Though early morning when I touched down in Entebbe it was pitch-black equatorial night outside the aircraft. A big, bow-wow storm was shedding acres of water over Lake Victoria, which lay hard by the runway. As I looked through the oval of the window, the sky about the lake lit up with sheet lightning, followed shortly afterwards by a whump of thunder. I tried to resist the melodramatic feelings that rose inside me; then gave in. From where I sat, it did feel like a show.
I’d not been back to Uganda since 2000, when I covered the Kanungu cult murders for the Guardian. But I was used to the highway from the airport to Kampala, the capital, unshaken by what might have been eerie in another place – soldiers leaning out of the dark, the flash of headlights on wet banana leaves, most of all the piles of coffins at a roadside carpenters. Those coffins – or rather, their successors – had been there since I began coming to Uganda eight years ago. They were a comfort not a fright to me.
more from The Guardian here.