Insights into Uganda is a selection of newspaper articles written by [Roving Eye] columnist Kevin O’Connor for the Sunday Monitor, drawn almost entirely from 2007.
Title: Insights into Uganda
Author: Kevin O’Connor
Available: African Studies Bookstore
Price: 50,000 UGX
Pages: 410 Published: 2016
Pioneering Canadian-American sociologist and psychologist Erving Goffman saw magic in the commonplace. In things or occurrences that we take for granted, he saw our deeper selves as circumscribed by social norms.
He called it ‘microsociology’, which could be described as teasing out the devil in the minutest details of how we live to reveal connective threads stitched into our social interactions.
This threaded linkage further exposes what we perceive to be marginal matters as activities which matter. Every encounter or experience of ours is shaped by social mores, moralities and, more or less, communal conventions that elevate the mundane to the magical.
This is the impression I got when I read Kevin O’Connor’s literary compendium, “Insights into Uganda.” But this introduction seems somewhat underwhelming. So let’s try this again. This time, however, we shall allow the book to introduce itself.
“Insights into Uganda is a selection of newspaper articles written by [Roving Eye] columnist Kevin O’Connor for the Sunday Monitor, drawn almost entirely from 2007 to 2019. Divided into 15 chapters ranging from sex to religion and from inequality to the environment, the 193 articles are always thoughtful, often provocative and sometimes humourous,” the back of the book reads.
Certainly, the book said more about itself than what I just said it said. But an extended quotation of what the book says about itself serves only to preempt the reader and reduce this review to a rubberstamp. So this observational book requires my observations and yours, too.
On my part, the simple elegance of the author’s diction unlocks a world of meaning with worldly wording salted by its quiet sophistication. I could be biased, previously being an avid reader of his ‘Roving Eye’ column as published by this newspaper. However, every reader will savour the singular insights of the author as minted by a freshness of their own.
Take the story “Why are Ugandan Bars So Dark?” written on June 20, 2008. The title alone makes you think, especially if you are in a bar right now and it is nighttime.
The bar is probably tinted by a monotone of near-gloom, only enlivened by some sips of bitter, so to speak. But that is not all, the author discovers. He asks one Ugandan as to why bars are dimly lit.
“Julian, 29, owns a small shop. He increased my understanding by zero percent, as his reply was, “I am a saved man. I don’t go to bars.” It is a characteristic response from evangelical Ugandans, speaking volumes of that ilk.
It also tells us that the ‘Savedees’ are the ones responsible for the darkness in bars. Because their faith is the light and if they deprive bars of their presence, they inevitably deprive bars of the light and The Way. Maybe that is why punters zigzag their way home from bars, no? O’Connor flatly disagrees.
“If Uganda had been colonized by India and not Britain, most of its population would be Hindus, not Christians. Religion is nonsense. And the supposed certainties of belief, often called “faith”, are distortions shaped by the accidents of history or of birth.
So, you may be a devout born-again Christian who regularly throws your arms around in Kampala Watoto Church. But had you been born in Saudi Arabia instead of Uganda, you would almost certainly not be a devout Christian, but a devout Muslim,” he writes.
Yes, O’Connor writes. I know you think Alan Tacca wrote this but he is not the only non-believer on the block. Still, this book is no diatribe against religion. It is so much more, reflecting who we are as Ugandans and what we do to define who we are when what we do is ultimately who we shall become (as Ugandans).
