We are back outside, omo! You know there is this famous narrative that Ugandans, oba Africans, do not read. It is repeated so often that even some of us who spend our lives writing almost started believing it. During our little forced holiday, I honestly thought people would simply move on. I mean, Ugandans have no time. Them Ugandans only read headlines before sprinting to the comment section to educate the author about a story they have not actually finished. But banange, I underestimated you people.
The messages started coming in almost immediately. Friends called in checking on us, strangers sent DMs wondering when the paper would return. Some even confessed that Friday mornings no longer felt complete because The Timeline had disappeared. I will not exaggerate and say the whole country stopped functioning; we still have rent to pay but it was genuinely humbling to discover that this little corner of the newspaper had quietly become part of some people’s weekly routine. So, thank you. Thank you for reminding us that good writing still has a place in Uganda. And since gratitude is important, allow me to also thank the government for generously forcing us to touch some grass.
People realised birds actually sing in the morning, a few even remembered they had children. And somewhere in the middle of all this, Big Eye dropped a tweet that somehow became part of the conversation leading to our return. Only in Uganda can a musician accidentally find himself in media history without releasing a new song, star boss waffe! Watching Ugandans react to Daily Monitor’s closure was perhaps the greatest social experiment this country has produced since somebody convinced us that pineapple belongs on pizza. Everybody became a loyal Daily Monitor reader, even people who normally only encounter the newspaper when someone screenshots a headline into a WhatsApp group started mourning like shareholders.
You could almost hear violins playing in the background. People described the closure as the collapse of balanced journalism while their own browsing history consisted mostly of TikTok dances, football banter and conspiracy theories explaining why rain only falls on weekdays. Publicly, everyone spoke about solidarity and the importance of independent media. Privately, you could almost imagine analytics dashboards being refreshed every 30 seconds to see whether the extra traffic had arrived. Facebook groups that normally spend entire afternoons arguing about fuel prices suddenly transformed into support meetings discussing democracy, press freedom and constitutional values.
Ugandan content truly has range, I do not know why Netflix has not set base yet because we can move from debating whether Rolex should contain cabbage to defending media freedom in under five minutes. Naturally, where there are Ugandans, there will be memes. We process national events the same way our grandparents processed grief with stories. Then, just as everyone had accepted their new reality and began writing lengthy think pieces about the future of journalism, came the announcement that the paper was returning. My favourite groups were those who had not visited the website in months but instantly became ambassadors for quality journalism, we appreciate naye tusaba ku ka subscription.
Of course, because this is Uganda, peace never lasts for long. The celebrations barely settled before the complaints resumed. The website was apparently too slow. The layout had changed. Headlines were too long. Headlines were too short. Somebody even managed to complain about the font before reading a single story. That is when I remembered that complaining is probably our strongest renewable resource. We mourn loudly, celebrate loudly, then immediately return to complaining because consistency matters. However, beneath all the jokes, this episode reminded us of something important. Ugandans actually read. Maybe not every paragraph. Maybe sometimes we stop halfway because someone tagged us in another argument.
Maybe we skim headlines before confidently becoming constitutional lawyers in the comments. But we read. We care. We argue. We laugh. We build communities around stories. And for me as me, the messages asking when The Timeline would return meant more than you probably realise. They reminded me that words still matter, humour still matters, and that every Friday there are people somewhere waiting for a story that helps them laugh at the beautiful madness called Uganda. So yes, tukomyewo. The keyboards are warm again, the satire has returned, and if this country continues producing stories at its current rate which, let us be honest it will, we shall all continue meeting here every Friday. Just do us one favour this time, after reading the headline, kindly continue to paragraph two.