Another month, or week if you please (depending on how much salary and month is left)and another set of challenges and stories if you please. But isn’t that what this column is about? Examining the mindsets and beliefs that drive us and the absurdity of our actions in this neck of the wood. Many a time you can’t wrap your head around some of the things going on. Here are the best of this month so far.
In Act One, reports hitting the newsrooms are about Lake Victoria (Nalubaale) getting polluted by effluent and also rising by about 1.1 meters over the course of the last three or so months. Some explain it off as a periodical thing. Others put it down to the destruction of catchment areas through activities like sand mining and encroachment on delicate lake ecosystems. Whatever the cause, in this day of instant relays of information, one cannot help but be astounded by the lakeside residents predicament. We see mothers and kids trying to keep their shacks dry, and green disease-causing algae floating on the water in these settlements and we cannot help but wonder what is going on.
But we have been urging ‘investors’ to exploit these ‘natural resources’ (read ecosystems) and telling whoever cares to listen to let the investors be. It only stands to reason that if it has been raining incessantly for the last four or so months and the catchment areas have been degraded, the lake is going to rise.
If you are still watching the lake rise, you are chasing old news. Act Two is about the locusts (enzige) and how my former classmate (Minister Kizige) and colleagues are tackling this once in a generation event. They have assured us they are ready to deal with the invasion and that all manner of preparations is in place. Soldiers, stones and whistles have been deployed, spray pumps purchased, and the drone operators’ association has been contracted to do ‘war’! However, no sooner do the locusts arrive and you begin to hear all manner of comical responses. The substantive Minister for Karamoja (another friend) assures us the ‘enzige’ have feared us and rushed back for the burial of Baba Moi. He advises us to be ready to harvest these locusts since they are a delicacy.
While the locust drama is going on, Act Three was also unravelling. Parliament and education technocrats are busy bickering about some new curriculum for schools. The technocrats want it, the legislators don’t want it. Truth be told, I too don’t know what the issue is but aren’t these two arms of government supposed to be working together? The last I heard about this one was that the Speaker had summoned the Minister of Education to come and explain the ‘shenanigans’ of her team. Watch this space because if you know you know.
Act Four however blew all the other news away. Enter one Honorable Peace Regis Mutuuzo, Minister for gender and culture. Despite her very humble beginnings, the Honorable Mutuuzo’s is ready to take on that gargantuan elephant of labia elongation amongst her peoples, the Bantu. I have often argued here that if you want to get into trouble, start a discussion involving either God, politics or sex (Of experts on God, sex and politics, Daily Monitor, April 8 2017). Obviously the Honorable from Kabarole (whose empaako I could not find on her Wikipedia page ) didn’t heed my advice. Her lecture on the subject of ‘pulling or not pulling’ has caused massive public debate, with her fellow women being the most vocal. With tongue in cheek, some have offered her free service, if she needs to keep her own house warm and closed! Bar talk has now turned to the six-million-dollar question: did she or did she not? Apart from locust hunting, all pundits are looking for a fly on the wall to solve the Mutuuzo mystery!
Samuel Sejjaaka is Country Team Leader at MAT ABACUS Business School. Twitter @samuelsejjaaka
