When peasant spirits are disturbed by pressures of modernity

Stock taking after the festive season always returns a  predominant reality. People lose their lives in unusually big numbers in matters associated with the period.

Merrymaking means availability of alcohol. Some get so inebriated and fight to grave injury and death. Others over feed or eat contaminated food, or fall sick and die. Yet a good number perish in road accidents as the people take advantage of the break to rush all over the country to visit loved ones.

It is usually the road accidents that make the most eye-catching headlines as it is common for entire families using one vehicle to perish.  

According to the WHO, globally road accidents account for 1.3 million deaths annually. When broken down it means about two people die every minute. The saddening bit is that over 90 percent of these accidents happen in developing countries like Uganda.

We have tried almost everything under the skies to get on top of the situation. More traffic police officers on the road to monitor. Instant fines. Route charts. Prosecution. Calls for better training of drivers, wider roads, rail, air and water transport to ease the pressure on the roads. We are almost still in the same place or even getting into a worse situation.

This is because we are being very rational in a seemingly irrational environment. What is peculiar about developed countries is that in whatever way you look at it these are societies where the peasants and peasant mentality outnumbers all else.

Peasant culture, mentality and mannerisms are at loggerheads with and overwhelm most efforts to ensure order and the discipline required to live in an orderly modern society. I know many people will feel offended, but what we have are societies where in every place a peasant who only recently arrived in the modern setting and has been there for two or three decades, holds fort.

What we call the middle class are basically glorified peasants who have been stampeded into a modern setting. They are there by virtue of the fact that they have made some money and gone through school. If you make money or steal, or inherit it or you find yourself among the ruling elite because you joined a plot to remove a sitting government and succeeded, you automatically become a member of the middle class overnight.

Our middle class and urban elite is generally not the product of a long, pains-taking, organic process that slowly but surely helps us to shed off the peasant streak. Such a metamorphosis comes with experiencing hands on, and appreciating modern situations and how they operate. That would gradually give us an elite that has a totally different mindset from that of a peasant.

Just uprooting a peasant from their slums and village spaces and transplanting them into a modern setting is cosmetic. It gives birth to a person with modern flesh that carries a peasant’s spirit.

He is then given access to power and amenities beyond his understanding and then blamed when he under delivers or fails totally. I have always wondered how councillors who have lived their entire lives in the slums and ghettos or in the villages, can sit and confidently claim that they are working to create modern 21st century cities. It comes as no surprise that most times when they are talking of improving transport they are discussing regulating motorcycle transport a.k.a Boda Bodas, with great intensity. When the peasant mentality is not diluted and banished completely from fellows masquerading as middle class and modern elite you are headed for disaster. You cannot give what you don’t have. A peasant cannot live like a modern person or give you modern ideas that work. He will always backslide into peasantry. So the peasant spirit will from time to time be overwhelmed by the pressures of modern living that it does not appreciate. It will live in rebellious mode most of the time making indiscipline and law breaking, like it happens on our roads, a way of life.

I had a ride in the front seat of a taxi where the driver elected to overtake a speeding vehicle on its left side moreover in a sharp corner. The other vehicle, trying to avoid oncoming traffic, veered back to its left side and almost pushed our taxi off the road. We ended up on the pavement where we almost killed some pedestrians and road side maize roasters. All this was in the middle of a capital city. The taxi driver who broke three rules; overtaking on the left, doing it in a corner and driving on shoulders, confidently cursed the other driver. He claimed that educated people are arrogant and don’t know how to drive! He also reserved some unkind words for pedestrians who are not alive to vehicles using the road.

It was obvious that in that instant, the spirit of the taxi driver took him back to the village and reminded him of the time he walked on the village path. There it is permissible to ‘overtake’ whoever was coming in his direction from any side including in corners without the thought of any risk. In case he wanted more space to himself, he may walk off the path into the bush and then back again after ‘overtaking.’ He may even stop to chat with an acquaintance while the other path users step into the bush and then back onto the path without a hustle.

But now in a strictly demanding modern environment, such a fellow feels like a prisoner with limited freedom as it is dictated that he must drive in a fixed lane moving in a particular direction. He cannot stop wherever and whenever he feels like stopping or parking. He should not overtake or turn anywhere as he pleases.

Most of the boda boda riders are recent arrivals whose contraptions were purchased after a sale of land. Same applies to most of us driving on the road. The first time many arrived in the city was to go for higher education.

That short encounter with modern living plus a job that bought them a car, graduated them into the middle class though their peasant minds remained largely untouched.

It is going to be long before we live in an accident free society. The peasant spirit is disturbed when abruptly pressured by modernity.

Twitter: @nsengoba