What symbol is right for your marriage?
LAST Thursday, when I threatened to scare the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), many of you warned me against it. Thank you for the concern, it is relieving to know there are people who love my body parts more than I do.
By Hilary Bainemigisha
LAST Thursday, when I threatened to scare the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), many of you warned me against it. Thank you for the concern, it is relieving to know there are people who love my body parts more than I do.
Luckily, the CBP did not find it necessary to look at me beyond my clothes. Did they read my column?
The only sexual activity that took place at the border was to define microbicide. The female officer who took me aside insisted that I define it when I told her I was going for a microbicide conference in Pittsburgh.
Nobody has ever been able to define microbicide without mentioning the female sexual body part. So I decided not to be the first person. And as soon as I said 'vagina', she lost interest in the rest. She did not even realise that I stopped my explanation before my full stop.
Pittsburgh is a city of bridges in the same way Kampala is a city of potholes. Everywhere you look, you see a bridge. It developed as a steel manufacturing town and as companies competed to prove they had the best steel in town, they erected bridges across their two rivers.
Today, the bridges still exist and have even extended into the town emblem, conference badges, company icons and if Pittsburgh was to introduce new money, there would be a bridge on the new note.
Unlike us who were not bold enough to put potholes on our new currency. Yet potholes would have been more realistic or child sacrifice, riots, minibus robberies but not animals. Of course we have to put symbols that will deceive visitors that we are the 'united, free for liberty' Pearl of Africa, gifted by nature. And the designers' idea of nature's gift in Uganda is animals and sculptures! Nothing brainy, no spectacular invention, no extraordinary international contribution, but sculpture and animals many of us have not seen in the past one year!
That is the kind of public relations pretence found in marriages where couples have to be seen smiling together in church compounds and before parents and colleagues. But once their family door closes, it changes into a Bakaluba versus Nambooze campaign affair. It is very Ugandan to dress a dirty body with clean clothes but, if we can be that innovative, why not just wash the body.
Why do we want to look awesome when we can actually be awesome? Think about your relationship: if you were to produce five new currency notes for your marriage, what symbols would be very representative? Romance?
Honesty? Children? Cooperation? Peace? How many would describe their relationships with such terms?
Okay, put down your hands. I know you are deceiving. I will ask again: In your privacy and honesty, would you actually put similar symbols on your marriage notes? If not, doesn't that show that, apart from making a marriage statistic, you are not as married as you think? Do you want to be like Uganda which wakes up once in a while to give the world a surprise before giving it up to return to corruption, intrigues, blackmail and pretence for visitors?
Pittsburgh gave the world a polio vaccine. Uganda too gave the world circumcision as an HIV prevention technology but soon after, got too busy with CHOGM to give it another thought. CHOGM has refused to end and that is putting us in the dust of those who took over 'our' circumcision and are rolling it out to their people.
Pittsburgh is now determined to give the world another prevention technology in microbicide.
Yes, we are also hosting some microbicide trials but look where the money is coming from! How much of this is from our coffers? Of course I know we don't have money.
We put it in probes such as the Global fund and the Police and are still calling for more investment in commissions of inquiry into Luwero massacres, Kasubi tombs, new bank notes and the Cranes performance at Namboole!
Eventually when HIV is defeated, the world will have forgotten Uganda as a country which was at the frontline.
Few will remember how we brought down our incidence because we failed to maintain the tempo. We lost our lead to others who used to see us an example.
LAST Thursday, when I threatened to scare the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), many of you warned me against it. Thank you for the concern, it is relieving to know there are people who love my body parts more than I do.
Luckily, the CBP did not find it necessary to look at me beyond my clothes. Did they read my column?
The only sexual activity that took place at the border was to define microbicide. The female officer who took me aside insisted that I define it when I told her I was going for a microbicide conference in Pittsburgh.
Nobody has ever been able to define microbicide without mentioning the female sexual body part. So I decided not to be the first person. And as soon as I said 'vagina', she lost interest in the rest. She did not even realise that I stopped my explanation before my full stop.
Pittsburgh is a city of bridges in the same way Kampala is a city of potholes. Everywhere you look, you see a bridge. It developed as a steel manufacturing town and as companies competed to prove they had the best steel in town, they erected bridges across their two rivers.
Today, the bridges still exist and have even extended into the town emblem, conference badges, company icons and if Pittsburgh was to introduce new money, there would be a bridge on the new note.
Unlike us who were not bold enough to put potholes on our new currency. Yet potholes would have been more realistic or child sacrifice, riots, minibus robberies but not animals. Of course we have to put symbols that will deceive visitors that we are the 'united, free for liberty' Pearl of Africa, gifted by nature. And the designers' idea of nature's gift in Uganda is animals and sculptures! Nothing brainy, no spectacular invention, no extraordinary international contribution, but sculpture and animals many of us have not seen in the past one year!
That is the kind of public relations pretence found in marriages where couples have to be seen smiling together in church compounds and before parents and colleagues. But once their family door closes, it changes into a Bakaluba versus Nambooze campaign affair. It is very Ugandan to dress a dirty body with clean clothes but, if we can be that innovative, why not just wash the body.
Why do we want to look awesome when we can actually be awesome? Think about your relationship: if you were to produce five new currency notes for your marriage, what symbols would be very representative? Romance?
Honesty? Children? Cooperation? Peace? How many would describe their relationships with such terms?
Okay, put down your hands. I know you are deceiving. I will ask again: In your privacy and honesty, would you actually put similar symbols on your marriage notes? If not, doesn't that show that, apart from making a marriage statistic, you are not as married as you think? Do you want to be like Uganda which wakes up once in a while to give the world a surprise before giving it up to return to corruption, intrigues, blackmail and pretence for visitors?
Pittsburgh gave the world a polio vaccine. Uganda too gave the world circumcision as an HIV prevention technology but soon after, got too busy with CHOGM to give it another thought. CHOGM has refused to end and that is putting us in the dust of those who took over 'our' circumcision and are rolling it out to their people.
Pittsburgh is now determined to give the world another prevention technology in microbicide.
Yes, we are also hosting some microbicide trials but look where the money is coming from! How much of this is from our coffers? Of course I know we don't have money.
We put it in probes such as the Global fund and the Police and are still calling for more investment in commissions of inquiry into Luwero massacres, Kasubi tombs, new bank notes and the Cranes performance at Namboole!
Eventually when HIV is defeated, the world will have forgotten Uganda as a country which was at the frontline.
Few will remember how we brought down our incidence because we failed to maintain the tempo. We lost our lead to others who used to see us an example.