Righteous Indignation; Things That F***ing Piss me Off and Give Me Hope

Last week, the Ugandan social media was awash with the #UGBlooggers7days [collated by the dutiful and obsessive Joel] hashtag. A conversation that started with a one Raymond’s insatiable greed for Ugandan reading material thereby plummeting the whole blogosphere into a blogging frenzy. Suffice to say I’m glad I was there to suggest the 250 word limit because certain people were talking 600 and 400 words as a minimum. And that had its own deliciousness. Savour it

More interestingly, in the course of last week, I read a post by SamiraSalwani where she explained a phenomenon called white privilege and colonial mentality. From thought provoking to downright alarming at the state of affairs in my country. I couldn't believe my eyes as I read it. More, I couldnt believe the directness of it all. It was as if she was being fueled by that calculated methodical anger you get from serving a revenge ice cold. Under the surface but seething. Cold. Calculating. Then I realized that the ghosts I was imagining as racial anger was her razor sharp intellect.

Throw yourself upon it and die.

Die.

Die cut up in pieces from it.

Die with your ignorance bleeding from every crevice in your body.

It was not only sharp, it was steady and abiding. Diamond hard. Never goes blunt. So I looked up several of her other articles. Yeah, diamond hard intellect. But I digress.

“White privilege (or white skin privilege) is a term for societal privileges that benefit white people beyond what is commonly experienced by non-white people in the same social, political, or economic circumstances.” - That is how Google describes it.

This is what Samira had been talking about. How Ugandans or Kenyans were more likely to treat people of Caucasian extraction in more privileged ways; quicker service at restaurants, more attention in service queues, etc because of the colour of their skin. Because of a perceived superiority.

No sooner had that storm subsided than Simon released the mother of all hailstorms. The blog post can be read here. At 11:00PM he was livid and frothing at the mouth. Imagine a bull mastiff with rabies and an itch. Tearing into the New Vision and its editors. Asking pointed questions and causing uneasiness all around. He was taking names and no prisoners. 

But what he did do was raise once again the question of how a colonial sport for which every single element (riders’ kits, horses, saddles, jumping bars, etc) had been imported was able to get a page and a half of coverage in a country where our national netball team, which is going to the world cup by the way, couldn't even afford to buy water last week. I swear I think I saw a swear word in Luganda.  

And as if the night would not end just like that. At one 1:00AM someone posted this scan from a newspaper advert yesterday. An advert for several jobs and an administrative assistant. The admin assistant had to be a foreigner!! What the f*** were they thinking? Can you be more disrespectful than that? How dare you?!! Is this your father's house?!!

Now I was frothing at the mouth. I wanted to say something. To write to these people. To say to them they couldn’t be so stupid. You can’t feel that untouchable and hope to get far ahead. Then I realized that it wasn't just me. Its like all the media I had been exposed to had riled me up, had made me think of all the opportunities that people had missed and all the mistreatment people suffered because of this stupid white privilege.

But also I felt a sense of relief as I dozed off.

Why?

Because my anger was a sign. A sign that there is a new wind sweeping across Africa. People were questioning these “practices”. And they won’t stop because the awakening was happening. Yes, the good jobs might continue going to the less educated less experienced white people and their lackeys. The projects will end and they will have to go back home, or not. But us here, we are building our country. One brick at a time. One step at a time. And hopefully through blogs like this, one story at a time.

I'm off to lunch

A Home Theatre To Remember

In the quiet rustic air of Lira town, the birds of the morning chirp gaily to usher in the fresh morning air of the plains.

Filda wakes up, takes a quick shower and heads out in the early morning light to open shop as a retailer in the now buzzing upcountry town. There she sells soda, beer, wine, bread, body oils, little knick knacks that people use often but cannot get to easily, like sugar, soap, and other small utilities. She is also the newspaper agent in the town for a couple of newspapers.

She does this Monday to Saturday everyday without fail. Saving her little earnings and investing the into her shop to turn it into a better stocked shop. On Sunday, Filda goes to church service, has lunch at home and after a short nap in the afternoon she will meet up with some friends to sit and recapture the highlights of the week, to talk about which politician is messing around, who is the new young girl working with the local branch of the bank, the trucks that came in the previous night, and other things. She and her friends will normally catch up at the local watering hole known as “24/7” for being notoriously open all day every day.

Filda’s is a moving and emotive tale; she comes from a little known town called “Anai” on the Apac – Lira border and as soon as two years ago was a farmer in Anai growing and selling grain to earn a living. But she had a dream, to see her little boy; Solomon Ogwang and little Miriam Apiri get an education as well. She gathered 3 bags of Sesame (Sim sim) grain and sold it for UGX600, 000 Shillings and took the proceeds and came to town to start a business.

On one of those Sundays while she was enjoying herself with her friends she ordered for a few drinks and as luck would have it, a woman with a “tictac” sound system ended up with a Sony home theatre system. The excitement on her face when she came to collect it form UBL offices was almost pulpable. Her whole life she had never won anything, never been rewarded apart from her hard work and now here she was with something that would change her life, and Solomon’s, and Miriam’s.

