This is such a bittersweet moment for all the Spanish living in Kampala. On one side, we are celebrating that Spain has won its first World Cup, which is a dream come true; on the other side, we are saddened after the bombs that exploded in two bars in the capital, targeting innocent people who were watching football.
It's difficult to explain how one feels about this, because this is as much about the facts as it is about the feelings. I remember when we were living in London and the tube bombings happened... I felt quite intimidated back then, mainly because you realise that you are vulnerable: all of a sudden somebody targets your usual public transport, what you use to go to work and back every day, and it is so hard to protect all those millions of people from crazy people. So you realise that you are vulnerable but ultimately you cannot avoid taking the tube every day, so you just come to the conclusion that only God knows when we are going to be called... after all, you could also be in a 'safer' environment and be involved in a freak accident...
This time round I have felt more sadness and a bit angry probably. I feel sad because Kampala is such a safe environment... Ugandans have worked really hard at stopping lots of the issues that they had back in the 1980s, when people feared leaving the house after 2pm and crime and danger where an everyday problem.
Kampalas enjoy the social live, and the safe environment has been so conducive to supporting this, people enjoy meeting in places like the rugby club and enjoying the World Cup final together, with a quiet drink, and I think why not, why shouldn't they. During each game we have heard the vuvuzelas out there, and the party going on until late into the night...
I feel angry because they were innocent people, lots of them suppoting my country in a highly expected final... While millions of Spanish celebrate (and we should), in Uganda, and in other countries, more than 70 families are mourning the death of their loved ones.
I didn't feel vulnerable this time round. Although I have read comments in a couple of places on internet suggesting that the places were usual 'expats hunts', I think that those places were very popular with the locals, I was discussing this with another friend here (Colombian) and she was saying the same. In fact, so far we have only heard about 1 foreigner (US citizen) among the dead. I have seen the list of dead and of the admitted to hospital in yesterday's newspaper and all the names are local except for 6 US citizens admitted to hospital. I think those places unfortunately were targeted because they were just popular... I think that probably only the rugby club must have had easily over a 100 or more people watching the game, they wanted to hit as many people as possible, not particularly locals or foreigners.
Apparently we know now that Al-Shabaab has claimed the bombs, further to previous threats to Uganda and Burundi following Uganda sending peacekeeping forces to Somalia. Today I was watching CNN Back Story, they were talking about Nate, the US citizen who has died; he was a fulltime volunteer for 'Invisible Children', who had moved to Uganda quite recently. As the representative of 'Invisible Children' was explaining to CNN, it is quite ironic that a person who was working to end children being victims of war (and LRA terrorism), has himself been taken by terrorism.
It is almost metaphoric or even paradoxic, how Nate's death has made his organisation and the children's cause more visible... so often suffering is invisible to all of us, may this help us see the suffering around us and help us bring hope where there is despair, and courage where there is fear.
The vuvuzelas stopped too early on Sunday... let's keep them playing to show that we are not intimidated, not fearful, not invisible.
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