Dreams Which Haunt Me

In the infancy of my Christian faith, I used to interpret and lose sleep over dreams. It was not until recently that I convinced my mind that these dreams are actually a continuation of a movie that played out physically or in my mind during the day. Some dreams are as a result of the mounds of kalo or heaps of potatoes that we, villagers crash just a few minutes to bed time.

Uganda Military Police flogging Journalists
(Photo maybe subject to Copyright)

I no-longer scratch my head to understand why in my dream, I was closely following Dr Col Besigye as he commanded us to look out for South Sudanese who killed 9 Ugandans.

I just know that it is a big zest, an animating spirit, a desire for leadership which cares about Ugandans in Uganda and Ugandans outside Uganda. The unanswered question of why Ugandans die like paupers in foreign countries and our rulers are not moved an inch.

I know that it is a result of a fantasy about a  leadership which doesn't look forward to military expeditions to collect money from Americans but a chance to export peace and apathy won by gracious Ugandans to other nations: a leadership that does not glory in keeping its soldiers in another country for 13 years but kind enough to execute a mission successfully and return in one piece. A leadership which does not see a stable East Africa as a threat to its own autocracy but a relief from perpetual violence that have dogged our region for centuries.

Back to my dream:

We were squarely defeated by South Sudanese who were led by Gen Tibs Kaguta. All along, we thought that he was fighting with us.

Finally, I bought omulondo (Mondia whytei)

When you find us chewing on those roots called mulondo, don't think that they are easy to come by. 

The boy child has suffered.

On this particular day, the city is not much crowded, as Sundays always turn out to be. I bumped into the young man selling emilondo, it is my

chance to strike.

I quickly inquire about the prices. But before we can complete the transaction, a damsel turned into our direction. I snatched the root from the guy, hurled a coin to the young man and dashed off off into a waiting matatu, just around the corner.

However, before I could settle in the back seat of the matatu, the young man was right there too. It seems he was following after me. 

He banged on the window demanding for his money with basic insults being directed toward me. Well, I didn't know that it was a 5 franc Swiss coin that I cast to him in haste.

All passengers turned to look at me with judgement written over their faces.

"You pay for the man's mulondo; how can you rob him of a mere 500 shillings?

Kale me, who had secretly wanted to acquire this magic tuber, my transaction suddenly turned into a matter of public scrutiny. Then a guy who looked to be in his early 30s poked in, "oba whose daughter is going to suffer this today?" which sent other passengers into a frenzy of laughter. 

Within me, I garnered all the confidence to explain myself, justify my purchase and win respect of the people who I thought were judging me harshly. I did that for the rest of the short trip.

As we approached Nsooba stage, my destination, the conductor casually referred to as, "musajja w'omulondo, kwata balance wo."

Jumping out of the matatu, I could feel relief of the humiliation; it was only then that I remembered that I had forgotten my kaveera in the taxi; in the kaveera was my new pair socks, popcorn and my mulondo. The car had drove off.

Since then, I gave up on buying mulondo!

Below is a post from Daily Monitor about the Mulondo, also known as mondia whytei.

https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/magazines/life/ugandans-search-for-prowess-and-virility-1528362

the myth that Mulondo roots improve sex performances are based on the tuber’s shape. “The Mulondo are long and erect,” he says. “That shape made people start thinking that it can make men stronger. In fact, when most men are buying the roots, they choose those roots, which are long and straight. But truth be told, these roots don’t have any (virile) effect ,” he added.

Instead, the roots have a set of unrelated health benefits, which still make them attractive. “Eating this root will for instance help you have better breath, say in case you did not brush your teeth. Most people who eat them however, do it because they (roots) can improve your appetite (for food). They have a way of making you feel hungry very fast, so for people who are sickly and do not want to eat, the mulondo can help.” The roasted coffee seeds do not have any virile effect either but instead help restore appetite levels.

This tweet by Dr Kasenene may help give insight into the herb: https://twitter.com/drpaulkasenene/status/1285099641097379842

The Real Village Ninja of Uganda

 

There is a troublesome boy in this village who doesn't do much at their home. He wakes, eats and goes into the neighborhood. When in the neighborhood, he does all the chores that any parent would expect of a child.

Therefore neighbors love him and know him to be hardworking boy when at home, he is totally the opposite.

Some people tell us that he is like his late father. That man (his father) was killed at his second wife's home. He abandoned his young family and got married to a mother of 4 children, which children he partly took good care of, as his blood  children and their mother struggled to make ends meet. One morning, "he woke up when he had died in sleep"according to the police report.

