What motivated you to write the Jambula Tree, a story that focuses on young lesbian love?
I think first and foremost Jambula Tree is a story about love. If you read Jambula Tree critically it’s really more about the community than it is about the relationship between the two main characters. If you see things from the community’s viewpoint and how it is affected generally by the relationship between these two girls, that is what the story is about, the community’s reaction. And, if you look at the reality, not only in Uganda, but in many African countries, I think the reality that Jambula Tree represents is very real. It’s a difficult subject and there is a lot of hypocrisy around the subject; hypocrisy in the way that we look at this subject of morality. And I think there are other more important things to look at, issues such as poverty and impunity, and then people say “oh but no”, same-sex relationships — in a sense this is what Jambula Tree is about. It is a very real story and I think a lot of people would be able to identify with it. People wonder, “Oh what would hap
