And so it goes. It is by examining misfortunes elsewhere that you realise how lucky you are. Not necessarily that you do not have any misfortunes yourself, but that you have less. Which does not mean that you should sit complacently and do nothing about it. Rather, it means that you should think and act in a rational way, so as to participate in removing the hurdles, even if they may be few. Whining and apportioning blame without participating in finding a solution will always be our undoing. We should be ready to fight for the freedom of this participation and get out of the mentality of ntakigenda, everything is at a standstill. Many enemies will be in our way, it must be expected, and the fight for this participation will be a hard and protracted one. It will be hard because the enemy here is your brother who wants a privileged position, and he will use all the dirty tricks to reach his selfish end. So, in my futile effort at philosophising, I am trying to show how lack of morals in a society arises out of inhuman actions by selfish individuals. It is these few individuals who are the fathers and mothers of corruption, nepotism, hatred and vindictiveness, for their sworn purpose in life, their raison d’être, is acquiring wealth and power and keeping them at all costs and by all means. We are thus turning into a degenerate society, if we do not watch out. It is our duty to watch out.
Freedoms, therefore, should not be taken for granted. They need to be guarded jealously by all of us without exception. No one should be allowed to patronisingly guard these freedoms for us, to know better what is good for us. On individual, national or international level. The small incidents of banditry I was talking about the other day (when I still had the eyes to abuse the computer!) are interesting pointers to this kind of scenario, in their minor way. For instance, in the Uganda of Idi Amin Dada, King of Scotland, QC, CBE, VSO, etc. (God bless his dictatorial soul!) in the 70s, it was a mistake punishable by death to just travel, especially without knowing the Kiswahili language! You are, say, an elderly refugee from Kyangwali, Bunyoro, travelling by bus to Kampala. You are going to see if your newly employed son can spare you a little cash to buy some medical tablets for his ailing mother — never mind that the old man is paying some precious transport money that would have bought those very tablets! At the Kabwoya military roadblock, those gun-totting, red-eyed Kakwa soldiers shout from down: “Shuka yote!” While everybody obediently and quickly shuffles down to queue up for the body-search, the old man rushes to the soldiers and pulls his small bundle from its stick and empties the contents in front of them: a smoking pipe, tobacco leaves, etc. “My children,” he pleads, “you can see I have no bed sheets!” The incensed soldiers shoot the old man down, thinking him mad.
Of course, it was not only the old men to make mistakes, the young ones too. You are a wiseacre, for example, and you know what these soldiers at the roadblock want. So you give them money, but in your bigoted confidence you did not hear them shout: “Leo cici pana taka peca, cici taka damu!” And so they get what they wanted in the first place, which is your blood! So it was during the Obote 2 era, the early 80s. You live in a muzigo, for instance, in Wandegeya, Kampala. By their nature, muzigos, single-room houses, do not have bathrooms inside. So, you are going to the bathroom outside, towel around your loins, early before going to the office. Before you can say ‘soap’, a lorry is in the estate and soldiers are shouting: “Panda gali!” Into the lorry you go, and that is the last time you enter into anything except a grave. Even today, the taxi-park in Kampala is a menace to women. Imagine the situation you will be in when you find out that while you were struggling with many people to enter into a commuter taxi, somebody was busy using a razor blade to slice off your handbag by its straps, and your dress at the waist!
In Nairobi, sometimes these cons are not so crude. The chokora, street urchins, will patiently wait at the traffic lights for a lady in her car to come by. While she is waiting for the green light, a boy at the right-side window graciously informs her: “Mama, una panca nyuma!” As she is looking behind to check for the punctured tyre, another boy is busy picking her bag on the passenger seat! Not that men have it any easier: there are special tricks designed for them. Smokers, be warned! You will be walking along Tom Mboya Street in Nairobi (otherwise known as Nairobery), opposite Hotel Ambassadeur, for instance, when a fellow smoker dangles a cigarette under your chin, indicating that you give him a light. While you are using your cigarette to light his, he will be doing something else that you will know when the cool Nairobi breeze hits you. As you continue to walk towards Tusker House, you feel cold on your chest. Your shirt pocket is gone; together with the three thousand shillings that you thought you had hidden there! You had preferred to keep the money there rather than the money-purse because you thought otherwise it would be seen in New Kinangop Restaurant. With your purse thus lightly equipped, you pull out the changed money and pay for your one drink. Otherwise, how would you avoid running the risk of buying a round of drinks, when the big currency notes have the nasty habit of popping out and being seen?
Again, be warned! When you are robbed, do not run to police for help. The first thing a Nairobi policeman will ask for is your identity card, kitambulisho in Kiswahili. Woe unto you if you are found with the booklet, aliens’ card, or the P.I., prohibited immigrant’s card! “Eh he he!” the policeman will exclaim with glee, “gidapulijo kani hii?” if he is a Kalenjin. If Kikuyu: “Kitavuricho”, if Kamba or Meru, “nkindamburinsho” and “kitambuliso” if he is from Luoland. You will realise later, after you have walked the breadth and length of Nairobi on his beat, that actually what the policeman wanted all along had nothing to do with identifying you. It is kitu kidogo, something little. It may be as little as 20 shillings, depending on your bargaining power, but you will regret that he had not told you exactly what he wanted earlier! Sometimes these Nairobi mishaps may be due to purely personal greed. Take this fellow, for instance, who was teaching in Limuru back then, and is now here in Kigali. He was walking near Koja Mosque, in Nairobi, and saw a group of people gathered in a corner. On checking, he saw they were surrounding a man who seemed able to make your money multiply. Somebody handed the magician a note of 20 shillings and received 200 sh.! Our friend gave him his whole salary, 2,780 sh. then, and received a swollen envelope with instructions to open it later. To this day, the man weeps when he recalls the plain papers he removed from the accursed envelope!
All of which goes to show you that freedom to move about in peace may not be as abundant as we may assume. To live in peace, without encountering any form of violence, state-inspired or otherwise, is an ideal we should strive for. However, it is next to impossible for any country to achieve all the freedoms and enjoy all the rights. In fact, to my knowledge, only Heaven seems to answer to such a utopia, but you have noticed how even the Pope is reluctant to join such eternal bliss! Whatever little security you are enjoying, therefore, is not accidental. If you are not mugged in our Kigali village, if you can live in and visit any quartier without losing a shirt or a limb, if your car can be safe on the roadside overnight, if you can say and write what you want, associate with whomever you choose, if you can bury your dead without requiring a permit, etc., then our institutions are working.
Let us celebrate our freedoms and fight those abusing them!
