A Uganda of the busy bodies, the lackadaisical, and no middle ground

Busy body. If you think a little hard, you might find that you know or remember someone like this. They are usually common at family functions. Shows up in the kitchen where everyone is sweating through the mingling and peeling to put the feast together. Picks a knife, peels three Matooke, issues some instructions or moans about the time then walks away.

Pops up at the back in the banana plantation where a group of young men is sending a goat and several chickens to their creator, and hustles the boys for taking too long to get done with the task. Picks a broom on the way back and calls out two pre-teens admonishing them for not seeing how dirty the compound is.

Goes to the front of the house and for about three minutes, helps us out with dusting the chairs but complains about pain in their back and how everything is behind time. Shouts instructions at the sound guy as they disappear into the house, to pretend-clean some plates and dust the chairs. Then repeats this dry-run until the end of the day, when they remind everyone how tired they are from a long day of doing everything. But in fact, all they did was a shuttle from one station to another, looking like they were putting in the work but didn’t.

You see it on the roads when you get pushed to the sides by large SUVs for another big man/woman to make it late to another meeting. In government projects that get launched with pomp and graders show up every day, before they stop working and then mysteriously disappear without explanation 3 years after the project should have been completed.

Lackadaisical. A word that sounds like what it means. You have seen these as well. Could be in any given office – government, private sector, or civil society. Even at the gate. The apparent lack of effort starts to get a lot more irritating than the wait itself. There is a winding queue of vehicles or people to be served but nobody is showing up to attend to them.

If it’s at the gate, you will have a couple of bored askaris making sure to stop each vehicle and person, peer inside, and then wave you in. It is not clear why they bother. Or maybe it is because they are expected to. Required to. Make it look real. They wouldn’t notice a bomb or weapon because that’s not what they are looking for really. They just need to be seen to be checking. The same way that a government official would sign off on a document without reading the fine print.

The same way that you would get in or circumvent the security checks with a Shs 2000 note. The same way that you would get a document signed for whatever sum the man with the stamp deems fit – even if you should be getting the service “free” courtesy of your taxes.

It is hard to think of Uganda and not feel sad about the realization that we are caught between these two persons. Busy bodies who show up at work every day clutching laptop bags, envelopes, and balancing huge water bottles with blended cucumber and avocado leaves. Strutting through office corridors and browsing their phones for the latest gossip and memes instead of responding to emails or processing clients’ invoices or competently responding to inquiries.

And the Lackadaisical. Lacking enthusiasm and determination; carelessly lazy. Not even pretending to be uninterested in the task but showing up anyway.

It is a kind of charade where you are there but you aren’t. You see it in many places. People pretend to be working or going through the motions because they are expected to be present. Or maybe because they are paid so little it makes no sense to exert themselves any more than the bare minimum.

To make sense of this, think of it as you would, a toddler with boundless energy but no sense of purpose or direction; living with a geriatric whose best days are behind them. It is an untenable situation that has you wondering when the able-bodied middle-aged relative will show up and take control of the situation. It is hard to see how things will play out when the spaces are heavy on the extremes and light in the middle.

Mr Rukwengye is the founder, Boundless Minds.

@Rukwengye