Satire: Somebody filled up the Empty Tin

An empty tin makes a lot of noise. Sometimes good noise although the average mind tends to only link empty tins with unnecessary noise.

The other day I spent several hours just thinking of something to say here. Even rubbish. Yes, rubbish, it sells. But nothing was coming. The brain kept taking me to Museveni’s ministers.

Then I thought of idiots who are starving to death as if Uganda is a desert. The idiots, do they live in the air and on lakes where they cannot till land from dawn to dusk to make crops grow?

But as I was starting to jot something down about these starvy-idiots, a twin’s sixth sense warned that I risked being sued by Museveni’s ministers if I offended their patented right to spewing nonsense – like the allegation that there are Ugandans out there who have turned starving to death into a hobby.

You’ve to give it to this government, though. 

They surely know their PR. Yes, the one who speaks for them might have developed some distended stomach but his bosses must have thought he looks more constipated than satiated.

The thought of asking Anite to go and say what Henry said was completely off. I mean, she is this lithe and if she started bragging about the abundance of food on a national telly, none of these NAM-ChinaG77 chaps would believe it.

They would even interrogate the Leopard for good measure. But the choice of Henry was epic. Those visitors watching the clip would have had no doubt everyone is belching in this part of the wretched earth.

And with street children and beggars all deported to their destitution caves, the only thing that was left was to fill the Empty Tin with anything that could make it stop the noise. They chose trash.

I’ve been sleeping on a soaked foam mattress for a few months now. The bad thing is that when you are hard-hit like that, is when every green housefly attempts to perch on your lips.

That is how the government comes in claiming that there is so much food for all and when the wanainchi extend their Empty Tins for that alleged abundant food, the tin is instead filled with so much crap just to keep it from making noise.

As long as the madoadoa are receiving rations of kawunga na maragwe at their places of deployment around the empty tins that is you and me, everything else is just fine.

And in case you are wondering, the ‘plates’ used to serve madoadoa meals are made by Jua Kali artisans from beating empty tins relentlessly until it is flattened and modelled in such shapes that they allow the meal in there.

In essence, they are empty tins filled with ugali. Back in the 80s in Magamaga Barracks, the ugali was always yellowish and the beans, with weevils, were never fried.

Once the empty tin was filled with that capsule, the recipient forgot about everything else. 

They would only see and hear Henry’s talk about abundance of food at that point.

The only flipside is that when the hour comes, that meme of someone carrying a huge saucepan begins to do rounds. The saucepan is like an empty tin, too.

So as the people amplify the noise around that saucepan, threats are sent in that say celebrating death is unAfrican.

They just want the Empty Tin filled, even if with trash.