From Inside the Silence
A 5 day affair
A Journal from Inside the Silence
“Let me write, because if I don’t, you’ll never know how this looked from where I stood.”
Day 1 — The Cut
The government announced a temporary internet shutdown and before the news anchor finished his sentence, the net was already dead.
Wireless fibre. SIM network. Everything. Gone.
No countdown. No warning. Just silence.
That’s when the reality sank in: we were cut off from the rest of the world from information that at least pretends to be accountable and left only with the same looping local broadcasts, the kind that talk a lot but say nothing. The official reason? To curb fake news and promote peace.
Lol.
From a government that’s been in power for four decades, perfecting obedience through force and simple psychology. Food. Just feed people and they’ll forget you’ve been on the throne since cassette tapes were premium technology.
Being a first-time foreigner in a lockdown like this is a special kind of anxiety. No internet means no access to funds unless you’re the old-school type who sleeps with cash under the mattress. Today, I wished I were that person. My family food storage was thin. We were told it would be five days. Rumors said two months until the president was sworn in. That thought alone nearly sent me into delirium.
By evening
1900 hrs the sun was still up （or maybe paranoia had sharpened my senses）. Voting had ended. A few teargas canisters here and there. Otherwise, strangely quiet. People looked… present. Less bent over screens. Like the world had been forcibly unplugged and suddenly remembered it had faces.
Let me write because only then will you know how this looked from my side.
Poll rumors were circulating. So far, the ruling president was “leading.” Which makes you wonder: where were the votes of the multitudes who used to flood opposition rallies, turning streets into carnivals of hope?
It reminded me of back home our late leader, may his soul rest with the ancestors. Massive following, but without IDs. Passion without paperwork. Disappointment on repeat. We love slogans, but change doesn’t come from chanting at mountains. It comes from picking up spades and moving soil.
Faith without works is a motivational poster.
Action is construction.
Day 2 — The Sky Knows
I woke up to military aircraft doing rounds overhead. Nothing like rotor blades at dawn to remind you democracy is supervised.
Had to go out for tea. Life continues, stubbornly even when the sky looks like it’s rehearsing for something.
Tallies were coming in. Tight race. The Electoral Commission held press conferences every five hours, yet somehow never said who was leading. Corporate communication at its finest: many words, zero meaning. Keep the masses on toes till the knees beg for help and the cool down.
Bless Divine Providence for friends, and in this case, friends with benefits. All shops are closed. Mobile money was frozen. But people came through with food. I owe them receipts of gratitude payable in the future.
At
0200hrs, the third tally dropped. Family-level results were out. But here’s the twist — the Electoral Commission unveiled a “new transparent system” for tracking votes… through their website portal.
Their website.
In a country supposedly on a nationwide internet shutdown.
That’s when it hit me: this blackout wasn’t total — it was selective. A VIP outage. Some people lived life as normal. The rest of us were locked out of reality itself. Democracy, apparently, is free but bandwidth is not.
We had been played.
Played clean.
Played politely.
Played legally.
Day 3 - The Crown
By now, everyone knew who was heading back to State House. Internet still dead. Honestly? Part of me enjoyed the break. A forced sabbath from scrolling. An extended holiday from digital noise. But let’s not romanticize captivity, rest hits different when it’s chosen.
Today was announcement day.
An irony I forgot to write earlier. because if I don’t tell you, who will?
The night before elections, a government push message landed on everyone’s phone, like divine revelation from the Ministry of Marketing:
M7
More PDM — 200M allocated to every Parish
Free education
Reduced university fees
Cheap internet
Vote Museveni.
Be for real.
The same government that had just cut us off from the world, frozen funds, stalled life itself. promising cheap internet. That’s not irony; that’s performance art. And credit where it’s due: the subliminal genius of it worked. In one message, they hit every demographic pressure point. Parents. Youth. Hustlers. Dreamers. Everybody felt personally spoken to.
I live near army barracks. It has perks: security, infrastructure, certain efficiencies. But also, drawbacks — like the Uganda–Rwanda highway, a spiritual test disguised as a road.
