Smita Ganatra

I was 13 when I left and Uganda was home at that time, that’s where you grew up, and nobody talked about going anywhere else. And my parents went to India, but not that much really. So you knew that there were cousins and family in India but there was no link.

Anand Dattani

Do you know how your parents ended up [in Uganda]?

Smita Ganatra

Yeah my dad came to Kenya when he was about 18, really an economic migrant, the family wasn’t doing that well in [India], he was the eldest son, came to Kenya, got a job, did the usual stuff of working for different people and then finally got himself settled in a job and then his brother was in Uganda and he kind of encouraged him to go to Uganda from Kenya when my dad was married. He came obviously as a single man and years later went back to India, got married, and then mum came across.

Anand Dattani

I don't actually hear that many stories of [the fact that] there was a huge move of the British [colonialists who] went to Africa and they brought a lot of Indians over for the railways.

Smita Ganatra

My dad wasn’t part of that but certainly along the railway route there were these little towns where the shops were developing and he certainly worked in [them] but he wasn't one of the railway workers, he very much came a bit later in time.

Anand Dattani

And I wonder if that's more the Asians who made themselves established here also tended to be the ones that left India themselves? I don't know if that's the case but you know most of the stories I hear from people here are the ones who, their parents decided to leave India for themselves because they wanted better opportunities.

Smita Ganatra

Yeah it's possible. I think it's definitely there, that immigrant mentality, that you drive yourself better yourself and you can see how it all came about from when we came here from Uganda to where we are now. There's always that push that you get yourself better, and your parents were the same.

Anand Dattani

Yeah and it kind of reflects on us. Were you in Kampala?

Smita Ganatra

No I was born in Bugiri. My dad had a shop which was quite a successful shop in the small village and then as all the kids were growing up there was only primary education in Bugiri, so then they moved to Jinja for secondary education. He had a shop initially and then a flour mill. So that’s what he had, he was in partnership, but that’s what he ran. So childhood it was a very idyllic childhood, carefree, there were no kind of restrictions you weren’t scared at all, it was a very free community/society everybody kind of looked out for each other. So I was in Bugiri until I was 6 and then went Jinja.

Anand Dattani

When was that, what year?

Smita Ganatra

1966 we went to Jinja.

Anand Dattani

Okay so after the independence.

Smita Ganatra

Yeah I was born in 1959.

Anand Dattani

And the whole looking out for each other was that mainly amongst Asians, or even did you have friends that were local African Ugandans as well?

Smita Ganatra

In Bugiri it was a fairly kind of mixed Asian community, the African community kind of lived more on the outskirts of the village, but Jinja our schools were mixed, so we had people from all nationalities there. I think most of my friends were Asians funnily enough.

Anand Dattani

Is that more because of just cultural similarities?

Smita Ganatra

I don’t know, I haven’t really thought about it like that, I guess that's probably it. When you’re that young you go with similar people in some ways.

Anand Dattani

I guess you didn't feel any of this class divide where Asians got put in the middle with the white westerners at the top I know you were quite young but…

Smita Ganatra

I didn’t so much but I now go back to Uganda and I reflect on it as an adult and think “Yes of course it was there”. There was this one supermarket in Jinja which belonged to your family and you would see the English people who lived in Jinja would come and shop there. So when you went to that shop you saw English people there and when you think about the shops all the shops were Asian shops, the Main Street in Jinja was all Asians, and you didn’t at that time stop and think “Oh why aren’t there any African shops?”, you didn't, but you do now. You know because you’ve grown up and you’ve learned to challenge things in a slightly different way. So yes that divide was there for sure.

Anand Dattani

But it didn't feel like it was enforced?

Smita Ganatra

It didn’t, for a young person like me it didn't feel like that at all. You got up, you went to school, and all the people at school were mixed and you didn't look out for those things at that stage of your life.

Anand Dattani

Do you remember any fond memories?

