This article contains mentions of sexual assault and violence against women.

From a distance, the row of half-finished plywood cottages looked like a shantytown on the brink of disintegrating over the verdant cliffside. With boarded-up windows and corrugated tin roofs, these raw barracks, located on Itanda Falls in Jinja, a southeastern city in Uganda, contained no running water, no toilets, no locks and none of the amenities that were initially promised to the festival attendees who had purchased them. Each sold for three million Ugandan shillings, the equivalent of around £700.

Nyege Nyege Festival was first held seven years ago. The annual September event, founded by two expats, Arlen Dilsizian and Derek Debru, has drawn an increasingly large contingent of international partygoers to Uganda due to its fervent promotion of East African electronic music, though it was never meant to be the destination festival it eventually became. Their two in-house labels, HAKUNA KULALA and Nyege Nyege Tapes, have launched affiliated DJs and producers such as Kampire, Slikback, MC Yallah, Debmaster, Rey Sapienz and Hibotep into the global touring circuit.

This year, like many other festivals, was Nyege Nyege's first edition since the pandemic, taking place from September 15th to the 18th. Upwards of 15,000 people were expected to make their way through its entrance gates by Saturday night, in comparison to the 9,000 capacity in 2018. Unlike the previous iterations, it was held in an even more remote location, with the new inclusion of what was described as upscaled accommodation.

Initially advertised on the event website as "self-contained," the cottage glamping option boasted a private bathroom, a charging station for small electronic devices—all powered by solar electricity and fully lockable—plus, a "private reception, bar and a morning breakfast club." The stock images online depicted chevron rugs, plump throw pillows and, in one memorable photo, a bearded man having a picnic on a roof covered in artificial grass. A bouquet of peach-colored roses and a golden plate with two crystal vases sat in front of him. It sold out.

According to the co-founder Derek Debru, their cottages were meant to be a comfortable option for middle-class Ugandans who wanted a touch of luxury for their long weekend on the banks of the Nile. What these attendees found instead was an accommodation crisis that so drastically diverged from their expectations that they became acutely vulnerable to issues of assault and crime that also beleaguered the festival. Nyege Nyege itself became a safety hazard.

When Agatha Asiimwe, 34, arrived on site on Thursday, September 15th, she witnessed a flurry of carpenters still setting up. They were "literally nailing boxes together, working as though they woke up just a few hours before," she said. Asiimwe, who is from Uganda but had never previously attended Nyege Nyege, paid for a four-day pass and her cottage two months in advance. Around 2 PM that day, she remembers approaching Lucy Ogwang, a woman with black, curly hair moving around on crutches, who had a receipt book of all the payments.

"We need to verify you," Ogwang said. Asiimwe was confused. Ogwang already had her proof of payment in her book, but she still waited 30 minutes. Ogwang came back to her with VVIP (very, very important) cards with a QR code on them. She told them they were backstage passes that could also be used as tickets for breakfast with the musicians and a scanning lock for the cottages. All they had to do was wait a bit longer because their bedrooms were being prepared.

"Are you only now setting up the cabin?" Asiimwe joked. Ogwang was offended. "What do you mean? Of course the cottages exist," she snapped before disappearing once again. Asiimwe remembers being taken aback by Ogwang's defensive tone. Maybe, she thought to herself, the pressure was getting too high.

Four hours later, after Ogwang failed to show, another organiser took them to the cottage grounds. Asiimwe discovered construction workers fiercely negotiating with a long line of fellow attendees, many paying an additional fee on top of their original booking payment to fit their slipshod lean-tos with roofs. She was furious. It was too late in the evening to drive back to Jinja, so she and her sister stayed for the night. Because there was no lock on the doors, they awoke at 4 AM to strange men who had stumbled into the cabin. They called a taxi back to Kampala the next day.

On the way, Asiimwe posted a trending Twitter thread of images warning fellow revellers of the site conditions. If no one was transparent with her, she would at least sound the alarm so others would know what they were getting into.

"Good morning from the @NyegeNyegeFest kennels," Agatha Asiimwe tweeted on the morning of September 16.

-

There's an eyeful of life during the long journey to Itanda Falls. My cab driver wound through Kampala, Uganda's capital city, to Jinja, until we reached the rural stretches of land that hugged the Nile River. Here, the wind picks up the loose fertile soil and covers everything, including playing children and toiling field workers, in a film of red ochre dust. By contrast, the green trees look almost fluorescent. Deep within "the pearl of Africa," everything smells of a cloying equatorial humidity.

