It was in 1999 in The Monitor newsroom when journalists Charles Bichachi, Timothy Kalyegira, Fidel Kirungi and Charles Onyango-Obbo argued over which African country had the most beautiful women.
It is difficult to tell the criteria they were following. While Kirungi argued favorably for Mali, Kalyegira was lyrical about Eritrea. There were other nationalities mentioned: Somalia, Ethiopia, Rwanda, South Africa, and Nigeria.
These men (surely, this was a men-only affair), who spoke from a point of great travel, and meticulous attention to detail, did not fancy Uganda taking the accolade. The exception was in Charles Bichachi, who argued strongly for his country.
In addition to narrating our women’s chocolate complexions, stunning v-shaped and sometimes round-shaped chins, a tender gait, and entrancing curvy frames, Bichachi even knew where and when these beauties could be found: if one wanted to see Uganda’s belles, the best place was not in pretentious upscale neighborhoods, but downtown Kampala (Owino market, Mu kikuubo, old and new tax parks, and surrounding shopping malls).
As a latecomer to this conversation on the poetics and geographies of beauty in Africa, I want to take sides with Bichachi. Bichachi’s was not petty patriotism, but real field experience. In different shapes and sizes, Ugandan girls are far handsomer than any other on the continent.
There are two explanations for this endowment: our ethnic composition, and geography. With over 65 different ethnic communities, all of them infinitely open to intermarriage, the country continues to graft beauties of unimagined quality. Short and tall damsels, sturdy builds and magazine covers, dark- and light-skinned.
Uganda’s climate has been most kind. With both dry and wet seasons, the country boasts of an expansive list of foods, fruits and meats both wild and domestic.
Our women’s skins radiate from sumptuous meals of organic milk and honey basked in ever warm temperatures. The collective sum of these endowments – beautiful women and generous climate – is that Uganda has the happiest and dumbest men. A satiated belly and a beautiful sweetheart are man’s main basic needs, which also double as his vanities.
Either or both can drive men to war or elixir them into pacifism. For Uganda – especially Buganda – our beautiful women and climate have been an absolute sedative inspiring a general sleepiness and numbness of fighting spirit. Not surprisingly, it had to be Yoweri Museveni who grew up herding cows under extreme hardship to go to the bush in 1980, not Paul Ssemogerere (the most aggrieved) who had grown up amidst plenty.
Two American professors, Daron Acemoglu of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and James Robinson of the University of Chicago, have made a name in the development discourse after they published their 2012 book Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Poverty and Prosperity. Their key argument is that the difference between poor and rich countries is in the nature of institutions.
Built on contesting Jared Diamond’s 1997 argument in Guns, Germs and Steel that poverty and wealth are a product of the environment, Acemoglu and Robinson contend that “in the modern age when advanced technology is widely available, the reason why Equatorial Guinea or Sierra Leone still suffer from diseases like malaria is not because of the weather, but because of the poor institutions underlying those states.”
Without seeking to disagree with any of these positions, I want to extend this conversation focusing on the geographical roots of our sensibilities as regards hard work, sacrifice, struggle, wealth, and happiness.
Perhaps one of the toughest questions for opposition politicians is why Ugandans have remained perpetually content in the face of a political nightmare and economic disintegration.
What explains their levity and content with small things? My tentative explanation is in nature’s endowments: as Uganda’s men continue to afford cheap heavy meals (maize bread, and beans, meat and matoke, cassava and fish), enabling them to spend entire afternoons and evenings sweating amidst the plush thighs of their beautiful women, the connection between their livelihood, and the present leadership is blurred.
Whether President Museveni simultaneously appoints himself chief justice and speaker of parliament, and continues to donate four-wheel-drive cars to select ‘organic intellectuals’, Ugandan men will return home to their women, make love and sleep off their poverty. Before food and sex are threatened, select members of the opposition risk continuing a lone fight.
The author is a PhD fellow at Makerere Institute of Social Research.