TY and the Making of a Royal Championship

 

TY Omujuma are royal champions. Two years of being an “almost team” – while playing the most scintillating football, our medals finally have that extra shine of gold. It did take a while but that is what makes it savourable. Here is the story of how the stars finally aligned for us on that evening of 12^th April in Fortportal.

Rewind back to a year ago in March 2024, and it is the Ntare Lions League final in Kigali, Rwanda. One specific scene comes to mind. The final whistle has just been blown, and the TY players are huddled together in one of the corners of the IPRC Stadium in Kigali. It isn’t a celebratory huddle but one of disappointment. Most are holding back tears with their faces sullen. Another final, the second on the bounce had just slipped through their fingers, and this time by the faintest of margins; spot kicks. Whoever said that men are not emotional lied a great deal. Football does things to their emotions that can’t be rationally explained. The players that missed their penalties are understandably more distraught. There is a sense that they have let down the entire team. Such is the ignominy of being on the losing side of a team sport. A season that had promised so much for us had come to naught.

The day after, we prepare to leave Kigali. Overnight, the players looked to have gone through all the stages of grief and by morning had fully accepted what had happened. The mood had greatly improved, and we started our journey back to Kampala. While on our way, it was then that our Exco Chairman, Nuwagira Steven, first notified me that they had decided to reshuffle the entire committee and have new leadership for the team, both on and off the pitch. Steven and Mugerwa Brian Paul (famously known as MBP) had served as our inaugural Chairman and Captain respectively. Both had helped with getting the team off the ground. They had gotten it a name, registered it in the league, led it through its non-competitive times and had now brought it to the brink of the shield, twice. However, they were “running out of energy”, to borrow Jurgen Klopp’s phrase. They needed a new team that would replenish the energy, one that was baggage-less, that would skip that one last hurdle. In that brief chat with Steven, he informally told me that his Exco was tipping me for the Chairmanship position and Kagezi Noel was to take over as Captain.  

A month later, when we had fully recollected ourselves, we met at one of the hangout places in Kampala where the new leadership of the team was announced. With a small team, I was to lead TY from the boardroom while Kagezi would lead it on the pitch. I remember as part of my acceptance speech, having already known that we would have our next final in Fortportal, I mentioned that the universe was communicating something by us having both a Chairman and Captain from Fortportal. There wouldn’t be a better script than us winning the shield in our home backyard.

There were 3 issues in my in-tray. The first was how do we build a financial war chest to make another shot to the final, the second was on how to grow the cohort’s cohesion considering that football was just what brought us together. And there was that small matter of a skirmish that had happened in Kigali involving one of the players, who some thought shouldn’t play for TY again. I preferred to start with the third because that needed a one-off decision, while the rest were block-by-block continuous building that would last the distance. One of my first acts as Chairman was to visit the said player. I needed to discuss his behavior in Kigali and set out what the new leadership expected of him. We spoke for close to 2 hours, disagreed on some things but reached a middle ground on what was most important. Human beings like to be listened to and everyone loves to feel valued. The key is always to make them feel that way and they will do anything you ask. At the end of our discussion as I left, he said to me, “Mr. President (as he likes to refer to me) you can always count on me for this team, and I won’t let you down.”

Given that this was pre-season, it was also a time to bolster the squad. The Technical Director, Henry Twinomujuni, was fully on top of that and did a very fantastic job with the signings. The league allows for a small number of players who were not in your year to play for your team, provided you reach an agreement with them. And then came our very first test. The Crichton Cup. This was an inaugural tournament and was introduced in remembrance of the founder of Ntare School. It was played by the top 8 teams from the previous season on a knockout phase. Our preparation wasn’t that meticulous, and we trailed our first game by 2 goals. We pulled back one in the second half and played until the last minute. And then came that famous throw-in from MBP that was deflected into the goal to tie the game to 2-2. Many people won’t remember this, but if you asked me about the one moment that I can point to as the fulcrum on which my entire administration turned, it was that one. We lose that game, and our confidence is completely shattered. Luckily, the game went to penalties which we won and then steamrolled through the tournament with two comfortable wins in the semi-final and final. TY Omujuma 2.0 had announced itself to the world. That Crichton Cup win buoyed the mood within the camp. Finally, we felt that we could win finals too.