After a three-hour car ride, travellers piled into a ten-person gondola to cross the Victoria Nile. Only when the boat passed the roiling white rapids and floating river islands did the festival site slowly reveal itself.

"You're lucky you arrived when you did," one artist, who chose to remain anonymous, told me later. He attended Nyege Nyege every year due to the exceptional programming. He arrived on Thursday. "It's always been disorganised, but this year it's next level. None of this was built yesterday. It felt dystopian."

Nyege Nyege Festival took place September 15-18 at Itanda Falls in Jinja, Uganda.

When I arrived on Friday, the sun hung low in the sky. Debru, 41, greeted me and my colleague Whitney Ajayi on the wooden boat landing. He wore a loose, woven red robe exposing his chest and a pair of circular black Saint Laurent sunglasses over his heavily hooded eyes, straw hat askew atop of his head. This, combined with his unruly beard, gave him the image of someone who, although he was Belgian, would describe themselves as a "citizen of the world." Prior to Uganda, he roamed throughout India, Japan, South East Asia and the US. Nyege Nyege's other co-founder, Arlen Dilsizian, is a 43-year-old Greek-Armenian ethnomusicologist and filmmaker.

Despite Debru's composed demeanour, there were already some insurmountable challenges afoot. As he carried my suitcase up the grassy hillside, greeted every few metres by beaming friends who would relieve him of the bags and run to drop them ahead, I learned about the difficulties with a local contractor responsible for the glamping portion of the site. "He hustled us over almost everything," Debru ruefully confessed. "It's been a nightmare." The associate's name was Arthur.

In the blurred select camera footage I've seen, Arthur Kirunda looks like a young, Ugandan Rumpelstiltskin, with a wiry, 5'5" build and with a sculpted ducktail beard. He is 23 years old. Debru described him as "soft-spoken," a man with a sort of eloquent quiet confidence that appealed to his own aspirations for the future of Nyege Nyege. "He could convince you of anything," mentioned Ogwang, his ex-girlfriend, yet "everything about him was a mystery."

Kirunda posed as the CEO of Afro Avenue, a fashion line with an interest in tent and accommodation purveying.
He is pictured in the glamping cottage that he sold to Nyege Nyege.

Though she dated him for five months, Ogwang knew nothing about Kirunda, other than that his family had owned a hotel in Entebbe and a home in Kololo. He kept any other personal information vague, and also shied away from photographs, leading Ogwang to believe that he would open up with time. Maybe he didn't trust her just yet.

On Sunday, June 12, Kirunda cold-emailed Aly Allibhai, the CEO of the booking and events agency and Nyege Nyege partner Talent Africa, with an attractive business proposition. Posing as the CEO of Afro Avenue, a clothing label with an unlikely interest in tent purveying, Kirunda made a convincing case for himself by detailing a long list of tent descriptions ("high quality oxford cloth with high-efficiency function of waterproof and UV protection") and mentioning his business branches in Nairobi and South Sudan, eventually landing an in-person meeting in Kampala with Debru on June 25th.

Images of the accommodations Kirunda claimed to own.

Ogwang was born and raised in Kampala to a devoutly Christian household, which she credits for instilling within her deep, immeasurable selflessness. She is 26 years old and works as the proprietor of a motorcycle garage. In May, she met Kirunda at a quiz night at the local bar in Jinja where the two bonded over their mutual interest in entrepreneurship. He went home with her that evening and the two began dating immediately. From then on, he stayed over for week-long stretches of time at her house, only leaving for a day or two to refresh his wardrobe before coming back. He was her boyfriend, although in her mini-documentary Sleeping with a Scammer: A Nyege Nyege Nightmare, she explained "everything was a lie," so she no longer knows how to accurately describe their relationship.

"By that point," Ogwang told me over the phone, "I believed in Arthur." She was drawn to his unwavering ambition. Though they had only been dating for three weeks at that point, she was already reaching through her networks, sourcing friends with tents, to help him realise his partnership with the festival. Ogwang had several connections in Jinja through the Rotary Club, where she had volunteered for community literacy and health projects since settling in the city during the pandemic. She found timber and the carpenters to help him build the cottages he claimed he already owned. She never disclosed to any of the workers their involvement with Nyege Nyege.

