Thursday, 19 November 2020

They Can't Secure your future!

 Fact: Since 1986 The NRM Government has built 4363 kilometres of Tarmac Roads. In the last 34 years in power they have on average been tarmacing 128.3 km of roads per year. Today Uganda has about 20,544 kilometres of road coverage.

If we are to go with their performance rate over the last 34 years, it will take the NRM government about 126 years to tarmac the current road coverage in Uganda.

This therefore means that the current NRM government can not secure the future of even the un born Ugandans with good tarmac roads.

In Kenya, Uhuru kenyatta has built about 8000 kilometers of tarmac roads in just 3 years at half the cost of building roads in Uganda. This is double what the NRM has built in 34 years in power.

#SecuringYourFutureByNRMIsNothingButHotAir.

Wednesday, 15 January 2020

Noon Breeze

They stood in the middle of the sequestrated highway at midday. It was so peaceful, so silent. Even the wind seemed to have taken a siesta. All around us, the park was at peace. The picturesque savanna plains burnt a couple of days ago by errant pastoralists presented a kaleidoscope of quaint country illusions. A few patches of brown grass and shrubs remained in isolation. A roosting sparrow chipped from high up in the Cactus tree on the other flank of the road.
As I stooped over to capture a magnificent photo of my family, apart of me drifted far away into the heart of the of the peace that surrounded us. I lost myself into it as my fingers subconsciously took multiple shots. The sound of an approaching automotive resuscitated me. Rubber soles slapped the burning bitumen as my family scuttled to the safety of the sidewalk. In a moment, the red Nissan Quasqai was gone. The silence returned. Peace once more prevailed. A pair of weaver birds flying low glided past our faces, pieces of half burned grass between their beaks.
While the clear pristine Kasese sky held no promise of a downpour, in my mind, a storm was gathering. I knew a raging tempest was fast approaching. Like a hen gathering its chicks in the face of the first downpour after enduring a prolonged African drought, I guided my family back into the car and drove away. Apart of me remained in that spot, imprinted on a million grains of sand hidden in the tiny crevices between the miniature gravels held in captivity by the gooey tar.

Masters at work

Seated on a dry tree stump at the beach, we watched the fishermen work. The placid lake was basking in the ambiance of the evening. Midget waves relayed and crashed against the sandy beach receding to the lake crestfallen like an adolescent walking away from the girl of his fantasy after being turned down. A stray dog with only good use of three legs limped to the beach. He gazed at his own image on the glassy surface, took a drink and winced a couple of times whilst the waves distorted his image. A blitz of apprehensive barks ensued. A vexed fisherman threw a wet maize cob at the dog, striking him between the neck and fore limbs. He howled and scuttled off.
The fishermen operated like clockwork loading nets, buoys, anchors and other fishing paraphernalia into their boat. The stocky fisherman in army green slacks and a stained old yellow 'vote Museveni T-shirt' seemed to be the guy in charge of the fishing outfit. He stood at the beach and signaled instructions to the other three men. In his right hand, he held a small radio close to his ear and occasionally stumped his foot on the wet beach whenever he heard something he didn't agree with on the broadcast. He could be seen pacing and grimacing. I watched him and thought, I know nothing about him and he knows nothing about me. I wondered what his story was. I was sad that I would probably never know.
The men on the boat finished loading and called out to the stocky guy. He hurried to the boat, radio still held to his ear and embarked. The fisherman in the aged leather jacket pull-started the Yamaha engine. It coughed once and purred to life. The other men stared at the sky while the stocky man lowered the radio from his ear to read the time on his wrist watch.
The sun was already fast receding behind the sky. Over the horizon where the sky appeared to meet with the lake, a bright amber art piece was taking shape, nature's own adept fingers working seamlessly to create this sensation. The fishermen, steered their boat right out into the growing sunset and blended in. The masterpiece was complete. Four fishermen in a dugout with a motor engine sailing against the tide bathed in the tranquility of the amber ball of fire changing to hues of orange and then almost tangerine.