Our very hardworking mobiliser, Ainomugisha Joshua (Joshman) ensured he moved “heaven and earth” for the team to have enough resources to start the season.  We were bouncing as we started the season, raked up the most points in the first two months, everything was looking up, and then tragedy hit. We lost our boy Allan Ategyeka. From then on, it was just an emotional rollercoaster. The season became Allan’s and every ball we kicked from then on became for him. We had to win the shield for this boy from Bugashe who was the glue that had held us together for so long. We agreed to make a memorial jersey (with his face on it) and win our final in it.

When we confirmed our place in the final, together with my Exco, we set in motion the plans for the final. We planned and executed everything so well that I was sure even before the kick of the ball, that our opponents in the final stood no chance. When the game started, it was clear that our opponent’s tactic was to take the game to penalties. By the end of the first half, their medical team had covered more ground than most of their players. They used every touch to drop down and break the rhythm of play but also run down the clock. This was a team that had the meanest defence in the league during the season, and it was the only one we hadn’t scored against during the season. They knew they wouldn’t go toe to toe with us because of the gulf in quality, so they played to their strength, which is to defend. They almost succeeded until the referee raised his two fingers to indicate the additional time. Then a mistake from their most dependable defender, a moment of magic from our own Jose, and then that fabulous strike from Allan Dziz won us the game. When that ball hit the back of the net, we completely lost ourselves, we had never experienced anything like that. Two finals and we had never scored in any, here we were in dreamland and who else to score the winner but Allan’s namesake. Rewind back to 10 months ago, and the player who had famously told me, “Mr. President you can always count on me for this team, and I won’t let you down” had just scored a goal to win us the holy grail. Vindication if ever there was one.

We laughed, cried in joy, and celebrated into the evening, we danced in the drizzle and prostrated before the King of Tooro. This was a poetic moment for Kagezi and I, but for the bigger TY family, there will never be a more perfect script. As the shield was handed to us by the Omukama of Tooro, I couldn’t help but think that we shall win many more in future, but this one will always be the most special.   

Tribute to the Brightest Light of TY Omujuma

 I kept turning in my bed for hours as I labored to catch some sleep, but it came in brief intermittent patterns. I can’t recall a time in the immediate past where I have had to struggle that much with sleep. The news of Allan Ategyeka’s passing in the early hours of the day was now properly settling in. The images were playing in my head, and it didn’t help matters that several of his videos were making rounds on social media. I made it a point to watch each one of them.

Yesterday, Monday 4, 2024, the first message in our class WhatsApp group was a motivational message that was shared by Flart. Nothing unusual about that because he has done that every single morning for as long as I can remember. It came in at 5:14 am. At 5:35 am, Philo asked if anyone had heard from Allan Ategyeka. Again, nothing unusual about this because Philo’s wedding is coming up in less than a month and Allan being his treasurer, they were always in constant communication. But that particular message screamed of uncertainty. After almost 2 hours, Josh responded to his message at 7.11 am and said, “I think his phone could have blacked out.” Exactly 5 minutes later, George, who was Allan’s very close friend and who was almost always with him everywhere, posted and said that Allan had been involved in an accident and had been taken to Devine Mercy hospital in Mbarara. That message came in at 7:16 am. The next 5 messages were wishing him a quick recovery. And then, at 7:25 am, exactly 9 minutes after his first message, George delivered a bombshell. He typed 4 words that we have all since failed to recover from. “Guys, Allan is gone!” There was no missing it in what he said, it was all clear. Everyone screamed “Nooooo”, and we asked that someone in Mbarara rush to Divine Mercy hospital and confirm. We were hoping that at best George was mistaken and had rushed to a wrong conclusion or at worst, he was playing a dirty joke on us. But jokes rarely come on a Monday morning. At 7:34 am, we got our second confirmation from someone else who was in Mbarara. “Guys, I am at the hospital, and Allan is gone. I can’t post his picture, but I confirm Allan is no more.” Bruce, his business partner still couldn’t believe it, “Guys first confirm properly, let’s not rush.” I know, for him, like for us all, we kept holding onto the last thread of hope. A motor accident had snuffed out Allan’s very young life.