It is one of those few times I get to think that maybe witchcraft is real. Otherwise, why would you abandon your family and take on some other family unless under the influence of some supernatural forces.

Mpozi another time I have got to believe that witchcraft works is when a Member of Parliament from Butalejja or Bududa approves a budget to construct roads in Congo, apparently to foster development when those districts do not have any tarmac road. 

 Can't you see that your leaders and maybe yourself need to be prayed for?

Putting the Lockdown into Perspective

Drinking-at-B-B-Lounge. (Nile Post)

President Museveni did not bother with allowing bars to open. I think he also realised that the bars were opened just a day after lockdown.

On 23rd March 2020, my neighbor turned his bar into a restaurant. On the menu rolex, chapatti and omelette.

Mzei Kalaso goes to the restaurant for lunch and comes out at 8pm, singing obangaina. Then LDUs who guard the gate arrest him for breaking curfew rules.

Basically, the LDUs only offer security to premises and patrons when inside the restaurant/bar and one can drink as much as he/she wishes and stay as long as someone so wishes. But once it clocks 7pm, you have 3 options: remain inside the restaurant/bar till morning, invite the LDUs inside for a drink or pay them to escort you to your house. They are very nice. Thank you very much, Museveni for bringing LDUs.

Another thing which had to stop was the music. The sound system was disabled and you would find people watching NTV news with the volume down to zero. They make use of the sign language and experts like us depend on the lip reading experience to know what the news anchor is saying. The challenge was "zungulu".

But fear Arsenal fans. On the day they won against Manchester City in the FA Cup, they blew their own cover. They noisily celebrated for 30 minutes.

Then I remembered the Police Officer who directed a butchery to turn off his loud music. There was no presidential directive whatsoever that we should stop loud music and indeed there is no scientific link between loud music and Covid-19.

But that officer was intelligent, he realised that everytime the loud music played, it was meant to distract the police from noticing that people were playing "matatu" or card game or ludo, just behind the police post.

People are pretty smart!

They are smart like me. Now that salons have been allowed to operate, I shall be going to Mbale this weekend to cut off my hair. This hair and I have tolerated each other for all these 4 months.

I would have cut my hair from here in Kampala but Jerome has told me that there is a salon which is offering discounts in Mbale. I can't miss that. I shall get on the first bus on Saturday so that by midday, I shall be done with the barber and return to Kampala.

While in Kampala, I shall return my DP party card to Norbert Mao and ask for a refund of my membership fee. I want to join another party!

A Peak into Uganda's Social Media Groups

A few years ago, some Ugandans made it a rule that I should write an article of 1000 words everyday for the rest of my life if I am to remain in their group as a member. But then I wondered, If my audience can’t even read 20 words, what shall I do with a “1000” words article? But Lawrence is a tough lad, he insisted on 1000 words. He told me that I should stop writing for those ones and start writing for myself. I broke the rules continuously and they removed me from that group. There are times like now when I think that I miss being part of that group; given chance, I would rejoin it and try my best to adhere.

But before that happens, today I will write about Uganda and its social media groups. This love emanated from my mentor’s commentary that she shared in our WhatsApp group, the need for individuals, companies and nations to use social media diligently and make the best of it, which we have not yet embraced to full capacity. 

Many Ugandans are being weighed down by the burgeon of numerous social media communities. These groups are of tremendous importance to the members but you will agree with me that most associations mean no good to many of their members.

If the uneducated fellows wake up in the morning and hung around on verandas and along the streets, there has emerged a new form of idlers; educated, they wake up every morning, buy or borrow data bundles and “hung out” on their phones.

They are good at greeting while looking for a person to provoke into a conversation.

"mng"

"hi guys"

"gud mng"

"gm"

Then someone posts a funny picture and the madness begins.

The groups are well coordinated and most of them hate sense. They idle throughout the day but if you want to taste their wrath, post anything of more than 2 paragraphs.

In fact some have formed ground rules. They brutally resist sense and you risk being removed for posting much of it. But come on, they remove you in the morning and put you back in the evening because they want numbers to boast of.

The social groups will mostly advertise concerts, house parties, graduations, marriage ceremonies and even death. When they advertise the concerts most of them promise to go, when one of their own loses a relative there is that level of solidarity and a somber mood takes on the day. Then the group administrator suggests that they collect condolence for the bereaved. Such announcement shall be followed by stone silence. After that the fun continues, only 3 out of the 200 attended the burial.

These groups have cliques and they are bound to frequent fights; some are settled by one or two persons quitting the group or a distraction from another member who has not been following the conversation. But they also have a panel of kangaroo judges. They will always point out who was in the wrong, the arbitrators who try to neutralize tense moments and that rude administrator who thinks that he or she is always right.