The moment the presidential winner was announced, military helicopters shook the sky. Not celebration, proclamation. Long live the king. And mind you, the head of command is the king’s firstborn son. Dynasty doesn’t need to be declared when it’s already operational.
Looking back, the government’s precautions were surgical:
Elections on Thursday — unusual, strategic.
Results released slowly, in intervals — calming wild horses before they stampede.
Final announcement on Saturday — during a Premier League match, because nothing divides attention like football. Hamad from Manchester made sure of that. Lol.
Rome had gladiators.
We have match fixtures.
Same circus.
New century.
It was a fun run — but now, honestly, we needed internet back. Life wanted to continue.
Day 4 — Smoke
0520 hrs
I spoke too soon.
At 0520 hrs, teargas and bullets cracked the evening. The sky darkened, not from clouds but from intention. It wasn’t “serious,” they said — but neither are earthquakes until your house cracks.
0640 hrs
Now it was serious.
Bullets. Army trucks. Soldiers sprinting past my gate, chasing shadows and firing into the logic of fear. Smoke everywhere. The neighborhood transformed in minutes — from the 2 -0 victory （Man U beat Man C） to battlefield choreography. One evening. That’s all it takes.
Few of them. Many of us.
Tamed like cattle. Lol.
History has a dark sense of humor.
side note ( I’ve always wondered how a few people can control many other people, just because you have guns, a million of us will run away from you, be fr)
0800 hrs
Canisters were exploding like bombs. I tried reaching the main road to see what was happening, journalism instinct, maybe stupidity. But when three well-uniformed villains decided I was today’s cardio exercise, I sprinted.
I sprinted so fast I’m convinced my ancestors thought I was opening a portal.
For a moment, I felt aerodynamic. Bolt has nothing on me.
Survival unlocks talents you never trained for.
Day 5 — The Signal
By morning, the streets were calmer, though the air still carried yesterday’s memory; smoke, fear, and the quiet exhaustion of people who’ve learned how to normalize abnormal things.
Then, without ceremony, without apology, without explanation…
The internet came back.
No announcement.
No accountability.
Just signal bars returning like nothing had happened.
WhatsApp messages flooded in. Notifications stacked like overdue mail. The world rushed back into my pocket, news alerts, memes, business updates, arguments, jokes. Digital noise reclaimed its throne. And just like that, five days of forced silence were archived into inconvenience instead of history.
But something had shifted.
Because when the signal returned, it didn’t feel like freedom. It felt like access and those are not the same thing. Freedom is when you choose silence.
Access is when silence is revoked.
And I couldn’t stop thinking: if a government can unplug an entire nation with a switch, what else can it switch off ? Memory? Movement? Truth? Dissent? Hunger? Hope?
The internet returned but the question remained.
Who controls the switch?
Afterthought
Those five days taught me something no civics class, no history book, no motivational speaker ever did:
Power is quietest when it is most confident.
No speeches were needed. No declarations. Just a flick — and a nation recalibrated. We queued differently. We spoke softer. We planned smaller. We waited. And waiting, I learned, is one of the most effective political tools ever invented.
Yet something else happened too.
People talked.
Faces lifted.
Neighbors borrowed salt again.
Time stretched instead of scrolling.
The blackout revealed two truths at once: one dark, one beautiful.
The dark truth: freedom without infrastructure is a rumor.
The beautiful truth: community doesn’t need bandwidth.
But let’s not romanticize hardship, resilience is not a substitute for justice. People shouldn’t have to become poetic just to survive policy. Silence shouldn’t be state issued. And peace built on fear is just quiet violence with good PR.
We are not disconnected from power
we are plugged into it.
And the future won’t be decided by who shouts the loudest online,
But by who controls the switches,
who owns the infrastructure,
and who remembers to write when silence is enforced.
That’s why I wrote this.
Because memory is resistance.
Because silence, when recorded, becomes testimony.
Because if we don’t document what power does in the dark,
it will keep mistaking darkness for permission.
And because one day, when someone asks,
“Were people quiet because they agreed — or because they were muted?”
I want to be able to say:
I was there.
The internet was off.
But the truth was very much online.
— Baraka