Kintu

by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

There were a few elderly houses, built between the 40s and 60s, which boasted of good days gone by. Tenants said that some of the old houses belonged to Kabaka Muteesa II’s elite men and the families who first bought into British administration; others belonged to the landed gentry. The landlady insisted that in the early 70s Bulange had verve and ambition. At the time, the village was fast becoming an affluent residential area. The old houses belonged to the landowners and the unfinished structures mostly to their sons and a few people they sold to. But then Idi Amin came and one by one, the men erecting modern houses disappeared. Her own husband had disappeared in 1977. Sometimes, she pointed at the incomplete houses naming their owners and the dates they had disappeared and she would cry.