UGANDA:  YOUNG PEOPLE IN GULU CITY NAVIGATING THE SPEED OF THE CITY DOUBLE LIFE, DOUBLE LIVING

 

 

 Gulu city like all other cities, is descended to, assumed to offer to the increasingly displaced young people, and also to the bodies converging in it, opportunities for social becoming. The stories are an elaboration of the specter of intensified sensibilities and tactics.

 

As we shall elaborate, it was this nuance of threats of re-displacement and de-emplacement that mobilised Okello, Anywar, Obita and Ocen, to stake their emplacement in the city and cityscape of Gulu, trying to find ‘cracks’ and possibilities with which to emerge, stay afloat and provide for their families.

 

 

 

 

GULU CITY-THURSDAY JULY 23,2026

By Okumu Livingstone (Ugandan correspondent)

 

Prof. Daniel Komakech carried out analytical finding in the post war conflict Northern Uganda, here below is his verbatim, fourth edition

 

“In this section, we case study four stories of Okello, Anywar, Obita and Ocen as stories of emergence from episodes of displacement in its different settings, while motivated by the ideals of emplacement.

 

Gulu city like all other cities, is descended to, assumed to offer to the increasingly displaced young people, and also to the bodies converging in it, opportunities for social becoming. The stories are an elaboration of the specter of intensified sensibilities and tactics.

 

As we shall elaborate, it was this nuance of threats of re-displacement and de-emplacement that mobilised Okello, Anywar, Obita and Ocen, to stake their emplacement in the city and cityscape of Gulu, trying to find ‘cracks’ and possibilities with which to emerge, stay afloat and provide for their families.

 

We begin with Okello. Okello, through processes of sensibility, gains insight on the importance of accelerating speed reinforced by hooting. This, he does, as his tactics with which to get emplaced in the city. The details follow;

 

Navigating the Speed of the City

 

Okello, a boda boda rider, aged 32, came from Koch Goma after spending his earlier youth in the IDP camp in Goma. His coming to the city was because there was nothing much and he could not continue staying in Goma. Okello rents two grass thatched houses in Kanyagoga B at about 30 dollars.

 

He has a two- and five-months old baby girl who looks like him and she is called, Blessing. Okello is passionate about his fatherhood and particularly about Blessing. He plans to take Blessing to baby class in a nearby kindergarten that he can afford to pay 110 dollars per term (a term comprises roughly four months). His wife Lalam is also a young lady of 24 years or about 25. She makes pancakes which she sells every break time in a nearby primary school with a number of school children, and makes between 2 to 3 dollars per day.

 

Lalam, Okello’s wife, is the first born to her mother of six siblings. Their father died when she was 20. While her mother and the siblings live in Koch Goma village, Lalam and Okello her husband have to provide for her family and pay other school dues and requirements for the two sisters already in a secondary school in Koch Goma (Koch Goma Senior Secondary School is a government aided school under Universal Secondary Education -USE and fees are not paid but other requirements are to be met by parents).

 

Lalam and the husband have to balance between house expenditure and Lalam’s siblings and mother. While for Okello, he is the third born of four children. Okello’s father is in Koch Goma, while the mother died from internal injury after being beaten by the LRA who had found her at home. She had left the camp to go and pick some vegetables at the homestead. His youngest brother of 17 stays with him.

 

Okello tells me that he has not travelled abroad, but that his wife and himself are living in different worlds in this town of Gulu. Okello wakes up at 6 am to ride his customers to their different locations. Sometimes, Okello sneaks as early as 4 am to avoid quarrels with his wife over what to leave home to feed the family. In his view, his riding boda-boda is not only for business but also to ride away from stress. In his words;

 

“You think people only migrate to ‘Ulaya’ (Europe)? We also migrate here by riding around, around and around”. He continues, “when you see money in the form of a passenger, you brake and stop. But when you see your wife, especially when you do not have money, you speed off somewhere, anywhere”.

 

Okello’s early rise in the morning before the wife wakes up, and riding his boda-boda ‘around, around and around’, typifies a certain mode of flight – a sneaking flight within the realities of helplessness. Although the wife is the reason for the flight, she is not ordinarily the cause for the flight, not even the children.

