On foot, from Kampala to Entebbe

Need for concentration. I’m trying to see if the damaged sections of the CDs and DVDs that store our memory can be repaired by a rigorous process that involves training in indexing, research, developing the ability to get the African mind to work through tedious and irritating detail without losing concentration or patience.

Many of the early European explorers, missionaries and colonial administrators noted this trait in us and while their writings and descriptions of us seemed racist at the time, this continues to be our most distinct personality trait well into the 21st Century.

The normal semester-course work-exams-graduation academic training that works for other people does not seem to work for us Africans.
I’ve been trying to work out since I first observed the large bookshops in Beijing packed full of customers during the 2008 Summer Olympic Games whether China is rising at this astounding speed because its people are obsessive readers of books or whether, in the first place, minds, when they are productive, inventive and creative tend to be attracted to reading.

Reading and development
In other words, is reading a lot a cause of rapid economic development or a reflection, an outcome, of a mindset breaking new ground, of which fast-rising cities and economic output are an end result?
Last year, 2012, traditional print bookshops in China sold slightly over two billion books. (This does not include the figure for the new electronic or e-books.)

Since China’s population is just over 1.3 billion, it would mean that there were more print books sold in China than the country’s entire population.

Or put another way, the number of books sold in China last year were the equivalent of the whole population of China and sub-Saharan Africa combined.

I have noted and been writing about the problem of the lack of mental concentration among Africans for a few years now.
I’ve seen this in government ministries and departments as well as the private sector, at universities and schools and the State system.
I’ve sat down and watched artisans in Kampala who repair TVs, radios, watches, cameras, mobile phones and other electronics with small components.

I notice the untidiness of their surroundings and the difficulty of reassembling the gadgets without smudging them with grease or dirt after repairing them.

In corporate meetings all over Kampala, executives and staff lay out plans and for every sign is they are under pressure to meet targets and increase profit margins.

But somehow, even as they talk, they seem absent-minded as they scribble on office notepads, impatiently checking on the time or restlessly looking around the room.

In a few weeks’ time, most of the detail the meeting or workshop agreed to work toward will have been forgotten. Customer care officials at our water, power, mobile phone and other public utility firms have that problem too. Incoming calls get the better of them and they get overwhelmed, politely promise to “work on the problem and get back to you”, but that’s as far as it goes.

Damaged CDs
No matter what we want to achieve, our minds seem to start out on a project or procedure but then like a damaged CD or scratched DVD, start skipping over several patches of the track.

Our minds are easily distracted and overwhelmed by technical detail or simply run out of energy before much has been accomplished. That is what has had me thinking since last September about an alternative training technique to our classroom education.

It involves a combination of physical endurance training and especially a regimen to (try) and get the mind first to slow down and develop concentration, then speed up and turn into a dynamic force for creativity, mental energy and efficiency.

I’m trying to see if these damaged sections of the CDs and DVDs that store our memory can be repaired by a rigorous process that involves training in indexing, research, developing the ability to get the African mind to work through tedious and irritating detail without losing concentration or patience.

Whether it will work or not, I have no way of knowing.