General O: Sharing the Blind Spot

Muwado Ad by Muwado - Africa's Storytelling Platform

For men like me, who slept wherever darkness found them, would have been obvious that the Commonwealth Resort beach Munyonyo in Makindye Division-Kampala district would never have survived me when body becomes overfatigued due to Alcohol and workload alike…

A man whose work is pleasure, writing and reading everything useful or dangerously useless.

That evening, I ended up there largely because of Drake’s influence. We moved across the city like professional linkers—visiting new hideouts, drinking deeply, marauding like amateurs. Each place felt temporary, borrowed, as though we were rehearsing exits rather than enjoying arrivals. Beer dulled the edges of caution, and the lakeside shimmered with a generosity that made one forget the city could also be cruel.

At some point, excess overtook balance. I fell from a counter chair and landed on the polished floor—uninvited, undignified, exhausted. I slept in my shoes. Men like me learn not to undress too completely from the world. You never know when departure might be urgent.

I woke to the unkind weather of Kampala. The sun arrived early and without mercy, pressing down on concrete and skin alike. In the dry season, the city offers no sympathy; rain feels like a rumour, and afternoon heat like punishment. My mouth tasted of stale courage.

Out of habit, I reached for my compass in the corner pocket of my rucksack. The needle trembled before settling north, confident in a way I no longer was. Direction meant little in a city constantly shifting beneath its own weight.

I left Munyonyo cautiously, choosing routes that bent through hills and neglected roads, instinctively avoiding Makindye Military Barracks. Some places demand obedience simply by existing. I threaded through narrow, dilapidated housing units, moving quietly, penetrating the city the way men do when they would rather not be remembered.

Then came the hard bit. The American Embassy on Gaba Road lay ahead. There was no escape here. I hated being watched, and this place felt like surveillance itself—embedded in soil, wall, grass, even the nearby trees, all crouched beneath fortified concrete. Movement here felt like confession.

Behind the embassy lay a road, quiet and lonely as a graveyard at night, separating the military detachment from the compound. In front of it ran the famous Gaba Road—busy, crowded, loud with the confidence of people who believed movement alone meant safety.

After the embassy, my direction shifted towards the hospital. St Teresa lay just a stone’s throw away from that high fortress.

As I passed through the wall fence of St Teresa Girls’ School, I overheard children rehearsing their anthem exactly as it came:

*”We young women and men of you gahn dahh

Are ma Ching along

The path of e du cai tion

Sing nging and Dan sing

With joy To get her

You naii ting four a better you gan dahhh

We are de pillars of to morrows you gan dahh

Let us rise now

Embrace true know ledge

Yield ding discipline re source full mess

To rebuild a great, grate pearl”*

Their voices rose innocent and determined, floating above walls that knew too much.

I made it out of that graveyard-lonely stretch where signposts and large zombie trees seemed to interrogate the consistency out of your soul. Relief only began when I approached the church complex near Nsambya Hospital. By then, my dark skin was slick with oily sweat. I was sweating professionally, like a man inside a sauna, no longer feeling the heat.

From the hospital, I tightened my steps toward the Sharing Hall. Kampala pulsed around me—taxis coughing smoke, boda bodas slicing through impossibilities, vendors negotiating survival coin by coin.

At Nsambya Sharing Hall, I found brief refuge from the city’s dogs—literal and figurative. I checked my dilapidated Casio Twin Sensor—twenty-three years old and still blinking. It vibrated.

Felix had sent 360,000 Uganda Shillings—360K.

He instructed me to meet at 2 pm, same location. Which location?

Just as I sat to eat a tight Rolex, a voice rose calmly from within the crowd:

“Choose a side. You are either with us or for us. Otherwise, it’s useless feeding among rotten carcasses.”

Was it Felix? Drake? There was no answer.

Through their lenses, I was already a spy. And they were not entirely wrong. Journalism and intelligence look the same to a layman.

It was a quarter to two when my phone buzzed again. Felix. He had my number, though I never remembered giving it to him. Arena Mall—not the bar.

360K. Now I had money again.

At Nsambya I opened my rucksack. A pair of jeans and a white T-shirt awaited me, the inscription bold across the chest: Made in Uganda. I washed, changed my drawers, and stepped out renewed.

I was now Made in Uganda.

Arena Mall was just a stone’s throw away.

And there he was—Felix Okello.

He did not wave. Soldiers rarely wave.

