Something is happening in our villages and it does not feel right

That’s when it dawned on me that we are slowly becoming a country of opportunists and beggars. Everyone, from the young agile men to elderly men, is looking for a quick buck, preferably one they do not have to work for.

Taking a few days off work last week, your columnist headed out into Busoga, also known as Poverty Ville.

Repairs on the road from Jinja to Kamuli remain undone several years after work started. The short section that has been completed is quite a joy to drive over, but only because the rest of it is as comfortable as being dragged down the sides of a volcano on one’s backside.

I have been to villages across the country and seen some aspects of improved lives. Tin roofs continue to replace grass-thatched houses, bicycles continue to give away to motorcycles, and boreholes continue to spring up.

Where new districts have been carved out, government-registered vehicles make sudden, dusty appearances, and government buildings appear suddenly, symbols of government presence if not little else.

Busoga, and many other parts of the country, however, remain chronically poor. In many cases the people appear to defy all the rosy growth figures presented in workshops in Kampala.

During my last visit to my maternal village, to attend a funeral, I was shocked beyond despair by the poverty that had descended on the residents and simply refused to leave.
The poverty is still there, like a stubborn weed, but there is something else that is happening in our villages.

The first thing you notice is that capitalism has replaced the socialist glue that previously held villagers together. People who used to contribute food and labour to communal events, from burials to road works, no longer do it.
Either they have no food to contribute, or now demand to be paid for any labour that they contribute.

The young people, especially men, have acquired appetites for a good life but forgot to pick up the work ethic necessary to pay for it. So drive through any trading centre in many parts of the country and you will see young men idling around, playing cards, drinking and basically “being around”.

The less indolent are to be found riding boda boda taxis or making chapattis. Despite abundant fertile soils agriculture, with its backbreaking needs, is not for them. They would much rather sell their land, buy boda bodas and live a poor life in the emerging urban areas.

There is nothing wrong with seeking a better life in the city – after all your columnist lives in Kampala, not in Kapchorwa – but the sum total of these small events is that agricultural productivity is declining in many rural areas, in spite of government programmes and ambitions.

Your columnist has previously argued that without the need for a tax to encourage these young people to earn an income, they will continue to waste away. Graduated Tax might have had its problems in the way it was collected, but it did encourage people to get out and work.

The biggest change I saw on my visit, however, was with the older persons.
Many years ago a visit to the village required one to take a pick-up car or have space in the boot to carry back all the chickens, maize, beans, etc., that relatives gave.
They gave freely and with a proud smile, happy to show off the fruits of their hard work and give something in return for the soap, sugar, and other gifts we carried from the city.

Not anymore.
With the exception of one proud relative who, despite being unwell, insisted on giving us some fresh maize cobs, the rest of the people we met were all looking for ways to wring some money out of us.

There was a moment of embarrassing discomfort when a group of three men in their sixties followed us into a small makeshift restaurant and insisted they, too, were hungry and wished to have a free lunch.

It is not just the desperation of poverty; one of the three is a fairly progressive man who is completing a small commercial building in the same trading centre! But he swung from proudly showing me his building – one worth more than anything I own in the area – to asking for lunch worth less than Shs5,000.

That’s when it dawned on me that we are slowly becoming a country of opportunists and beggars. Everyone, from the young agile men to elderly men, is looking for a quick buck, preferably one they do not have to work for.

That could be the legacy of the grand larceny that the government has overseen with impunity over the last three decades. Our humanity has been stolen from us and we no longer know shame, be it in stealing from the poorest or in begging. If nothing else is, that, there, is a fundamental change.

dkalinaki@ug.nationmedia.com
Twitter: @kalinaki