Charles Wesley Mumbere
A political refugee from Uganda who worked for years as a nursing assistant in Maryland and Pennsylvania has gone back home to take his place as king of the Rwenzururu Kingdom. According to an Associated Press article about Charles Wesley Mumbere, “The new King of Uganda’s Mountains of the Moon has undergone many transformations — from teenage leader of a rebel force to impoverished student to a nursing home assistant working two jobs in the U.S., where he lived for nearly 25 years.”
Mumbere grew up in the bush with a rebel group led by his father, a deposed king who was leading his Bakonzo people in protest against their oppression by the Toro Kingdom. After his father’s death, Mumbere came to the United States to study, gained political asylum, and trained as a nurse’s aide.
He chose the work, he told the paper, because it was reliable. “Other jobs you can be laid off easily.” But surviving on a nursing assistant’s salary wasn’t easy. “Sometimes you have two jobs,” he said. “You go to college in the morning, between 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. Then you go prepare to go to work at 3 p.m. and then return at 11 p.m.”
Under a new arrangement with the Ugandan government, the exiled king was reinstated. He has no executive power, but he may determine cultural and social issues affecting his people.
