On parents and their late teen children in Covid19 lockdown

As the reader may recall, all institutions of learning in Uganda were shut down on Friday, March 20. As of September 24, that makes it more than a half a year.

The dynamics of a contemporary family is maintained by a lot of things with a known rhythm. For instance, there are some family members whose regular absences from home balances things out. Such members are the school going children (boarding or day).

Now, family members whose regular absence from home were the balancing act in the family dynamics have been home for more than six months on an unplanned holiday. 
Only legends, as the common usage goes, would understand (and appreciate) the story of parents and their late teen children in the Covid-19 lockdown.

I knew I was headed for trouble when junior didn’t appreciate the concern for my failure to pick him from school. He got a lift from a friend’s parents and found his way home, to my relief. He wondered why I had worried over him and even reminded me how he was in the ‘highest candidate class’ in the country.

Next he was reading funny things: Novels (Jane Eyre and The Hobbit). We ‘quarrelled’ but managed to keep the peace. Later, I found him reading French on the Internet (mbu if he spoke another international language, he would get a job with the UN). I was very incensed, but I at least I now knew I was dealing with a complicated situation.

 When my friend Olive Eyotaru (formerly of Monitor Publications Ltd and now of Parliament of Uganda) asked about ‘her child’, I told her he was in France. I really don’t remember the last straw that broke the camel’s back, but I later decided to exile them to Kasese.

With continued mistakes (even in Kasese), I decided to cut off all financial and social support. On September 1,  I withdrew the phones. No calls. No nothing. PEACE. But I am not stupid. 

I know that in this kind of war, the fools always win. Your victory can only come when you see a grandchild. But a friend of mine in Kasese is expecting a grandchild from his S6 boy.

My friend’s S6 boy (on Covid holiday), has impregnated a S6 girl. Last week, the boy stole some money from the house and sold his expensive phone set and used the money to rent a room where he is now settled with his pregnant amour scholaire girlfriend.
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Mr Henry Mutebe (not real name), is a young academic smitten with his two sweet little things and their beautiful mother. Henry is more than 25 years younger than me; and I have no courage to tell him that it is a trap. The truth is, I actually admire him.
One time, he wrote a Facebook post about his two sweet lovely things when I was nursing an anger that could detonate a nuclear bomb. 

Cause of my nuclear bomb anger: Two late-teen boys were not yet home by 9pm and this was driving me crazy.
Dear reader, I would like you to read this Facebook Post. Child up for auction. Brief description: Early teen, lanky, tall, talks endlessly, voice is breaking, eats like a machine. My comment on this post was: I exiled mine to Kasese Republic. 

But the way I spend on this, one may think I am running an embassy in Kasese. Tonaba...
For allowing candidate classes to resume school in October, I ask all parents to vote Museveni in the 2021 elections. What a relief! Keeping a teen-ager under your roof is like a war. 
Keeping the peace is worth one million shillings a day. 

Mr Bisiika is the executive editor of the East African Flagpost. [email protected]