For the people who knew him, the one thing that we share in our recollection of his life is how joyful, lively, bubbly, high spirited, vibrant, and zestful he was. I run out of superlatives describing the light (pun intended - considering how dark he was) he brought with him every single time he walked into a room. His mates usually joked that he was so dark that he was invisible and could only be noticed by the sound of his laughter. Banter aside, when he laughed, it was that deep, raucous, no-holds-barred kind of laughter. It would pierce through the room and almost blow off the roof. He had the most contagious and genuine laugh that you could find. He also had a specialty in coming up with jokes. He would tell the same story in different ways that every single time you heard it, you would think it new. Allan was so funny that at the funeral of his father earlier this year, during his speech, all we did was laugh so much that we forgot it was a funeral.   

I don’t know where to start about his love for TY Omujuma (his cohort team in the Ntare Lions League). Allan loved the team so much that he thought it would kill him one day. In September, the League Exco organized the inaugural Crichton Cup that constituted the top 8 teams from last season. Omujuma was trailing in the first game, a few minutes on the verge of exit, but managed to equalize and win the game. He sent a message in our WhatsApp group and said, “I am in Mbarara, but I am almost dying of pressure.” When the team got to the final, he sent a message and said, “If we win this final, I will never attend any other final we qualify for, I will definitely know I am cursed.” The team went on to win and yes, there will now never be another final he attends, but I don’t think that is what he meant. In the Kigali final at the start of the year, he was our commander-in-chief, leading from the frontline as we bellowed out songs of support for the team. He had led us in the same way, a year before, in Jinja. Both times we fell short, both times he gave his everything. The saddest bit now that I think about it, is that he never witnessed the team he loved most, win the thing that his heart most desired; the Ntare Lions League shield.

After that very close defeat in Kigali, when the team administration changed and I was asked to take lead as Chairman, he spoke to me on phone for close to 2 hours. He explained to me the problems I was inheriting and offered counsel on how to deal with some. I promised him that the team would try and compete again. I remember the last game he attended was at Kampala Quality, where we were facing our elders Abashweki (one year ahead of us in school), a derby. He met me in the parking lot, I was holding a carton of water. He shouted through his car window, even before he had parked, “Chairman, please don’t carry water when I am here.” He quickly parked, sprinted to where I was, and picked up the water from my hands. That day, with the rain coming down, we came from a goal behind to win with almost the last kick of the game. He ran into the pouring rain, jumped and celebrated like a little child. These were the things that gave him joy, that made him wholesome, that made his world stop. He would often say a TY Omujuma win is enough to push you through the week. In the toughest of his days, the team at least gave him something to smile about.

Now that Allan is gone, I don’t know how our games will be like anymore. Our touchline has been orphaned, our loudest voice has gone silent, and sadly forever. He really loved the team, he loved the people, and he was loved by people.

In one of the conversations that Allan had with a friend, here is what he said:

“As long as we live, we can never truly and fully love. The true embodiment of love is death, death perfects a person. Meaning, true love is impossible. You can lie no more, steal no more, hate no more, abuse no more, kill no more, sin no more when you die. You become love itself”     

Like he always desired, he has become love itself! 

As a very devout Catholic, I am sure the heavens are opening to receive him. May his soul rest in peace.

 

The Making of an Academic Revolution: Personal Reflections

 Today makes it a year. One full year since that solitary silent day in June 2021, when an academic injustice was meted out on the lives of hundreds, altering their life course significantly. I went back in memory lane to the events of that day, and the weeks, and months that followed.

We had had a rather start-stop academic calendar. The reason for this was the outbreak of the you-all-know-what virus that had brought the world to its knees. Confronted by an unseen enemy, we were sent scampering in retreat and so did our school activities. It took us some time to resume but when we finally did, we completed our academic calendar with a 4-month long work training called clerkship. Like anyone else would, within days of completion, we started anticipating the release of our results and graduation.

Prior to that life-defining Tuesday evening, we had spent most of the weeks speculating about the outcome of the results. We had a few naughty ones among us pulling up a prank here and there. They would rename an empty document “LDC Results 2019/2020” and send everyone into a mini-panic. Then we would laugh about it while of course as others swore at them. The jokes had finally run their full course.

