Ian Ortega
I have nothing against the Eid week other than my disappointment in today’s Hajjs and Hajjats. In the good old days, my great grandfather, a one Bwana of Lukuli used to spoil the whole division of Makindye. We would all gather at his home on such days and eat until the sun came down. The one thing I dreaded was the ‘lusaniya’ and its politics.
Sometimes your lusaniya would have that kid with mucus flowing, or some strategic players that dealt with all the big meat pieces as you busied with the pilau. Thank goodness for my connections at an early age, I would be exempted from the politics of the lusaniya. My great grandfather had been one of the richest transporters in the Amin era. In his compound were remnants of his fleet. These grounded cars became our play field, a silent reminder that we once ran this town.
Of late, I am sensing a renewed sense of panic among Generation NSSF (as someone chose to call them), but literally, the generation that came with Museveni. The generation that never stops reminding us about the bodies they jumped to school and the many miles they travelled bare-footed. There is a rush to a point they themselves cannot tell. It is a rush to make sense of the chaos that has served them for the past years.
You know Lord Belafonte sang the Jamaican Farewell, in Uganda, we are having the Ugandan Farewell. Generation NSSF is singing; “but I am sad to say, I am on my way.” Oh, how so much they promised us with their good English? Oh, how so much they prided in their long working hours? Little did we know that the long working hours were a substitute for failure to build systems and groom new leaders.
The panic is this realisation that the one thing they could not cheat is time. No one cheats time. And a stark reminder that everything we own here has been borrowed. Life ends in zero. What will be the legacy of Generation NSSF? They did not build any great Ugandan businesses. We cannot point to a single factory that became a regional player thanks to Generation NSSF. They were nothing but grammarians and masters of the narrative. They complicated the simple things and hid through jargon. They were the kind that would use complicated vocabulary in an argument without landing home any point. If Dostoevsky spoke of Generation NSSF, he would say; “their worst sin is that they have destroyed and betrayed themselves for nothing.”
You mean to tell me all these 30 and more years of dreams could only end in potholes? Liquor stores for side dishes. Massage parlours to employ their daughters, and streams of concrete in the name of arcades. Is this all they could deliver? No great art! No great culture! No great philosophy! No transformation! All they cared for was titles, to be called honourables, owekitiibwa. But beneath those titles was an emptiness, a void that they cannot fill.
What shall we remember of these Ugandan baby boomers? Now that they are transitioning. We only hope they have not reproduced themselves in their children. The children that were raised by maids and teachers (those failed by the education system). Oh, so we hope their children could be much better.
That they could rise out of these voids and find something to call a life. Or perhaps, they too will be an extension of this emptiness, of hiding in an intellectualism that lacks form. Of acquiring titles and degrees but without output. Of attending conferences in hotels, and meeting former school mates, and signing per diem at the end of the day!
Enough of the rambling. At least this generation produced an illusion of order. Of keeping up appearances, of projecting that things are okay even when they are not. We have learnt that well. Everyone is doing well, going by the profiles of Ugandans on LinkedIn. If the talent on LinkedIn is to go by, Singapore has nothing on us in the next five years. What a dream!
At least, despite all these failures of Generation NSSF, we finally have EFRIS. The faster it gets to everyone, the better. Things could make sense the day my boda guy gives me an EFRIS receipt. May be, we could force ourselves into a digital future.
We have progressed with music. We have songs such as Enkudi. We have the return of Lil pazo. We even have the Planned Dead such as Isma, that left a word for every Ugandan moment. All hope is not lost. At least there is the Kabaka run, a place to ask; “ani yalya?”
But Ugandans and eating. Do not you understand this was the core philosophy of Generation NSSF? That at least we could now eat and sleep. After all, what do we all work for? Is it not eating and sleeping? And reminding our haters that we are still eating, and we are still sleeping.
For Generation NSSF, the farewell is masavu!
Twitter: ortegatalks