"I take the blame for [the deception]," she said. "It was a very wrong thing I did. I don't want to say it was love. It was stupidity. But I put the love aspect before anything to defend this person."

Kirunda showed Debru and Dilsizian cottage prototypes he said were pre-fabricated in Nairobi, Kenya and Sudan and that he would dismantle and construct at Itanda Falls at no additional cost. But these structures, which would end up advertised on the festival website, were built for the first time on Ogwang's property. She even found a furniture store willing to lend its wares for the cabin's interior.

Nyege Nyege's "glamping" cottages sold for three million Ugandan shillings each.

By June 26, Kirunda had succeeded. Drawn in by his lofty claims of managing high-end camping facilities in Trinidad and throughout East Africa for NGOs and the UN, Debru confirmed the deal.

"And I loved the guy," Debru emphasised. "I was putting him on TV, I was telling all my friends about him. 'Yo, this guy, Arthur, he's the bomb, you know?'" Ogwang, equally enamoured, took on the role of Kirunda's ad hoc marketing lead; she lassoed her influencer friends to spread his ventures throughout their vast social networks.

Kirunda pitched other business ideas. Debru reported that he waxed enthusiastic about a potential VR space and a gaming centre. He wanted to do the parking lot for the festival. The Nyege Nyege team didn't need to search for artists' catering. Kirunda's auntie could take care of it—she had experience catering for the Ugandan government and upscale hotels. Three weeks ahead of the festival, he introduced her, along with a bevy of other cooking staff, to Debru and they prepared a spread to sample. They made another deal, though the one stipulation Kirunda impressed upon Debru was that all communication went through him; after all, it was his auntie and only he could get the best rates for all involved.

"He kept talking on about this thing and that thing and we were foolish. We thought he was the Messiah," Debru ruefully admitted, "We really thought we were going to grow with this guy and go so many places together."

Beyond the tents and cottages, Kirunda claimed he had other shelter options too, so Debru handed over advances for the festival's mattresses, for partner tents, production partner tents, and sponsor tents, all of which contained contracts accounting for thousands of staff members. Kirunda also took over the sanitary facilities, including the toilets and showers. Rather than renting out third-party portable bathrooms, he had a whole system he pitched involving wheelie bins and self-constructed toilet and shower stalls, so the organisers wouldn't have to continue renting facilities every year.

"There's a weird, sort of chain of events between the moment when you understand you're going to crash, and the moment where you try to fix things," Debru told me. A month ahead of the festival, there was little progress on the campsite. But he had watched the Netflix documentary that came out three years ago on 2017's fraudulent Fyre Festival, so he came up with a contingency plan from the outset just in case the cottage construction went south. He capped the cottages purchased online at seven and simply put 'sold out' over the website listing. The profits from these were to go to a few cottages reserved exclusively for press and headline artists.

Unknown to the Nyege Nyege organisers, Kirunda started to take on his own cottage bookings on the side, outside of official platforms like Mookh, the festival's ticketing partner. (Resident Advisor was also a ticketing partner for this year’s edition.) Ogwang continued to promote him. Kirunda, in turn, began receiving potential clients through his email and WhatsApp channels, and requested they wire the money directly to him. Ogwang kept a receipt book to keep track of these transactions and claims any money she received on behalf of Kirunda was immediately forwarded to his bank account. She only discovered these bookings were illegal on September 15th, the opening day of the festival.

In one email thread provided to Resident Advisor by Debru, Kirunda posed as the co-founder of a made-up entity titled "Nyege Resort: 5 Star Music / Food / Art / Culture." He wrote to one client: "We are absolutely delighted to welcome you in September, and even more so to count you as the lucky few who will experience our most luxurious and comfortable accommodation option to date." At one point, Elizabeth Nganga, the woman with whom he corresponded, sent him an image of a wooden tent with a different style but the same interiors as Kirunda's, texting him, "I'm concerned some people might end up being fleeced." He responded firmly, "Thank you for rising [sic] this. We will try to control the propaganda."

Like Nganga, Debru saw false accommodations, such as a storage space above the artists' cabin, advertised online. But each time anyone questioned Kirunda, he had a tendency to spin his way out of accountability or make just enough progress on his projects to assuage Debru's fears.

