In the 1970s, Jean-Pierre Adams was one of the brightest defenders in French football. He played for PSG, Nice, and the national team.
In 1982, he checked in for a simple knee operation. But a mistake during anesthesia left him in a coma, one he would never wake from. He stayed in that state for 39 years.
His wife, Bernadette, stayed too. She refused to leave his side.
She fed him, bathed him, and spoke to him... every single day.
Until the day he passed in 2021.
As an idea, Hamis Kiggundu is good for country – local capital need state support. The problem is boxing with poor-people & being unsophisticated.
Instead of businesses with big monies – in billions of daily earnings (telecoms, banks, mines, coffee) – they are elbowing hustlers downtown over markets, market compounds, animal slaughterhouses, & drainage channels! Kwegamba.
In @observerug this week.
No One Warns Immigrants About the Silence
When people move to the UK, everyone says, “You’ll be fine.”
But no one warns you about the silence.
The kind that fills your chest when you come home from a 12-hour shift …too tired to cook, too broke to order food …and the walls don’t answer when you talk.
Back home, in Africa, there was always noise …neighbours arguing, radios playing, kids laughing outside, boda guys shouting across the road.
Here, even the air feels like it’s watching you quietly.
At first, you think you’re strong.
You smile through the cold, through the confused looks when you don’t catch the accent, through the “where are you really from?” that hides behind polite smiles.
But it’s the small things that wear you down.
Having to repeat your name until it doesn’t sound like you anymore.
Being called “love” but never truly seen.
Hearing your qualifications don’t count because they’re “not UK standard.”
You start from scratch. Again.
Washing dishes. Cleaning houses. Sending money home like it doesn’t ache.
Telling your family you’re fine, even when you cry at the bus stop because your card declined.
Still… there are moments.
Catching the eye of another African on the bus and sharing a silent smile.
Hearing an Afrobeats song in a corner shop and feeling your heart breathe again.
Cooking familiar food in a cold kitchen and, for a moment, it smells like home.
And slowly, life rebuilds itself.
Not the way you imagined, but piece by piece ….quietly, stubbornly, beautifully.
Because being an immigrant isn’t just about survival.
It’s about learning to belong in a place that never expected you to stay… and still daring to call it home.
My heart aches for these kids,John Bosco Kibalama’s children,the mother is all they were left after the disappearance of their father now she’s also gone💔💔.
While Kampala floods again, one man — Hamis Kiggundu (Ham) is being protected like a national treasure. He builds on the Nakivubo Channel, blocking the city’s only drainage path, and no one dares stop him. Not KCCA, not NEMA, not even the ministers. Why? Because he’s protected in the name of “progress.”😭
But for who? For us, the people in the water? For the mothers carrying children through flooded streets? For the traders watching their dreams float away? No. This “development” is not for us it’s for power, greed, and pride.
Our government doesn’t care, not about the market vendors in Owino watching their tomatoes, onions, and clothes float away with every storm, crying as years of sweat disappear in minutes.
Not about the mothers and children forced to spend the night on rooftops, shivering as floodwater swallows their homes, Not about the traders in Park Yard not about the traders in Park Yard who keep losing their hard-earned savings every time it rains wondering how to start over when there’s nothing left to sell.
We demand justice for the vendors, the families, the traders, and every Ugandan living with the pain of floods that could have been prevented.