000s, Kamwokya was more of a slum than a staging ground for President Museveni’s perceived Waterloo.
To be sure, Kifumbira slum made up much of what we know as Kamwokya today. Back then, before redevelopments began, Kifumbira slum was an eyesore, the festering wound on Kamwokya.
Excepting the road snaking down into this dark underbelly, the roads within the slum were narrow and dusty. Inside this beast, shoebox hovels sat indifferently beside dingy smoke-filled bars, outhouses of ash-grey corrugated iron, and places of worship, dispensaries, along with motley structures given to urban blight.
Above this fashion-backward ribbon of dwellings and premises, a pall of smoke crept up the invisible stairwell to the skies, to disappear Ninja-like. It was as if this Godforsaken place had been hit by mortar shell fire and lived to brag about it.
Age-old kafunda
Amid this death-defying masonry, Biira’s Drinking Place was an oasis of apartness. The watering hole has been in operation since 1995. A stone’s throw away from Tufnell Drive, just below Kasasiro Stage and Old Kira Road, it stands at the dividing line between upscale and downscale Kamwokya.
In this sense, it is similar to 8 Mile. You should recall the 2002 American drama film starring rapper Eminem in his celluloid debut. The title is derived from 8 Mile Road, the road between the predominantly black city of Detroit and the largely white suburban communities to the north that Eminem originally lived in. Similarly, Old Kira Road is our 8 Mile Road. For it separates Kisementi and Kololo from Kifumbira slum.
A melting pot
Still, people from all over Kampala crossed this dividing line to sample the pleasures that Kifumbira has to offer. Biira’s was often their first point of call. Inside its modestly small confines, a gallery of rum characters brought it alive. All told, they were a medley of derelicts, destitutes and denizens of the demi-world of Kamwokya. Some of them worked. But the rest of them drank from sunup to sundown. After which, they’d then pressed rewind.
There was Blanks, a part-time barber, one-time Congolese, and full-time lover man. He was also a fitness freak who could run up a hill like he was sprinting down a slope. Then there was Jackie. Her hourglass figure had the appeal of a Cindy Lauper song: Time after time. Her love interest, Andrew, usually celebrated his hours of newfound sobriety with a round of beers!
At 6pm, every day, you could hear a loud crash on a wall next to the bar. It was Steven. This is what he always did because his car didn’t have breaks. So he had to crash it into an immovable object in order to stop.
Altogether, these persons made Biira’s Drinking Place a Kafunda (dingy drinking joint) to savour. The beers were also cheap. Today, you get three beers for Shs10,000 on its Bucket Night, every Saturday. Back in the early 2000s, this money could buy a brewery. Well, not the whole brewery. But a substantial amount of it. So the Bucket Nights at Biira’s were previously awash with tides of good feeling which could go the extra mile, so to speak.
Checkered past
According to Kampala Capital City Authority records, Kamwokya is bordered by Kyebando to the north, Bukoto to the northeast, Naguru to the east, Kololo to the southeast, Nakasero to the south and Mulago to the west. It is approximately five kilometres, by road, northeast of Kampala’s central business district. It served as a conveyor belt for labour when Kololo was home to colonial administrators and well-heeled Asian Ugandans of Indian extraction.
In the northern portion of Kamwokya, between the Kampala Northern Bypass Highway and Kira Road, Kifumbira slum lords it over all its surveys. Biira’s was whiskey-shot into existence when Kamwokya was putting on its running shoes on the fast track to what it is today. These were the roaring 1990s, when privatisation and liberalisation carried out twin assaults on an economy battered by war and ravaged by disease.
Kamwokya, a multi-lingual area, was in the 1980s and 1990s one of the worst affected places with HIV/Aids. This led to the founding of Kamwokya Caring Community by Sr Mary Dagan to care for those suffering from “slim”, the colloquialism for HIV/Aids. Out of this dire situation, people wanted to drink or get high in any way. This is what served as the impulse for the appearance of Biira’s.
Kamwokya’s facelift
However, Kamwokya is changing fast, with new structures and infrastructures shaping a reconstruction towards a future that no longer belongs to its past. It all started in the early 2000s when Kisementi sprang onto the scene, changing the face of what was a faceless expanse of empty lots primed for development.
In 2016, Tagore Apartments was built on Mawanda Road in Kifumbira Zone. In 2020, Tagore Living followed. Businessman Sudhir Ruparelia owns both of these residential gems. Being a maven in real estate, Mr Ruparelia knows full well that location is everything.
The expression-cum-truism means the physical location a firm chooses for its physical presence can make or break the future of a business establishment. The fact that Mr Ruparelia saw it fit to build in this area, he must have had the inside track on what Kamwokya will soon become. And, for sure, developments have sprouted everywhere, there.
In the not-so-distant future, there will be no slums in Kamwokya. As a result, there will be no place for Kafundas such as Biira’s.
As changes go on around it, again Biira’s stands out as an oasis. This time, an oasis of a past unsuited to the Sahara of low-income-friendly establishments that used to make up Kamwokya.
It might not survive this. Still, its legacy will always be embalmed in the memories of those who knew Kamwokya when politics did not define it.
