Don’t worry, be serious, be happy

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OPINION

By Simon Kaheru

Please go and find the Bobby McFerrin song Don’t Worry, Be Happy on youtube.com and hit play as you read this, and this year’s World Happiness Report.

Bobby McFerrin, an African-American musician, released this hit in 1988 and still gets applause from people like me who like happiness and all messages that promote it.

That affinity for happiness is also the reason why I get alerts when the annual World Happiness Report is released.

On a related note, that affinity is the reason I decrease my social media exposure and activity, especially in this season of political campaigns.

In this year’s World Happiness Report, Uganda was ranked 116 out of 147 countries in “life evaluations”.

Are you listening to Bobby McFerrin’s song? If so, increase volume and read on:

The report uses a set of variables as “the best available measures of factors established in both experimental and survey data as having significant links to subjective wellbeing and, especially to life evaluations...”

The variables include: GDP per capita; healthy life expectancy; social support; freedom to make life choices; generosity and perceptions of corruption. You have to read the report, and there will be no questioning it fully because that is their method.

Are you happy? Is your household happy? Are your neighbours and relatives happy?

Surveys don’t normally cover ground that way. The fact that these economists and scientists (social and otherwise) conducted this science of research and has ranked us so low in happiness is cause for concern, even when we can poke holes in some of their methods.

Generosity, for instance, refers to donations as part of ‘pro-social behaviour’ or acts of kindness.

That segment alone disturbed me because it showed quite clearly how different we are from the western world.

“People who engage in prosocial behaviour are healthier and happier, and they experience a greater sense of purpose and meaning in life...” the report reads, in part.

“...in the poll, people are asked if, in the last month, they gave money to charity, if they volunteered, and if they helped a stranger. They were also asked ...if they think other people would help them by returning their lost wallet.”

Wallet? Yes - returning a wallet. That trope has lasted for decades in the Western world as an indicator of integrity and in this report that ranks 46 or so million Ugandans 116 out of 147 countries uses it as well. As for giving money to charity and volunteering, of course the report does not factor in ‘Black Tax’.

Most of you Africans reading this understand fully what that is and how we have little choice in the matter every day of our lives.

Most Africans live this way regardless of how many university degrees they have acquired from western education systems or how cosmopolitan their lifestyles have come.

In fact, for most of us Black Tax has evolved to increase a much wider circle of people. Not too long ago back in the day it only referred to the support we had to give relatives and close friends when it was needed - feeding, medical treatment, tuition fees, rental support, funeral expenses ... whatever was needed.

Today? Somebody in your WhatsApp group lost a loved one? You contribute. Your workmate’s poultry project collapsed during a heavy storm? You contribute.

Did the report pick this up? Nope. Their understanding of generosity is giving to ‘charity’ and “...untied official development assistance (ODA)...” The happiest country in the world (again) is Finland, followed by Denmark, Iceland, Sweden and the Netherlands. Israel is eighth on the list. The other factors weigh in as well, of course, but the report gives so much weight to generosity and giving to charity that it concludes with chapters that focus on this one aspect.

Still, the World Happiness Report is not very African in perspective so it says we are quite unhappy in general. Annoyingly, in East Africa we will find it difficult to mount a strong defence because where we are most visible — on social media — we are an extremely angry and unhappy lot.

This demeanour has been made worse by the politicking we are embroiled in today — including Kenya that ended theirs, but has kept up the momentum so that their next election is as fiery.

Just like the report, our social media activity on its own can’t paint a complete picture because, to start with, we report an internet penetration rate of just under 30% (2024 numbers). So, the angry people on social media are only a third of the entire population, right? Simplistic.

The important focus point, though, is not checking or proving that we are happy or not. It is doing the things that would make more of us happy whether we will be ranked by Eurocentric experts or not.

Even taking their rankings, let’s Be Serious about the criteria they used and fix them.

Again, the variables include: GDP per capita; healthy life expectancy; social support; freedom to make life choices; generosity and perceptions of corruption.

On top of us continuing to do what we do to be happy and make others happy, what can you and I do about these variables so that more of our compatriots are considered happy by these social scientists?

How do we put a smile on the faces of more of our fellow Ugandans, East Africans, Africans?

First, be serious about being a good person, a good Ugandan, a good African - and play Bobby McFerrin’s Don’t Worry, Be Happy often as you go about doing so.

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