Jinja, Uganda
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This article refers to the city of Jinja. For the corresponding district, please see Jinja (district).
Jinja is the second commercial centre in Uganda. It was established in 1901. Jinja lies in the south east of Uganda, 87 km north east of the capital, Kampala. It is located on the shores of Lake Victoria, near to the source of the White Nile river. The city is the chief town of Jinja District, and is considered the capital of the Kingdom of Busoga.
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[edit] Population
The resident population of Jinja is approximately 106,000 (an increase from 45,000 in 1980 and 65,000 in 1991), but it also draws in some 80,000 commuters each day.
The majority of the population are of Bantu origin, and are English-speaking Anglican Christians. Lusoga and Luganda are the main local languages. Average annual household income is estimated at US $100.
[edit] Economy
Agriculture thrives on the fertile soils, abundant water sources and reliable rainfall. Other industries are metal processing, leather and paper processing, grain milling, sugar, some organic fruits and coffee growing for export, and brewing for local sale. There is some local and export fishing on Lake Victoria. British-American Tobacco Uganda (BATU) closed its Jinja tobacco-processing factory in 2005, due to high taxes. The biggest local employer is currently the Kakira Sugar works, which runs on sugar alcohol - since there are said to be frequent power cuts in Jinja's mains electricity supply.
[edit] Infrastructure
There is a post office, town hall, a hospital, a golf course, and several internet cafes. There are numerous small shops.
There are many primary schools due to Uganda's universal primary education. For older children there are also secondary schools: the PMM Jinja Girls Senior School, and Jinja Senior Secondary School which is now the largest in Uganda. They operate a British-style system of education. The literacy rate is currently around 60 percent. There is a teacher's college at Jinja.
[edit] History
Jinja was formerly a fishing village that benefited from being on long-distance trade routes. The city was founded in 1901 by the British, as an administrative centre for the Provincial Government Headquarters for Busoga region. This was around the time that Lake Victoria's importance in transport rose due to the Uganda Railway linking Kisumu, a Kenyan town on the lake, with Mombasa on the Indian Ocean, 900 miles (1400 km) away. Cotton-packing, nearby sugar estates, and railway access all enabled it to grow in size. In 1906 a street pattern was laid out, and Indian traders moved in from around 1910.
British-American Tobacco Uganda (BATU) established a tobacco processing factory in Jinja in 1928.
Manchester based Calico Printers Association in association with the Uganda Development Corporation constructed a large vertical textile mill ( Nyanza Textile Industries - Nytil ) in the mid 1950's to utilise hydro power from the Owen Falls Dam. By 1973 Nytil employed about 3,000 people and exclusively used Uganda cotton to spin, weave, and dye or print, to sell via its own retail chain, Lebel, throughout Uganda and Kenya.
Genuine Nytil fabric was recognised by the "Silver Shilling" - a foil piece resembling a shilling which was inserted at one yard intervals along the edge of every cloth length produced.
The city remained the capital of Busoga region, and was the industrial heart of Uganda between 1954 and the late 1970s - supported by power from the hydroelectric Nalubaale Power Station at the Owen Falls Dam, completed in 1954.
Under Idi Amin's bloody rule, it is said that so many bodies were dumped in Lake Victoria that they often blocked the hydroelectric intake channels at the Owen Falls Dam.
The city once had a large East Indian community, although these were expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin in 1971 and 1972. Much of Jinja's architecture is Indian-influenced, although the detailed shop-fronts and buildings were poorly maintained after the Indians left. Local industrial concerns also collapsed. Many of the East Indians who are now returning to Uganda are choosing to set up businesses in Jinja.
The city has been twinned with Finchley, London, England since 1963.
[edit] Life in Jinja in the 1960s
The town enjoyed excellent utilities: clean, potable water on tap and an unwavering electricity supply. Her roads were constructed robustly and she enjoyed a highly efficient drainage system leading into mighty sewers that emptied rainwater directly into the even mightier River Nile. Traffic consisted mainly of private cars, taxis that plied between towns and bicycles that were the beast of burden of the black african populace.
Jinja, like all the towns in Uganda, was subtly segregated, with little mixing of whites, asians and blacks. The whites who held government and top managerial jobs lived in the area by the lakeside. They enjoyed a classical colonial existence; lots of servants, large gardens, a superb lakeside club with golf, yachting, a rugby pitch and swimming pool. Their children studied in white primary schools and were dispatched to Nairobi or the home country as soon as feasible.