Smita Ganatra

I have lots of fond memories, as I said the childhood was very idyllic, we lived in Bugiri. My uncle used to live in Kakira and our cousins, we were all really close so we were either in Kakira or in Bugiri, and holidays we were always together, and you know I have memories of being like a 3 year old and my siblings were going off to Kakira for the holiday and I [remember] running into the house at 3 [years old] packing my little bag and saying “I'm going too” they entertained me and said “It doesn't matter, let her come, if she is upset we’ll send her back somehow, it's fine, don't worry about it” and the time with our cousins was just lovely and the time in Kakira in particular, got such fond memories of going to Chiko were there was a swimming pool there, and just playing in the backyard, and climbing trees and cutting mangoes [down] and eating them, lots of food memories as well. But even as children climbing on these tin roofs and then looking into the market in Jinja. So lots of very very fond memories really of growing up in that place because it’s a beautiful country.

Anand Dattani

Do you remember a point at when that feeling of freedom and idyllicism started to change?

Smita Ganatra

I think it was, and I remember so distinctly actually that change, because it felt very safe until this period. My two sisters got married on the 6^th of August 1972 and we had a big family wedding planned and we were all in the hall decorating the hall and the food was being prepared for the wedding the following day, and on the radio there was an announcement that all the Asians would have to leave, everybody kind of sniggered saying “Oh yeah this guy has lost it, he's had a dream, it’ll all wash away” and I remember hearing that. And then nothing happened, the wedding happened everything went to plan. But really the weeks that followed the wedding, so this was August, by September you were starting to hear stories, as a child you were probably hearing from your parents, and there were whispers, because they didn’t want to frighten us in some ways about people being arrested, people being taken, people being tortured, and then one night we had some soldiers knocking on our door and they arrested my dad, just took him just like that. And obviously when our family saw the soldiers coming all the girls were shut away in one room because they didn't want any girls to be around for the soldiers to see, and I remember peeking out of the window and seeing my dad literally being butted [with a gun] as they took him to the lorry that was just there, and I could see from the window, they just literally picked him up and threw him, like a sack of potatoes, in the back of the lorry and you were just kind of frozen, you just didn't know what was going on. And this was in the evening, there was nothing you could do, your house was watched so you couldn't leave, and at that point it was so many women in the house. We had a neighbour next door who was kind of connected so we could sort of call upon them, and everybody was a bit stunned, to try and get a message, to get information, because there was no information they just took him, said nothing.

Anand Dattani

Do you know why they just took your dad and not the rest?

Smita Ganatra

They just started hitting [him] and just took him. So then that night nothing happened, and then the following morning again our neighbour’s son went out and informed my brother-in-law that this had happened, just to try and see if we can get some information from the police or army, or just try to use some connections. But nothing came [from it] and just after lunchtime my dad came back again with four soldiers, armed soldiers again, and his clothes were completely torn, he was beaten quite badly, so you could see he was covered in bruises and they just came and he said “Can I have the key to the mill” and he took the mill [key] and went again. We didn’t know what was going on, so we’re thinking “Okay he’s taken the mill [key], it’s something to do with the business”. So then 2/3 hours later he came back and said that somebody had reported that he had taken Idi Amin’s photograph and stamped on it. So basically what they did is from there they took him to the police station in Jinja made him lie on a slab of ice and they were torturing him all night, they were throwing cold water [on him] and butting [him with a gun], quite violent, this was my dad who had a heart attack not many years before that. So we were clearly worried and we weren't expecting him back because lot of people who were arrested in that way…

Anand Dattani

That was the end…

Smita Ganatra

That was the end. So they tortured him like that all night and then the next morning they took him to the army barracks, by which time he was half unconscious, and threw him in front of, there was a court and Idi Amin was presiding, so he then said to my dad “Bwana (a respectful form of address) what are you doing here?”, because he knew my dad, he used to buy flour from the mill for the army because when he was a junior military man he used to come and buy flour for the soldiers, my dad used to supply the army. So luckily it was Amin and he recognised my dad and my dad said “I haven’t got a clue why I’m here, I was just brought here, I don't know what's going on” and he said “Oh you've insulted me and you’ve broken my picture”. So my dad said “Look I’ve got your picture in the mill next to a photograph of my Mungu (god) and I light the candle to it everyday, it's just there, what are you saying? That's not true”. So he said  “Right” he got four soldiers to go with him and they were instructed that “Take him to the mill if the photograph is not there, just kill him”.

