Give us a little romance!
Oct 03, 2009
HAS our columnist, aided by pneumonia, gone clean out of his head over the last week, to be babbling about romance, however little? Well, deep down one is vulnerable to such, and there’s romance and romance. Let us start with that youngish mother of one
JOHN NAGENDA
HAS our columnist, aided by pneumonia, gone clean out of his head over the last week, to be babbling about romance, however little? Well, deep down one is vulnerable to such, and there’s romance and romance.
Let us start with that youngish mother of one, Dorcus Inzikuru, whose praises I’ve sung before; followed by a very different subject: the monarchy in today’s Uganda. I read in Tuesday’s Daily Monitor that some MPs were tabling a plan to abolish the kingdoms. Oh no, went my heart, not our dear monarchies! There used to be four of them, or four and a half if you counted Busoga, but such has been their current attraction that they could mushroom to half a century. Add this to the burgeoning figure of districts, now nearly into three figures, and the merriment becomes suffocating!
Inzikuru is more straightforward, although her past has carried seeds of chaos. Usually it was family members and so-called friends attaching themselves by bolts of iron to her running shorts for goodies. Government built her a nice house in the long-ago White quarters of Arua town: hardly was it built than the hangers-on moved in. A prize car, which she never even got the chance to learn to drive, was annexed by her father and promptly crashed. Her protective coach, an Italian, who had seen her potential during her early teens and trained her, (while finding the money to keep her going) now that she had become a world star had his intentions roughly questioned, and gave up in disgust. She didn’t last. Her child came, tying her up even more.
Inzikuru, the quick gazelle, had turned into a plump sparrow by-show, wracked by a nightmarish cocktail of ailments; many of them inside her head. During a high-level breakfast meeting in the November 2007 Commonwealth CHOGM Kampala meeting, the little has-been was trotted out and found a low chair beside her President. He made a lot out of her, but even he was speaking of her past. She squeaked, “I’ll be back!†But remembering the dust, or whatever it was in the atmosphere, which choked her while she tried to make her come-back, we rose to our feet and clapped for her gone days. But can miracles still happen? Latterly, she won a couple of races, in Italy.
Now, this weekend, she has won a couple more, and her first 3,000-metre steeplechase (for which she was world champion, and record holder before the dream shattered). A little romance indeed! Give it to us in bucketfuls.
***************
What a pretty picture appeared in Thursday’s media! It showed a completely relaxed President Museveni welcoming his equally relaxed Guest of the Day, Ssabasajja Kabaka Ronald Mutebi II of Buganda. They are standing at the entrance to State House, Entebbe. Each is looking straight into the eyes of the other, and their look is one of Peace.
If you took ten thousand snaps, you couldn’t have come up with better than this. Museveni is wearing a little smile, perhaps a degree quizzical; Mutebi wears one back, looking a tiny bit mischievous, the younger man looking at his Elder, who as it happens, anointed him into what he is today. Looking at this moment, it is impossible not to wonder why it was so long in coming; why so many overtures went a-begging. But let stale recrimination take a back seat at this feast. This is time to start afresh, clear the board of obstruction, adding to the onward march of our nation.
In George Kakoma’s anthem: “Oh Uganda, the Land of Freedom…We lay our Future in thy handsâ€. As we must! Buganda is a part of Uganda, a very central one. You look at current pictures from the faraway Pacific where the Tsunami is tearing chunks out of the countries of Philippines, Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Samoa, and see that the survivors are only looking for ways of re-building, and then you look at Buganda, which Museveni, the Movement and the Baganda and other combatants gave back whole, ready for the same purpose. That was a quarter of a century ago, and yet the job is hardly started, the effort expiating on the air with hot, unimportant verbiage, not crucial to the job ahead.
What is wrong with us? But now is the time not of shouting, but Wordsworth’s “mellow fruitfulnessâ€. Let the two teams get to work in an atmosphere unsoiled by extremism from either side. In the near background, just beyond Museveni and Mutebi, in a white cassock touched off by red, was the arriving Bishop Mutebi (retired): as sagacious a man and prelate as you would wish to meet, and a good mate too.
Among the same Buganda team was Katikkiro J B Walusimbi, a regular in this Column, and A D Lubowa, veteran counsellor from the ‘60s. And then the diminutive woman MP Namayanja, head of the Buganda MP caucus, and the tall amiable Prince Wasajja and, not least, Allen Waliggo, chairman of the Clan Heads Council; as well as ex Ambassador William Matovu.
