The Public Theater

This play was based on photographs and interviews of Ugandans taken over the course of 18 years by Ugandan-American photographer Ntare Guma Mwine.

Biro had come to America to get medicine for himself and money to pay for his son’s welfare, believing the stories of the United States as the land of prosperity. Instead he finds himself in a Texas prison after a bar fight, about to be deported by the I.N.S. Sitting in his cell he remembers his youth, and the Uganda that he once loved. Following in the family tradition of fighting against unjust and murderous regimes, and he joined the army at 16 full of revolutionary zeal. After liberating villages came celebrations filled with alcohol and women, and after that a wave of S.T.D.’s. It wasn’t until he was rejected from a training mission in Cuba that Biro discovered that he and many of his comrades had H.I.V. As he waits in prison to be sent back to Uganda he must face the very real possibility that he is going home to die.

source: nytimes.com