Anand Dattani

Wow

Smita Ganatra

So luckily whoever reported [him] they didn’t go in the mill and destroy the picture, didn't have the foresight.

Anand Dattani

But he doesn't know who reported [him]?

Smita Ganatra

No I think somebody said it was one of the staff who…

Anand Dattani

Wanted to gain points [with Idi Amin]…

Smita Ganatra

Wanted to gain points or whatever. So really after that, it was weeks before we left, then it was saying “Right get your passports done, aligned” and I remember sitting there, and we used to have all the photographs which were framed, taking them out of the frame and just cutting the frame around so we could bring the photographs with us in a little bag, and I remember sitting there cutting those things just because those are priceless, and I have those pictures in my house and those are just like so valuable because that’s the only bits you could take out. But because my dad was a Ugandan citizen, we were all British citizens, my dad took the Ugandan citizenship because he was running a business and needed to have that, he wasn't allowed to come here. So my two sisters were married, my brother was studying here in the UK so he was doing his A-Levels here and then it was my mum, my older sister, and my younger sister, that’s it. But I remember leaving Jinja, our house in Jinja, we just had a little van with our suitcases and we had a dog which we had to leave behind, and that was hard, but my dad told us that “Oh yeah he's such a great dog the police want him they're going to come and take him”. So we left him with a neighbour and I remember kneeling down and just saying goodbye, and it was hard.

Anand Dattani

At that age did you know exactly what was happening?

Smita Ganatra

Yeah I was old enough.

Anand Dattani

So you knew that you’re not going to be going back there anytime?

Smita Ganatra

Yeah so you just got in the van, you didn’t know what the future was, you just went. But that journey from Jinja to Kampala had 10 checkpoints and at every checkpoint, so the women were at the back with the suitcases, my dad and my brother-in-law at the front with the driver, and every checkpoint [the soldiers] they were given a book “Here a book for you to read” and it was laden with money, and so you were basically bribing your way out of that checkpoint. But they would just come and they would open the back and we were told “Don’t look at them, just look down, don’t look [them] straight in the eye” because they were taking women and they were raping them, they were just throwing them in the ditch. You heard all of that, so you were scared, and as a 13 year old you were scared, you knew enough to be scared. But [those] 10 checkpoints, one after the other, after the other, after the other, and we finally got to Kampala which was a relief, and there was some community place became the hotels, we didn't have that sort of money to go and stay in hotels, so there was a community hall which was about twice the size of this room and they’d just laid mattresses. So all families were given like three or four mattress to sleep on and that was just kind of one night, and they provided food.

Anand Dattani

So did you already know what flight you are taking or was this provided until [you found one]?

Smita Ganatra

No the ticket was bought and you had to buy that, ticket isn't provided. So my brother-in-law had got the flight so we knew, I'd never flown before so I didn't even know what all that was about, so we were told that we were going to go, that he was going to drop us at the airport and then we could go in. My dad couldn't obviously come with us so he stayed back and he was going to go to India a few days later, and yeah we just went in. There was a bus, I remember there was a bus that took us to the plane, I think it was Sabena Airways or something. So yeah there we were on the plane, on our way to the UK, and landed at Stansted.

Anand Dattani

Because your brother was already here did that help with either getting the ticket or having at least some base or knowledge of where you were going?