So today having woken in a lugubrious mood, I thought I would annoy one or two people and get a basis for my article. All I did was open WhatsApp only to be met with a person asking us to join his group of a Houseparty which will be held on 1st April 2021 “Fools Day”. I would have said something worse but I chose the following;

“What do Ugandan youth do in their WhatsApp groups? They create a group everyday but there seems no difference being in one out of 10.

Mark Zuckerberg should put a cost to creating a WhatsApp group and servicing”

And the reply was not as bad as I hoped it would be, “I won’t say anything about your closed retarded mind!!!”.

That was enough to get me started. It also drew me to what a one Muthoni posted in a WhatsApp group asking what has gone wrong with the youth of Mbale;

“Mbale has issues

The youths don’t want to work

They are the ones that like partying every day

They are the ones that negotiate with the club guards to get free entrance

It’s even worse; they enter the club to beg drinks

It’s worse still on women's side, and some men

They offer them the drink; they return it to the counter to get money.”

She was removed from the group.

This fuss about the youth is at times frustrating but maybe some honesty may save a few souls; if we are truly the pillars upon which this nation is set, are we the ones we were waiting for? How shall we manage this nation if the majority youth spend the best part of their time greeting, insulting or praising each other on social? How shall we claim the future and the present if one cannot read 500 words a day? How shall we claim to be the leaders of today if we cannot even read the first page of our constitution.

Don’t we think that we need to be honest with ourselves, the world, the future generations and honest to Golola? We need to tell him that we cannot do any better. We are not merely products of bad education system but we seem to have taken and owned the failed system, we have seized it and we are carrying the bad package to our children and our children’s children but only in a creative way.

Before we can revoke the law that regulates the use of WhatsApp and Facebook, before the president of Uganda can punish you who misuse social media why can’t we repent our ways and learn to engage productively? Can’t we learn from our bad past and correct the present? If those that lived a generation before us faced difficulties accessing information and getting closer to people who matter, we are facing the same difficulty not in accessing people who matter but associating with people that do not matter.

I know that a person reads athousand words expecting to be motivated, inspired or at least exhilarated but today I thought that I could pen down something that can annoy you, move you to action. I wanted that by the time you have finished reading this article, you could have looked for the EXIT button and left the group that does not add any value to you!

Recalling the Shooting at Quality Supermarket, Nalya

Somehow social media picks us from our dust and places us on the same bench with people of very high status. Imagine, me a graduate of one UPE school in Nakunuku also coming here to give opinion on the behavior of someone who studied at Oxford and Leeds universities. Mugisha Arnold who was shot by a security at Quality Supermarket in 2019.

Despite all the hype however, I learnt to maintain my silence and only comment on issues of my "level".

Things like one shooting another is beyond me. I will passionately comment on Mama Rhoda increasing the price of katogo, raising the taxi fare from Bwaise to Namungoona, bodaboda accidents and maybe our ghetto gladiator Bobi Wine who has refused to leave us and enjoy his wealth alone.

Those matters are of highly placed people are complicated and most of all we have our own problems to solve. Just the other day, before lockdown, a guy was stopped from entering a certain mosque because he was not well dressed. I also wondered what took him to such a magnanimous Mosque to disturb the other God who listens to issues such as land titles, real estates and foreign trips for vacation. You take there your problems of a ka-boda boda accident?

Arnold Mugisha who was shot (Internet Photo)

Let us just stay in our lane; let the trolleys roll. After all we have never gone to a supermarket and bought merchandise  enough to fill a trolley. Let the bullets fly; after all some of you are too poor for a bullet to be wasted; one iron bar and you're down. Do you remember Dans Kumapesa?

In my opinion, I think that the askari was right and wrong. If his colleague was run
over for blocking the car from behind, instead of this other one picking a gun he should have run in front of the car. Block it from the front and behind and see whether the guy would have run over two guards in the same day.

Quality Shopping Village - Scene of the shooting

I still doubt whether rich people are allowed to kill more than one poor person in a day.

Meanwhile am unhappy that Mama Naki has lost a relative in Kalisizo and she must go for burial. Not that I feel for her but she wants all of us, her debtors to pay the weekly food fee on Friday instead of the usual Sunday evening. M
bu she wants to get money enough to travel to her village for burial.

The Great Expectations: Mbale City

Miss Daisy Nagudi poses for a photo on Republic Street (Facebook photo)

Mbale as a city is finally operational. But due to the scavenging COVID-19, the city has not been welcomed with the well known kadodi and fiesta which envelopes Mbale when people are supposed to be happy. It is even more annoying that COVID-19 cannot allow our "Road Meir Zanywa" to address us about the new developments and probably unwrap the benefits accruing to the attainment of such status. But as a city enthusiast, I want to preempt what our "Meir" was too shy to tell us on this spectacular achievement.