This is a very serious team, as indeed is the Government’s; from nothing to plenty. The nation seriously awaits.
HAS our columnist, aided by pneumonia, gone clean out of his head over the last week, to be babbling about romance, however little? Well, deep down one is vulnerable to such, and there’s romance and romance.
Let us start with that youngish mother of one, Dorcus Inzikuru, whose praises I’ve sung before; followed by a very different subject: the monarchy in today’s Uganda. I read in Tuesday’s Daily Monitor that some MPs were tabling a plan to abolish the kingdoms. Oh no, went my heart, not our dear monarchies! There used to be four of them, or four and a half if you counted Busoga, but such has been their current attraction that they could mushroom to half a century. Add this to the burgeoning figure of districts, now nearly into three figures, and the merriment becomes suffocating!
Inzikuru is more straightforward, although her past has carried seeds of chaos. Usually it was family members and so-called friends attaching themselves by bolts of iron to her running shorts for goodies. Government built her a nice house in the long-ago White quarters of Arua town: hardly was it built than the hangers-on moved in. A prize car, which she never even got the chance to learn to drive, was annexed by her father and promptly crashed. Her protective coach, an Italian, who had seen her potential during her early teens and trained her, (while finding the money to keep her going) now that she had become a world star had his intentions roughly questioned, and gave up in disgust. She didn’t last. Her child came, tying her up even more.
Inzikuru, the quick gazelle, had turned into a plump sparrow by-show, wracked by a nightmarish cocktail of ailments; many of them inside her head. During a high-level breakfast meeting in the November 2007 Commonwealth CHOGM Kampala meeting, the little has-been was trotted out and found a low chair beside her President. He made a lot out of her, but even he was speaking of her past. She squeaked, “I’ll be back!†But remembering the dust, or whatever it was in the atmosphere, which choked her while she tried to make her come-back, we rose to our feet and clapped for her gone days. But can miracles still happen? Latterly, she won a couple of races, in Italy.
Now, this weekend, she has won a couple more, and her first 3,000-metre steeplechase (for which she was world champion, and record holder before the dream shattered). A little romance indeed! Give it to us in bucketfuls.
***************
What a pretty picture appeared in Thursday’s media! It showed a completely relaxed President Museveni welcoming his equally relaxed Guest of the Day, Ssabasajja Kabaka Ronald Mutebi II of Buganda. They are standing at the entrance to State House, Entebbe. Each is looking straight into the eyes of the other, and their look is one of Peace.
If you took ten thousand snaps, you couldn’t have come up with better than this. Museveni is wearing a little smile, perhaps a degree quizzical; Mutebi wears one back, looking a tiny bit mischievous, the younger man looking at his Elder, who as it happens, anointed him into what he is today. Looking at this moment, it is impossible not to wonder why it was so long in coming; why so many overtures went a-begging. But let stale recrimination take a back seat at this feast. This is time to start afresh, clear the board of obstruction, adding to the onward march of our nation.
In George Kakoma’s anthem: “Oh Uganda, the Land of Freedom…We lay our Future in thy handsâ€. As we must! Buganda is a part of Uganda, a very central one. You look at current pictures from the faraway Pacific where the Tsunami is tearing chunks out of the countries of Philippines, Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Samoa, and see that the survivors are only looking for ways of re-building, and then you look at Buganda, which Museveni, the Movement and the Baganda and other combatants gave back whole, ready for the same purpose. That was a quarter of a century ago, and yet the job is hardly started, the effort expiating on the air with hot, unimportant verbiage, not crucial to the job ahead.
What is wrong with us? But now is the time not of shouting, but Wordsworth’s “mellow fruitfulnessâ€. Let the two teams get to work in an atmosphere unsoiled by extremism from either side. In the near background, just beyond Museveni and Mutebi, in a white cassock touched off by red, was the arriving Bishop Mutebi (retired): as sagacious a man and prelate as you would wish to meet, and a good mate too.
Among the same Buganda team was Katikkiro J B Walusimbi, a regular in this Column, and A D Lubowa, veteran counsellor from the ‘60s. And then the diminutive woman MP Namayanja, head of the Buganda MP caucus, and the tall amiable Prince Wasajja and, not least, Allen Waliggo, chairman of the Clan Heads Council; as well as ex Ambassador William Matovu.
This is a very serious team, as indeed is the Government’s; from nothing to plenty. The nation seriously awaits.