Ugandans Are the Happiest People

I walked around the length of the bar, observing. All around were the happiest people I had ever seen. December holidays will do that to you. It doesn’t matter that we’ll all have some hectic responsibility to deal with in Jan. No, today, we’ll dance and party like school fees, rent, job searches, and the rest of it don’t exist. And if there’s a place that tops Ugandans' ability to do this, I’d like to see it. We’ve gained a reputation as some of the funniest, happiest people you’ll ever meet. Whether it’s clips of our members of parliament saying some ridiculously hilarious things or Simon's legendary question, our little country has continuously found ways to entertain the world and stay in the global psyche.

Still don’t believe me? Pick any day of the week, and I guarantee you’ll find a bar or restaurant packed to the rafters. There’s this weird unspoken agreement among Kampala’s partygoers—some invisible WhatsApp group where they regularly decide which bar they’ll congregate at on each day of the week. Make a mistake and go to the wrong place on the wrong day, and it’s crickets.

Back at the bar, I walked around wondering, “How is everyone so happy?”

I wasn’t trying to be that person. Nobody likes that person. And yet, the question persisted. As a country with so little to celebrate, we seem to do a ton of celebrating. A country where each morning brings more bad news before we’ve even healed from the previous batch. Death, loss, and incompetence greet us at every corner, threatening to choke even our most basic efforts to live well. Historically, this country, beautiful as she is, has witnessed some of the ugliest and most tragic events on the African continent.

Despite it being 63 years later, there are still unhealed wounds whose effects threaten the thin fabric holding our nation together. With our historical record and a seemingly unpromising future, are we like the proverbial death-row inmate who, with foreknowledge of what’s to come, chooses to dance to the very end? Or is our happiness the result of a rare type of collective amnesia, where our brains reset every two weeks to spare us the pain of actually having to process the uncertainty we’re living through? To this day, there are things we will only speak of in whispers in dark rooms, and others we won’t let ourselves acknowledge even took place. A national vow of silence, where all citizens instinctively know what can and cannot be questioned, said, or revisited. Are we living in our own version of a coming Armageddon and have decided life is going to be short anyway?

Pondering these dark thoughts as I made my way through bodies pressed together, dancing rhythmically, singing ecstatically, I studied the faces of strangers. Yes, it was happiness written on them. No, deeper than happiness—a dare to the future to be anything other than what they demand it to be. A proclamation of self-determination; ekigya kigye. We’ve seen it all, and we’re still here.

But what did I expect to see? What do you expect people to do in a country with no justice—not even the illusion of it? What are they to do about the blatant corruption, the preventable deaths, the poor infrastructure, and the state arm tightening its noose around everyone’s necks? What else is there to do but eat, drink, and be merry?

And so I joined in. Let’s leave the heavy thinking for another day. Today, the DJ is on fire, and my feet are itching to speak.