Sometimes the location of an interview is at least as interesting as the
interview itself. Across the 1970s and ‘80s, Kampala’s luxury Nile Hotel
was used by military dictators Idi Amin and Milton Obote as a site for the
interrogation and torture of dissidents. Obote kept the offices of his
feared security agency in two of the hotel’s suites, rooms 211 and 233.
Like the equally infamous Hotel Rwanda in Kigali, the Nile was later sold
off to an international conglomerate, the Serena Group, which refurbished
and reopened the hotel in 2006. But if the Serena’s TripAdvisor reviews are anything to go by, the hotel’s old ghosts still lurk just below the
surface.

I met with a human rights lawyer in the Serena’s cafe Friday afternoon, a
strange juxtaposition of the country’s horrific past and a more hopeful
future.

Ryan Lenora Brown