Dear Soldier,
I was at Namugongo on June 3, 2025, with my wife. Three million people. Some of them had walked for weeks to be there.
The Uganda Martyrs were killed between 1885 and 1887. Young men, most of them teenagers. They were pages at the court of Kabaka Mwanga II. They were executed for refusing to renounce their faith when it conflicted with what the King required of them.
I was not raised at Namugongo. But I have been in enough situations where someone with authority over me required something that conflicted with what I actually believed to recognize the shape of that moment.
The walk to Namugongo is not symbolic. It is a physical re-enactment of a journey that ended in death. The pilgrims who walk barefoot, who carry crucifixes through forests and across borders, who arrive exhausted and pray anyway — they are doing something I recognize from other kinds of service.
They are saying: I believe this enough to make it cost something.
That is a standard I keep trying to hold in every context. Whether it is the wait for a visa, the year away from home, or the decision to serve a country before it decided whether it wanted me.
Gabriel
Gabriel Mahia writes from the intersection of U.S. federal infrastructure and East African operational reality. This essay is part of a series written after twelve months in Kenya, April 2025 – April 2026.