[UAH] What's with Oyam District - Will it Prosper?

What it means to be rejected in a place

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By Joseph van Eijndhoven

Posted  Wednesday, June 26  2013 at  01:00

IN SUMMARY

After several short visits to Uganda, he decided to settle in the country. He married a woman to establish the connection, and together, they invested in a business that would boost the local economy. But their neighbours hate them.

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I first came to Africa in 1981 and lived in Ghana for a year. I crossed the Sahara desert on my motor cycle and visited a string of African countries. 
When I stayed in Uganda for a year and a half between 1984 and 1987, I worked with the United Nations Development Programme. I continued visiting the Pearl of Africa occasionally.

More insight
From 2004, I started looking for ways to settle here and since 2007, my wife and I have been working to set up a farm and a poultry business on her father's land in Otwal, Oyam District.

As a political scientist I have always been interested in mechanisms of underdevelopment; I can say that my five-year stay in Otwal has definitely provided more insight. 
What I want to share are the circumstances that led to people in the community labelling my wife a prostitute, and me an old man whose wife married him for his money.

We have been warned by our friends that they may harm us so we no longer buy our food locally and fetch water.
When we came to Otwal and started clearing the land, the LC urged me to employ as many local resources as possible to boost the local economy. This was exactly what we had in mind. We wanted to "give back to the community".

Over the past five years, we have injected tens of millions of shillings in the local economy in the form of employing building labour, buying locally baked bricks, sand, transport, and employing people to plough, weed, harvest and what have you.

Sabotage
Recently, we started supplying eggs, which has lowered the prices for people and has made stocking easier for the shopkeepers.

We did things by the book yet our lives have been threatened and people have vowed to take our land from us. So, what went wrong and what lessons can be drawn for other investors in villages and for the development of the country as a whole?

Three things come to mind. Most importantly, tribalism and petty jealousy. People all over the world are jealous but in a small place like Otwal people actually go to any length to sabotage those who advance in life.

We bought an acre of land bordering ours. After we paid for the land, our next door neighbour went to the seller and told her to sell that plot again to somebody else "because there is nothing these people can do". 
Some years later, we bought a larger plot on the other side of our land. This has led to bigger problems.

Not with the previous owner who sold to us and moved to Kamdini. Not with the owner before that but with the one even before that; an old man who owned that land in the 1980s. He sold his land cheaply and now knowing about the Shs6m we paid for it, he showed up with his sons to demand Shs15m.

Resources 
It is hardly surprising that he was "advised" by the other neighbours. These women, whom we helped a lot over the years by the way, have nothing to gain from the fracas except perhaps some free drama on their doorsteps. 
We live in a house of seven by seven metres and have one solar panel. We do not own a TV unlike many others in Otwal. We do not have a luxury car or a truck unlike many in Otwal.

What is wrong with us is that we do not belong to the clan, which runs the trading centre where we live.
The second reason has to do with resources. Our father, a headmaster, had to literally run for his life when rebels came for him one night in May 2003. He has been living in Lira ever since and the land was abandoned. 
So, our neighbours had twelve acres of free land to graze their cows and goats, free fire wood, free honey, free fruits from the trees, among others.

These free things were taken from them when we started using the land. Instead of accepting that the owners have returned our neighbours resorted to terrorising us in order to force us to leave so they can get their free resources back.

Thirdly, and lastly, it pains me to say but from what I have observed since 2004 I conclude that confrontation and sabotage are the default mode of operation in Otwal as well as in many other parts of Uganda. "Compromise is surrender" as one political figure put it not too long ago. 
For many Ugandans, all of 10 is apparently better than one third of 100. Or is it?

While many Ugandans are busy preventing their neighbours (and thereby indirectly themselves) to advance in life, people in Western countries have learned to cooperate in business so we can all benefit. Other developing nations in Asia also found this secret to prosperity for all.

Interests
My conclusion after living in Otwal is that global macro-economic and political factors only explain part of underdevelopment.

At the local level, strong interpersonal forces are at work, which prevent economic growth: tribalism, envy, wanting free things and an absolute determination to sabotage anything that is not in one's own immediate direct interest. These forces often succeed because, unlike in Western countries, the neutralising effect of strong civil institutions is lacking.

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