I first met Priya Ramrakha on a back street in Kampala, Uganda, in 1966. I was helping him and his editor at Time/Life, where I worked as a stringer and a fixer, to rent an aircraft to fly to Bukavu, in the eastern Congo, where some white mercenaries had taken over the town. Hiring the small plane required tedious paperwork in a government office, so, while the editor filled out an application, Priya wandered outside, into the equatorial sunshine and the broken road, his camera around his neck, and I followed. A large, dark snake, probably a mamba, highly poisonous, lay dead in the road. Priya stood over it. He cocked his head, then he raised his camera and looked through the viewfinder. He did not snap a picture; he paced around the snake and continued to examine it through his camera lens, bringing it into focus, enlarging it, studying it. I realized then that that was how he saw the world—that the camera was an extension of his brain and his eye, and that it did not shy away from danger or death.

Ramrakha at Haile Selassie’s palace, Addis Ababa, 1965.

In those years, the sixties, when African countries were becoming independent, a job was more than a job, it was a mission. I was teaching then, at Makerere University, and felt that I was part of a pan-African movement, helping to create a more literate and more productive society. I was that bore, that monomaniac, that moralizer—an idealist. Priya was, too. Kampala was the center of a great deal of cultural activity—we had a literary magazine, Transition, and two decent English-language newspapers; the National Theatre put on plays by local writers; Makerere University had a film society; and all along Kampala Road there were bars and bistros where writers and activists and publishers met and argued. Uganda by then had been independent for four years; though there were tensions between the Kingdom of Buganda and the central government, no one foresaw the attempted coup d’état, the government assault on the Kabaka’s palace, or the later usurpation by and rise of Idi Amin. We still believed we were helping to make Uganda a better place.