Rolling Wheels

She came to him last night. The look in her eyes told him she had moved on. The smile on her lips told him he still had apart of him left in her. Then for the the next hour,her voice,her heartbeat, their shared past raced through him like Boda bodas at the traffic lights during rush hour on a Monday morning.In the car they kissed.Yes,she kissed him and he knew her eyes and lips were playing games on him. He still loved her and he wished God would bless her with him BUT, he also knew he didn't deserve her anymore . He was Now A Father. How could he have the ability to love and hurt her and feel no guilt at all?
He picked up a pad of paper and a splintered Bic pen. He started to scribble...
Darling Grace....am talking about me. Am talking about the pages of my life that i haven't flipped in along time. It feels good going back in time. I love the overwhelming feeling of nostalgia, the fresh scent of innocence and the great aroma of love that comes with the trip. There is a song from 1988 by George Michael called "One more try" ...am listening to it while i smile!
Wild thoughts rummaged through him... He thought of words, words she had written to a girlfriend of hers when he was nursing his first heartbreak as an adolescent. "I will stand aside and watch. When the tears and whinnings subside,then i will step in like a heroine and grab that boy by the heart and take him to places he never knew existed. He shall not be in need again!"
He knew knew of the blazing desire to be taken to some places he never knew existed.
His mind took a flight. The night was cold and there was an eerie chill to the air on his bare back. Her body underneath him was warm and anxious and hungry for him.
When he was this close to it—eyes squeezed shut, lips twisted in a Billy goat sneer, cheeks glowing—the most descriptive word wouldn't be "passionate" or "erotic." It would be "determined." Because right then, at the edges of his fading consciousness, he was worried that the phone would ring, his knees would lose their traction on the sheets, or she ... would change position, and suddenly he would be sliding away from that elusive peak instead of moving toward it....

Primal Urges

Mini - gorgeous who wears nothing save for pristine brown skin and dances all day long on what i deliberately call my 'haute couture dashboard' pulled a facsimile of the famous Foxy Brown deep-it low and twirl-it-till-it soaks dance move from the 2001 Oh Yeah smash single as we took a turn to the left. The sheeny 'colansi' road hastily gave away to a loose surface road. The AC now in full blast whizzed through the dashboard gills like carbon-dixode exiting the strained nostrils of an Olympic marathoner approaching the 42km mark. The murrum was so fine it went up in a cloud of dust behind us like an eerie halo we couldn't shake off. Some portions of the ill-maintained road were creased in multiple corrugations. Negotiating 45 degree bends at 60km/hr, the sedan's under-steer gave me the rusty feeling country roads treat nouveau riche city dwellers with each festive season when they flock these parts with their larger than life attitudes. Close to the Nyamununka crater with its famed rotten-egg signature smell, we hit a couple of potholes and the automobile fish-tailed. The children smugly sit belted in their seats behind me exclaimed in a frenzy of unbridled excitement. Gorgeous flew me a lady bird smile and intimated the need for us to stop and commune with the great wild outdoors for a break. I jammed my leg on the pedal and my brembo's pressed hard against the disks as I steered to the road side, the six speed transmission circling back in absolute acquiescence. We stepped out....
From where we stood, the crater lake was so vast and up till now so minuscule in contrast with the far stretching wooded grasslands. Only a pair of warthogs gingerly wallowed on the muddy beach(in the spirit of the festive season-so am misled to imagine). Somewhere beyond the tree line, an elephant trumpeted,another one joined in. The wind carried the beastly serenade over the open savanna plains to us.. ..We turned around and walked back to our car, visceral somber calls of the wild beckoning us to venture deeper into unfamiliar realms. Not a word was said. Not a beat was missed and yet the primal urge to return to our wild roots seemed to have fleetingly been carried away in the crisp wind that ran through the shrubs with a rustle like a set of boisterous fingers through nappy hair.

Questions

On the eve of Christmas, the Christmas of 2012. I was driving to Fort portal from Kampala. Towards Mubende, I remember driving through perpetual grassy plains heavy with light. Marabou stocks and bold vultures flew low over brackish swampy waters, dragging their feet and the pine woods closed in again on either side of the tar laced road I was on. Mubende was almost half way the entire length of my journey.
At this roadside market, I met a group of of kids. Just like me, they were traveling upcountry to their village for Christmas. There was about five or seven kids with three chaperons. Howbeit, there was this one kid, a little girl about 5 or 6 years old who resuscitated my sense of wonder. She had bought a stick of roasted chicken and was having trouble eating it because it was too hot. I offered her mine and asked what her name was. "Kimora" , she said. "My name is Kimora but you can call me Kim. My mother calls me Kim" . She told me about her mother and her little kitten and how much she loved it. She said she was constantly worried about her kitty dying in its sleep and for this reason, she stayed awake all night long watching over it. I gave her my hankie as an avalanche of tears escaped her eyes. She said "Thank you Garfield. Garfield is what I'll call you" . Moments after she was gone, I found myself shading tears. With a heavy heart, I entered my sedan and drove away. Uncontrollable qualms of unfathomable loneliness and a forlorn longing for something I quite couldn't lay claim to obsessed me.
Two months later, I was at capital shopper's Nakawa going up the escalator when I caught eye of this kid waving at me on the escalator descending from the first floor. At the landing, were about two dozen people. The woman she was with stared down at her as I approached the first floor landing. I jumped off the escalator and turned around to look for the little girl. She was gone.
This little girl remained in my memory over the years like an indelible print consuming my peace of mind. Sometimes in the middle of a busy street, I have caught myself staring at a total stranger or at a mother and her daughter as though I would get the answers to some of the questions that plagued me. Questions I knew would go answered for life. Answers I probably should never hanker for and yet I still looked, looked in all the forbidden perspectives.