 

Like his wife with whom they are to fend for their families, Okello in effect has three families; his own, that of his father and that of his wife Lalam. Lalam’s income of 2-3 dollars a day and boda-boda business in the face of three families, do not enhance livelihood in any meaningful way. Again, life in this new site of displacement is unfamiliar and strange.

But, given the aspiration of emplacement which Gulu city is assumed to offer, Okello refuses to get displaced once more and worse still to the village he has fled. Faced with weighing obligations, Okello mounts his earlier capabilities of perceptivity gained in the camp on how to stay alert, to see the outlays of Gulu city. What he discovers is that, with barely any money in his hand or pocket but a motorcycle – boda-boda, which again is in plenty circulating in all the arteries and hinterland of the city, Okello looks again and again. He has nothing else to turn to but his boda-boda.

In that case, he intensifies his insight in relation to that which he has and sees a crack in the boda-boda circuit, namely, speed modes, timing and hooting. It is this nodal point that Okello lets loose his ingenuity of survival.

 

It is in this regard that the circulation, ‘around and around’, makes sense. This flight is not from the family as such but to the city, to knock at opportunities of making money for the family. The registry of, ‘around, around and around’, shows triple effort of circulating. In the flight, Okello engages various and different gears. When a passenger is met, Okello slows because that is money.

 

As soon as that is done, the speed rages on, with Okello pacing as fast as he can to catch-up with the speeding city. It is when another opportunity knocks, either another passenger or being hired to send some parcel at a good pay or any other possibilities, which Okello slows as well, leaving Okello and the city in a continuous speed-slow continuum.

 

What is also the case is that Okello speeds off from the wife before she wakes up. This again as we said, is not flight in the sense of from but rather, to the city. The waking up of the wife and the sight of her helplessness, is not only insecurity but also shame to Okello. It is therefore a combination of insecurity and shame that drives Okello to circulate more and harder, hence the phrase, ‘around, around and around’.

 

It is this feeling of being insecure, that makes Okello not slow but engages another gear in circulating and combing the city. Once there is an encounter with possibilities, Okello slows motion while, an encounter with impossibilities, induces another gear of speed. In this sense, speed is not rush, speed is not time keeping but rather, a perceptive and tactical capacity of maneuver and wit, in the face of uncertainties.

 

In the perceptive frame of Okello, hooting and hooting loud is not noise but sound to the ears of likely passengers that he is getting close or too near not to wait. Hooting complements speed and both actually intertwine.

 

When speed does not catch up with the passenger, sound of hooting is a moment of alerting the passenger that whereas speed has not yet created presence, hooting goes ahead to announce presence in a presenting way of allowing speed to come forth in the materiality of the boda boda. Once speed assures moments of timely reach towards a passenger, hooting is momentarily suspended and only to be recalled in situations when speed cannot assure timely presence.

 

To indicate the importance of hooting, an external hooting device is applied in Okello’s boda boda to reinforce the sound. With these two tactics, Okello tries to avoid further displacement but routes for emplacement with a view to provide for his three families. Marked within Okello’s scale, speed and hooting are not just conceptual or words to be debated or intellectualized, but practical and an outcome of a careful perceptivity and therefore, tactical modes for survival.

 

Okello’s idea of waking up “early” is not to be confused with time but a certain sense of temporality different from ordinary time. One notices this by first appreciating the routine of waking up ‘early’, which makes it no longer an episode but a routine. This means, ‘early’ in this case is intended as background to mean, timing, without a watch or a clock.

 

His timing is when the passengers and the city are already awake and going about with their businesses. It is in this sense that he has to catch the city and the passengers early enough. In this temporal continuum, Okello is not aware whether he is within the dominant time schedules and it is outside his purview. To him, the waking up of the town and the busy passengers, is his timing and not time. Okello therefore uses timing and not time. Whereas time and timing are both in a temporal continuum, ‘time’ induces a certain scale, a certain temporal scale and a miniature of a whole complex temporality.

