Satire: Midlife crisis: Why birthday  parties are good for Ugandans

Growing up, I had a thing for dogs. But mama couldn’t hear of it. It was in adult life that I finally went for it. My cynophilia (fondness for dogs) is no longer a wishful thing. As a dogophile in adult life, I can get the canine as long as my means allow.
Also growing up, I was madly in love with dreadlocks. I always wanted to lock my hair but I just couldn’t do it. Then in adult life, I finally went for it.

“He’s suffering from a midlife crisis,” joked Benon.
Now, according to the Wiki, a midlife crisis is a transition of identity and self-confidence that can occur in middle-aged individuals, typically 40 to 60 years old. Media tropes and psychologists say this is a period in life where someone struggles with their identity and self-confidence.
Put another way, it is supposed to be a negative thing. Most of the things we do in that midlife crisis can embarrass the “right thinking members of the public”.

The examples of midlife crisis we are dealing with as a nation are shouting like tabloid headline the day after a sex scandal. 
You look here and there is an adult stuck in a teen’s body learning to tweet. You turn there and there is someone who has arrived on the table of opulence and fly whisk, so much that they literally drive to work in two Benzes.
And when you try to ignore it and tell yourself that it is just a period that will go away on its own, you are slapped with ‘birthday parte after birthday parte’. Bigtril would be proud. 
So am I, I tell you.

The papers have been shouting that this gavumenti is skunk broke. There are talks that the people up there have been borrowing from individuals who are loaded enough to gift their lovers with luxury cars on birthdays.
That is the challenge of having bad papers and editors and journalists around. A drone needs to pick them and have them kneel before some big woman and explain themselves.
Surely, you can’t keep going on and on that the government is broke when even the foreign donors couldn’t find enough space in the central bank to stuff anymore funds and decided to channel Ebola cash through agencies.
A broke nation cannot be the one raising the birthday wheel to Range Rover level when there are ducks and pens that can serve the same purpose. We must accept that we are stinking rich but we just don’t seem to know how to eat the money.

The other day someone did a “cross-country of birthdays” in a manner that left the legendary Eliud Kipchoge worried for his own good. The fellow was trying to show us how to do it.
Disappointingly, those who have turned in their midlife crisis aprons are just being shy by giving us one party with cakes of just 30k baked by Mama Nuru Bakery in Nakulabye. As a nation with enough resources to construct roads in the jungles of Congo or pay billions per day to road contractors, we must give our people two or more birthday parties a year.
If such isn’t a good idea, at least let’s follow a birthday fete with thanksgiving. At most, we will spend a few billion shillings, money that has always hidden itself when cries emanate from hospitals that there are no drugs and women are dying giving birth.

Other things can wait. When a leader is happy, a lot of good things go down. Like the most powerful hubby after the Spotted One getting to enjoy a PDA with his loved one in matching tracksuits.
By the way, does the Ministry of Public Service still know its job? How can we have these parties rolling and there is no public holiday to allow the people time off the strains of work so they can celebrate too?

Disclaimer: This is a parody column