“You Basigyi in Kampala, yeah, things could be much worse, yeah! But you will never understand, yeah, for you cry about poverty while you carry sacks of shillings under each arm, yeah, and a bag of rice in each hand, yeah! “You cry about load-shedding, yeah, while your noisy generators and power convertors smile like forgotten spouses in the dark.

Dear Tingasiga:
The rains have let up a bit and the men of Mparo, Kigezi, have gathered again at their favorite watering holes. The women have spent the entire day tilling the land, fetching water from the distant springs, harvesting food, cleaning the homesteads and worrying about their children’s future.

As the Sun rapidly heads west to spend the night behind the giant hill that never smiles, the women quicken their pace, for they must cook for their men, feed the children and prepare to receive their husbands.

The men have had their fill of omuramba, the traditional alcoholic beverage made out of fermented sorghum that weakens the joints, loosens the tongues and blurs the vision. They stagger home through the muddy and treacherous paths, alert to the witchcraft laid in their paths by their creditors, in-laws and imaginary enemies.

The Old Man of Mparo, perched on his wooden recliner, is entranced by the golden glow of the departing sun’s rays. He nurses a gourd of obushera, a non-alcoholic beverage from sorghum, which some Bakiga men consider a drink for women, children and the impotent. He hears a familiar voice of a man singing the blues, and cranes his neck to decipher the words of the drunken poet. Presently, the voice gets closer, louder and clearer, and the Old Man recognises the man orikuteera omurengye (singing the blues).

Had he been born in a country that valued and promoted its musicians, Bitanyagurika Mwene Kabeeshekyere would have been a world class blues shouter, in a league occupied by folks like America’s Blind Lemon Jefferson, Joe Turner, Muddy Waters and Jimmy Witherspoon.

Bitanyagurika, affectionately known as Bits, is a gifted singer, composer, poet and political commentator, one who only needs the help of alcohol to turn on the tap of creativity and oratory that has made him an influential leader of sorts.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!” he sings. “People are crying about hard times, yeah, but somebody tell me what they are crying about, yeah! People are wailing about budget re-allocations from hospitals to State House, yeah, somebody tell me what it is all about, yeah!
“You Basigyi in Kampala, yeah, things could be much worse, yeah! But you will never understand, yeah, for you cry about poverty while you carry sacks of shillings under each arm, yeah, and a bag of rice in each hand, yeah!

“You cry about load-shedding, yeah, while your noisy generators and power convertors smile like forgotten spouses in the dark.
“You Baitira who gave me a great wife, yeah, I don’t know why you cry about the economy, yeah, the hospitals and schools, yeah! For if you were like me, yeah, you would have nothing to cry about, yeah, for I have never had anything, yeah! “You cry poverty, yeah, I live it, yeah! You dread the future, yeah, my present is dark and hopeless, yeah!”
“You whine about fuel, yeah, I don’t know what that is, yeah! You cry about money, yeah, I have no debts, yeah, for who would lend a shilling to one who cannot pay back, yeah!

Bits stops singing. The Old Man’s heart quickens as he orders his grandson to hurry to the road to check on Bits. The young lad finds Bits emptying his bladder against the tree that marks the path to the Old Man’s house.

The lad hurries back, and Bits staggers into the compound. He immediately launches into one of his most eloquent commentaries on the state of the nation. “I have been hovering between tears and laughter,” he begins. “I heard from someone that Gen. Salim Saleh, the brother of this country’s ruler, had proposed that the corrupt be forgiven their crime and allowed to keep the loot.

“Had that come from a drunkard like me, I would have laughed it off as the rambling of one under the influence of a potent brew. But coming from one of the chief architects of the fundamental change under the 10-point programme, I fear that Uganda has become unhinged kabisa!
“In this country, a chicken thief will rot in jail. A barefooted pickpocket will be beaten to death. Yet the president’s brother, who may well speak for our ruler, seeks to protect those whose massive greed has denied us the dignity of citizenship.”

Bitanyagurika recites the numerous corruption scandals by the leaders of the fundamental change. “Uganda Commercial Bank, junk helicopters, URA, Valley dams, Congo gold, Copper rivets, Global Fund, Gavi Fund, Nssf/Temangalo, Chogm, OPM…..”