Smita Ganatra

No, no because we didn't know, in our mind we just didn’t know, where London was, he was in Birmingham, where we were being taken. So we landed at Stansted and we were cleared through and I think they gave us some warm clothing of coats and stuff, I think we had something given to us there, but then essentially it was just processing us as quickly as possible. We were put on coaches and taken to Heathfield camp in Honiton, so we were in Devon. We didn’t know the geography of the country, so didn't know where we were, we just knew we were being taken somewhere. The thing [was] that you felt safe, which was nice, you felt things were kind of controlled and it seemed like there was a process in place that was being followed, and there was a lot of you there so you were all being processed in the same way. So we then arrived in Heathfield camp at night sometime and then they allocated us a family. So there was Michael and Joy, lovely young couple, who were allocated to our family. So they basically helped us settle into our room, and my sister was a baby so they got nappies and milk bottles and stuff like that, and we had one room. So we had a double bed, a cot, and another single bed, so that was it. We had a room and a shared bathroom and shared toilets, and then they took my mum and my sister to the restaurant to get some food and I said “I'll just stay with the baby” and they came back with some food for me, and I will never forget that, they opened this, you know they had a plate which was obviously covered, and they opened it and it was cabbage, uhh rice and cabbage, and I just thought “I cant eat that”. So that was the first food encountering in Honiton, but you know people were just so kind, so caring, and the next morning we got up again and we had some more clothes and things sorted out, we were winter prepared, and [it was all] stuff that people had donated, so the community around Honiton had come together and donated.

Anand Dattani

What [were] the conditions of the room and the surrounding area?

Smita Ganatra

It was an army barracks so it was just a room, so basic, there was nothing, it was comfortable and warm and we were safe, so all those things really were the things that mattered really at that point. And people were kind they were trying to help us, where we came from I mean at the airport somebody was shot when we were there and it was chaos, it was chaos, and it was scary chaos. So to come from that to somewhere which was tranquil, peaceful, safe, warm comfortable, we couldn’t ask for more really, we couldn’t ask for more.

Anand Dattani

So I think you said Michael, so there were volunteers that were assigned just to you, so one family [to a volunteer]?

Smita Ganatra

Yeah so they were a lovely couple, they must have been probably in their 30s, they had two young children who came the following day to see us, just lovely, but they were kind of like our link workers. So they helped us with all the logistics, so then we had the next day, they filled in all the forms and you got registered with the doctor and social services, that sort of stuff, but the thing that we found really funny was they gave us money. So they gave us, “Here you go this is your money and you’ll get money every week”, we kind of looked at each other and said “Why?”, you know you weren’t used to that concept of money…

Anand Dattani

…as a help.

Smita Ganatra

Yeah that people would just give you money, you worked for your money, so that's how things happened. So we were king of sorted out and then we tried to contact my brother and tell him we were safe and we were here, just link up with him, and he was only 19 poor guy. He went to my cousin who lived in Bolton and said “Look these guys are now here, what do you think I should do?” and they said “Don’t worry, just get them to come to Bolton, we’ll help them settle”. So we stayed in the camp for about 11 days and it was quite funny, we got used to the routine, you went to the canteen and had your breakfast, lunch, dinner, and you got used to having cornflakes and milk, it wasn't familiar food, but then there were other familiar foods and being Indians that we are within weeks the people had the masalas out, and they were in the kitchen cooking.

Anand Dattani

I heard of this in some camps.

Smita Ganatra

They were making shak (vegetable curry), puri, rice, and stuff so soon there was familiar food as well which was again great. I remember just discovering the little village of Honiton and cute little shops and stuff it was all just, it was new, it was adventure, and at that age it was an adventure. My poor mum must have been beside herself because she had these two girls, and she'd never been without my dad, and she didn't know where he was or how he was going to be, and each family was given £50, so he just gave us the £50, and he went with nothing to India, and to go to India with nothing, it's not a good thing even though he had family there and they helped him, but to stay with somebody for that long is difficult. So anyway from Honiton we went to Bolton and we stayed with my cousin for one night and then the next day he found this rental property which was this old little terraced house in a cobbled street in Bolton, I don't know if you know Lancashire at all, but those old streets in Lancashire, and it was literally, you went in and you were in the living room, and it was awful, it was absolutely pits, and then upstairs we had two rooms, one room had a double bed, a bunk bed and a cot, and two of my cousins then moved in with us because they needed somewhere to be housed and the little box room had a double bed and my brother and my cousin slept in there. The toilet was outside and the little shower was a door that you moved to get yourself a bit of privacy, but it was ours, and then my brother left his studies and he got a job in a factory. So he was working 60 hours a week in a factory, and then weekends he was working at a petrol station.