“You cleaned up,” he observed.

“Nation building,” I replied.

“You received the money.”

“I did.”

“It isn’t generosity.”

We walked along the upper corridor overlooking Gaba Road. Kampala roared beneath us.

“You avoided Makindye,” he said.

“I avoid many things.”

“You think we don’t notice?”

“A man sweating through the city?”

“A man with a compass,” he corrected. “A man who writes. A man who listens.”

So they had noticed.

“You journalists think you are neutral,” Felix said. “Neutrality is a luxury.”

“And soldiers think loyalty is clarity.”

“The 360K,” he continued, “is not for drinking.”

“Shame.”

“It’s for cooperation.”

Elastic word.

“In what capacity?”

“You move in spaces we cannot enter without noise. You hear things before they become reports.”

“And if I decline?”

“Then you remain what you already are.”

“A storyteller?”

“A blind spot.”

That landed heavily.

While at Arena Mall, heading towards the pub, Felix suddenly moved his right hand towards his back pocket. My heart pounded like the Kadodi drums of Eastern Uganda — Gishu land — ceremonial, urgent. In that split second, I calculated angles, exits, glass reflections, distance to the staircase.

But he was only scratching his back.

I forced a quiet breath and kept walking.

In Kampala, paranoia is not madness. It is training.

We entered the pub.

Felix took a few more beers and offered me a meal. It was some international cuisine—something that looked like a baby’s pop and funny-looking bread. I picked at it politely for a moment, but no.

I looked him straight in the eye and said, point blank:

“My kind of meal is roasted pork or goat meat. Beef and chicken are fine too, but pork—especially ribs—are my best. Not dumplings and gravy.”

He raised an eyebrow, smiled faintly, and shook his head. Soldiers and diplomats often misunderstand taste, I thought, but at least he didn’t argue.

It dawned on me that the 360K was not generosity.

It was insurance.

Insurance to keep my ears shut and my eyes blind to the conversation I had overheard at the Munyonyo party. To them, I had vanished without a trace — despite the heavy security at the Commonwealth Resort. Cameras, guards, controlled gates — yet I slipped through.

That disappearance was not luck.

It was skill.

That was what made me real. A chameleon inside the system. Present, but unrecorded. Seen, but unregistered.

Which meant something dangerous: they needed my services more than I had imagined. The money was not payment. It was calibration. Even the suggestion that it was meant to transport me home felt rehearsed.

Drake had bugged me earlier that evening. But fate, or clumsiness, intervened. When I fell off that chair at Munyonyo and hit the polished floor, something disrupted the signal. The device only reactivated later, as I moved through the slum arteries of Makindye.

That was when they realised something unsettling.

I was harmlessly dangerous.

A man with a camera. Lenses. Recorders. Gadgets. To a layman, journalism and intelligence look identical. Observation is observation. Documentation is documentation. Only intent separates the two — and intent is never visible.

The last words Felix spoke to me that day were measured, almost paternal:

“Play the game in a way that saves even your closest friends. People like me and Muzee — we are here to serve you. And you are here to serve your country. Uganda needs men like you.”

He said it like a blessing.

Or a warning.

The noise of the pub continued around us, careless and loud. But at that table, something had shifted. This was no longer about beer. Or money.

It was recruitment without paperwork.

Perhaps I was important after all.

Or perhaps I had just entered a game where importance was another word for expendable.

Written by

Caesar Obong Ng'bong ocen

Caesar Obong Ng'bong Ocen is a Ugandan writer whose work traverses narrative fiction, cultural memory, and moral inquiry. Drawing on African cosmologies, and reflective storytelling, his writing engages with issues of power, identity, faith, and the human condition within post‑conflict societies. His series blends political realism with interior psychological struggle, articulating the tensions between duty and conscience, tradition and modernity, exile, redemption. Obong Ng'bong's work bridges literary and social worlds: it interrogates African historical and political realities while exploring philosophical and ethical questions that resonate across disciplines. His narratives are grounded in cultural authenticity and moral depth, making them relevant to both literary and humanistic inquiry. He also mentors emerging writers and contributes to dialogue on African storytelling traditions and their place in contemporary literature.

Follow

Did this story move you? Every gift goes directly to Caesar Obong Ng'bong ocen — writers on Muwado earn from reader appreciation, not algorithms. Even $1 makes a difference.

Gift Once Gift Monthly