The old man interrupts him. “I cannot believe that you know all these scandals by heart, Bitanyagurika,” the old man says. “I may be poor, but I am not stupid,” Bits replies. “I may be drunk but I am not a fool.”
Suddenly, Bitanyagurika bids the old man goodnight, resumes his blues and staggers into the darkness. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah! The hawks and eagles are in charge of the chicken shack, yeah, yeah!”

muniinikmulera@aol.com

Conjecture, bias, superstition, fossilised cultural beliefs, skewed interpretation of the scriptures and information deficits continue to inform attitudes toward new ideas.

Dear Tingasiga:
There are some who were shocked by the news that children were sexual beings just like their parents. Some considered my report that masturbation was a perfectly normal activity even among infants to be blasphemous.

To underline their vehement disagreement, some spared time to call me names, a welcome indicator that the message had shaken their beliefs.
Conjecture, bias, superstition, fossilised cultural beliefs, skewed interpretation of the scriptures and information deficits continue to inform attitudes toward new ideas.
Prejudice conspires against scientific evidence, oftentimes with disastrous consequences. Fear of the unknown is a particularly powerful emotion, made worse by pronouncements by the powerful and influential.

Scientific inquiry is relegated to the shadows. Personal opinion becomes received wisdom, amplified in a market too lazy to engage evidence, preferring to embrace speculation as truth.
We find an example of this in the myths that were engendered by fear of masturbation in 18th and 19th century Europe and North America. One of the experts on the subject published a volume called “The Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution”, in which he assured young lads that continued indulgence in masturbation would unman them and render them “ridiculous to women”.

In fact, all sexual activity, not just masturbation, was considered dangerous to one’s health. Sylvester Graham, the best- known American merchant of this opinion, assured his contemporaries in 1834 that most treacherous of the sexual acts was what he called the “solitary vice”, his term for masturbation. Why, the practice was a guaranteed cause of insanity!

“This general mental decay,” Graham wrote, “continues with the continued abuses, till the wretched transgressor sinks into a miserable fatuity, and finally becomes a confirmed and degraded idiot, whose deeply sunken and vacant glassy eye, and livid, shriveled countenance, and ulcerous, toothless gums, and fetid breath, and feeble broken voice, and emaciated and dwarfish and crooked body, and almost hairless head – covered, perhaps, with suppurating blisters and running sores – denote a premature old age – a blighted body – and a ruined soul!”

There was only one cure for this – circumcision for males and removal of the clitoris for women. Many doctors believed it and brought out the scalpels.

Meanwhile, writing in 1828, Dr. Reveille Parise declared: “In my opinion, neither plague, nor war, nor small pox, nor similar diseases, have produced results so disastrous to humanity as the pernicious habit of masturbation. It is the destroying element of civilised societies, which is constantly in action and gradually undermines the health of a nation.”

Throughout the 19th Century, masturbation was cited as a frequent cause of heart disease, epilepsy, consumption (tuberculosis) and, of course, insanity. A good parent was one who made unannounced visits to his children’s bedrooms in the hope of catching the rascals in the act of self-pollution in which case the recommended treatment was circumcision of the boys or clitoris removal “without the benefit of anesthesia.”

An even more fascinating development came with the advent of the bicycle, introduced in England in the late 1860s.
Dr S.A.K. Strahan, the Assistant Medical Superintendent of the County Asylum, Northampton, England pointed out some “alarming evils” of bicycle riding in the Sept. 20, 1884 edition of the Lancet: “ The pressure upon the perineum must be injurious especially to growing boys. It must cause irritation and congestion of the prostate and surrounding parts, tends to exhaust and atrophy the delicate muscles of the perineum, and also call attention to the organs of generation, and so lead to a great increase in masturbation in the timid, to early sexual indulgence in the more venturesome and ultimately to early impotence in both.”

We look back at these beliefs with incredulity and a knowing smile. Yet the folks back then were as sure of the dangers of bicycle riding and masturbation as many Ugandans are of the horrors of little children doing what we in medicine know to be normal.

None of the above will sway the minds of those who are terrified of new knowledge and better understanding of the human being. Only time will show them that human biology has no racial prejudice.
Only time will reveal to them that denying reality does not change that reality. Only time will reveal that the normal sexual developmental pursuits of children will neither ruin them nor destroy Uganda’s morals.

