Uganda, Oct. 13 -- My ancestral village, Buyende, is 154 kilometres from the Main Post Office in Kampala. You can breakfast in the capital, lunch in the sticks, and return just in time for high tea. But doing so would require time travel into a previous century.

I know the place well, from many long school holidays. The land is fertile, and the wider area is generously endowed. Toyota Stout pick-up trucks thundered down the road from Lake Kyoga, hurrying fresh fish cargo to processing plants in Jinja before it went off.

They sped past thick natural forests teeming with hardwood Mvule (Milicia excelsa), Musita (Albizia lebbeck) and Msizi (Maesopsis eminii) trees, past clearings in the forests where fruit trees surrounded simple mud-and-w...