Spaciaphilia in Uganda
I have been wondering lately! What is the matter with our lawmakers? Is it our culture that glorifies power? Where the father is the head of the family? Elders passing judgment on us lesser folks? What is it really that gives rise to a skewed mindset. But wait a minute. Power in our traditional sense was unpredatory. Our elders were revered as they offered justice impartially. It was agreed that power was a societal good and was not abused as it is so blantantly done today.
What then could have gone eerily wrong in our society today? On a closer scrutiny, you will notice a cancer that has eaten deep into our very cutural fibric. To that later. Just wake up in the morning. You clean up, but how? well, carry water in a basin, tooth brush; a pint of toothpaste on it, bewrapped in towel, trudging to a small sack called a bathroom. Well to be fair, after a visit to pit to empty the bowels.
A few water drops on the body and a mug of hot coloured water if any at all and off to a stage to be picked up by a formerly Japanese delivery van. You call it Kamunye. Once inside the Kamunye, you are confined to a 1/2 by 1/2; a discomforture of insumountable proportions. The noisy touts, indecent and smelly environs and space between metals so crowded you barely move a limb, driven by clumsy fellows from UTODA. You have no space at all.
So you have arrived in town and you have evade the pickpockets, move through crowded streets and into office; many a time so squeezed, you can barely move a limb. Do you see the drift. Well, most times you have arrived in office late and a series of excuses and plenty of gossip ; to that another time.
It is lunch time. So you squeeze past several people to a table where you will be served on a plate; ofcourse a plate, what did you think? If you looked closer at the hygiene of the plate you could lose the appetite. But no, that is not the point. You order for matooke, muhogo, potatoes, mayuni, posho, kaaro and fish/meat boilo. Sometimes you order chicken and chips, so burnt, you are better off eating charcoal.
Aaah! after a glass of butunda, it is time for work. But it is 4.30 pm and time to move on. You are back on scary grounds; scary transport system, scary streets and finally to your 4 by 4 room. You probably have a number of these 4 by 4 rooms. But you have immunity. You are brave. Oough? you belch carbon dioxide from that indulgement called ethanol. You hit the sack. The 6 by 4 sack gives you the comfort to the cycle of life in this republic.
So you now understand the madness of our leaders today. From a tortured livelihood, our collective psych is self denial. You now understand why our roads are narrow. Why we do away with space. They even say our mind is narrow. We eat a lot of carbohydrates, you get it (carbon and water) and little protein. Our minds can only be narrower. We are so confined that when we become leaders. It shows.
Space is beautiful, ask stargazers. Well, we do not have a department at Makerere that deals with astronomy. Our president would not approve. If you doubt me, read The Daily Monitor of Sptember 26th, 2006. But space is beautiful. The problem is that space must be filled. So you fill swamps with concrete, strip the trees off hills; in the name filling space. Yeah, we all know the laws of physics. Atoms move from high pressue points to low pressue points. Is that not how our weather is determined. So, inadvently we have been good students of climatology and physics.
Trouble is. Interfere with space at your peril. In physics it is said, when the atoms agitate a lot of energy is released. Most times this energy is negative. So the space on the hills and valleys is filled. What you have is a recipe for disaster. Ask people of Bwaise about flooding, ask yourself about loadshedding. Asks and ask.
Well think. Think about space and leave it alone.