Tuesday, June 2, 2021

Not one sign under the sky showed that this would be the day. Not for many of us but maybe for the institution’s top brass. Our class WhatsApp group went about with its usual banter and speculation. It approached lunchtime, then 3 pm, and when it came to 5 pm we all knew it wasn't going to be the day. We mentally signed out and knew we would try again the following day. So, I decided to take an evening nap. Midway through my sleep was when it all unfolded and with no prior notice, the email we had all been waiting for came through. At 07:32 pm, the Academic Registrar sent through an email titled, “Final Examination Results”, laden with 5 attachments and with them the fate of thousands. These were for real this time.

Thirteen minutes later, at precisely 07:45 pm, I received a phone call that startled me out of my sleep. It was one of my closest friends on the other end of the line. He is always the first person I discuss results with. We had done this ritual countless times over the past five years and this was supposed to be another of those moments. "Hello, my brother. The results are out and you have passed, but that isn’t so for very many students. In all honesty, it is not looking good.” My heart raced because, in that brief period, he mentioned to me some of those who hadn't made it, and my heart sunk.  We spoke for scarcely five minutes and we hang up, I opened the email to see it myself.

Disaster unspeakable!

I don’t know if it was by design to have the results released on a day before a public holiday or maybe an attempt to take the sting out of them. Whichever it was, it didn’t work. But what it succeeded in, was making it the longest day in the lives of those who were awaiting access to the LDC premises to book their slots for supplementary exams. The administration had won the psychological battle.

The one thing I grappled with most during that period was how to help my friends through it. I never know what to tell those nursing disappointments. I don't judge. I don't question. I don't push away. I only welcome. No question they lay in bed, no doubt they stared at the ceiling, I know many times they cried but even in the deepest of emotions they never fully found answers. Even when I couldn’t provide any of those answers, as a believer, I always said a little prayer for them.

The graduation date which had been set only a week later came and went with little aplomb.

The ‘Revolution’

In the days that followed, there was a massive uproar over the handling of the entire process. It was the first time in living memory that we had received a list of students graduating without any of them knowing a single mark they scored. There were many wrong things but this one was on top of the pile.

They usually say that it is in moments of tribulation that heroes are birthed. At a time when the lone and timid voices of individual students were blubbering, with everyone fearing to put their heads above the parapet, there rose a bold and fearless warrior who made a conscious choice to “pick up arms and fight for justice”. With her, she was followed by “27 fighters” (we were in actual sense 17) who would help her launch a full-chested war against an establishment that no one thought was touchable. The battle was christened ‘Operation Walls of Jericho.” We spent some time planning because it wouldn’t be long before we made our “Kabamba attack.” (For the record, ours was not a rag-tag army)

For every group, there is bound to be a discussion about strategy and splitting of opinions. We weighed options depending on various factors i.e. time it would take to achieve the remedies sought. In the end, what mattered was the majority decision. In the end, we had made up our minds on the “key government installations” where we would drop our “bombs”. We petitioned the institution’s governing body and its regulators to comprehensively look into the circumstances surrounding the release of examinations. We prepared a 30-paged petition and a bulk of annexures to justify the case being made. We were heard and judgment found glaring errors and failure to follow the rules in the entire process. That for many was an important pronouncement because for so long everyone dismissed us as a bunch of noise-makers who had refused to read and were entitled to passing.

Like any revolution, we were faced with innumerable challenges. Threats were employed at a point, fatigue would sometimes set, and many others. It was hard to stay on course, it was honestly difficult and how those guys (the 86’ guys) kept it going for 5 solid years isn’t given enough credit. (That shouldn’t be a licence for their entitlement though) Less than a month and we were almost giving up and yet we were not even sleeping in bushes and tall thickets either.  

In the end, we had knocked on that tall impenetrable carte blanche door until it fell. The cloak of invincibility had been pierced and I am elated that our successors have benefited from some of the tiny efforts. In the past week, many of those who drowned in tears last year today finally had a smile back on their faces, and "a historical error" has been corrected. For those with a dark cloud still hovering over you, don’t worry because one day the sky will clear and it will shine brightest again.

 

PS: This piece is a special dedication to our Commander in Chief, General Atuhaire Agather (R-01) & 16 others (you know yourselves).

Grief

 

The outlook of the world that we live in today has never felt this different. Loneliness, sickness, grief. Well, the telltale signs started showing last year but not many accurately predicted it would be this gloomy. We sat, we hoped, we prayed. For a moment it looked like the heavens had smiled at our beautiful continent. But it didn’t take long before the dark clouds started simmering. 