"I have a hard time with conflict," Debru admitted. "I always have." But a week prior to the festival, he confronted Kirunda. "These are not prefabricated cottages. Admit it right now," he demanded. "You lied." Kirunda's response felt boyish in its nonchalance—a "facial expression of shrugging shoulders with a little smile," described Debru. "Like you were caught with your hand in the cookie jar but as if it wasn't that terrible of a mistake."

But Kirunda's lies soon became the least of their worries. In the lead up to September 15th, several days of torrential rain pummeled Itanda Falls, turning the red ochre grounds into slick mud and causing further delays in construction. Then the Ugandan government threatened to ban Nyege Nyege. One MP called the festival a "breeding ground for sexual immorality." The news splashed across local and international media outlets, igniting a years-old controversy between the festival and the government. In 2018, the country's Minister of State for Ethics and Integrity, Simon Lokodo, tried and failed to cancel the festival on similar grounds.

The Minister of State for Tourism, Martin Mugarra, argued for Nyege Nyege as a monumental tourism opportunity for the country, "As we speak now, around 8,000 foreigners have already paid tickets and have booked to come and sleep in this country," he said. But Sarah Opendi, MP of Tororo, a district about two hours east of Jinja, and Henry Kibalya, the MP of Bugabula South, located two hours north of Jinja, argued against allowing foreigners to disrupt the moral fabric of Uganda. "It destroys our children, it destroys everybody. We cannot sacrifice the morals of people because of tickets that have been sold," said Kibala.

To proceed with the festivities, Dilsizian attended a cabinet meeting with Uganda's Prime Minister to ensure no orgies, nudity, admission of minors or vulgar expressions would occur. Police authorities were even dispatched to the grounds to reinforce the stipulation on the festival's long weekend. Nobody could stop Nyege Nyege.

Meanwhile, Kirunda was still trying to build 60 cottages as promised. On Thursday, the festival's opening date, the cabins were mere shells. Kirunda was nowhere to be found. Ogwang became the de facto liaison for frustrated customers and suppliers. She had also fractured her ankle in a motorcycle accident, so she hobbled around the cragged terrain on crutches.

"Throughout the festival, it became this sort of singing anthem, 'Where's Arthur? Where's Arthur?' Everybody's just looking for Arthur." Debru recalled. Kirunda's auntie also never showed up to cater for the artists, leading Debru to discover that the woman to whom he was introduced wasn't related to Kirunda and had never agreed to work for Nyege Nyege; however, she agreed to pitch in with a few other townswomen on an impromptu favour.

By Friday, the 16th, one discontented military staffer who had paid for an uncompleted cottage hunted Kirunda down through one of the collaborators of his company, Afro Avenue. Kirunda was hiding, pretending to sleep, in an isolated tent on the artists' campsite. Other army personnel detained him and brought him to the Jinja police station, where he was arrested for multiple complaints of fraud.

Ogwang wasn't able to visit him in prison until the 18th because she was the only one on the grounds coordinating with festivalgoers. It was at that time, after she met his mother, when Ogwang realised Kirunda had lied about even the basic details of his life. She had known him by a fake alias, Arthur Nkutu. He was also a local, from the Busoga territory of Jinja.

By September 19th, the day after the festival, Kirunda had talked his way out of prison. He told the authorities that he could not compensate anyone while still in jail, convincing Ogwang and even the suppliers whom he swindled to pay for his bail fees and a stay at Bridgeway Guest House, a nearby three-star hotel. Ogwang, who by then wanted nothing to do with Kirunda, refused to stay in the same room as him that night, which is how he managed to escape at 5 AM the following morning.

The local carpenters who were hired to help build the cottages at Itanda Falls never saw the final payment for their labour. Ogwang attests that Kirunda pocketed about 18 million Ugandan shillings from one mattress company, 23 million from another mattress company, 13 million from the water tanks and, according to her receipt book, around 60 million for the cottages, all totaling an equivalent of roughly £26,800. She has had to deactivate her phone due to constant death threats. Many of the outraged unpaid workers still believe that she is protecting her former partner.

Kirunda has now disappeared. All four of his phone numbers have been deactivated, his online footprint deleted and his bank accounts drained.

Workers constructed last-minute accommodations on the festival site.

-

A scammer wasn't the only trouble that plagued Nyege Nyege. The disaster only metastasized further as a result of the deluge of issues that battered the festival before it even commenced.

