The Mistakes of our generation
I have not lived long enough to tell horrific first-hand stories about General Idi Amin. I don't believe half of them anyway. Maybe when pigs fly, I will attempt to believe that he had a freezer packed with the heads of his victims.
I have however witnessed some pretty gruesome things in this era. I have seen demonstrating civilians used as training dummies/punching bags. I have seen a man surrender with raised hands, only for his arresters to quickly degenerate into a lynch mob, and beat the lights out of him. I have watched in horror as what was supposed to be a simple arrest turned into a free for all. I have seen soldiers walk up and down the length of a man in a manner that oddly reminded me of someone trying to flatten uneven ground. I could go on to explain that here, shooting men with tear gas right in the face from point blank range does not surprise anyone anymore, but I would be doing the other government howlers a disservice.
The stories are not always violent. Some, well...some are just plain sad. Some of my countrymen lie hopelessly on Mulago hospital beds, right around the same time their government is acquiring 300 million dollars from the treasury for classified state house expenses. Oh yes, they then came back a few weeks later, and took another 700 million dollars to buy fighter jets. Now this here is thoroughly mind twisting. Uganda is a tiny, tiny country with no real territorial enemies, and claims that these jets are for protection just annoy everyone. Protect whom? What, the people that are dying in a government hospital without the most basic medicines? Do I even dare to talk about the underpaid, understaffed personnel? Are we talking protection for the guys that are opting to go home AND DIE THERE INSTEAD?
On Sunday, I listened to a gentleman on spectrum. I don't usually listen to political talk shows because of the occasional catastrophically myopic arguments, and I wished I hadn't. He - and with such gusto - defended his government's spending and lazily brushed off the planned million dollar swearing in ceremony as a mere 1 million dollars; like flicking an annoying, immaterial fly off his shoulder. I mean, what is a mere 1 million dollars to a billion already taken, except for the fact that it is forked – at times under threat of arrest - from the pockets of hard working Ugandan men and women, who after the tax have barely anything to live on. Pugh! What is all the fuss about shooting one insignificant woman in the belly when so many have already perished, except for the fact that a precious life has been taken, and a family has been torn apart.
To whom does our government answer? And here is the heart wrenching, in-your-face fact. We did this. We chose our leadership, so complaining about it is not unlike an impatient man that greedily consumes half-cooked pork, and then loudly complains about the constant and excruciating trips to the bathroom.
1+1 is always 2, even when you apply the most complex Einstein-advanced calculus equations. So what do we do? We stick it out for another 5 years and then do the exact same thing: SSDD. I couldn't say that in full. Mother wouldn't be proud.
About the Author
Peter Claver
Calculus for Dummies ft. Lil Steve and Beezy Weezy
[simpleaffiliate source="amazon" results="10"]calculus for dummies[/simpleaffiliate]
[simpleaffiliate source="cj" results="10"]calculus for dummies[/simpleaffiliate]
[simpleaffiliate source="clickbank" results="10"]calculus for dummies[/simpleaffiliate]
No comments:
Post a Comment