It is hard to think of a more difficult time in one’s lifetime than a time of grief, a moment of personal loss and bereavement. When the loss of a dear one is confirmed, when the day you didn’t expect to come sooner finally stares in your face, or when the angel of death rears its ugly head at your door. No matter how prepared you are, it is this moment in life that you will never fully prepare for. Death with all its sting was never meant to be something we wake up to every day. But for several days now, ambulances and hearses have become a common sight. Funeral homes and coffin makers are in big business but they have been overwhelmed lately. It no longer feels like what they set out to do and you have got to feel for them. They are human too!

In my moments of deep thought and continuous reflection, I have never stopped pondering the deep extent of our suffering as people. I am aware of the near impossibility of trying to fully comprehend any situation that you are not directly faced with. But many times, as you watch from a distance, you can see the plight of others and feel for them. You can sympathize with a story that you watch on the evening bulletin without even knowing those involved. We don’t need many ways to distinguish us from animals, that there is one of them; the ability to feel for each other as human beings.   

My mother once told me a story of a woman, who, many years ago had lost her three children in a single day; in a space of minutes if you would like. As they traveled to one of the many places they went together, they were involved in a motor accident, and not one of them survived. She was widowed not long after that. Early last year, before the world was engulfed by the debilitating effects of a strange virus, she celebrated her 95^th birthday. Her grandchildren, who she brought up, had conspired to throw her a party and like a newlywed bride, she basked in the glory of the moment. As I sat in among her guests, I didn't stop asking my inner self how she had managed to go through all those years after her tragedy. How did she cope? Was there a point of ever getting over it? As a believer, did she ever question why God had let that happen to her? Did she curse why she came into this world? I listened to her speak and her voice was firm, her resolve and belief in the Lord unwavering. She told us a bit about her personal story, her struggles to raise her grandchildren, and the loss of her husband and children. This was many, many years ago but you could still feel the sadness; that tinge of grief could still be felt. President Bush once said, even grief recedes with time and grace. But how long this takes will always be a personal story. Why did I remember this old woman?

The devastating effects of Covid-19 got me remembering about that old woman. Families are being wiped out in a matter of days now. One member of the household picks up the virus and in a short while everyone is infected. Panic, prayer, and the fight to make it through are what follow. Even when most of those who get infected make a quick turn around and recover, the fatalities have been unusually high. Death, in the past few days, has taken a rare and more painful twist. The path for those grieving seems lonelier because the strictness of the lockdown measures has restricted burials to only a handful. We can’t do anything about that because many are being saved from losing their lives. But the physical absence of friends and relatives at your most trying times may rank as the cruelest blow that this pandemic has dealt us. We are already struggling with what to say to them and presence would have provided a bit of comfort but that too is not present. If you notice, one of the most difficult thing during a time of bereavement is what to say to that on grieving. You can’t claim that you understand what they are going through because you never will. Never! Loss of dear ones hits us differently and with this, there is no shared experience. It is a personal portion that is administered individually. You experience the pain up-close and those around you will only try to make the load lighter. But is there a way we could handle grief? I don’t think there is a formula!

A Judge in one of the most high-profile cases in our country's judicial history famously said that there is no standard of expressing grief, some people break down in grief while others stand up in grief. Maybe for context, the man on the stand at that time was being accused of the most heinous crime a man can commit against their family; murdering his wife. To build their case, part of the evidence that had been adduced by the Prosecutor was to show that at no point during his wife’s funeral was he seen crying! Yes, he didn't cry at the sight of his wife's coffin, he didn't drop a tear as he eulogized her, throughout, he didn’t shed a tear. But do we all have to cry to prove that we are grieving? Over the years I have come to discover that you can have everyone in the room welling up and not a single one of them even means it. But that is not to take anything away from those that cry as a way of expressing their grief. It is part of how they let it out. Freud once wrote that ‘unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth in uglier ways.’

The reminder for us today is that we don’t need to first see teary eyes for us to be kind. The present times, more than ever before, call for empathy, affection and compassion towards our neighbors, strangers, kith, and kin or anyone that you chance across. 

                                             

                                            Stay Safe.