On my first day, shortly after being greeted on the shore of the Nile by Debru, Ajayi and I bumped into Dilsizian as we were returning to the artist and media cabin, an L-shaped hovel made of scrap wood. From a distance, I heard the faint strains of "Xtasis" by Nick León ft. DJ Babatr and watched as multicolored lights flickered through the dense foliage.

Dilsizian looked more nondescript than Debru, sporting a grey shirt and shaved head. "Just putting out fires left and right," he told me when I asked how he was doing. Midway through exchanging pleasantries, we were suddenly stopped by several security guards expelling a man from the same bamboo gates we were poised to enter. "Arlen! Arlen!" he pleaded, his face stricken, "You have to stop them. You need to let me back in. Come on, man, come on, please." The guards told us he had raped a girl in her tent earlier. I noticed two girls in the periphery holding one another, one in a yellow sweatshirt looking distraught. "They took my wristband, Arlen. Just let me get my stuff, it's right there, please," he cried.

To ensure our safety that night, Ajayi and I promised each another we'd retire around midnight to beat the rush of imbibed festivalgoers coming back from the central site. Over at the main stage, the timetable was running so late that I had to Google the entire list of programmed artists until I was able to match the pixelated image search with who was performing. To my luck, DJ Zato, a Ugandan radio personality, was unafraid to make herself known. She howled out who she was every few minutes as gqom blared in the background and a skittering motion graphic of her name danced on the screen behind her.

"Listen, when we tell you, when it comes to Nyege Nyege: women sound, women culture, women arts, women entertainment," she belted into the mic. The feathers on her yellow dress trembled with the gusto of her delivery. The Kenyan rapper MC Yallah, who brought in her signature staccato scatting, made a cameo appearance.

But DJ Zato's exalted rallying cry did not reflect Nyege Nyege's reality. Violence against women became another harrowing aspect of the festival. Saturday afternoon, while waiting at the main stage for yet another delayed performer, I met an Englishman wearing silver earrings named Mike. He offered me a sip of his coconut-flavoured Uganda Waragi liquor. We quickly debriefed about what had happened the night prior.

Women who had paid a premium for their security on-site were left to fend for themselves.

"A girl was raped in her tent. Someone was attacked next to the river," he reported. "There was another girl who was robbed of all her valuables, around 2 or 3 AM." Our conversation turned to the conditions of the festival, with Mike comparing the experience of sleeping in the pre-erected wooden tents to "being kidnapped and held hostage under the stairs."

During the break, the MC reminded the audience to dial the police hotline in the event of trouble. "For emergency please call 080-010-099" flashed across the jumbo LED screens. That day, everywhere we went, from the dance competition to the main stage, hosts would pause festivities to repeatedly remind attendees of the official number and to keep a close eye on their belongings.

Disturbed, I went online after our conversation to find news reports to substantiate what he had just told us. That same day, police arrested a group of four suspects for the attack of Quentin Perie Jolu, a 33-year-old French festivalgoer who was hit with a blunt object and found robbed and unconscious on the banks of the Nile. In custody, the four suspects denied their involvement with Jolu but did confess to orchestrating a series of coordinated thefts targeting women. John Kasule, one arrest, explained their tactics of seducing their victims before seizing their valuables. "We are based in Kampala city and only accessed this festival as revellers but our coordination person here is [Walker] Enyonyozi who helps us to spot soft targets with expensive jewellery and designer handbags," he stated.

One festivalgoer, named Michelle, 28, described her experience over the weekend as "terrible." She considered filing a lawsuit against Nyege Nyege.

On Friday afternoon she drove to the festival with her friend, also named Michelle, from Kampala. They both lived in Uganda but were originally from Kenya, lured over by the abundance of like-minded young people. Michelle ordered the cottage accommodations online, but when she arrived and discovered the construction was barely underway, she had to fend for herself. It took her eight hours—many spent trying to haggle with carpenters who were building last minute cottages, then scouring the site for vacant tents—to find herself, and her brother and friends, an alternative. When she finally secured a place, she tried to go to the Boiler Room stage, but the power had gone out.

Artists such as Bloomfeld (pictured center) performed at the Boiler Room stage.

