Makerere’s Dr Opoka, Dr Mugeere, a little village boy and a large, green Mercedes!

Like most big stories, this one began in a small way. In the mid-1980s, in a small, backward, nondescript, poverty-stricken excuse of a village somewhere in Busoga, one wedding has everyone talking. 

The wedding is special, because unlike the usual array of bicycles only, this one has a car! The adults are impressed because a Mercedes, old though it be, has come to the village. The kids are not sure what a Mercedes is and all that; they are just happy that the green car, by whatever name called, has paid their village a visit. It is enough that it is a car! 

Quite naturally, the excitement is fever pitch; and a few little boys, in torn clothing, venture towards the car. They want to touch it. Eventually, they actually touch it, which heightens their excitement and they scream happily, like rabbits which have stumbled upon salad.

Problem is, when a big man comes to a small village, he and his property must be protected from the dirty paws of the poor.
So just then the big man notices that little rascals…little village vermin, are all over his precious car.

How dare they? Hopeless!
The unsuspecting little fellows are caught unawares when someone steps forward and unleashes a series of vicious slaps on their laughing faces, warning them, “Don’t you ever come near this car!” 

One of the boys gets a firm kick on the seat of his pants that sends him flying into the grass like a rag doll. Tears in his eyes, the little boy looks back at the green Mercedes and promises himself that he will read hard and one day, when he grows up, he will buy himself a green Mercedes. Big joke!

At the start of last month (October), I was quite curious when I found a lovely green Mercedes ML 320 parked outside our law chambers. And when I entered, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I had a guest – Dr Anthony Mugeere, PhD, a lecturer of Social Sciences at Makerere University. 
Tony has a special place in my heart. We were features writers in rival newspapers; he at The New Vision and I at The Monitor, as it then was. 

And we, in June 1998, shared the excitement of a first trip outside Uganda when we flew together to America and over coffee in our hotel room at the Intercontinental, in Manhattan, New York, we both firmly agreed that plump girls made better wives!  We became workmates at The New Vision a year later. 

When Tony explained the story of the green Mercedes to me, I recalled the words of another Makerere lecturer, Dr Robert Opika Opoka, who “teaches medical doctors”. Bob and I began our brotherhood as little boys, sleeping side by side in House Billington, when we joined Namilyango College in S.1, 1984. We had no idea our lives would be forever interwoven. 

I mean, how was I, at 12, supposed to know that Bob would be my Best Man decades later and that our wives and children would be close friends and we would live in the same village in Kampala? 
Fifteen years ago, Bob who regularly preaches at our church, looked at our huge Sunday School and made a remark I will never forget.

“As a paediatrician, I am careful when standing before children,” he told the church. “Because I don’t know; am I standing before a doctor, a lawyer, a president, a bishop or…?” 

Whoever slapped Tony was certain he was slapping a village kid. He had no idea he was beating up a PhD! He could not have thought he was inspiring a little boy to defy the odds and surpass his tormentor by reading to the apex of academia… and put icing on his cake by buying a nice, green Mercedes.  

Never mistreat a child; for you have no idea who exactly you are dealing with!
A fortnight ago, Bob, who at Namilyango College had the lovely combination of being a first rate footballer, representing his country and a class-topper, successfully defended his PhD thesis. All these years we have addressed him as “Dr Bob”; now we do not know what to do…

Mr Tegulle is an advocate of the High Court of Uganda  | [email protected]