The Dawn of a Bigger Struggle

It has been ages since I last made a post here. In fact I feared that the benign cobwebs like those of deserted homesteads would begin to litter my blog. It is just the way of nature; I would politely dust them off and reintroduce myself to the audience. Today I will make a spirited attempt to summon the writing gods again, with some success I hope.

At the stroke of 1pm on Wednesday 2^nd December, 2020, our invigilator clambered up the Law Development Centre (LDC) auditorium platform. He seized the lectern and bellowed through the only available microphone. Four words came out of his mouth and this was what he said; “Your time is up.” We had heard those words on a number of occasions throughout our innumerable examinations but somehow, these had taken on a different meaning. This was unlike any of those papers that we had done before, it was our very last. And somehow after many days of postponing, of tweaks and modifications to our schedule, we were seeing the light at the tunnel end. So when he said your time is up, the first thought that crossed my mind was that our time at LDC was up. But maybe I wasn’t over-thinking it, our time was actually up!

Ours has been a year like no other (I know everyone will say that about their lot) where we have shockingly done a 9 months course across three calendar years. This needs alot of explaining. The institution’s gates were flung open many moons ago in 2019 but I can say with certainty that even in 2021, we shall still be acolytes of LDC. Let that sink in because these are not normal times! We are going to have to do alot of explaining to our children in future. It doesn’t happen all the time and I have a hunch that the heavens may have been punishing us for side stepping the pre-entry examination. (Too many words were spoken after all, as if it was supposed to be our fault that we were having an easy entrance)

So my story...

I will let you in on the small bits and pieces. For the rest, you may have to exercise some patience as my autobiography is in the offing. (The wait won’t be long and I will be sure to dedicate a full chapter on my stay at LDC)

To get my story’s genesis, we will have to be transported back to an isolated event in my sophomore year. It had nothing to do with academics but was just a social event. Towards the end of 2016, I was honoured to be part of the wedding entourage of one of my father’s closest friends. He was a man of standing in society and had only delayed in formalising his marriage because of a few challenges here and there. You all know how this life can be. I was under obligation to attend because of the family ties but also that I had no reason to be elsewhere. So when it was time for the groom to give his speech, he summoned his children and had the opportunity to talk about each one of them. An important fact that we shouldn’t lose sight of was that the man was a lawyer himself. As he introduced his first born child, he gave me my biggest take way that day. This was what he said and I quote; “My daughter here is a big lawyer in town and she works with one of the biggest law firms in the country. And by the way, she got that place on merit because while she was at LDC, she was among the best in her class.” He went on and said, “I know many of you may not know what goes on at LDC but that is the hardest place on earth because I have been there myself.” It was the “hardest place on earth” for me, because at that point my body cringed. I knew deep down that it was only a matter of years before I got to that dreaded place.

I will hit the pause button for now and release the forward button.

When I got into my first class at LDC, there was nothing out of the normal. When I did my first assignment, it was normal too. The workshops were normal and so were the examinations. I don’t know if it was just me but I bet that I share this with a hundred others.

I speak mostly for myself but I know many others share my sentiments. Shortly after our final paper, as we sat over a farewell lunch with a group of friends, my brother in the struggle AJK advanced a similar case. In fact for him, he was blunter than I would ever be because he admitted that there was nothing difficult at LDC. Absolutely nothing! Every single thing we do is about attitude, he said and I agree.

I will share one of my highlights and this involved my close and dear friend Lillian. After our week of banking (the one considered to be the most difficult) we had a sit down as we always did and decided to run through our three workshop questions. As we concluded, Arinda paused and matter-of-factly asked, “But Patrick wait a minute, is this the banking that we were told was difficult or we should expect something else?” For me that was one of my all time favourite moments at the Centre. It was just a disarming question asked so innocently with such calm and collection.

I am of course alive to the challenges some of my colleagues faced and that is why I speak mostly for myself. Many of them had businesses to run, children to return to in the evening and nagging spouses that weighed like stones around their necks. But I for one, was a ‘baggage-less’ young boy with absolutely no excuse.

For me it has been a journey of faith that has kept me going every single day. I must be among the very few who have already acquired their graduation gowns (I actually bought mine last year after my first week in school). That is how much faith I have in the God I serve! I have walked through the ‘burning furnace’ and just like the Lord’s servants Shadrach, Mesach and Abednego I have emerged unscathed. The only difference with me is that my angel is invisible to the human eye.

