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Doing the same silly things over again posted on November 6, 2011 - 11:07pm

Every morning, across Kampala, there are men and women who determinedly sweep dust off the roads. They sweep up the dust and then pile it a minimum of 10 inches and a maximum of a metre away from the road. The dust then stays obediently still for about 10 minutes, till the next gust of wind or torrent of rain pushes it right back to where it was swept from.
I used to think there was something wrong with this model of cleaning until I remembered that drainage systems are cleared out in much the same way. Huge piles of soil, muck and kaveera will be laboriously dug out of a drainage system, and then piled a minimum of 10 inches and a maximum of 1 foot away from the open drainage channel. This pile will gradually be pushed back into its rightful place in the drainage channel by passing pedestrians, the wind and of course, the ever reliable rain.

Warid, worried, warning posted on October 31, 2011 - 11:14am

Ding dong the witch (or wizard) is dead. Colonel Muammar Gaddaffi was killed and all the problems of Libya have been solved. Or perhaps they are just beginning. It is not my place to say whether whatever Gaddaffi did deserved death. In fact, apart from the fact that he ruled for 4 decades and needed to move on, I am not fully clear on when exactly Gaddaffi made the transition from slightly insane despot to full demon. All I know is the way he was killed was uncalled for, shameful and horrifying. If that is the nature of the new Sharia law-abiding leaders of Libya, then I pray for the people. My heart also went out to Gaddaffi’s family, which had to watch videos of him being beaten and sodomised, and then watch him rot on international television and finally be denied the closure of burying him.

The Uganda Police should reach out to the community posted on October 18, 2011 - 10:21am

I remember a long time ago when I used to work some pretty strange hours. I was a scribe then, you see, and the Bible prescribes that there be no rest for the wicked. And so very often I would leave the office late and find myself caught up in three-lane traffic to Kireka. I remember one time my family was in Kampala for a party (which I missed, because I was working late) and they called to say they were leaving the dinner just as I was leaving the office. I advised my parents to pass through Kinawataka. That day they got to Jinja before I arrived at my Kireka muzigo. The traffic used to be that bad.

100 more ways to waste public money posted on October 10, 2011 - 9:20am

If I have not sustained injuries in the post-match fracas that must surely ensue at Namboole after the Cranes match, I will spare about 5 seconds to think about Uganda’s independence. To celebrate, I propose a few ways we as a republic can spend a few of those billions that somehow get into everyone else’s private account except mine.

Saying goodbye to George Patrick Bageya posted on October 3, 2011 - 12:20pm

The evening of Tuesday, September 27 was very strange for me. It was a reminder of my mortality and the grim fact that there is a time and a season to everything.
Last evening I received the heart breaking news that my uncle, George Patrick Bageya, had been killed in a motor accident. The very next phone call I received was my mother telling me my brother and his wife had been blessed with their first child, a healthy baby boy, probably within the same hour our uncle had passed on. I did not know how to react to either piece of news at the time. It felt like ‘God giveth and God taketh away’ in real time.

100 years of Busoga College Mwiri posted on September 26, 2011 - 9:08am

I will start by passing my congratulations to the college and its staff and students, past and present. By the time you read this I will have spent the day gallivanting about the school grounds enjoying its centennial celebrations, or getting rained on, with the way the weather is sulking these days.
I will also have accepted congratulations from others, being an honorary self appointed Old Girl of Busoga College Mwiri myself. I think I have earned the right, having sacrificed my father, six of my seven brothers and one husband to the institution. Please note, and in assurance to my parish vicar, when I say one husband, it does not mean I intend to have a collection; just the one. Until I came to understand what single sex schools were I fully expected to join Mwiri myself as soon as I was old enough. Thankfully for my shy legs, I was never to wear those white shorts.

People have lost their peopleness posted on September 19, 2011 - 9:16am

It has been said too many times but I will say it again because it is true – some vernacular expressions are too rich to be put into English. I was thinking of one such Luganda expression: “Abantu baweddemu obuntu”, literally, “people have run out of their ‘people-ness’.”
I was on a boda boda stopping to do a bit of shopping in my neighbourhood. Among the items I needed was charcoal. Round the corner from my house is a lady who sells charcoal from a little wooden shack which doubles as a bedroom, charcoal storeroom and kitchen. I like to buy from her because the first time I went there, she did not charge me money for a kaveera, even though she had to send one of her sons running down the road to buy one for 200 shillings.  For someone who sells charcoal for amounts as small as 500 shillings, I believe 200 shillings is a big deal. That she gave it to me endeared her to me instantly. I will buy charcoal from nowhere else.

More money and more respect posted on September 5, 2011 - 9:04am

I have always thought that nursery school teachers should earn heaps of money. A weekend with seven of my nieces and nephews was enough to convince me to take that imaginary salary figure, triple it, square it and then multiply it by 10. And then put it in dollars.
The nieces were okay – girls tend to pick a few toys, settle down and play agreeably together until someone accidentally does something to hurt the other. At which point I step in and say sorry to whoever is feeling aggrieved, give them a biscuit and go back to reading my novel.
The boys were a different matter. When they are quiet, you just know they are touching something they shouldn’t – like a dead gecko or the icing sugar and raisins you think you ‘hid’ in the cupboard, or they have discovered a game which involves jumping down from a very high place. When they are noisy, someone will bleed. Either way, expect a constant headache. I do not know how teachers of smaller children do not go mad.

Be careful about private hospitals posted on August 29, 2011 - 4:43pm

Privatising services has greatly improved life for many Ugandans. One such service is the medical sector. People are always complaining about the government facilities and how slow and impersonal the services are, not to mention the fact that drugs are never available. At least now there are is a mini-clinic round the corner for the person who can afford Panadol of 500 shillings and the huge hospitals in the posh suburbs for those who want painkillers made in Germany and served on a ceramic white saucer.
However, with the abundance of medical centres there is also an abundance of quacks, thieves and standards of treatment that would shock you. Stories abound of mishandling of the most basic cases of malaria to women losing their babies in puzzling circumstances. And all this happens against a constant backdrop of exorbitant out of this world charges and a total lack of medical documentation.

The state of Me posted on August 23, 2011 - 2:36pm

I am a woman in love (with a man). I am a mother and proud of it. I’m humbled and grateful, mostly. I am 30 and about to marry an extraordinary human being. Again, in these troubling times, I must stress that he is a man. I’ll be starting on my Masters soon and I’m putting one line a month (or so) into my collection of short stories. I’m on an international panel of judges that helps women around the world on a citizen journalist training programme. Someone actually pays me to make them lunch.