The New Vision

Wow, Uganda!

Publication date: Friday, 8th June, 2007

Excited fans cheering the Uganda Cranes at Namboole

John Nagenda

WORDS can but try to approximate the explosion of excitement amongst us exactly a week ago. Saturday was the unexpected day when all three of our sports teams in different disciplines went out and returned with the spoils of war!

It was on the tip of my tongue to say: “brought back the bacon”, only to remember that to many of those sportsmen bacon is the last item they would carry home.

In order of game popularity among the population, the victories were achieved in soccer, cricket and rugby. The vanquished were respectively Nigeria, Argentina, Kenya. It bates the breath just to state that. Nigeria, African soccer powerhouse, is a nation of perhaps 150 million, Uganda a sixth of that.

Argentina is not the most famous of cricket nations (and possibly had not a single Argentine in its team) but by winning the final against it in faraway Australia, Uganda was finishing the ICC World Cricket Division 3 tournament without losing a single game! Now moving up to Division 2.

And Argentina should not to be sorely judged on the basis that half a century ago one of its team, my late friend Keith Ellison, had gone on, many years afterwards, to fracture his wrist, or was it elbow, while playing a game of scrabble!

In rugby, Kenya has always considered itself Uganda’s superior, and yet it went under by 29 to 10 on Saturday. In the soccer too our cricketing heroes might unknowingly have played a part, for their achievement in Australia was broadcast at the Nelson Mandela stadium at halftime.

Did it spur the soccerites to greater heights? Alone among nations of note, Uganda perversely refuses to fund sport in its budget. How can this be? This is despite the fact that a few years ago its President and its Prime Minister unfolded their artistry on the football field to some acclaim!

What sport can contribute to the young and not so young of a nation is too obvious to ignore, so let every Ugandan tell our government to wise up or else, reminding it of the power of the vote if all else fails. In the meantime let those who were here never forget the Second of June 2007!
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Recently from time to time here in leafy Muyenga Gardens we have puzzled over a weird noise. It was not unlike the animal we heard at night at the beautiful Alam ecolodge in the Mabira Forest.

Our surrounds here are very green but how could that Mabira lodger have followed us here? Awoken once in the middle of night we opened windows and tried to locate the screaming noise’s direction without success, going back to sleep when it ceased as abruptly as it had started. But then Thursday while I was grappling with this column on a sparkling morning, the noise came again, startlingly close, and more human than before: piercingly alone and unloved; terrified. The hairs on the back of my neck stiffened.

This was a horror movie. In the end my people discovered the house whence it came. We have since found, through the police who very quickly answered our call, that it was a young boy of five, apparently frightened of going to school, and even more so of his preceding early morning cold wash in the open!

His mother had decamped overseas, the little fellow stays with his grannies. It is a gothic Dracula-like tale difficult to credit. But we intend to get to the bottom of it. Stay tuned!

With the same trepidation it has also come to light that the Basongora saga (chronicled last week) has taken a turn for the much worse, the stakes getting higher by the hour. People have been shot, some of the injuries being grave.

Confusion reigns. Now the police are ranged against the armed personnel of the Uganda Wildlife Authority, some of whom have been arrested. But they were trained, armed and deployed for the vital purpose of protecting Uganda’s wildlife. Things are falling apart, to paraphrase W. B. Yeats, and anarchy cannot be far behind. Government must step in.

New legislation looking equitably after both humans and wildlife must be urgently put in place, leaving no place for grey areas. Perhaps in the interim the UPDF should be deployed, with both the UWA and the police pulling back in this affected area.
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To cool off, the column concludes with that much-loved Chinese friend of Uganda’s, Ms Fang Min. Although what is currently happening to her cannot seem all that cool; indeed must strike her as related to the Fiery Gates of Hell! It takes a lot to disjoint this strong woman.

Your columnist has known her since 1990 when she first opened The Great Wall of China restaurant on Kampala Road. She moved to the then Greenland Bank Building as Fang Fang Restaurant, later upgrading to her present palatial area in Communications House.

What a pleasure to make a pig of oneself there, and at the Fang Fang Hotel, whether your pocket is deep or comparatively shallow! Chinese food eaters rate her very highly. She was recognised as Distinguished Woman Entrepreneur of 2003. Alas, her all-round achievements have provoked thugs who seek to destroy her. Some of them this column knows.

It will be like a rich Chinese feast, course after course, to expose them. Besides which, it keeps the pulse racing, this tale of money, intrigue and a little extra. Oh yes, even though ours is a family column; kind of!

This article can be found on-line at: http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/8/20/569471