Seeking Balance in a Continent Portrayed By Its Extremes

Abstract

This story begins in the mid-1980’s, some months after President Yoweri Museveni’s rebels swept to power in Uganda in 1986. A visitor arrived at the offices of the Weekly Topic, a newspaper in Uganda where I then worked. The receptionist sent a note in that told me the name of the guest who wanted to see me: It was Mr. Mort Rosenblum. I was barely a year out of graduate school, and Rosenblum’s “Coups and Earthquakes” had enthralled me immensely. I could hardly believe the words I was seeing. I asked the receptionist to show him in.