I have never once lowered a coin into the hands of one of these children, nor their older siblings who will run alongside you until you pay them to go away (or so their theory runs). You might consider me callous, but the reason is that every time someone hands over money to one of these kids, either out of annoyance or pity, they increase the problem. Why? Because no market can exist without customers.
Who is in the wrong here? Is it the mothers who instead of allowing their toddlers to toddle, will mould them into that familiar posture and hide behind a telephone box, returning periodically to collect the proceeds? Is it the fathers who got these ladies pregnant in the first place and are now nowhere to be seen? Is it the government, that is failing to protect the children under its care? Or is it the citizens of Kampala, for taking the easy option of dropping a coin, rather than looking at the problem from a long-term perspective? Kampala may not have a crime problem right now but it is certainly working hard on bringing up the thieves of the future.
Some children have found imaginative ways to avoid begging. My favourite is those who walk the streets with weighing scales. Never mind the fact that every time I weigh myself on these I get a different result – I still do it every time. It may not be any more likely to get the child off the street, but at least by soliciting money in return for a service, they retain a precious morsel of dignity.
Close Encounters of the Contraventional Kind
Regular readers may recall a certain lady called Sarah, who has featured once or twice within these paragraphs. I am going to use her here – with her permission – to demonstrate how social mores are altered one generation at a time. My point involves a comparison between her and her father, but interestingly, has nothing to do with the fact that life treated the old man to two wives – not consecutively, as is the vogue amongst the men of my home country, but concurrently.
With his pique bubbling precariously near to the brim, the father of twelve sent the following text message to two of Sarah’s sisters:
My Children, Amalli, Naome Asinde, you are sending me to the grave early by putting on trousers, against God’s teaching and command. Search for scriptures, otherwise you are to choose between me and your bad way of dressing. Stand warned!If anyone can help these wayward young ladies and direct them towards the relevant section of the good book, please do get in touch. To me, it seems that like so many, they stopped reading at commandment ten, and have therefore neglected to heed the eleventh commandment: “Thou shalt not put on trousers, thou shalt not put on jeans, nor slacks nor flares, nor shorts nor chinos, nor anything that has separate divisions for each leg.”
Sarah herself made a lucky escape this time, although she was once banished instantly from the home of an uncle for the same transgression. Quite right too.
FriendometerA while ago Ben and I made a deal to shamelessly promote each other’s blogs. However, what I got, in the lexicon of media slang, was a ‘shout-out’ and not a ‘plug’, so I considered the deal off on the grounds of breach of contract. However, since Ben made a recent cheese delivery to me in here in Uganda, I’m prepared to reopen negotiations. The benefit to you is that if you want to, you can read a less irreverent account of the country by clicking here: http://findingmyways.blogspot.com.
Ben’s main reason for coming here, which he repeatedly stated, was to enjoy Kampala’s nightlife. I decided to bring the nightlife to him in the comfort of my own home, and thanks to Andrew’s fine DJing and my efforts to redline the friendometer, I managed to pull off a pretty good party.
Miss the deliberate mistake
I happened to be absent-mindedly flicking through a nearby bible as I waited for my dinner the other night, where the early verses of the Book of Exodus describe an encounter between an important Jewish patriarch and an inflammable shrub. Having alluded to the story herein, I am disappointed that no-one spotted the error – it was Moses who was getting a hotline to the Big Man, not Abraham, long since dead by this point in biblical history. I am as ashamed by my own error as I am by the passive complicity of my readership, a significant proportion of whom share my Semitic background. Tsk, tsk!
Competition time
My deliberate mistakes finally proved too much for my trustily pedantic brother David, the original inspiration for this competition. He complained about my creative vocabulary. Now, I have spent the past year carefully positioning twenty-four thousand of the best words in the best order (count them). He should accept that within that splendid total, there will have been at least a couple of words that are new entries in his cerebral dictionary, even if they are home made. However, both he and Bill Gates’ spellchecker have enjoyed disdaining these unique lexemes (‘consultantism’, ‘telecommers’, and today’s ‘contraventional’, to name but a few), so in defiance I would encourage more linguistically progressive readers help to bring them into general use, in a process that I shall christen ‘vocabularic enrichimification’ (in homage to my favourite US president).
And finally… the obligatory valedictory swansong
One year on, I have mastered the change game, navigated the perilous waters of a Ugandan government department, proven that wingless flight is possible with the help of a dark road and a fast-moving motorcycle, confronted Death himself on my own front lawn, watched a chimp give his lady some lovin’, raced kids up a peak jutting over 4km into the sky, discussed circumcision ceremonies with a soldier, averted an ambush by a crowd of drunk boda-boda riders, and battled and beaten a raft of minor ailments. There is also the small matter of helping to turn one swamp and one sugar plantation into two thriving schools, whilst helping to get two others back on their feet, but who cares about all that? My proudest achievement is that I can now hear a Ugandan’s surname and tell you which part of the country they’re from with a surprising level of accuracy. But I am now coming home and even though Nigel will again be in Uganda, ‘Nigel in Uganda’ is closing shop.
I hope you have all enjoyed fondling your synapses with the rapidly oscillating electrons of my inspired HTML, whilst nourishing your optical organs with the megapixels of my magnificent daguerreotypes. I am sure what you have enjoyed more than anything is the verbose and pompous way in which I have expressed the simplest of ideas.
