Uganda.Ungifted by nature

I’m quite concerned right now.I have heard from a friend who lives in Entebbe that everyday now, there has been road work in preparation for the Tripartite conference to be attended by 26 african heads of state. By road work, i mean they are washing the road. Literally. Over 30kms of it too.

Now, i don’t know about the rest of you, but the image of guys on the road with brushes, blue bar soap and jerrycan’s of water is extremely depressing. Does anybody else think that this is a terrible sign of the multitude of underlying problems that are slowly but surely eroding this country away. Washing the road????

Back in the day, the rogueking and I learnt a truism that kept us sane. “Never under estimate the ingenuity of idiots” How else on earth can we justify scores of men and women, getting up everyday, earning a living by going to wash a road because some presidents are coming and we can’t afford to look bad and all because another idiot decided to embezzle the funds that were meant for building a proper highway with good drainage?!

As you can tell, i’m extremely frustrated. No, I’m disgusted and outraged. This is just one of the many symptoms you can observe in this country. And scarily, every one of us seems to be quite comfortable continuing with the status quo, deluding ourselves as we drive around in our ancient second-hand japanese cars, yapping away on our expensive trendy cellphones and living the good urban life. People, this country is sinking under our feet! Our economy is mostly held together by the thin threads of airtime, bank loans, Beer and donor funding.

In ancient times, inorder to distract the people from the truth about the state of their poverty and disease, the Roman emperors would put on spectacular shows in the Great Colosseum; you know gladiators, christians being killed in spectacular fashion by lions or something, you’ve seen the movies. This is what the powers that be are doing here. Hosting CHOGM and the queen, 26 presidents, encouraging the proliferation of booze, tabloids and pastors attacking another pastor on sodomy, MP’s being propositioned with prostitutes while they’re supposed to be on a secret investigation retreat, foiled bank robberies which were supposed to be aggravated assault yet no guns were reported anywhere near the bank…I wonder what next?

I’m not a political activist or a doom preacher, but people, we need to wake up and smell the sewage. The wool is being pulled over our eyes as our society, economy and morality goes to hell on an express train. What can we do about this? Well I’m not really sure. But for starters, lets all stop deluding ourselves that Ug is the most developed country in Africa, that we have everything we need and are right on track. Trust me, we are not. Just looking at Rwanda next door; they had a genocide just over 10years ago but have bounced back and surpassed us in nearly everyway.

But, we do all have great power in our individual circles of influence. When there is something you can do-as the nike mantra goes-just do it. Many small actions repeated multiple times can cause the mightiest change.

Somethings gotta be done or else, we truely will be Ungifted by Nature. In more ways than one.

I’m out.