"My brother drove all the way from Kenya just to come and find this," she said. What was even more appalling to her was the scrappily erected showers that appeared only on Saturday, which she described as "some flimsy water tanks'' with a hole and no doors. Many chose instead to bathe in the White Nile, an option she pointed out put attendees in danger for potential waterborne diseases, like the parasitic worm infection schistosomiasis, known to infect white-water rafters in Jinja. Some of the toilets on site, Michelle added, were just "pit latrines made of plywood—that is literally just people peeing and shitting on the floor."

Her biggest grievance with the festival, though, was the lack of transparency from the organisers. "They're trying to say that it was a great event. That it was lit, it was heavy, but truly on the ground, that was not the case. It wasn't a festival experience. It was just a complete shitshow." She was frustrated. "I feel like it would've been so much better if they pre-announced it and said, 'Guys, look, we faced a challenge. We'd contracted this person to do this and he hasn't delivered.' But to let people get there and let them sort themselves out? Their help desk is non-existent. Their contacts are not going through, but they have the time to keep posting on social media about how great it's going. That's so disrespectful."

Asiimwe thought the same, criticising the way the festival staff kept stalling her until finally revealing the truth hours later. Both mentioned that no other accommodation alternatives were offered to them, but due to Kirunda's fraudulence, there likely were none.

Michelle has attended the festival three times. In 2018, she loved it, mentioning that she respected Nyege Nyege's support of underground artists by giving them a residency space and public platform. But by 2019, she vowed never to return, citing safety concerns. During that year, she recalled, there was a long road stretching to the festival entrance without security oversight where attendees were sexually harassed and pick-pocketed. Yet after a long and difficult pandemic, she was swayed by the opportunity to dance again. This time, she would make good on the promise to herself. "I am never, never ever, ever going back to Nyege Nyege again. That was such a waste of time, a waste of resources," she told me. "It was so emotionally draining. It was traumatising."

The security this year was "non-existent," Michelle reported. The logistical issues of the festival left many bitter and underprepared for Nyege Nyege—or "Fyre Festival on steroids," as she put it. But women were ultimately the most vulnerable. "Even people checking your [wristbands] would catcall you. How insane is that?" she said. She couldn't walk around alone because of how dark the grounds were. "I don't want to be at a festival trying to have a good time and at the same time, worried that something bad might happen to me."

Attendees like Alisha, a 28-year-old Ugandan native who went to the festival with her boyfriend, told me, "I've grown up in Africa, so I know there are robberies. We know to expect theft, we know to keep our phones and our money safe. We're not stupid. But the people being beaten, gangs coming in. There was just too much violence, and no security."

In late September, two weeks after the festival, Alisha took to social media to voice her concerns. "Not only were people scammed but they were also violently beaten, robbed and raped at your so-called 'festival'. Stages collapsed, decks caught fire and people left Itanda Falls on boats only to find themselves caught in rapids in the middle of one of the most dangerous rivers in Africa," she wrote on her Instagram stories. While Michelle and Alisha received refunds for the cottages later that month, both of them were still disgruntled with the misrepresentations of the Nyege Nyege's 2022 edition in the media, all of which seemed to gloss over the alarming security concerns.

It's unsurprising in retrospect that safety issues infiltrated the festival. Kirunda's confidence scheme created a sinkhole of multiplying issues that the organisers could barely service all of them, not to mention the other spontaneous complications of technical issues or power outages that cropped up in the interim. Many attendees, particularly women, who had paid a premium for their safety and comfort, were left scrambling when they arrived on the far-flung site and realised just how isolated and neglected they really were. It was a grave example of how one man's misogyny and manipulation of a single young woman had the capacity to put the lives of so many others in danger.

What's more, Parliament had effectively twisted the public's perception of the festival's core values away from support of local artists or adventurous underground music into ground zero for immorality. By demonizing the event as a bedlam of perverse sexual activity within a highly conservative, majority Christian country, the Ugandan government had been explicit about the exact kind of person who would attend Nyege Nyege—someone depraved and unscrupulous, perhaps someone deserving of the crimes committed against them. This is not to say that other festivals don't have cases of sexual assault; misogyny in public places remains an ongoing plight for all large-scale events. Where Nyege Nyege differs, though, is the domino effect of compounding, devastating logistical issues that made a precarious situation even worse.