The first born of four has to make enough to send her last sister in Senior four to school; doing what thousands of other people in our country do for their siblings. While she herself did not advance very far in school, she has dreams for her children. Solomon is now in P.1 and Miriam in Baby Class. She wants one of them to be doctor and has taken steps to ensure it happens. It is her waking obsession and driving ambition. It moved her from Ania, made her set up shop in town not her own, has her working 18 hour days six days a week. And now with a little help, she will be able to enjoy her life a little more while spending a little less.

Johnnie Walker Ambassador

The Spartan with Christopher

I recently found myself standing next to and talking to Christopher Othieno. One of only two men in the region known as Johnnie Walker Ambassadors. A peerless connoisseur, and a teacher by training, Othieno is a fine speaker. Kenyan-born. Standing in his presence feels like a lot of the things I know matter little to the man I wanted to become. He has class, is irreverent, takes no hostages, and does what he does ruthlessly.

As we talked about how he was selected to become an ambassador, from his stay in Scotland, to his endeavours to teach a timeless tradition of exclusivity, passion, pursuit of excellence and desire for recognition, I see in this man a lot of the things I want to be, or at least , i hope to become.

As the end of the evening draws nigh, I see him gleam like a pastor preaching to new converts; like a mentor to a fresh batch of proteges. He is steady, firm, unflinching and a damn good speaker!

I think about mentors and proteges and how possibly the greatest mentor I have ever admired might leave me soon. The idea that the one person for whom you would move half the world will just up and go - creating panic, insecurity, heartache and disrepute looms over me. Like an axe over Antoinette.

I muse on the preponderance that if nothing else I will learn to be the best if nothing at all. But its not enough. Its not enough that they teach you to be the best. The movies lie to us when they say mentors hate their proteges outwardly but secretly love them. Mentors should be your friends, care about you enough to try and avoid breaking your heart. This is betrayal, of a high calibre, and there will be recriminations.

I look again at Christopher and I understand his dilemma. Tomorrow he will be on a flight back home and he might never remeber any of what happened here tonight. But for this chance I will to speak with him and ask him why he is the Ambassador for the Johnnie Walker Striding Man Society.

What drives him to be part of something so exclusive that even the people who should be part of it don't even know it exists? It is a society of men who appreciate that life is not easy but they have done their due diligence and paid their dues. Now they sit and 'exhale' [is what my mentor called it] and say

"I might not have achieved all my goals and targets but for today I will rest here and start tomorrow." They are driven by the idea that through perseverance any dream

ANY DREAM

can be realised.

We love our mentors. We are loyal. We are diligent because we believe in them; sometimes more than in ourselves. They have found their light and we hope that maybe, just maybe, we can borrow their light too; just a glimmer. But alas, we never can.

No We Can't

Growing Into The Heroes We Dreamt We'd Become...

As a child growing up I was always in love with heroes. But I was a Ugandan kid going to Buganda Road Primary School. I don't remember much from Mr. Mpenje and Miss Asio Stella or Mr. Mpagi or what they taught me at the time because it was amorphously assimilated into my greater knowledge of the world and life.

But i do remember my heroes back then. Very boldly. Very clearly. Recently I met someone who reminded me so much of who I wanted to become when I was growing up. Talking with her, I realised how far I had come; so many detours, so many many roads. What surprised me though was how easily me and this person got into this conversation, you know? One moment she was playing cagey and hard to get and then the next, the dynamic had shifted and we were like age old buddies. As we talked, I realised how special this person was.
You know the way the brain is triggered by the very slightest of things. How a sound, a smell, a flash of something can unlock a whole era of memories? Yeah she did. She said something about childhood heroes and father Abraham. and I...
.....
just spaced out.
....
It was too much. My mind delved into how, when I was younger, I used to want to return to school just to talk about e-works, and the Mutant League and Punky Brewster. But none of these was more interesting, educative and obsession-compelling as the green haired, smiley, deep-voiced Captain Planet!

I would have given my world to be him; I think i actually might have. He was cool, non-violent, a new metaphoric champion for the environment and the wave of environmental consciousness that that stood for.

A creation of Ted Turner [yes, the billionaire magnate] to find ways of merging education and Entertainment in the early '90s the show was a huge success in establishing environmental awareness clubs at high schools in the US. The idea seemed to be that if there was a way to teach children through entertaining them, then the world and the next generation of the planet would be a safer place.



I am much older now, more seasoned, perhaps even slightly jaded but for that instant in her presence I felt that it did not matter, whatever I'd had become; I had failed to be a planeteer.

But after I left her and as I contemplated this I realized that in many ways, I had become the hero I had always dreamt of becoming. In the more subtle features, in the finer points I still had the rough edges [its nearly impossible to be educated and not be crass. Learned is a whole different matter] but I had the bone structure down.

To be a gentle soul, be considerate, be giving of self in time and effort, to constantly adapt and be versatile in order to meet the challenges around us, to be able to accept defeat gracefully [still struggling]. But the true hallmark of any hero always has been and perhaps will always be; to be willing to do the right thing...at any cost.