Kampala

Kampala is Uganda's capital and largest city, a sprawling, hilly place of hustle and noise, where matatu taxis compete with roadside vendors and the boundaries between wealth and poverty sit close together, often just a street apart. The average Ugandan household earns roughly 4.6 million shillings a year according to recent national statistics, but incomes in Kampala are uneven, and many people scrape by well below that line. A 2019 study by the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development counted over 15,000 street-connected people in Kampala, including children, and the real number today is almost certainly higher given the pressures of urban migration and economic hardship since then. If you're sleeping rough here, Retrak Uganda works specifically with street children and young people trying to get off the streets, while the Salvation Army in Kampala runs shelter and feeding support for those in crisis. Uganda Youth Development Link is another group worth knowing, as they've long worked with vulnerable and homeless youth around the city. None of these organizations can fix everything, and some days you'll have to rely on your own wits and the kindness of strangers more than any institution. But you are not invisible here, and you are not alone — people in this city have survived worse nights than the one you're in now, and so can you.