This soil in Naziba, Seguku, holds more than bones. It holds my grandfather, Jaajja Petero Kidza Wakula’enume, who walked from Kifuuta, Kyotera, Buddu, in 1922 with nothing but faith and a dream. It holds my father, Joseph Bbemba Wakula’enume, born on that land, and 10 of his brothers and sisters who never left it. It holds the prayers, the tears, and the stories of 80 years of our family.
Out of the seven families of my grandparents’ sons, only ours has kept the line with honor. The rest have scattered, and some have chosen shame over sense. Not you, and the family of our late uncle Senkandwa, who are fighting me left and right because they are beneficiaries of edible-rat hunting, a business that stopped them from seeing beyond walls of classes. Their daughter enjoys her P4D of secondary primary certificate in Journalism, while the whole place is plastered with pit latrines, half-flayed pork, and njaga-bangi kiosks.
But then there is the other one—the vampire Senga—who spent 50 years rotting in London’s drainage, crawled back in the late ’80s with a brain emptied of sense, and now dares to speak against dignity.
I grew up in Jinja, a city clean and ordered, and I know what happens when a place grows beyond its old skin. Naziba is now 6 km from Kampala’s CBD. Towers rise where we once played. Investments breathe down on the very graves where we lay our dead.
And here is the truth that breaks my heart: if we do not move them now, my children and my children’s children will one day watch strangers push our ancestors’ bones aside for concrete. Development does not pause for memory. Time does not wait for sentiment.
We have 200 hectares waiting for us in Kifuuta, Kyotera, Buddu. Land that speaks our language. Land where our people can rest with honor, under open skies, not trapped between walls and bulldozers. That is dignity. That is respect.
But some of you hold on, not for love, but because you are still chasing mice and edible rats in the cemetery. You call it tradition. I call it fear of letting go. You would rather see our ancestors dishonored tomorrow than give up what feeds you today. And you let a brain-rotted returnee, with 50 years of gutter life, dictate the future of men who built this name.
I have walked through Zambia, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Malawi, and Eswatini. None of them bury in private plots inside growing cities. They honor the dead by giving them space, not by trapping them in the path of progress.
So I say this with love for our dead and fury for our future:
Step aside. Stop threatening, stop sending goons who cannot read, and stop letting vampires with lame brain cells speak for our lineage. I am not fighting you. I am fighting for my grandfather’s name, for my father’s rest, and for my children’s right to remember without shame.
Uganda needs a policy that protects both our living cities and our dead with dignity. Kampala cannot keep choosing chaos over order.
Move our family to Kifuuta while we can still carry them with our hands, with our tears, and with our prayers. Do it now, while there is still time to say goodbye properly.
Because if you don’t, history will remember you as the ones who chose rats over roots, drainage over dignity, and buried progress with the people you claimed to love.
Writer: Immanuel Benedict Joseph Mbazzi Muguluma Misagga
1st Generation Grandson