 

Time to Okello is not a clock or watches to look at. Time is in and it is the city and the passengers. This aspect contests the chrono time series and like Okello or any one entangled in life chasing, periods or periodising into time schedules is vague. This is because; one who is entangled in precarious pain of impossibility, lives in a temporality in which time scale remains counter-productive.

 

In practical terms, navigating intricacies in a city, transcend linear time zone because the city working of things are not framed in timescales but muzzled up in the dense, which requires Okello’s type of speed to speed up with or slow up with the city. In the next case, Anywar points to an inviolable double which in this case, is gained as an outcome of an intensified viewing of the city ways of things. Accordingly, he notices the white segment of the dense bodies, the white young ladies as his point of tactical negotiation of his continued emplacement.

 

Double Life, Double Living

 

Anywar, a university graduate, aged 28, has a young wife too, who is a High School teacher in one of the government middle range schools. She teaches English and Religious Studies to senior three and four and her monthly salary is about 100 dollars.

 

Milly, her name, together with Anywar, have two children with the eldest in primary one in one of the middle level private primary schools in Gulu city and pays about 200 dollars per term as fees. While the youngest is to turn three by the end of this year (2019) and ready to go to kindergarten.

 

Anywar has recently finished and awarded a degree in Development Studies but for about two years now, he has been trying to look for a job but it is hard to come by. Earlier on before joining University, he was employed in one of the NGOs dealing in peace building and psycho-social work. Given his busy schedule at work, Anywar could not study full time and so opted for a weekend programme.

 

However, in his second year of study, the organisation he has been working for, could no longer pay their salaries since their sources of funding dried up. His contract could no longer be renewed and found himself without a job. Since then, it is his wife who paid his fees and upkeep as well as the rest of the household.

 

Anywar negotiates with the wife, to add another ‘wife’, a white woman. This second ‘wife’ becomes their bread winner who also doubles as placeholder should there be an emergency like sickness and school fees. Anywar recounts moments when the first wife insists if he has visited the white ‘wife’, especially when supplies seem to dry up. Feeling pushed, and noticing shortage of supplies of the daily routines of the family needs,

 

Anywar would retort, “I will go. What is your problem now”? Interested in the answer of the wife, I inquired about the replies of the wife to his remark. Anywar tells me, the wife just smiles and sometimes when there is a real shortage, she would even encourage him to spend the whole night at the white ‘wife’s house.

 

Anywar confirms that his sexual engagement with the white ‘wife’, pays off, as he is given a lofty amount of Ugandan shillings and sometimes dollars, as his transport money back home and some items to cook or feed on since to the white wife he is ‘single’.

 

Anywar not only has no job but also no money. His wife has since his loss of a job been taking care of the children and Anywar. This weighed down on the wife but also provoked a sense of insecurity that comes with the cultural construct of a man as the bread winner for the household. In this reality, Anywar refuses to get stuck. He intensifies his perception of the city and reads the city through and through. He notices a sector of bodies in the dense city, a sector whose interests and hanging points are most times in the coffee shops. In the city gossip, this sector, the white people, are considered rich but also, particularly the white ladies, casual with the male youths and sometimes, when one is lucky, the gossip goes, one is taken in either as a partner for the time she is in Gulu City or Uganda or, married to her. But, the gossip continues, one has to

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look a certain kind of a youth; one who is fairly casual in dressing and general appearance. One has to keep the hair untidy or uncombed, wear fairly worn-out shoes or sandals, walk in a certain particular rhythm that portrays one as imposing, unique and flattering. Anywar picks this gossip and thinks it over and over to gain some insights. His interest is how to tap into this segment and get a young white lady for himself to try out his luck for money. This to him was the crack in the city that he needed to catch and utilise. So Anywar plots with the wife to try out on this as he details his new look for attraction. To his expectation, it worked and Anywar ‘hooked’ a white lady but told her he was ‘single’ with no partner. In a sense, Anywar employed a tactic of remaining single while his wife is invisible to the white lady. But double to the wife because to the wife, the white lady is visible and both of them are sharing Anywar.

