Masaka

Masaka grew where two things met: the fertile banana country of southern Buganda and the road running south-west from the kabaka's capital towards Ankole and the lake shore. The area belonged to the county of Buddu, which Buganda took from Bunyoro in the eighteenth century and which became one of its wealthiest provinces. Catholic missionaries of the White Fathers reached the Masaka area in 1891, and the mission hill at Kitovu, where the diocese has its headquarters, has been a centre of Catholic Uganda ever since.

Under the protectorate Masaka became the administrative headquarters for Buddu and then for Masaka district, with a planned town of wide streets, shopfronts and warehouses. Indian and Ganda traders handled coffee, cotton and bananas, and the town's position on the main road made it the market for a wide farming region. Coffee in particular built the modern town.

The turning point was the war of 1979, when Tanzanian forces and Ugandan exiles advanced on Kampala along this road to remove Idi Amin. In the battle of 23 and 24 February 1979 the Tanzanian army fired nearly a thousand shells into the town and then razed much of what the bombardment had spared, in reprisal for the destruction Ugandan troops had caused in the Kagera salient; the town hall, the bank, the post office, the courts and the hospital were among the buildings lost. Rebuilding took years, and the town was again affected by the insecurity of the early 1980s. Since then it has grown steadily as a regional hub for trade, transport, schooling and health care; the Catholic mission hospital at Kitovu, founded in 1955, runs an HIV treatment centre among its community health programmes. Masaka was granted city status in 2020.

Masaka is thoroughly Ganda. Luganda is the language of the street, clan identities and the totems that go with them are taken seriously, and family ceremonies — above all the kwanjula, at which a bride's family receives the groom's — are the big social occasions of the year, with the kanzu for men and the gomesi for women. Respect for age, unhurried greetings and indirect speech are the local manners, and loudness in public is frowned upon.

Religion shapes much of the calendar. The Catholic church is unusually strong in this part of Buganda, with the cathedral and mission on Kitovu hill, large parishes in the surrounding countryside and a steady flow of pilgrims towards the martyrs' shrines near Kampala each June. Anglican and Pentecostal churches and a Muslim minority share the city with it.

The other strand of local identity is agricultural. Masaka thinks of itself as a coffee and matooke town, and the seasonal grasshopper catch — nsenene, trapped at night in lit drums when the rains come — is closely associated with the city and sends supplies across the country. Evenings revolve around bars, football on television and music along the Nyendo strip, and weddings, burials and church fundraisers draw people back from Kampala at weekends.

The 2014 census counted 103,829 people in the town; the 2024 census enumerated 285,509 in the enlarged Masaka City, which spreads along the highway and up the surrounding hills. It is the largest place between Kampala and Mbarara and serves a much larger rural population.

The economy is trade and services: produce markets, wholesalers, transport and lorry traffic on the highway, banks, schools, colleges and hospitals, including the mission hospital at Kitovu. The countryside around supplies matooke, coffee, beans, maize and dairy from the drier land to the west, and fishing communities work the Lake Victoria shore to the east. Many households also depend on money sent home from Kampala.

The day starts at first light with produce arriving for the market and boda-bodas gathering at the stages; by mid-morning the arcades and banks are busy, and the afternoon belongs to the highway traffic heading towards Mbarara or back to the capital. Recurring local issues are the state of the roads to the lake, water and drainage in the growing suburbs, the price farmers get for coffee and matooke, road safety on the highway, and youth unemployment that keeps sending people to Kampala.

Masaka sits in the heart of matooke country, and the steamed, mashed green banana is the centre of almost every meal, served with binyebwa groundnut sauce, beans, greens or a beef or goat stew. Luwombo, meat or groundnut sauce steamed in a banana-leaf parcel, is the dish of celebrations, and katogo — matooke or cassava cooked together with beans, offal or groundnuts — is the working breakfast sold at stalls from early morning.

The city's best-known speciality is nsenene, the bush grasshoppers that swarm with the rains around April and May and again in November. They are caught at night in drums lit by bright lamps, then cleaned, de-winged and fried with onion and salt, and sold by the cup in the markets and along the roads; Masaka's traders supply much of the country.

Fish comes up from Lake Victoria and Lake Nabugabo: tilapia and Nile perch fried whole or stewed, and mukene, the small dried silver fish, cooked into groundnut sauce. Street food is the national repertoire — the rolex, a chapati rolled around fried egg and vegetables; muchomo skewers; roasted maize and gonja plantain; samosas and mandazi. Robusta coffee is the region's cash crop but tea with milk and ginger is the everyday drink, alongside passion-fruit juice, bottled lager, waragi gin and tonto banana beer in the villages.