When Uganda chose its motto in 1962, it did not choose For Oil and My Stomach, nor For Tribe and My Tender. It chose For God and My Country. Four words that are both prayer and pledge. The author of this theology in miniature, Fr. Hillary Kaijanabyo, understood what many of our modern patriots forget: that a country without God is only a piece of land, and a God without a country is only an idea that never learns to walk barefoot in our soil.
Fr. Kaijanabyo gave us a catechism before we had a constitution. Put God first, then country will follow. Not God or country. Not God versus country. But God for country. It is the same logic that made a wandering Englishman, Winston Churchill, stop his imperial diary in 1908, look at the green hills of Kigezi, the mist over Rwenzori, the laughter of Lake Victoria at Jinja, and call this place The Pearl of Africa. Churchill was Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, a man who had seen empires, but even his colonial spectacles could not hide Providence. He did not call us the Diamond of Africa, to be mined and shipped. He called us a Pearl-something living, formed quietly, precious because it is organic, whole, and cannot be manufactured in a factory.
And here is a short note Churchill never saw, yet it proves him a prophet: deep in Bunyaruguru, Rubirizi District, lies Lake Nkugute, ordinarily called Lake Rutoto. From above, it is shaped exactly like the map of Africa. God, with a sense of humour only the Divine Artist has, drew Africa inside Uganda. Churchill called us the Pearl of Africa without knowing that God had already hidden a tiny Africa inside the Pearl itself. If that is not Providence signing His own work, what is?
Oh, what a pious corruption we have perfected! We have built more churches per square kilometre than boreholes, yet our rivers carry plastic rosaries. We hold overnight prayers for national transformation while the National Environment Management Authority writes reports that no one reads, except perhaps the Nile itself, which carries our sins to Egypt. We speak of justice, yet justice in our courts has become a visitor who needs transport facilitation to arrive. The peasant who steals a chicken sees immediate justice; the man who steals a district sees promotion.
And yet, God has not resigned from Uganda.
If Providence were as fickle as our politics, this pearl would have long become dust. But look at the map God drew. He placed the source of the Nile, that great biblical river, right here in Jinja. Not in Berlin. Not in Washington. Here. The Nile that saved Moses. The Nile that saved a people. Consider the irony: Pharaoh ordered death, but the Nile became a cradle. The daughter of Pharaoh found a Hebrew boy floating in a basket of reeds-Exodus 2-and that river that should have been a grave became a seminary. Moses, the lawgiver, was a graduate of the Nile.
And was it not the Nile valley that saved our Lord Himself? When Herod sought to kill the Child, Joseph was told, “Take the child and flee to Egypt”-Matthew 2:13. The Holy Family walked along the Nile’s green vein. Jesus, the Saviour of the world, was a refugee on the Nile. Jacob’s sons went to Egypt for grain during famine, surviving because the Nile never stopped giving-Genesis 42. We are not just any country. We are a chosen geography. God hid His own Son in the shadow of our river. If the source is here, then our land is not just land; it is a baptismal font for nations.
We are still the Pearl. Not because we deserve it, but because God, in His stubborn Providence, still insists on calling us so.
by: Sem. Robert Bigabwarugaba, rrobertrugaba@gmail.com, St. Paul’s National Seminary – Kinyamasika
Note: This is a reflective opinion piece with religious and biblical interpretations.
