December 1989, Entebbe Airport. Almost 18 years since my mum left the country she was born and raised in, following an expulsion order in 1972. As I stepped outside the plane, it wasn’t the balmy air that struck me so much as its scent: a heady blend of jasmine, sand, heat, dust. A scent I’d come to crave. Anxious to capture the moment our feet hit African soil, I was camera-ready. Then, a rifle butt, gentle but firm, across my body. ‘No photos.’
Then, on the other side of the baggage carousel, the real joy of family waiting. Family I didn’t know so well. My mum’s brother, my aunt and an overexcited eight-year-old cousin who, in years to come, would become my friend, flatmate and confidante.
Meera’s mother in Kampala market, 1989
That first trip created a formula for many others. Landing in Entebbe, driving past the blues of Lake Victoria en route to Kampala, stopping off at a roadside stall – jackfruit for mum, pineapple for me – then ‘home’ for chai, thepla, a favourite Indian flatbread, and posho or ugali cornmeal with beans. By day, we’d explore Kampala. My mum knew every street: this aunt lived there, that cousin over here, here’s where so-and-so the hairdresser was. We visited her old school, Kololo Secondary, saw her first workplace, Standard Chartered Bank, bartered at Nakasero Market, visited the family’s former tea estate outside the city, and had a drink at the Hotel Diplomate on Tank Hill. She spoke Swahili quasi-fluently as if she’d never left.
My grandparents and forefathers were born in Gujarat in north-western India, another place that gives me goosebu
Leaving Uganda is as big a part of the family story as returning. A British protectorate until the 1960s, it was one of many countries the empire had encouraged thousands of residents from its prized colony, India, to move for work. Many Indians set up businesses – textiles, coffee, tea, retail – and thrived. But the colonialist legacy – two tiers of social status, Indians above Ugandans – would not end well.
Kampala, 2018Courtesy of Meera Dattani
Many Asian families had servants, a term I always had trouble with, and in some cases, those servants were not treated well. In time, I’d have braver conversations with my family about this.
Independence came in 1962, but by 1971, a military coup led by dictator General Idi Amin resulted in the exile of Uganda’s second president, Milton Obote. In August 1972 Amin issued a 90-day expulsion order to the estimated 80,000 Ugandan Asians, before appropriating their businesses and homes in an economic war. Known as the ‘Butcher of Uganda’, Amin was also responsible for the massacre of up to half a million Ugandans during his eight years in power.
Some in the family were working, studying or living in the UK in the 1970s. They said goodbye to Uganda from afar while those in situ left entire lives behind. While the majority ended up in the UK, some in resettlement camps, others went to Canada, the USA, Europe. Exile, migration, displacement, resettlement and the refugee story became part of ours.
My uncle and aunt were early returners to Uganda, moving back in the post-Amin 1980s. In time, ex-Ugandan Asians were encouraged to return, even promised their former homes. In 1989, the family house was still military-owned. We’d stopped the car across the road for a discreet photo op, but we were spotted by guards. One sign of an armed guard was enough. We sped off.
In the early 1990s, our family did secure the ancestral home, and my uncle, aunt and cousin made it theirs in a poetic turn of events. I’m drawn to it with a secondary nostalgia for a life that could have existed, a house that contains so many memories – even though they’re not mine. I wonder if that’s why I take far too many photos, and have enough keepsakes to start a souvenir shop, when my family and others had to leave with so little.
In subsequent trips, I’d explore more of the country. I fulfilled the dream of gorilla tracking supported by community tourism, walked feet from the chimpanzees of Kyambura Gorge and hiked in the Rwenzori Mountains. Then my cousin’s wedding, by Lake Victoria – the only time almost all the family were in Uganda together. And although we didn’t know it at the time, a 2018 road trip to Murchison Falls National Park would be my uncle’s last holiday, a treasured few days at Baker’s Lodge by the Nile.
I’d planned to spend time in Uganda during 2020 and 2021 for a personal project, but Covid derailed it. In February 2020, before the world shut down, my beloved uncle, whose mantra was “anything is possible”, died after an illness. Returning to Uganda will not be the same.
This year it is 50 years since the 1972 expulsion and since the first exiled Ugandan Asians arrived in the UK. As a way of finding joy and solace in my heritage as a British-born, second-generation Gujarati Ugandan Asian, I’ve just joined a project called ‘British Ugandan Asians at 50’. We are gathering interviews, photographs and memorabilia and drawing the community together to mark this watershed. Now that I am in my forties, I feel lucky to have met my second and third cultures in the flesh at an early age. Drawn closer to them through time, travel and tales, I feel a child of all three. I love to return. Because though Uganda was never my home, it’s where all our stories are.