Anand Dattani

And was that quite common?

Smita Ganatra

Like you say he was driven, you just got to get out of this, and my sister got a job in a bottle factory, I was 13 so I went to school. Mum didn't work, she looked after my sister. And my cousins both got jobs working, and I remember every Friday we’d sit round the table and everybody's money would be put in the middle, and everybody [got] their allocation of their spending money, and the rest went in the bank. And at the same time we were trying to get my dad across and the government would refuse saying “Look if you want to join your dad you go to India, simple as that, he can't come to the UK” and they said the only way you could sponsor him across was to have a property, so within two years we had our first property.

Anand Dattani

Did your cousins, did they find it difficult to get work or do you [feel] they faced any sort of prejudice?

Smita Ganatra

The work that they were doing [was] labouring work, and there were plenty of jobs, plenty of labouring jobs, it’s a mill town, lots of factories, and most people were working in factories at that point, and then gradually moved into different jobs, had little shops and stuff, but when we were there most people were just working factories.

Anand Dattani

You went across to Bolton because you had family there, do you know what happened for the ones that didn't have family?

Smita Ganatra

We had a neighbour from Uganda, they were given a house Wrexham, in Wales, so that's where they lived, that's where they were transferred. And I know they were trying to move people around the country so they were given a house there, they got jobs there, they settled in Wrexham, but when we got our house there was a government change which then meant my dad could come across because they decided that they were going to allow partners of families who were separated to be united. So my dad came after two years and my little sister didn't know he was, she was only a baby when we were separated, but I remember her saying to my mum “Oh when is this kaka (father’s younger brother) going back?”. So she just didn’t know who he was. But I remember going to school, and starting school, and it was a base school so there were two high schools and a grammar school on the same base, and just being a refugee they put you in the bottom stream and I did quite well at school so every term I was moved to a higher stream, and higher set, and stayed there till I did my CSEs, because that's all you could do in high school, and then moved across to grammar school to do my A-Levels. But even like your first early days people would go past and say “Hiya” and I would say “Pardon?”, I just didn’t know what they were saying, the slang and the accent. Because in Uganda we were taught in English and went to English speaking schools but your core language at home was Gujarati, you didn’t speak English [at home], but it was funny. School days, it was great to have such a structure in schools and all the resources, being taught different things, and I was just excited to be learning.

Anand Dattani

That’s good. So how were the teachers and the other students that were local?

Smita Ganatra

They were lovely. In schools there were no [problems] apart from this guy who was in the maths class and he was top of the maths class and I beat him, so I wasn’t too popular with him, but no discrimination or anything like that, teachers were really supporting, they were kind of interested in knowing where you'd come from and your journey, which was nice. As I said school was great I mean you got shouted at times you know “paki go home” and that sort of stuff, and eggs thrown at your door, and I remember my dad being hassled on his way home from work, and those things happened, that was reality, we kind of just, I remember my brother going to a pub and they refused to serve him, and he went to race relations and got them to come and got an apology from the landlord, but those sort of things happened, that was part of how things were.

Anand Dattani

So there was a way to take action against [discrimination]?

Smita Ganatra

Yes and obviously he was educated to a degree in this country, and knew the laws that were there to protect you, and knew that that was wrong, the way he was being treated, so the discrimination bit was there in the early days, you noticed it.

Anand Dattani

Did you feel that it came more from, actual aggression where they felt that you cramping their space or damaging their social environment, or do you think it was more ignorance and influenced by the media?

