Kenneth Ongalo-Obote '94, profiled in the spring 2001 issue of Colby, ran a tenacious campaign this spring but was unsuccessful in his bid for a seat in Uganda's parliament. His e-mail dispatches to supporters around the world read like a picaresque novel-he was the young outsider challenging well-entrenched older politicians, relishing enthusiastic support at his rallies and taking some figurative and literal hard knocks on the campaign trail. He writes about "Richard (the Snake)," who signed out nomination forms in Ongalo-Obote's name as part of a bureaucratic double-cross. aAn opponent paid the printer to delay delivery of Ongalo-Obote's campaign posters and literature. Supporters were pelted with stones at Kipenet. Ongalo-Obote spent nights sleeping in the car and nights with no sleep at all.

Most alarming was an incident in which a Land Cruiser driver, whom Ongalo-Obote describes as "either very drunk or temporarily out of his senses or, as most people like to believe, on a mission," intentionally ran his vehicle into Ongalo-Obote, pinning his legs between two vehicles. As he fell to the ground, the candidate was knocked cold when his head crashed into the bumper. When he regained consciousness he had to drive himself to the hospital.

"It's funny," he writes, looking back at the incident, "but nothing I could have done would have kick-started my campaign the way the combination of all those events did."

In a fascinating and thorough report Ongalo-Obote describes the campaign in detail, including his defense against charges he paid people to attend rallies and brought in a mzungu (white person) to campaign for him. "A man was paid to pour salt into my car engine so the car would get an engine knock. He failed. A pump attendant was paid to mix salt with the gas he pumped into my tank. He never got the opportunity. Twice I was to be shot on my way back from Anyara. Each time, unwittingly, I spent the night in Anyara. A soldier, whose friend later confessed, was paid to shoot me down like a dog as I drove through Lwala on my way home after a rally," he writes.

Ongalo-Obote took his defeat (third among eight candidates) hard. "I could have cried then, for my mother, who had suffered so much and endured untold labors to make sure that none of the 80 or so people who visited me every day left unfed; for myself for the futility of all the energies I had expended on the campaign; for all my friends who had really believed in me, and whom I had promised that I would not shame, whatever the outcome." But he describes rallying to buck up the incumbent, who fared even worse at the polls and was depressed and humiliated.

The defeat left his resources depleted, and this summer Ongalo-Obote was still unsure of his future plans and was weighing options both in Uganda and abroad. Whether those options include some future political campaign was uncertain. "There really are no permanent friends or enemies in politics," he wrote. "Just shifting interests."