We must condemn those dead lions for attempting to breach electric fencing

Former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had so many titles and names that he ran bonkers over them. According to history tucked in a museum in Kakira, the imperialist in Churchill, during a tour of Africa in 1907, saw so many leopards in Uganda that he began confusing his middle name, Leonard, with the spotted feline, Leopard.

In that reverie, Churchill blurted out things and went ahead to put them on the record by indicating in his musings that Uganda was the ‘Pearl of Africa.’ Apparently he was very excited with the vegetation, fresh water bodies and spotted animals!

“He intimated to my grandfather that his trip to Uganda was to assess how England could benefit economically from Uganda,” said Patel Nath, grandson of Patel Devgan, one of the earliest Indian settlers and traders in Jinja City.

Nath, who said his grandfather was one of the guests invited to welcome Churchill and the governor to Jinja in 1907, said the imperialist officer would be regretting today.

Like Bill Clinton who aptly foresaw a new breed of African leaders in a man emerging from the bush, Churchill had been excited with dense animals like lions.

He wrote: “For magnificence, for variety of form and colour, for profusion of brilliant life – bird, insect, reptile, beast – for vast scale – Uganda is truly ‘the Pearl of Africa.’”

I wish he were around today to see for himself how everything is, worse of them the wildlife. The same animals and birds he thought were so awesome are just a pride of dense living things that cannot even tell an electric wire from woodland where they belong really. You find the much-touted Crested Cranes eating poison in reclaimed wetlands just to spite the farmers suffering to make ends meet.

READ: Electrocution of lions raises many questions

Can you imagine the other day three lionesses connived to attempt to bring down the sound reputation of a hotel near the Queen Elizabeth National Park by planting their paws onto an electric fencing? Yes, they were electrocuted, those dense animals!

I still don’t know what Churchill was on about with his Pearl of Africa reverie and given that there were no known editors at the time, I have a feeling that he just suffered a typo malaise when he meant to type ‘Peril of Africa.’

Otherwise, we all know that the Creation story says God made man the head of all creation. The animals are supposed to do whatever they want except stray anywhere near Irungu Hotel. And if Irungu expanded its service deeper into the national parks, what these lions are supposed to do is to simply look for alternative wilderness to exist in. Short of that they would be extinct.

The stupid lionesses, they should have learnt from the Mountain Gorillas. Word is that these primates have mastered the art of roaming the Virunga massif so much that you will never hear such scandalous stories as gorillas being electrocuted because they saw White tourists and got excited like they were seeing ravishingly bleached people in Kampala.

Now I hear chaps in UWA are going to carry out a post-mortem to ascertain what killed the lionesses. It is as well they are doing this; the result must indicate that either the lions were brought to the fence dead or they committed suicide. Surely, the hotel has no reason to do something that can claim wildlife. I smell conspiracy by rival hotels.

What our venerable UWA should be doing is pass the meat to wananchi for nyama choma chap-chap before it starts to go bad. In this era where you need to attend a General’s birthday to eat a proper meal, what more manna would we ask for?

In the meantime, the hotel should not waste time and sue UWA for trespass. They can claim reputational damages too. What were these big cats doing in the vicinity of a hotel when we all know that they are neither tourists nor in need of bedding?

Government must move fast to protect the hotel so that it can continue serving tourists who come to see these suicidal animals.