UGANDA.

The origin of that name notwithstanding, we now own it and it owns us.

We are defined by it the same way our borders are, even if they were drawn by Europeans sitting in Germany about 150 years ago.

Britain’s Winston Churchill linked Uganda with beauty in his 1908 book ‘My African Journey’, famously naming it “The Pearl of Africa”.

The book itself makes for fascinating reading, as do most publications written about this country back in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

“The Kingdom of Uganda is a fairy tale. You climb up a railway instead of a beanstalk, and at the end there is a wonderful new world. The scenery is different, the vegetation is different, the climate is different, and, most of all, the people are different from anything elsewhere to be seen in the whole range of Africa.”

“Instead of the breezy uplands we enter a tropical garden. In the place of naked, painted savages, clashing their spears and gibbering in chorus to their tribal chiefs, a complete and elaborate polity is presented… an amiable, clothed, polite, and intelligent race dwell together in an organised monarchy…”

The entire book is written as if to make us – you and I existing here and linked to the name Uganda, immensely proud even today.

And, to clarify, his reference to Uganda in that book covers the whole country – go read it yourself.

Sad to say, along the way (sounds like Harry Belafonte’s “Jamaican Farewell” of long ago), that reputation has taken so much damage that even the slightest suspicion sticks a new tag onto us we cannot be proud of.

Idi Amin, war, famine, HIV/AIDS, corruption…a lot has been thrown at the Uganda wall over the years. At YOU – your name.

Today we have a new one to deal with in this pestilence called Ebola.

When the first story about an outbreak of the disease in Uganda first broke, I called up an American friend of mine and had the discussion.

I implored him to get his compatriots at the State Department to Be Serious about their travel advisory against Uganda.

At that point, I was in his village in the United States and he was in my city in Uganda.

I told him I was being asked by people in the US if I was alright while there, while he was living a normal life here in Kampala drinking coffee and shopping and whatnot, without being interrogated about his Ebola status.

Flying back into the country a few days later, an airport official in Dubai who needed to escort me to my next flight got into some light banter with me and when I said I was from Uganda he took a slight but very perceptible step away from me.

Ebola is NOT Uganda, neither is it Ugandan.

But we will be happy to take on the reputation of being the ‘Ebola Crushers’, if the world can acknowledge this.

There is no Winston Churchill to write this down in a book for the world, so the task falls upon all of us – Ugandans – to make the world acknowledge this, and more.

Over the last few weeks, we have proven that in some measure, by pushing back against the WHO and global media houses like Al-Jazeera that dabbled in extremely lazy reporting about this Ebola disease.

What some Ugandans did not understand in the beginning was that the Ebola tag would affect us all, shut us out of so many countries, and stop so many people coming in to visit us, spend their money and so on and so forth.

Meanwhile, the people tagging us with Ebola – the foreign journalists and leaders at agencies like WHO and the CDC, will never be stopped from travelling in and out of the actual Ebola epicentres.

Those Ugandans who did understand it took up the assignment with gusto and told the world quite clearly that we were not accepting it.

The dial-back has been so efficient that the WHO Director General himself has been going round Uganda visiting hospitals, the State House and certainly some hotels and restaurants.

In my favourite photograph of his visit, we saw him in a near embrace with the EU Resident Representative to Uganda, Ambassador Jan Sadek.

All Ugandans should pick this up and share it with those people and countries who have closed their borders to us, imagining that anyone with the word Uganda on their passport must be infected.

We must make people acknowledge Uganda for what it is for us – a badge of honour – if we believe it to be one ourselves.

Over the years, the world has found many more good things to define us by, so we should create a longer list ourselves and then make them more public than Ebola and whatnot. 

In my numerous travels I have had people at airport immigration counters respond to my passport with: “Uganda! How is Anne Kansiime?” (South Africa and Tanzania) and in shopping malls with: “Uganda? Can you get me Shea Butter?” (Arizona, USA).

A Ugandan friend of mine who visited Vietnam last week from the US was chatting with a waiter in Hanoi who said to him: “Yes, I know Uganda…good marathon you have there!” (Kudos to Amos Wekesa and MTN Uganda and all the others who have made that work for the country.)

We can, should and must do more. Uganda is OUR badge of honour, and only we can make it a point of pride that will outshine any flecks of mud or Ebola-ridden spittle they might throw at us. 

That’s one thing all Ugandans should join in on – No More Sleeping on our identity, our name – Uganda.