Smita Ganatra

I think it was ignorance, it was kids most of the time who were who were just behaving like that. I think if others were put out by how you were being given sort of opportunities, that would have been more subtle. The kids would be the ones who would hassle you, throw eggs, name calling and stuff, so it certainly felt like that yeah.

Anand Dattani

So I guess your parents experience would have been slightly more rough in the sense of…

Smita Ganatra

absolutely mum had never done the stuff that she was then doing here. I mean she'd never washed clothes, she got help with the housework, she got help with cooking. So in Uganda she had a pretty luxurious life really, the kids were there. As I said the only thing she really did was cook, all the house stuff is done by people who worked in the house, and then to come here, having to cook, clean, wash, make sure the house was kept in order, make sure the money was kept in order, she hadn't done any of that before, so it would have been a bit of a shock. And for my dad to go to India with nothing, and you can't get a job in India just like that, so he was staying with his brother. Alright he might have helped them a little bit, but really he didn't have a role, he was very much a guest in the house, and you can be a guest for a week or two, but when it becomes months and years then it's challenging.

Anand Dattani

Yeah especially when your family are thousands of miles away.

Smita Ganatra

Yeah so I think the life for him must have been really really challenging, and by the time he left Uganda, I mean I remember seeing bruises that big on his back, his back was covered, the back, the front, the legs, he could hardly walk. So he was still pretty bashed up when we left Uganda, he was badly beaten, and it would have take awhile for all those to settle. But you do don't you, human beings are very resilient, and you get on with it.

Anand Dattani

Yeah you're right. Do you feel that whether it's your parents, or other people who are slightly older, do you think they carried around a certain level of trauma or this sort of negative shock, that because of the mentality to just get on with it, do you think it was that they managed to get over it and move on, or do you think they just buried this feeling?

Smita Ganatra

I think my parents were always very positive individuals and I think they just got on with it. They never begrudged and in some ways you were in a country where you were safe, you could work hard and you could earn money and you can better yourself. My brother, once my dad got here, he then went on to do his A-Levels and went to university, I went on to university, they could see the children were kind of moving towards [a] better life. I never remembered them saying “We just had to walk out with nothing”, which is just what we did, the mill was left as it was, the house was left as it was, we just left with our life packed in a suitcase. So no I don't think my parents were like that, and I think that’s kind of the nature of who they were, they were strong, they weren’t shy of working hard, they worked hard, they wanted the best for their children. So they kept their eye on the ball and said “Right you go off, it doesn't matter we’ll be tight for a while, but you go on and make sure you get education”.

Anand Dattani

Kind of like “We're here now so we just have to look forward”.

Smita Ganatra

Yeah so I know the people that I’ve spoken to who said “There's no way they could go back to Uganda”, there was a lot of anger in them, whereas I never saw that with my parents, and as I said, that fondness of my memories of Uganda stayed with me all the time, to the degree that when I was kind of getting to the end of my career I wanted to be involved in a charity and I wanted to go and work in Africa, and Uganda would have been great. So I got talking to various people as I was coming up to retirement and said “Do you know of any charities are working in Uganda?” and I got connected with this wonderful charity, it's called Jinja Educational Trust, and it's been running for about 16 years, I’m now a trustee for the charity, but I went out in 2018 with them, and that first trip to Uganda was just amazing, you know all those little things that you remembered you think they were there and more just as you walking in the streets, and the Main Street in Jinja, you could remember the roads you used to go down and where things were and “The post office was there, and the police station was there, and our house was there, and the school was there” and all of that was amazing.

Anand Dattani

And it sounded like you really went back more with the emotion of sentiment, rather than any begrudging.

Smita Ganatra

Yeah absolutely yes and I wanted to do something to help the country, because you know when you went there you realised you'd moved on and forward and ahead, and that country had been left behind 30/40 years. It was a shame because when I visited our old house the paint that was on there when we left was still there, nothing had changed, it was completely derelict and going to the mill and there was a bike hanging which was there from the time when we were there, covered in flour and webs, but it's still there. But I love going back and I go every year, I'll be going back in July, and I feel I can go back and do something positive there.

