Uganda, April 13 -- Eastern Uganda. Going to the tiny, jumbled and dry, windswept excuse of a town that Butaleja is, you have to cross the railway four times, if you make a north-easterly approach along that murrum road from Namutumba Township.

There were days when trains were part and parcel of the daily life of Ugandans; but that was until the National Resistance Movement (NRM) shot its way to power in 1986.

NRM may know how to win gun battles, but the chaps are absolutely clueless when it comes to managing economies sustainably. The trains got less and less, till even the railway lines disappeared in most of Uganda.

Trains, quite literally, turn up once in a blue moon nowadays, especially in the villages. I was, therefore, caught of...