And it wasn't as though Debru and Dilsizian weren't trying. They clearly were doing the best they could. I frequently spotted both of them thronged by staffers who appeared to be whispering a steady stream of troubles into their ears. I saw Debru almost every hour darting to another task: in a van parked inside the artists' camp looking forlorn on his laptop, slowly jogging towards soundcheck near the main stage, taking television requests with Africa News, escorting 80-year-old Cameroonian performer Eko Roosevelt down from the stage to dance with the audience or chatting with vendors at the Yujo Izakaya, an on-site Japanese restaurant. At another point, I spotted Dilsizian, completely alone, slumped on the floor of the artists' cabin on the peak of Saturday evening, thumbing through Instagram stories, as if seeking a brief respite from the mayhem.

Revellers and performers at the Dark Star stage.

Ajayi and I made our own arrangements to leave early Sunday morning. But we had the pleasure of seeing Eko Roosevelt at the main stage, conjuring his rousing funk, backed by the Janzi Band, on Saturday night. Thousands of moths fluttered under the scarlet lights, so many that the band found ways to plug their ears and cover their faces from the swarm, though Roosevelt remained unperturbed. It felt like one of the ten plagues of the Old Testament. We later danced to frenetic jungle at Opium Hum's set at the Dark Star stage, the black tarpaulin covering the site flapping around us. Amid chaos, the music at Nyege Nyege was still exceptional.

The night concluded with a hunt for rolexes (an egg mixed with fried vegetables encased in a chapati roll) as a late snack. Once this was acquired, between bites, I pointed out wryly that the Bell Lager-sponsored dance floor near the riverbanks below was playing Rihanna's "We Found Love." Indeed, it felt like a hopeless place at times, but in the moment, the crescent moon cast the festival in its numinous glow. The air smelled fragrant of charcoal-grilled meat mingling with tepid rainwater from the downpour earlier that day. Outside the locus of control, there was nothing else to do but try and make the best out of what little we had.

-

Weeks afterward, I asked Debru why, after so many setbacks, he didn't just cancel the festival. In response, he sent me a few images that circulated in his network after the conflict with Parliament. One was of a young man holding up a sign in the middle of the road with the words "Nobody can stop Nyege" written across the cardboard in a purple computer freehand scrawl. People also printed black t-shirts embossed with the same bold slogan in support.

"The thought of cancelling never crossed our minds. We are used to adversity," he later wrote to me. "A lot of people rely on it for their livelihood, their career, it's the one moment in the year that everyone looks forward to. It's not just us."

Debru is currently gathering evidence for a fraud lawsuit against Kirunda. "I feel stupid. But the nature of con artistry is when you look back and everything is clear." He compared his experience to the final scene in the 1995 neo-noir movie The Usual Suspects when the police investigator realises he was tricked by the main antagonist, Keyzer Söze, and allowed the criminal to walk free.

"We were in a position where we were dealing with 250 shows on the road, a new site, plus the strong willingness to set up the camping ground nicely and also work with Ugandans," he reflected. "All these different things amalgamated to us putting our trust into someone who just took advantage of it."

Ogwang, meanwhile, has been in hiding. She describes herself as "a fugitive," unable to return home because of all the aggrieved contractors who accost her for money. "Life is really hard for me. I can't even talk to my family because they crucified me, called me a thief," she said. She's had suicidal thoughts as a result of being ostracised by almost everyone she knows.

Earlier this week, Kirunda reappeared. Ogwang forwarded me a WhatsApp voice note he sent to one of her close friends. He had seen the documentary Sleeping with a Scammer. "It's really not looking good," he commented. "If it's a personal vendetta for me refusing to be [Lucy's] man, then let her take it out on me, not on the whole festival," he said. According to Ogwang, he's been telling her to remove such interviews before he remunerates everyone. In the memo, he also claims he already repaid several suppliers. Ogwang, who is still in contact with many of them, denies this.

She reflected on a moment in the five-month relationship when she almost left Kirunda. Mid-way through their project together, Ogwang found him in Jinja, cheating on her with another woman, though he’d told her he was travelling to Kenya to source fabric and toilet supplies for the festival. What kept her by his side was a sense of empathy, she said. She was the one with all the contacts, with all the access to materials. "'Who's going to deliver the plans? Who's going to help him?'" Ogwang thought to herself. "And so I put someone else before me."

Anyone in need of help or struggling with suicidal thoughts can reach the Mental Health Counselling Services in Uganda or the Suicide Prevention Hotline in the UK.