Anand Dattani

That’s great, did you get a chance to go into your house?

Smita Ganatra

Yes they were quite nervous about me wanting to go, because a lot of people had gone back and claimed properties and stuff, and I said “Look I just want to have a look” and so they were quite nervous and made me write my address down and all sorts of stuff, but they let me go in which was nice. And I went back to my old school, and then the charity that I work with, we look after four schools in Jinja, and the idea is that we improve numeracy and literacy but with me joining, my background I studied nutrition, my interest is in nutrition, so I wanted to ensure all the children had food who came to school. So we provide porridge in all our schools and during COVID-19 we provided them with food, and we taught them how to grow [crops], and now you look at the land around the school and its covered in maize.

Anand Dattani

It's amazing that the opportunities and fortunes that the inadvertent or forced move of you coming here, now you're being able to give it back to the ones who didn't get those fortunes.

Smita Ganatra

That’s right and you go to Uganda and you see the beauty of people that was always there, the Ugandan people were always very gentle, it's just that leadership that…

Anand Dattani

Do you get a sense of what the locals felt? So either the ones that you met now that you go back, or the ones at the time, do you get sense of how they felt about the whole expulsion?

Smita Ganatra

You know a lot of people that we work with are young and they weren’t around, it's only when you meet the very old people that they remember, because remember this is 50 years ago, and a lot of the teachers we work with, the headmasters, the staff that we have in Uganda, they’re all young. The funny thing was they don’t speak Swahili, they speak English as the main language, and they speak the local dialect, Buganda or something like that, but they don't speak Swahili they said “Swahili is for the army”.

Anand Dattani

And is that just because…

Smita Ganatra

I think that's because of what happened at that time. so first time when I [went] was already remembering my few little words of Swahili, but nobody speaks Swahili.

Anand Dattani

Because it was the Kenyan influence when the Kenyans moved to Uganda that Swahili came, I guess after the expulsion that influence was taken away.

Smita Ganatra

Yeah because Swahili was [the] language you communicated with your staff, that's the language that was in shops, you traded in Swahili, so it was strange that it had gone.

Anand Dattani

Now that you go back are you still able to call those places home or?

Smita Ganatra

No the UK is home, Uganda will always be special, it will always be special, it will always have a special place because it was special growing up there, but the UK is home. This is home.

Anand Dattani

Why would you [say that is]?

Smita Ganatra

This is where family is, this is where everybody is, this is where you've spent 50 years of your life and it's a society that you are comfortable with. You know that there are rights and wrongs and how the organisations work, this is you in a lot of way,s so yeah now this will always be home now.

Anand Dattani

It's amazing, I mean to hear of you going back every year that's not something I've heard, and actually in 2018 I went for a wedding of a friend but then my dad came out and he took me to Jinja and he showed me around, and he did a very similar thing to you where he was like “This is where the shop was, this is where I used to live” and in fact they didn't let us into the house for a similar reason.

Smita Ganatra

Yeah people were scared.

Anand Dattani

But he distinctly remembers calling it a paradise and he’d say “You had palm trees here, these roads were clean, these shops were clean” and now it's very dirty.

Smita Ganatra

Yeah it’s was funny, because I remember I always enjoyed reading, and I remember I used to go to the library and read a lot of Enid Blyton, and I used to get books from the library. And when I went there I kept saying to them “Where the post office was, just beyond that was the town hall, and behind that was a library” and it's no longer there and nobody could remember it being a library and I kept saying “I'm sure it was there” because I could visualise myself walking there, and there was a Jacaranda tree, and you went under there and I recognised the block as well, that was the block which was the library. And then we met one of our Uganda board trustees and he said “Yeah of course there was a library then”, he was an older man so he remembered it, but none of the young people remembered the library being there. But Ugandan people are lovely, they are very gentle, very gentle people, and it's always great to go back and you come back enthused wanting to do more, and wanting to raise a bit more money and go do something else, but yeah no it's amazing.

