Writer: Benjamin Rukwengye. PHOTO/FILE.
I have heard a couple of versions about the origin of the phrase “When the unmentionable hits the fan”, but here is my favourite one – remixed for effect. Apparently, a man walks into a bar where everyone is having what looks like a good time. Revellers milling and engrossed in whatever catches their fancy. He looks around and loves what he sees. Orders a couple of shots and gets charged. Soon enough, the gbedu enters the body properly, and he is up dancing. Stumbles into one or two tables, but people are having a good time and don’t mind him much, even if he seems to be descending into a bit of a nuisance. Eventually, the bladder needs relief, so he asks the bartender about the bathroom. The barman tells him to go upstairs, the second door on the right. But the music is too loud, and he doesn’t get the directions right. He goes up the stairs and opens the first door he sees. He sees a small hole in the floor, and figures this must be it. At this moment, he also decides it might be best to go the whole way.
So, he dropped his pants and went for number two as well. When he was done, he walked back downstairs and was stupefied. Everyone was covered in waste! And they were livid. “What the happened here?” he asked nobody in particular. “Your ... hit the fan!”, everybody cursed back. And thus, the figure of speech was born. Now, the story usually ends there, but for the sake of it, let us imagine what might have happened next. For starters, the party must have ended because how could it go on? Then, the hapless fellow would have gotten a beating of his lifetime and likely not made it out of the bar alive. Then everyone would have needed to figure out how to get home incognito . And it is also likely that the bar owner wouldn’t be left counting only that night’s losses but that the night might have spelt the end of the business. Every time I am faced with a big decision to make, and I run it by my dad, he usually ends his input with that famous line from Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken".
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less travelled by; and that has made all the difference." Basically, it is his way of saying that whichever decision I make, I will never really know how things would have turned out if I had chosen the alternative. It might be unfamiliar, and I must be ready for the benefits as much as I should accept the consequences. But mostly, to realize from the get-go, that in choosing to go one direction, I have foregone the other – and that I make peace with it. But what happens in situations where you can predict how things would have turned out if you had chosen the other direction? That is a question that Uganda will increasingly and urgently need to answer because of how quickly its political and governance ground is shifting. Faced with the choice between honouring the constitution or legitimizing autocracy, we didn’t take the one less travelled. Instead, those entrusted with decision-making lifted term and age limits. Faced with an opportunity to entrench the rule of law and hold back militarism, those charged with the responsibility passed laws that are likely to exacerbate arbitrary arrests, unlawful detentions, and sadistic torture of civilians. In many ways, this feels like that exact moment just after the drunk man
Mr Rukwengye is the founder, Boundless Minds. @Rukwengye