The Asians were the commercial class and lived in the rest of the town. They had lesser facilities but were a thriving class rumoured, often unjustly, to be much wealthier than apparent at first sight. All schools but the white Victoria Nile School were full of asian children. In 1968, the huge Jinja Secondary School had one white student and about half a dozen blacks. The remaining 500 students were all Asian.
Many Black Africans lived outside the town. Each morning there would be a line of two-wheel traffic heading for the 'sokoni' or marketplace. Heavily-laden bicycles usually with cargoes of bananas or sacks of coal weighing maybe 150 kilos would be pedalled into town. And each evening the return journey, hopefully less laden, would be executed so that at night there were only a few blacks in the town centre.
[edit] The Goans of Jinja
These were fun-loving, well-to-do immigrants who originated from the former Portuguese colony of Goa on the west coast of India. They did well largely because they were well-educated, spoke fluently the language of the colonial masters, worshipped as Christians and had the ability to manage organisations well at the middle grade level. They tried hard, but were not gifted businessmen, lacking the money-making skills and contacts of the other Asian classes.
Goan life in Jinja in the 1950s and 1960s (the pre-Idi Amin era) was comfortable. Spiritual life revolved round the Catholic Church of Our Lady of Fatima, and worship was prescriptive and rigorous, with services in Latin until the mid 1960s. Church feast days, first holy communions, confirmations and of course Christmas, were all events that were followed by great festivities in the Jinja Goan Institute, the community's social club across the road from the church.
The "club", as it was known, was the focus of most social activity. It enjoyed a small library, a dance hall, a bar and grounds that permitted tennis, hockey, football, volleyball, athletics and badminton.
Dances were indeed a grand occasion, with a live band and much ball-room dancing.
Sport was an essential part of Goan life in East Africa, and field hockey was de-rigeur for all young Goan men. Some of the most important social events were tournaments organised either between Goan clubs throughout East Africa or inter-community events, the most inflammatory of which were generally hockey matches between the Sikh community and the Goans.
Goan primary education was church-supported and mostly segregated from other communities. Much emphasis was placed on reading and writing in English. Education was delivered by largely untrained teachers selected by virtue of their race rather than qualification. But the school worked; it produced people who often ultimately did very well in life.
The exodus of 1972 caused by Idi Amin, saw the Goans of Jinja leave this green and pleasant land for pastures anew. They are now to be found in the UK, Canada and Australia in the main.
[edit] Transport
Jinja is a major station on the Uganda Railway and is a port for Lake Victoria ferries. From the early 1900s access to the railway was by ferry to the railhead at Kisumu. It was not until the 1930s that the track was extended into Uganda. There is a good tarmac road west from Jinja to the capital at Kampala (80 km, 90 minutes by car, two hours by bus), but the tarmac road to the border with Kenya at Tororo, 100 km to the east, is generally in poorer condition. Buses and minibus taxis provide transport between Jinja and other Ugandan towns.
Transport in Jinja is dominated by the 'bicycle taxi' bodaboda and motorbikes. The bicycle is very important to the town, and there are over twenty bicycle retailers.
There is an airfield at Kimaka.
[edit] Local attractions
Local attractions include white-water rafting, the "Source of the Nile", and a large brewery. Five miles/8 km north of Jinja is Bujagali Falls, which is located downriver from Owen Falls Dam. Bujagali Falls is a world-class spot for kayaking and white water rafting, and also a popular weekend picnic area for local Ugandans. However, the Falls are under threat from the construction of a proposed new 250 MW hydroelectric facility.
There is a private Sailing Club on the shores of Lake Victoria. There is an animal sanctuary at Buwenge.
The 9 hole ( 18 tee ) golf course was originally laid out in the mid 1920's and famously had a local rule allowing a free drop of the ball if it came to rest in a hippo hoof print.The course has tremendous views of the Nile and Lake Victoria and the second green is within a lob wedge of the source of the Nile
Some of Mahatma Gandhi's ashes were scattered into the source of the White Nile. There is a small memorial garden at the spot. There is an active Hindu temple near Jinja, which has a bronze bust of Gandhi. There is also a Buddhist temple.
About 25 km south, in Lake Victoria, is Buvuma Island—whose forests sometimes attract intrepid bird-watchers.
[edit] Geographic data
- Latitude and Longitude:
- Height above sea level: 3,700 feet (1,130 m).