Anand Dattani

It's amazing to think that your spatial memory and those [thing] stay so strong, of you being able to remember.

Smita Ganatra

Yeah but even in Bugiri, I left Bugiri when I was 6. I recognised our house I remembered the school, obviously the school you went to, but I remembered the journey that I used to walk to school and it took me a little while of going up and down that street, but then I figured it out from the layout of the houses. My uncle used to live next to us and the little path between our houses, and I could remember with how the rooms were laid out and once I thought it was the house I asked, it was an Indian lady who runs this shop now, it’s a new migrant from India, and I said look “Would you mind if I go and have a look because I used to live here?” and I went in, and yeah, it was just as I remembered it, and I remember the water tank where the water tank was, the kitchen was, and I was only six but I had a very very vivid memory of that house. It was so good and it was lovely because I went with Krutika, who is your cousin, and Leena, who's a very good friend of mine who came from Mbale, and they were there to share my journey really, and my tears, and my excitement, and all the rest of it, which was amazing. I think the tears came when, the charity was working with another charity called Brass for Africa, and people who are disabled and they play [in] a band and it's a brass band, beautiful, and I was saying “Oh won’t it be nice if they played the national anthem”. So we went and got them to play the national anthem and I stood there and the tears just rolled [down], because that's what you did every morning at school, you sang the national anthem, and I was miming away all the words, it was amazing, but yeah it was a good journey.

Anand Dattani

You know the community spirit is one of the main things that most, I think everyone I've spoken to, says between all the Asians, whether it was the Sikhs, the Punjabis, Hindus, Jains Muslims, it was so tight. When you came here, or even to the current day, do you feel that's still the case here?

Smita Ganatra

No and it’s sad really, it does make me sad, because I remember in Bugiri we had Indian families, we had Hindu families, we had Muslim families, Arab families and there was Diwali, during Diwali your Muslim friends would come with sweets, during Christmas there would be a big parade in town and everybody was excited because they knew it was Christmas, and during Eid you knew it was Eid because people were putting mehndi on their hands and all the festivals were on and everybody celebrated together. We played Holi together and yeah it’s sad, I don’t think it should be like that, we’re all one human community really and it's a shame that there is segregation like that, there shouldn't be.

Anand Dattani

No and there's many reasons why that could be, and that's a whole other thing but that tends to…

Smita Ganatra

but you didn't [discriminate] you had your neighbours and they were your neighbours and you knew them as your neighbours, and that's it, you didn't think of them as being Christian, or Muslim, or Hindu, or whatever, you were a community, and you looked out for each other.

Anand Dattani

What would you say is the one key value that summarises or describes the Ugandan Asian community?

Smita Ganatra

I think we’re thrivers, we thrive whichever community you put us in, we’ll make it work, we’ll make it happen, and I think the majority of people who've come from Uganda have that spirit about them, and I think that’s why we’re successful.

Anand Dattani

I like that, did you have any other stories or any other points that you?

Smita Ganatra

No I think we've covered most of the ones that I could.

Anand Dattani

Yeah. If there was anything else, but otherwise I think it's been really interesting to hear this take, and I guess it goes back to what your parents were like. But a very positive optimistic [outlook] even though, you know you went through some quite scarring experiences, to still come out and be grateful, but also wanting to give back, it's amazing.

Smita Ganatra

Yeah but I think a lot of people were like that you know, and I remember when we did that workshop where Max was there and there was an older lady who came along and she just said “It was all right, everything was alright” and she just didn't play up all the [difficulties] because she came when she was like seven months pregnant with her daughter and the traumas she went through during that journey was just incredible, but whatever life brings they seem to just take it…

Anand Dattani

and push forward

Smita Ganatra

Push forward. I don't know whether that's an Indian thing, or it’s a Ugandan thing or an immigrant thing.

Anand Dattani

Probably a mix of everything, I think we’re built of the characteristics of generations of what makes us. So thank you it was amazing

Smita Ganatra

It was lovely it was a good chat.