Uganda, Why the Rush?

There is a common saying among the young people of Buganda; "Topapa, ojakutomera" meaning "don't rush, you may crash". It seems like this saying needs to be told with illustrious examples so that it can sink into the brains of all Ugandans.

This is my brother Collin Mukhatere

When you find us on the road, we are always in a rush: the push and shove on the streets of Kampala, the overtaking on the roads all over the country, it is always rush hour, laced with a lot of impatience.

When you ask where we are rushing, I cannot exactly tell because same Ugandans are not good with time management. Then why the rush?

When we drive at 100/hr, you may think we are trying to make it earlier than scheduled, for an appointment, but no: most Ugandans never keep time.

Four years ago we invited this "big man" to an event which was slated to start at 3pm.

He confirmed attendance a day before and indeed dispelled our fears of him being late for the occasion.

On d-day, we were all conscious of the need to keep time and indeed we invited the other guests an hour earlier so that by 3pm, all was set. "Big man" was no where, 30 minutes down.

I decided to make this humble call and indeed he picked.

"Hello young man, mpozi your event is today?" he asked

"What is the time right now?" he probed

This is annoying; that someone scheduled for an event is not even keeping track of time of the day and you expect him to remember the time scheduled for your function? Go to hell.

But the end result of our poor management is the rush and push; the reaction without thinking which leads to disasters. Majority Ugandans are in a rush because they are late for an appointment, school or office. This creates a rare of urgency which develops into impatience and the end result is the rampant accidents we have on the roads, traffic jam caused by wrong driving and all evils associated with reactionary behaviour.

Back to our "big man" in the story above; as he rushed to our event, he knocked a bodaboda motorcylist and only his name saved him from spending the weekend in a police cell.

Therefore, Ugandans, we do not need to rush, we just need to manage our time; for all the rushing we have been into, our economy seems not to much our pace because; we rush because we are late.