It took them more than a century, but the Europeans and North Americans eventually discovered that adolescent self-stimulation did not cause insanity or other disease. Science will overturn the myths and superstition that inform a large section of Ugandan society.
My heart goes out to the families of the little girls who were thrown out of Gayaza Junior School. My prayer is that the headmistress will reinstate them to their school.
Dr Mulera is a Daily Monitor
columnist based in Canada.
muniinikmulera@aol.com

Excellent ultrasound studies on pregnant women have shown male fetuses engaging in masturbatory activities.

Dear Tingasiga:

I do not know the particulars of the six Primary Three girls who were recently expelled from Gayaza Junior School because of what sounds like normal sexual exploration. Yet there is no doubt that a terrible injustice has been done to completely innocent children.

According to the New Vision, a Kampala English daily, the pupils were expelled because they were “engaging in sexual acts with other students.” The story did not elaborate on the nature of the “sexual acts,” although it is a fair guess that these eight-year-old kids were most likely engaging in self-exploration, mutual exploration or masturbation. However, even if there were other underlying factors, expelling these tiny children from school was not just wrong. It was plainly cruel and completely unjustifiable. It would be similar to beating and/or expelling a child from school because she was left-handed.

The expulsion of these kids was a classic clash between yesterday’s cultural mind-set and modern realities of normal human biology and development. Not that childhood masturbation and other sexual exploratory engagements are new phenomena. They have been perfectly normal pursuits since the arrival of homo sapiens on this planet. We just have a better understanding of them.

Excellent ultrasound studies on pregnant women have shown male fetuses engaging in masturbatory activities. To be sure, genital exploration begins in infancy, with interest first peaking during the second year of life. Pediatricians see many masturbating infants brought in by parents who are fearful that their little ones have seizures. Yes, the masturbatory experiences of infants and toddlers often go all the way, with the little ones ascending Mount Everest, followed by sweat-drenched resolution of the experience in a diminuendo that leaves them exhausted. The second peak of interest in one’s own genitals and those of others occurs around four to five years, with frequent sexual exploration that can terrify the uninformed parent. It is completely normal.

Beyond six-years of age, children learn that it is socially unacceptable to explore their “little friends” in public. The struggle continues, of course, but it is what I call the guerrilla phase because the sexual interest goes underground. This age group will hide in various nooks and crannies, such as school bathrooms, to do their thing.

Things get even hotter in the teen years, their raging hormones a trigger for masturbation and other sexual explorations. Data from the United States show that by the early teens, about 36 per cent of boys engage in masturbation three to four times a month, with 10 per cent doing so every day.

There is no reason to think that Ugandan and other African children are less sexually explorative than their European or North American counterparts. Of course myths about the consequences of masturbation continue to frighten parents and teachers all over the world. Here in Canada, one hears claims that masturbation can lead to blindness, sterility, pimples, warts, sex-mania, promiscuity, sexual deviance, homosexuality and insanity.

We hear from Uganda that masturbation is a vice that is passed on from child to child, or from television and other visual media and such. I have read comments on New Vision Online claiming that these masturbating kids have been taught these things by foreigners or by their minders. These are Victorian myths that have no basis in science. Sexual interest and exploration, including masturbation, are natural phenomena that one does not learn from others. These are old behaviours that were as common in the “good old days” of our blissful ignorance as they are today. The Internet has nothing to do with it.

Unfortunately, these falsehoods inform the decisions of school authorities and parents who criminalise normal behaviour. The lives of little children are destroyed because of our pathological fear of sex and normal sexual behaviour, now labelled vices by our happily ignorant moral police and those whose distorted religious views are at war with normal human physiology. Shaming, punishing, expelling and other hysterical reactions to these children will only lead to potential sexual problems.

Masturbation is not a sin. Never been. There is certainly no mention of it in the Bible. But let us assume, for discussion’s sake, that these little Gayaza girls were indulging in inappropriate behaviours. Should their lives have been ruined through expulsion? The answer is a firm “no”. Rehabilitation must always supersede cruel punishment.

So if Ms Margaret Kibuuka, the Gayaza Junior headmistress, has an opportunity to rectify this terrible error.
First, she should reinstate the expelled little girls back into their class.

Second, she should invite pediatricians or other experts in childhood behaviour and development to assess the situation in her school, and to provide appropriate advice and counselling to the children (if necessary) and to the teachers and parents. The teachers need to be empowered with knowledge about normal behaviour.