As the sun sets on the struggles of our today, we are reminded of tomorrow and if we get to see it, I can guarantee that we shall be great.  

 

Power, Privilege and the birth of Entitlement

At a time when many of us have been hoarded into our homes like unripe bananas, it would be an opportune moment to have a discussion about privilege and its begotten child entitlement. The subject is more apparent given that the world is afflicted by a global pandemic as World Health Organisation puts, a ‘privileged disease’, as I sometimes refer to it. Privileged, because it has been to apartments and palatial mansions (a rare occurrence for pandemics) but we also know for a fact that it has sojourned in the corridors of the Buckingham castle. But that is not a conversation for today.

I will use a familiar tale, one that has been music to our ears for quite some time now; it has been drummed into us. We now know it like the back of our hands. In 1980, the current President of the country garnered courage (he picked up the guns later) to wage war against the government of the day. He was followed by his close friends, in-laws, kinsmen and well wishers. From a rag-tag rebel outfit, they became an embellished army who sustained a military offensive that unsettled the sitting government. However, for the eagle-eyed there was something fascinating about their organisational structure and ranks. There were fierce fighters who earned their pips on the basis of their heroic acts in battles and these were called loyalists. There existed another equally conspicuous group who enjoyed special status not because of their military abilities but majorly because of their tribal leaning.  These were called royalists. Stories abound of how time and again their Commander in Chief had to deal with various standoffs between the loyalists and royalists. But again that is not for today. The takeaway here is that status has a way of bestowing immeasurable leverage over and above the others. It is this that has the metamorphic ability to sire privilege.

In an attempt to underscore the context within which I talk about privilege, do not only imagine a politician who is chauffeured in a state of the art latest SUV. Consider those who are fortunate to pick their food from freezers, those whose deliveries are made at a click of an imaginary button or even the farmer who picks hanging fruits from their garden that sits on hectares. Privilege is more about possession and how it is used. But it is broader if you look at it in the context of race, of sex and gender or even tribe as Museveni’s royalists will tell you.

To look at privilege, we need to consider the bigger outlook that our society is. It was supposed to be organised to function smoothly and effectively with members sharing some basic tenets but that did not happen. Humanity was supposed to have a face whose outlook was accommodative rather than combative but that was only a utopian setting.

But what is wrong with being privileged? What is wrong with having the wherewithal? Absolutely nothing to start with but it can be everything in the long run. Privilege for starters has a position of thinking that it confines its hosts. They tend to look at the context of things quite differently. People can be insensitive to the suffering of others because they don’t have the imaginative ability of getting into the skin of another, to be able to see the world through the eyes that for once are not their own. There are people who have amassed power and with it come privilege. Their children’s main struggle is normally over the remote control in their plush living rooms, and many times the greatest danger they face is boredom. For others the greatest risk their lives are facing is not being texted back. They don’t understand that meals can sometimes be a luxury, that basic human decency, like water and food is a consistent inconsistency for many. But the dictates of life wouldn’t let many understand this because the only time they interact with food is on the dining table. The food chain is what they read in academic books but they don’t make as much meaning out of it.

So what then is the point? The point is that many times our selfishness that is born out of privilege hinders our ability to step in the shoes of the less privileged even for a moment. You can tweet from the comfort of your sofas, knowing that your fridge is fully packed, calling for the Fountain of Honour to impose a total lockdown on the country. The rest can always find a way after all there is an imaginary threat to your existence. How about those whose existence is being threatened on a daily by real dangers? Harm and peril that stares them in the face and lurks around them! Of course we would never know because they don’t have the luxury to tweet about it or be hosted in mainstream media to air it out. But like Achebe famously said, privilege, is one of the great adversaries of the imagination; it spreads a thick layer of adipose tissue over our sensitivity.

So what should we do? Social exclusion, identity seclusion and isolation from the social mainstream are still the dark realities faced by individuals today. It is only when each and every individual is liberated from the shackles of such bondage and is able to work towards full development of his/her personality that we can call ourselves a truly free society. We concede to the diversity and variegated hues that nature has created but we can take steps by vanquishing the enemies of prejudice and injustice and undoing the wrongs done so as to make way for progress and inclusion.

