‘Uganda is broken, which is why I love it to death’

The meeting was supposed to be 30 minutes. In the end, it took nearly two and a half hours. Theo Kasango (not his real name for privacy reasons) is a big-minded young Ugandan man I have known since he was a precocious little thing with a running nose.

His parents are good friends. They left Uganda as Theo was turning 11. He returned to Uganda 20 years later, a bearded handsome lad, to make a fortune for himself from the land of his ancestors. His parents, who didn’t return to Uganda, didn’t waste their money paying his school fees.