Third, she should work with experts to teach children about their own sexuality, this being the perfect age to prepare them for the inevitable pursuits of healthy, morally upright adults. This may be one of those cases where the intervention of the Minister of Education, or even the president of Uganda himself may be warranted. These kids do not have time to lose.

muniinikmulera@aol.com

Rich or poor; ruler or subject; armed or unarmed; titled or nameless, we shall all pass away like a wild flower.

Dear Tingasiga:

The death of Margaret Hilda Thatcher, late prime minister of Great Britain, though not shocking, has cast a chill on my world, one that she dominated so totally for more than a decade.

She is one of the leaders that I admired and respected greatly, though I disagreed with a lot of her policies and practices. She coddled dictators. I loathed them. She declared Nelson Mandela and the ANC terrorists. They were my heroes. She opposed sanctions against South Africa. I felt that the sanctions did not go far enough.
She attempted to frustrate Robert Mugabe’s ascension to the leadership of an independent Zimbabwe. Though I would later on regret it, I was then an enthusiastic supporter of ZANU-PF and its leader.

She was always at loggerheads with Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere over the South African question. I cheered the Tanzanian leader during his intellectual combat with the Iron Lady.

Her immigration policies betrayed a xenophobia that would later be revealed after her death to have been racist. The Australian Foreign Minister disclosed last week that Thatcher had advised him to ensure that Sydney would not be taken over by Asian immigrants.

One was not surprised by the visceral opposition that she triggered both at home and abroad. One could not be indifferent towards her. No surprise that many Britons still hate her even in death. Their primitive celebrations of her demise, more than 22 years after she was forced out of office, reveal the power she continues to wield over them.

Perhaps I liked Thatcher because she was everything I wanted to see in a leader. She believed in something, stood up for it and spoke in the plainest English for all to hear. With Thatcher, what you saw was what you got. And of course she was honest with public money. She was frugal in life and remains so in death.

It was often said that she was “the only man” in her all-male Cabinet. Her force of personality and her unshakeable belief in conservative socio-economic values turned Britain upside down, and offered a template for the privatisation and the structural adjustment programmes that were embraced by many countries in the 1980s and 1990s.

Her opinion mattered, whether on Zimbabwe or apartheid S. Africa; whether on nuclear arms or international monetary policies. British military and security services, along with the political establishment and civil service were under her command and service.

She was as militant as her enemies. She humiliated the Argentinians in the Falklands War of 1982. She took on the Irish Republic Army and weakened them. Not even their attempt to kill her in Brighton in 1984 shook her resolve to fight them. She fought British trade unions and left them dazed in the dust.

In the Cold War world in which she operated, she turned Number 10 Downing Street into a power centre equal to the White House and the Kremlin, the first British leader to do so since Winston Churchill. The lady towered over the world more than any other woman did in the 20th century, perhaps in all recorded history.

Yet when she died last week, at the age of 87, Thatcher, frail, helpless and deprived of her mental faculties, was almost alone in a hotel suite in central London, only attended by a caregiver and her doctor. Not even her children were with her. Not one of her cabinet ministers was present.

Not a single soldier from the fighting units she had dispatched to war theatres in ages past was by her bedside.
This week, Thatcher’s remains will be cremated. The Iron Lady will be reduced to ashes. Her commanding voice will remain stilled in eternal silence. And the world will continue its journey, as though Thatcher never lived. If that does not humble you, Tingasiga, I don’t know what will.

A humbled Thatcher is hard to imagine, but one hopes that as she run her last lap she internalised the words of James 1:9-11: “The brother in humble circumstances ought to take pride in his high position. But the one who is rich should take pride in his low position, because he will pass away like a wild flower. For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant; its blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich man will fade away even while he goes about his business.”

As one reflects on Thatcher’s death and legacy, one is humbled once again by the inevitable reality of one’s own mortality. Rich or poor; ruler or subject; armed or unarmed; titled or nameless, we shall all pass away like a wild flower.

One hopes that this great and once powerful woman had, in her last years, knelt before the cross of Jesus, surrendered herself to His mercy and saving grace and received her passport to an eternal life that is guaranteed only to those who believe Him. (John 3:16). In the end, that’s all that matters.

Dr Mulera is a Daily Monitor
columnist based in Canada.
muniinikmulera@aol.com

...his gratuity was paid to us last year, all of Shs2.1 million ($840) for an officer who served in the army for 14 years.

