Uganda

Uganda is the setting of Lillian Kagwa’s early life and the place she leaves after violence by the state’s security forces makes escape feel necessary. The novel gives the country a defining role in her history: its political upheaval, the killing of her cousin Arthur, and her eventual departure establish the circumstances behind her arrival in New York in 1968.

Political Setting

Lillian grew up in Jinja, described as Uganda’s second-largest city. She lived through the country’s emancipation from Britain and its subsequent homegrown rule under Milton Obote. Obote governed through the army and the General Service Unit, a secret police force whose agents spread violence across the country. This history is not distant background for Lillian; it determines what happens to her family and why she decides to leave.

The Checkpoint and Arthur’s Death

In 1967, Lillian and three cousins were traveling toward Kampala when three men claiming to be General Service Unit agents stopped their car. The men checked the cousins’ identification and demanded that Arthur, the only male cousin, get out to open the trunk. Arthur hesitated because he did not want to leave Lillian and his sisters. An agent then shot him.

Lillian was driving. Though the gunfire briefly left her and her cousins disoriented, she managed to put the car in gear and escape. The agents fired at the departing vehicle but could not follow: their own car had run out of gas. They had established the checkpoint to take a more suitable vehicle and were left waiting for another. Lillian reached Kampala within half an hour; Arthur had already died. The episode shows how routine the danger had become: an act of political violence could be treated as ordinary rather than newsworthy.

Departure and Migration

Lillian wanted to get out of Uganda. A year after the checkpoint killing, she secured a visa to the United States. She arrived in New York in 1968, aged twenty-five, knowing no one. British rule had left her with command of English, which eased her transition and helped her find work. At Glamour Time, a modeling agency in Queens, her English was better than its founder Pavel Aresenyev’s; it made the business sound more legitimate than it was. She accepted the job without knowing that the agency was a scam, valuing its pay because she had been unable to find work in Uganda.

Narrative Significance

Uganda anchors Lillian’s story in a contrast between economic hardship and state-sanctioned violence. In New York, a garbage strike and an exploitative job make up part of her new life, but neither carries the same weight as the danger she escaped. Her migration is therefore not simply a change of country: it follows a family loss and a political order in which armed agents could kill with little public consequence. Uganda remains the essential context for understanding why a paid job in a fraudulent agency could still represent a chance to begin again.