The cover page of Goretti Kyomuhendo's new book, Promises.
The irony of being born in Africa today is that millions of Africans don’t want to spend the rest of their lives at home. Mother Africa is no longer warm, caring and loving to many of her children. Thousands of young Africans weather desert storms, ocean currents and slave traders to cross into Europe, looking for a better life. Thousands more queue at embassies of former colonial masters, seeking entry visas into Europe or America.
To get a visa, young African women and men have to undergo health tests, produce evidence of financial security (borrowed or forged bank account details), and demonstrate that they aren’t economic migrants. An absolute majority of the applicants fail to get the visa. The lucky ones might just have jumped over one hurdle. The problems of settling down in Europe or America, finding work, paying back money that was borrowed to find the application and travel expenses, and supporting family and friends, hang around one’s neck all the time.
This is the tragic story that Goretti Kyomuhendo tells in her new book, Promises (Catalyst Press, 2025). This is the sad tale of a young man, Kagaba, who leaves Uganda for greener pastures in England. He lies that he is traveling to a relative’s graduation from a university in England. The family raises money from various sources to fund the trip. Kagaba arrives in England and is picked up at the airport by his relative through marriage, Musana.
Kagaba’s nightmare begins on the road from the airport to Musana’s place. First, he is disappointed by Musana’s appearance. The host doesn’t look like a man doing well in England. Then Musana knocks the car in front of him whilst in heavy traffic. When the lady whose car is knocked threatens to call the police, Musana begs her not to whilst on his knees. Kagaba is shocked. But he experiences bigger shock when he arrives at Musana’s residence, which is small, cold and in disorder. Musana leaves him alone in the apartment because he has to report to work immediately.
The ‘greener pastures, money and other promises’ that Kagaba imagines are his to enjoy in London don’t happen exactly as he dreamt. What follows is an almost nightmarish existence. Kagaba had arrived in London on a visitor’s visa. Thus, he couldn’t legally work. And if he were to find work, his pay would be below the minimum rates. Eventually he finds some work distributing posters. Unfortunately his hand is mauled by a dog one day when at work. He ends up serving in a hotel, using a ‘borrowed’ but paid for passport. In the long run that arrangement collapses and Kagaba ends up depending on the goodwill of other immigrants to survive.
Immigrants without papers
But Kagaba is just the lead character in this tragic drama. His story is merely a canvas on which other, more tragic, stories are drawn. Kagaba had left a wife at home, Ajuna, who delivered their baby. The promises of finding work and supporting his wife and child remain just pipe dreams for the three. In the end the marriage between Kagaba and Ajuna collapses because both of them end up in romantic relationships with other people. Kagaba’s inability to support his family back at home, where Ajuna is struggling to manage life with a baby on a poor university teacher’s pay, catalyses the estrangement and eventual break up.
The cast in the drama is a sad mix of immigrants without papers who stay and work legally in England. Those who manage to get the legal papers are few and hardly want to be associated with the illegals. Some of the illegals would rather commit suicide than face the shame of returning home without having uplifted their families and paid back the money used to fund their trips.
What Promises does is to remind readers of the unending troubles that millions of Africans endure to reach the imagined paradise in Europe. This isn’t a recent subject. It has been around for more than four decades now. The rise of immigrants looking for a better life beyond Africa, especially economic immigrants, is traceable to the 1980s. Economic downturn in Africa, after about a decade of independence, meant that many educated and skilled Africans could not get jobs on the continent. With dwindling profits from farm work and produce, and few or no industries to support excess labour, young Africans looked West. Europe and America appealed naturally as they were cast as beacons of human progress.
Yet, the promise of a better life in the West can turn into bitter experience without warning. The illegals face racism, are accused of stealing jobs from the locals, are suspected of being criminals, are charged with being carriers of diseases or being prostitutes or drug peddlers, among other ills. Because they gave wrong reasons for travelling or their visas have expired, the illegals live in terror of being stopped by a police or immigration officer. Yet, some of the immigrants had fairly decent jobs in their home country, which, though they imagined would not give them the dream life they wished for.
In Promises, Kagaba is lucky to find a job in Botswana. Musana is forced to return to Uganda after the death of his daughter. Neither enjoys the promises of the imagined paradise in England. But thousands of Africans, Asians and Latin Americans are not so lucky as European countries and America arrest, detain and deport them back home. How tragic that an African escaping economic hardship and some unending war ends up in a European country, settles down, makes a life for himself through sheer hard work but is arrested one day and deported to a different African country. What would it take for Africa to promise its young people realistic and deliverable lives?
The writer teaches literature, media and performing arts at the University of Nairobi. [email protected]
