KAMPALA LETTERSomali refugees in Uganda are aghast that their compatriots could have been behind Sunday's attacks
IN THE back alleys of Kisenyi, a minaret-studded suburb of Kampala, Uganda’s capital, the legacy of Somalia’s two-decade civil war is played out for all to see. Packed six to a room, there are few refugees from the war-torn Horn of Africa country that don’t have a story to tell, or a scar to display.
A wedge of flesh was blown from 40-year-old Mako Moallim’s right calf when a grenade exploded during the Ethiopian invasion of the country in 2007. Sitting underneath a clothes line stretched across a narrow alley with an open drain down the middle, she’s introduced to us by Batulo Mohamed (40), who has her own marks to show: a series of indentations in her right foot, the result of shrapnel from a bomb in 2002.
But perhaps the saddest story overheard, as the Zuhur call at 1pm for prayer washes over the halal butchers shops and around the orange sunbaked walls, is that of Uloso Noor (75).
A strongly built woman, surrounded by her daughters and nieces, she can’t remember anything since an artillery shell hit her home in Mogadishu two years ago. Three members of her family were killed and both legs blown off another girl who was there at the time. Uloso now walks aimlessly around her house, in an apparent state of shock.
“They’ve taken her to the hospital to get her brain scanned and found nothing wrong with her,” says Abdinroor Wardare, a community leader.
“But she has no memory, and needs more attention than a child. If you let a kid out for the day they will come back, but Uloso will just wander off.”
If anyone understands the hurt and fear that comes from terrorism, it is Somalis. That makes the events of Sunday night in Kampala all the more painful for them to bear.
Uganda has given them a home, when other countries pushed them into squalid refugee camps – and now people from their own country have allegedly murdered their hosts.
“We don’t feel like foreigners in this country,” says Wardare, who fled Somalia in 2001 after losing his sister and three cousins.
“They treat us like their own citizens. So when someone from your own blood says he has killed innocent people, of course it has created a lot of fear in the community.”
Somalis in Kisenyi are already reporting several incidents of harassment from passersby, mostly verbal abuse. A Ugandan friend of Wardare’s says if one of her relations had died in the bomb, she would have planted another in the middle of Kisenyi.
It was a throwaway remark, but still, he can’t tell whether she was joking.
Although native Ugandans show no outright hostility to Muslims, who make up about 12 per cent of the country’s population, when asked about relations between the two communities it is clear that there is an increased distrust of outsiders.
“Obviously, when you see new people now, especially when they have a long beard or are dressed like a Muslim, you do worry,” says a man in the city centre courtyard of a bar on Luwoto street.
“When we see outsiders now, we get worried.”
This might be a natural reaction to an event as catastrophic as that witnessed on Sunday. But in Kampala, a city known for its relative calm and openness to foreigners, it is unusual to hear.
Once-bustling bars have gone quiet, and although bar owners say they believe business will pick up again by the end of the week, they don’t plan on removing the increased security restrictions.
Several bars are refusing entry to anyone carrying bags, and it is rare not to have to pass through a metal detector and be patted down.
Only two weeks ago this would have been unheard of. Reasonably assimilated into Ugandan society, Somalis are aghast at the thought that anyone within their own community could have been behind Sunday’s attacks.
But as Wardare admits, for some, the reasons for joining al-Shabab are understandable, even if they are reprehensible.
“I don’t know if al-Shabab are recruiting here, but in Kenya they give $600 [€466] to anyone who joins up. If you are a young man with no job and no prospects, it is difficult to say no.”
With that, he asks for a coin, which he takes on the top of this thumb and flips in the air, from where it settles in the dust.
“You might die, you might live. For some, it is a risk worth taking.”
No matter what the consequences?
“No matter what the consequences.”