*Inspired by Arinda Lillian

De’-Pato, you forgot to say Goodbye! Rest in Peace

It's too hard to say goodbye
It's too hard to say goodbye
just can't say goodbye
              Westlife


On Thursday March 26, 2020, as the cover of darkness slowly lifted to give birth to a new day, it took with it a life of a bright, promising young man. It took with it my good friend and brother, Patrick Kansiime. The account by those who were with him in his last hours is that he was fine (atleast by looks and deeds). He wasn’t complaining about anything the night before, made plans for the following day and went to bed like we all did. He actually woke up very early in the morning (around 6am) and even took a glass of water before shortly going back to bed. Patrick didn’t wake up again! The postmortem report indicates that he died from pneumonia related complications. It is a life full of uncertainties! I will not delve into the complexities of this earthly life but I will recount some of the fondest memories that we shared with Patrick.

In school (Ntare), we didn’t have many students that went by the name Patrick. In fact, I was certain that I shared my Christian name with only him. But now the challenge came with having to call us out since we all went by the short name Pato. At first we fleeted with the idea of referring to him as Pato the basket-baller and me as Pato the debater but this would defeat the whole purpose of shortening our names because those would be a mouthful in themselves. Because he was the author and finisher of most of the school’s slang, he was a man who was never short of words. He had the seamless ability to conjure a word from nowhere. He was the one who came up with a solution when he decided to add ‘De’ before his short name and made a print at the back of his shirts with “De’ Pato” on it. Problem solved or as you would say, crisis averted. From then on, you would be looking for him if you mentioned “De’ Pato” and omission of the first word would mean it was me you were coming after.

De’ Pato and I shared many things beyond a name; we shared a class, a room, a football team, did the same combination plus many other preferences that space and time can never allow me to exhaust. The most prominent thing he was known for was probably basketball. He was never born playing basketball; he only learnt this in High School and boy he became a super star. He made the game look so easy, we called him the king of 3-pointers. He was the talk of school. For any basketball game that the school competed in, there were three constants, his signature 3-pointer, a dunk and a world class run. He was a real talent. In room, he was always throwing around things to hit imaginary targets and soon it rubbed off against many of us. On the sidelines of his stellar basketball career, he also groomed a tennis career and with this he was also part of the school’s elite brigade. If Ntare School was a military outfit, we would easily say that in as far as sports were concerned Kansiime Patrick constituted its top brass.

For many reasons, after joining different Universities, we wouldn’t talk as often but whenever we caught up, it was always a continuation of where we left it the last time. My last conversation with De’ Pato was about three weeks ago when he called in to wish me success in my forthcoming examinations. We wandered alot in our talks and I do remember how he kept teasing me about one of his beautiful cousins. We laughed about how I have always used academics as an excuse for not pursuing my woman crush. He always liked to tell me that the moment you like someone, reach out to them and make your feelings known. “Knock on the door and let them know that you are around. They can choose to open but even if they don’t, it will only be a matter of time before they do.” Oh I already miss those calls!

I can never forget the days during our holiday when he would connect the entire room on a conference call and then allow us to catch up. He had the luxury to do it because never in his life had he been short of resources but beyond that he had a heart that loved to give. He didn’t give because you asked but it was in his nature to make comfortable those around him. Phones were not allowed in school but somehow he had created exception to that rule. He carried his phone to school but it looked like it was never his. Most of the time, it was one of us either playing a game, texting away or even making those late night calls that many times yielded nil. For those who had girlfriends in other schools, it was that phone that helped keep the communication going, for some who were trying out their luck; he offered us hope through his phone. As people who spent our school days with him, these memories will forever remain part of us.

But like any other mortal, De’ Pato wasn’t without his flaws and struggles. He battled some illnesses and his education was at times interrupted but like a fearless warrior who never gave up, he soldiered on. He studied with dedication, completed his education and had started on the bitter-sweet arduous journey of employment. He had his other personal difficulties and many of those we may never know. Some he shared with his friends but others he only confided in his creator. It is heart breaking that the ugly pangs of death snatched him when he was only getting started with his life!

Patrick will be dearly missed by all of us that knew him, that laughed and enjoyed basking in his jokes and all that had an opportunity to cross his path. The most painful thing however will be that we won’t have the opportunity to send him off and say our final byes.

The angels in heaven will still welcome you Patrick!

Rest well De’ Pato!

We shall always miss you.