We have tried, as a Council of Mbale City Enthusiasts (CMCE) to compile ten expected benefits and we shall present them to you one by one from one up to ten. We don't want anyone to be shocked when you find yourself with a bouquet so huge that you cannot hold.

Presenting the expected benefits as compiled by CMCE

1. City status

From today, all dwellers and those born in Mbale should edit their addresses to add the word "city". Failure to honor this shall attract a heavy penalty which may be as heavy as banishment from the city. 

2. Jobs

Having been declared a city, all "dirty jobs" and those jobs which endanger lives of the city dwellers shall be reserved for people from outside the city. People who work in despisable positions like Executive Directors, Human Resource Managers, Banking officers, Engineers, Doctors, nurses, teachers, lawyers et cetera will be reserved for non-city dwellers. The city dwellers shall be expected to engage in prestigious occupations such as sports betting, hanging around big politicians, being political assistants and running social media pages. Basically, city dwellers need to only involve themselves in those jobs which don't cause stress and strain.

Mbale Clock Tower- the Central point of the Town - Daily Monitor

3. Weekly Allowances

We shall be entitled to a weekly allowance. At first, this allowance was supposed to come monthly but we factored in the need for weekly recuperation until our propensity to save improves. There is no specific amount set for the allowances, they will depend on your needs. These allowances shall be a preserve for only those who opt not to work. If anyone is tired of working, they can just sit at home, send in their weekly requisition to the city finance director and the money shall be instantly wired to your account.

4. Administration

In fact, Zanywa who is our first "Meir" was not born in Mbale. We shall not allow our own people to administer Mbale City. We shall be hiring people from other parts of Uganda and make them "Road Meirs", Councilors, RCC, and those other administrative positions. We shall not afford the indignity of our own being a Member of Parliament to endure long hours in the National assembly and yet you need to spend time with your family. Therefore, people from Busiu, Bungokho and Bufumbo should prepare themselves to come and do this administrative work of the city as we chill.

5. Marriage and family

Marriage shall be compulsory to all people and the city shall have a special budget to facilitate marriage functions from home to the church. We shall then treat you to all expense-paid honeymoon in Bahamas. We want to simplify life for our people. Otherwise, what is the city for if it cannot offer paradise to its people? One can even marry more than once in a year but can only be married to one person at ago.

Because we understand the side effects of child birth, all children shall be born through surrogacy if approved by religious leaders who are still under lockdown.

6. Education

With this kind of life, what do you need education for? When our citizens want to move out of the city to alien places where they cannot speak Lugisu, they shall be availed a translator. So long as one knows how to post on Facebook and hurl some insults at opposing politicians, that is enough! The money which would otherwise be wasted on education shall be spent on facilitating brothels and paying for our people's luxuries.

7. Medical Care

We shall set up the best hospitals but outside outside the city. Generally, we don't like the smell of medicine and contagion from health officers. We shall therefore purchase land from surrounding districts and set up magnificent hospitals which shall be run by doctors who do not reside in the city. Whoever falls sick shall immediately be picked and dumped in the hospital for care.

8. Religion

We are tying to figure out whether we actually need different buildings for different religions especially those who pray on different days and those who pray on the same days and to the same god. We think that we can use the same building on Monday for witchdoctors, Tuesday for Budhists, Friday for Muslims, Saturday for the SDA and then Sunday for the Christians. This selfishness which makes people build prayer houses next to each other shall not be tolerated. If this fails, we can hire descendants of guys who built the Tower of Babel to put up a single structure for all religions to occupy but on different floors.

9. Housing

All land and houses shall belong to the City Authority and therefore, you can sleep anywhere you wish to. If you went to Bukonde and it gets dark when you're there, just look for a house and occupy, sleep and own it for that night. We want to return the good old life of hunting and grazing. Sleep wherever darkness finds you, all houses belong to the city center.

10. Transport

We don't need roads and railways. We just need an airport for those people who will be landing in from villages. Don't expect the city council to fix those potholes and repair the outdated railway, we shall have a transport system never seen before.

However, as you await the fulfillment of these fantasies, you must remember that it all comes down to  you, as an individual. This rubbish-town maybe elevated to whichever status there is, but the challenges in your life will only be met by personal effort. It will take your individual courage to thrive; consistent, bold steps that you take everyday is what will make you.

And maybe, you may also choose to live as a villager or a rascal in the so-called city!