On challenges of surviving in Uganda’s rural economy

For my low-volume ‘export’ of millet and sorghum to the DR Congo, I have shifted my base to Kiburara (25km from the Uganda-DR Congo border). In most cases, my trading partners come all the way from the DR Congo to trade with me in Kiburara.

This has allowed me to spend lengthy periods in Kiburara (allowing me to participate in the Kiburara economy). As the son of a peasant farmer, the inclination is always to tend some crops. And that is where and how I have experienced the real Kiburara hitherto unknown to me.

Almost every young person in Kiburara with the muscle to labour smokes marijuana. Most of them cannot honour a simple arrangement of supplying labour for a fee. They want to be paid in advance before delivery of the labour. 

And if one made a mistake of effecting advance payment, like I have done several times, one would be advised to count that payment as a loss.

There are young girls, more honest than their male counterparts, who swam farms seeking digging opportunities. In most cases, they have children strapped unto their backs. 

There was this 14-ish looking young girl who raised my curiosity. My guess was that she was either in P6 or P7. I was shocked when I learnt that the baby she was nursing was her second child (from a different man). I shed a tear.

But what almost killed me was a third-trimester pregnancy-carrying young lady digging a designated area for immediate pay (we call it erikatara in Kiburara). My engagement with her was disheartening: the money earned would be used for attending an antenatal clinic.

And there was the mother of one set of triplets and two pairs of twins. At about 60 (my guess) and bleached, she was such a spectacle. And when she came looking for work at my place, she was sporting braids similar to what I see with girls in Kampala. Hmm!

I had never met her, but I had heard of a Nyabasatu (mother of triplets) in the neighbourhood. With the compelling story of triplets with poor parents, my heart melted. I offered her some work. And boy, the lady from Ibanda (Busongora North of Kasese) is a real hard worker. She can clear an acre in four days. The kind of person one would like to have on the farm.

But she is very inconsistent. She will put in a really good day’s job but will disappear for the next three to four days: she will be making appearances on other farms.

The economy of Kiburara depends on cultivating by Bakonzo (and other communities) and cattle rearing in the exclusively Basongora community in Busunga. The pressure on land is very high. 
Annual rent for an acre (about three-quarters of the standard acre dimensions) goes for Shs350,000.

This alone excludes most of the residents from meaningful participation in the economy. It limits most of the residents to doing makatara (digging for immediate pay).

It is tough to live in Kiburara. There is a street called Red Street where mairungi or khat, marijuana, and sex workers hold fort. The issues in Kiburara are substance abuse, early pregnancies, and pressure on land. This leads to some kind of hopelessness that cannot be addressed by the educated speeches I hear in Kampala.

With this hopelessness, there is a new wave of migrant labour moving to Buganda. I know of four former farmhands in Kiburara who are now working on a commercial coffee farm in Mubende. The effect of this migrant labour is yet unknown but it is bleeding Kiburara of labour.

*Asuman Bisiika is the executive editor of the East African Flagpost. [email protected]