Dear Tingasiga:
“From the womb comes a warrior, a king, a rich man, a criminal and a killer.” Powerful words by a Kikuyu woman, named Muthoni wa Kirima, one of the last of the Mau Mau fighters who survived the great rebellion that expedited the formal end of British colonial rule in Kenya.

Field Marshal Muthoni wa Kirima, 83, who uttered those words when asked by The Economist what she thought of Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta, Kenya’s president-elect, still wears her very long dreadlocks, a Mau Mau trade mark that she will not trim “until she receives the benefits of independence.”

Her story, accompanied by her beautiful portrait, reminds us of the unresolved bitterness of betrayal that haunts not only the forgotten warriors, but many widows and orphans of men and women who risked life and limb for the liberation of their people from oppressive regimes.

One example of a forgotten family of a great freedom fighter and Ugandan hero is that of Major Patrick Balati Kimumwe, a professional soldier and fine gentleman who joined the Uganda Army in 1965. He shot to fame after he led a coup attempt against Idi Amin’s regime on June 18, 1977.

Maj. Kimumwe and fellow plotters were betrayed, arrested and incarcerated in the State Research Bureau’s maximum-security prison at Nakasero. In one of the most daring and successful exploits by Ugandan military men, Maj. Kimumwe and his colleagues escaped from jail, hours before they were set to “confess” their crime.

Barely a year after his escape to Kenya, where he was living with his very young wife and two toddlers, Maj. Kimumwe was recruited to join the fighting forces that tagged along the Tanzanian Army in the war against Amin.

According to Ms Lillian Kimumwe, who is my younger sister, her late husband was recruited by, among others, Ephraim Kamuntu, then a lecturer at Nairobi University. “I still see Kamuntu walking into our house in late 1978, giving Patrick an envelope, after which my husband told me he was going to Tanzania but would be back soon,” she says. “He left the following day and never returned.”

Maj. Kimumwe, died in February 1979, as his company of heavily armed men attempted to cross Lake Nnalubaale and capture Entebbe from Amin’s soldiers. The circumstances of his death remain unclear, but the great suffering that his widow and children have endured in the 34 years since his heroic death gives meaning to Malcolm X’s memorable statement: “To me, the thing that is worse than death is betrayal.”

“I have a bitterness that has never gone away,” Ms Kimumwe says. “Patrick was totally committed to Uganda’s liberation. He had offers to settle either in Sweden, UK or USA. He refused and said he had to return to Uganda. He never did. Of course some of those who recruited him or whom he fought alongside returned to Uganda. They forgot him. They forgot us.”
“I think Museveni mentioned him in his book,” Ms Kimumwe says. “Unfortunately, he did not tell us how Patrick died. Meanwhile, his gratuity was paid to us last year, all of Shs2.1 million ($840) for an officer who served in the army for 14 years. However, I still wonder why he has never received a medal of honor?”
“More than that,” she continues, “I am bitter because I have been let down by President Museveni. For years I believed that he would fulfill, what my husband believed in. But now, like many people, I feel betrayed.”

For his part, Mr Kamuntu, who was a minister in Obote II, is now minister for Water and Environment in the Museveni government.
When asked whether she has ever met Kamuntu since 1978, Ms Kimumwe said: “No, I have never met him. Not for lack of trying though.”
Years ago, she visited Kamuntu’s office in Kampala but was denied access to him by his staff. “Perhaps they thought I wanted financial help from him, which was not the case”, She says. “All I wanted from him and what I still want from him is to know what happened to my husband. Perhaps he or Museveni knows exactly how my Patrick died. It might bring me closure after all these painful years.”

“I would also like to ask him why he never bothered to look us up?” she adds. “Were we only worth his visit because he was looking for someone to fight for power on his behalf? Does he ever wonder what happened to those little children that he saw when he came calling for my husband?”

Kimumwe’s widow and her sons have literally struggled to survive for over 30 years. A high school teacher and administrator by profession, she spent seven years in England working as a personal support worker before returning to Uganda two years ago. Her sons, Phillip, 36, and Robert, 35, have never found reliable employment in Uganda, where they both live.
Yet her struggle with the bitterness is eased by her deep Christian faith. “If I met Kamuntu today, I would give him a hug if he let me,” she says. “It would be a hug for peace and forgiveness.”

Dr Mulera is a Daily Monitor columnist based in Canada.
muniinikmulera@aol.com