By Nelson Bwire
It is 1:00 am (Shaaha Mushanju Z’ekiro) in London (United Kingdom), and I have woken up drenched in all kinds of sweat. Owing to the record torridity here, sleep has become a luxury, while survival in itself is now hinged on how much water you can gallop.
I do not know which is a better condition anymore: extreme heat or cold? And while I sat on the bed, I scrolled through the internet to a story of Ugandan bikers who, en route to their debut motocross tour to Milan in Italy, stopped by Qatar and began tweeting: “Guys, how is Uganda?”
These overzealous bi-cyclers were basing their digital artillery in an opulent desert (Qatar), while travelling 10 hours to a country whose longest river is drying up due to extreme heat conditions, and the farmers there are fearing drought.
An hour flight away from me (France) is also worryingly drying up, announcing that 16 percent of its water ways have desiccated; At the same time, six (6) Ugandan girls according to social media updates were downing bottles of expensive liquor and settling a bill of Shs69 million in a Kampala Night Club while dancing paka kyini in about the same time I was deprived of sleep.
To put it in better perspective, Shs69million is cash for about 68 Parish Development Model (PDM) beneficiaries, or in the worst case scenario, it is 2 million less than that which constructed the Mbale Local Council Pit-less Pit Latrine, which has extremely irked Minister Balaam Barugahara.
I have also been following a story of the returnees from South Africa, and there is this specific character who detailed a harrowing experience of how he and several others arrived in South Africa undocumented to woo women as a full-time job!
And yet there is another interesting story of one Daniel Muwanguzi, alias Skyler, who has amassed such a following in a short time through narrations about how he abandoned a job at Nasser Road and went on a risk-taking venture to South Korea, causing a scene at the Airport in Seoul, doing odd jobs.
Skyler, despite stating that South Korea’s hustles were indeed paying, says that Ugandans are asleep and misusing the opportunities and potential of their country. He says Ugandans have so much peace of mind; they do not want to work, and many are seated on wealth meant to support their generations, such as land, climate and excess food.
Geographically, one can fit at least two (2) South Koreas in Uganda and remain with enough space to build several leisure parks, but Korea has 51m people, with an average age of 47 years. Uganda, on the other hand, has an average age of 17.8 years, meaning that Korea is running out of a younger population to do certain jobs, while Uganda is running out of jobs to give certain young people. Imagine the irony!
These two countries with almost the same population have a yawning difference in wealth, with Korea overseeing a $2Trillion economy while Uganda, on account of the few woke citizens, is creeping through to a $60B economy.
To make the matter more personal, Uganda has only about 1500 millionaires (USD) while South Korea has about 1.3million of them, that is almost the population of Kampala.
Now this is why President Museveni is waking us up; South Korea, the country Dan Muwanguzi aka Skyler is praising to all and sundry, is resource-poor and imports 95 per cent of its raw materials, Uganda, on the other side, has until recently been exporting all its raw materials, hence we have been our own enemies.
We have overseen Uganda suffer from economic haemorrhage (Ekikulukuto), by sending out our raw materials to countries that, in the end, use the raw materials to attract our young population into their labour force, albeit as casual labourers! While the ones who remain here are being finished by alcohol, to be fair, they are also finishing the alcohol, so it is an even war.
Uganda spends at least USD $635 millions on importing plastics, but we produce a huge amount of sugarcane (bagasse), cassava( starch), banana (fibres) and coffee (husks), which are used to make the same plastic.
In any case, President Museveni offered expert advice on the health dangers of using plastic and ceramic utensils. Can’t we then shift to wooden food containers?
However, all this is the cherry on top; it is the top layer; serious work ought to be done in ideological orientation, teaching Ugandans to appreciate their country, manage things, and value wealth.
Today, over 20 people are fighting for the estate of the late Kadongokamu singer Paul Kafeero, with the intention to split it amongst themselves. Would it not be wiser to leave the estate as is and offer shares to each of them and use the many acres of land in commercial agriculture, for instance? Why would a fairly rich man who died 20 years ago hold the magic wand to the temporary survival for the living?
Populations elsewhere are transitioning, there is a socioeconomic change, a sort of metamorphosis, based on entrepreneurship, industry, commercial agriculture, production, education and ideology, and then there is us, who are gathering to celebrate the TikTok gossip of Skyler’s South Korea escapades and hold month-long elections for who will be the Twitter President, while our country continues to produce peasants 100 years later! When then shall we think of the African market?
President Museveni is waking us up because we are so comfortable with where we are, while countries that are so far ahead of us are worried about where they are! Others are learning how to start living on the moon, while we are fighting for a 2 bed roomed house left behind by Kafeero deep in rural Mukono 20 years ago; others are building roads in the air, while we are eating the money meant to construct the ones on ground; China is constructing a railway system to connect the world, while Ugandan youth are debating on which premier league club has more spanish players!
It is now 5:00 am ( Eshaaha ikumi n’emwe z’omukasheeshe) and my entire neighbourhood is awake, while it is about 7:ooam in Uganda and my texts to some colleagues are not yet answered as they are still asleep! Zukuka Uganda ( wake up)!
The author is the online editor for State House