This inviolable double, characterises Anywar. His dressing in a particular way and in constant company with the white lady, is to enhance his survival. Indeed, as he tells the story, the white lady is happy with him and at most times, gives him dollars and some presents to live on since he was ‘single’. As supplies increase, Anywar and the household are secure and life goes on pretty well.

 

In case of supplies drying, Milly, the wife of Anywar, would ask why and if Anywar has since left the white lady? In this scheme, Anywar is equally enhanced by the wife to intensify this tactic and maneuver. Consequently, the economy of Anywar improved and he was no longer to go to the makeshifts (small grass thatched huts or small rooms made of rusty iron sheets where young men hang up to eat pork, gossip and watch football)

 

. He together with the white lady now goes to the coffee shops, a new public space that expresses a new economy and a new status. One needs to understand the status of construction coffee shops in Gulu city. It is a withdrawing space (withdrawing room) where the City elites gather to express economic distance with the rest of the city inhabitants. Here, even when one does not take coffee, one forces oneself to or takes other status foods like pizza, hamburger and so forth.

 

But there is also another segment of young men, men who enter this space not necessarily to take coffee or pizza but, on a hunt, on a look out to also ‘hook’ a white lady. They are dressed in a particular way as well, similar to Anywar and normally with their eyes wide open, to catch sight of a curious looking young white lady.

 

Many times, they do not order anything but sit on and on, looking in all directions. Once he believes he is soon being suspected for being ‘idle’ by the attendants or the coffee shop crew, he orders a simple bottle of soda which he sips with a meticulous calculation to last for nearly an hour.

 

So, coffee shops become a kind of public space that is familiar to similar kinds of inhabitants. But also, within, there is a second public space to which this sub-segment of young men and white ladies as ‘partners’ or ‘lovers’ withdraw to. This public space of appearance is likened to the ‘drawing room’ or the British ‘withdrawing room’ (Habermas 1962,1991, Bourdieu 1970:290, Foucault 1984, Thad 2001:12). These rooms are normally not secluded in the physical sense but spatial and so, not visible in the manner in which Anywar and his friends are insulated from a particular viewing. He is to the rest of the outsiders coming for coffee or pizza in the same place, not viewed as having a second wife but having a friend. His friends with whom he has shown presence are also not viewed as a batch of young men with white girls as second ‘wives’ or ‘livelihood wives’.

 

The outsiders – those outside this withdrawing ‘room’ view them as friends and simply taking coffee or eating pizza. While some of the ‘outsiders’ – also young husbands on mission, think they are in a ‘withdrawing room’, in this case, a coffee shop, for an opportunity to knock, by getting a white girl. In their view, the boys with the white girls already, are simply

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friends having fun, while they (the outsiders) are the real contenders to ‘snatch’ the girls. Therefore, unlike the physically secluded, this ‘withdrawing room”, is in a co-presence; a double and a simultaneous space, namely, a space shared by different segments of maneuver.

 

Both of the maneuver segments however, share something in common. Dress and act in a particular way to express entry to this space. With a particular way of acting and dressing, they are variously referred to especially by the boda-boda riders as;

 

“nigger man”, “cowboy”, “spider man’ or “ninja” and many other coded names. Having mastered the preferred way of appearance to attract the white girls, Anywar like the other boys employ schemes appearing just as that, ‘improving to stagnate’, a tactic to remain or become more and more shabby.

 

This scheme ranges from; the hair left untidy, uncombed or weaved in a Rastafarian fashion. The shirts are half or quarter way buttoned and most times on casual shorts with open saddles, walking in a particular way. The magic seems to work, as the white girls most times are seen in their company.

 

The white taste has therefore begun also to invert dressings among young boys in Gulu city, as the boys find it working and profiteering. To try and remain in the company of white girls, the African female folks have also tactically changed their imaginings of a ‘hot guy’. He is as to the white girls, this particular ‘rasta’ or ‘ninja’, making both finding a common definition of the ‘hot guy’.

 

This makes the white company sustained just as the privileges of being invited for coffee and pizza does not also halt but increases instead. In the section that follows, we case study Obita, his insights into the city and how it leads him to a conclusion of swinging within the city and the rural, in order to extract from both, a tactic he employs as the most realistic way of his and family emplacement in the city.