TITLE: Ghetto Heroes

At the heart of this story are the heroes of the ghettos. In the early days of August 2025, this photo reportage was shaped by long walks through the labyrinthine alleys of Kampala’s ghettos. At every turn, children’s voices pierced the air with a single word Munzungu, a white man, literally the wanderer. It echoed between corrugated walls and narrow passageways, reflecting both curiosity and distance.
Beyond individual stories, the reportage captures the collective spirit of communities often reduced to statistics. In neighborhoods where homes are single rooms without running water, where open sewers trace the streets and every resource comes at a cost, life is nonetheless sustained by solidarity. Here, survival is communal. Children carry water together; neighbors share what little they have; every moment holds the possibility of making a living.
As urban development encroaches and land becomes increasingly valuable, these communities face yet another threat: erasure. The ghettos of Kabalagala, Katanga, and Kisenyi stand at the edge of transformation, where the promise of progress risks displacing those who have built their lives there.
These are not spaces defined solely by deprivation, but by resilience. The people portrayed are not victims, they are protagonists. Their dignity resists simplification, their daily acts of endurance become a form of quiet heroism.
Ghetto Heroes is an invitation to look closer, to move beyond stereotypes and confront the layered realities of life in Kampala. It asks not for pity, but for recognition: of humanity, of inequality, and of the strength that persists in places too often overlooked.

AUTHOR: Gianfrancesco Peretti (Italy)