CLOUD SHADOWS CARPETED THE African countryside as a privately owned matatu rattled along the dusty lorry route toward the capital. Four passengers had been on board as it rolled out of Kyotera just past daybreak. Now, as the bus neared Kampala, every seat was taken, with nine men standing, gripping the overhead straps. Several transistor radios played incongruously—gospel, raga, soca—their signals becoming clearer as the city loomed. The passengers were villagers and farmers, many of them carrying goods to sell at the open-air markets of the city: Nile perch and tilapia, tomatoes and maize, basket-ware, gourds, kikoy cloth.
In a worn wicker seat at the rear of the bus, a wizened banana farmer clutched a bark-cloth package and gazed through the sweating bodies at a spout of rain in the distant terraced hillside. The man wore a vacant expression, although occasionally he stole glances at the other passengers: at the young bearded man who nipped from a flask; at the toothless woman seated in front of him, who kept falling asleep against the window; at the burly, bare-chested man—the only one facing backwards—who held a panting dog in his arms; at the tall, handsome woman with the lovely profile on the aisle. The man was careful not to make eye contact with them, though, or to give any of the passengers reason to notice him. He had been paid to make a delivery in Kampala, and the only thing on his mind this morning was the cold bottle of pombe—fermented banana beer—and the plate of mkate mayai that he would enjoy once he returned home. He did not think about what he was delivering, or why it might be important to someone. That was not part of his job.
The farmer closed his eyes as they came to another makeshift village, where women were washing clothes in a creek beside the road. When he looked out again, he saw cane and cassava fields and then a gathering of people by a banana grove, dressed up as if for church.
Two of the men, he saw, before averting his eyes, were leaning on shovels. It was the fourth funeral they had passed since leaving Kyotera.
The road took them past a roadhouse, where sunken-cheeked women watched blankly from under a cloth awning, and into a sprawling neighborhood of ramshackle apartments and merchant stands, where the air was smoky from roasting meats. As downtown came into view, the farmer remembered traveling here as a boy, in the years before the dictators—the shouting merchants, the bleating horns, the pungent scent of spices from the food stands, the buses and boda-bodas, the chaotic excitement of so many people sharing space peacefully.
The man got off the bus near Bombo Road and walked into the open-air market, as he had been instructed, keeping his eyes on the cracked pavement. He breathed the beef and lamb smoke, the spiced vegetables, looking at no one until he found a booth far in the back, belonging to a fish merchant named Robinson. A nod, pre-arranged. The man spoke the sentence he had been instructed to repeat: “A fresh delivery for Mr. Robinson.” He was handed an envelope containing five hundred thousand Ugandan shillings—about two hundred dollars. No one else saw the exchange. Sweating in the mid-afternoon heat, the farmer walked back toward Bombo Road and the matatu that would take him home.