A CRUEL PEOPLE, CRUEL WORLD!

Thirty minutes ago, I was in a taxi heading to Kampala. Thirty minutes ago, my mind was squealing and something like an insect, presumably a wood beetle, was whistling in my ears. I cannot explain to my doctor friend how I feel; he will call my pain hallucinations: He will say I am reacting to the medicine he prescribed to me three days ago. He will laugh and call me a coward. I cannot tell him my heart is in my throat:  I cannot tell him my abdomen is burning like our country’s poverty—I just shut my mouth and heal quietly.

Thirty minutes ago, I was disgruntled by a neighbour’s words in a taxi. He was a very noisy passenger who never minded his business. He looked at me and ardently asked whether I was a Muslim or not. Today is Eid, so I wondered whether he indirectly invited me for rice, even when I didn’t fast.

The short man, whom God might have denied height for his arrogance, scrolled through his phone as he grinned, exposing his smoked teeth. He stared at my Crocs and then at my unkempt hair, wondering which mosque I was going to. When I shot at him with my subtle answer, “I am a traditionalist,” he laughed and said his guess was right: one, I didn’t reflect Islam, and so he might have thought I was a pork eater: two, I was no ramification of a devout Christian but a witch doctor—I respect whichever yardstick he used to draw to such a conclusion.

So, I am trapped between two acute thoughts; I don’t know when I will recover from whatever ailment sucks my body, and I am scared of death. I haven’t even opened up to Kushaba, a girl I met a few days ago; I have been waiting for the right time, if there is anything like that, to tell her that she has been dangling in my mind since we met. Then there is the thought of the pure man, who assumed today was a day for the most faithful, not us, the Heathens!

But I have had this idea for a while, and today was the only day I would bring it to life. I wanted to write about the theft in the country’s taxation system—it has been two days since the kikuubo traders started demonstrating. We are remorselessly taxed: there is the single life tax: the engagement tax: and the sex tax—taxes that we do not understand, as long as they poach money out of our pockets.

I wanted to know where the taxmen and women take the many taxes they collect from us—we collect too much and gain too little. So, I wanted them to account for every penny because, even when I am to kiss, I have to pay what women call the ‘lips fee’. There is nothing for free!

But then everything happened so fast. The idea of asking for the URA to account for our taxes sank.  I assumed it could wait—after all, the speaker of parliament has a fixed budget of 400 million shillings every week; the president of this poor country manages (we cannot say he wastes) 1 million shillings on his shoes every day; our Members of Parliament have what they call service commission and per diem—another way of legalising corruption—so I don’t have to insist on posing questions about the whereabouts of our money.

I don’t have to ask why my village hospital has not received any medicine in six months. I don’t have to ask why it no longer has medical officers, who have been on strike for almost a year. I don’t have to ask why people have named potholes after their patriotic leaders—for instance, Kaguta Pothole or Anita Impenetrable Pothole. I don’t have to ask why our schools are like garden fields, with the first lady in charge as minister of education. I don’t have to ask why the URA introduced a new tax a few days ago—I already know that we need money to service the fancy lifestyles of our patriotic leaders, who are more committed to serving their interests than the country’s.

I slouch towards the Rwanda High Commission from Mulago Hospital. My body trembles and I am thirsty. It is morning, but my lips are cracked.

From a distance, all I see are Boda-boda men gathered on the other side of the road. They groan and curse. As a curious person who might pick up a story from there, I see a young man, older or almost my agemate, lying in the frosty grass, lifeless! Thin houseflies fatten upon sucking his blood, which flows from his nose towards his lips.

He lies on his back. The wind blows his bloodstained shirt to his umbilical cord, exposing his hairy stomach. Everyone’s sight rests on his brain, unblocked. He holds pain in his hands—clenched fists—and a knife in his ears. The weird blood smell penetrates my nose, and my stomach reacts by grumbling.

Comrades praise the fallen soldier—they unsolicitedly tell the crowd how the young man was a friend to many; they speak of how they had lunch the previous night as a team and how he had a mission with a client and cum girlfriend, whose rich husband is disastrous at bed-football; they speak about how the young man was going to harvest the sexually starved woman as though she were his. And then the KCCA road cleaner, who first saw the dead, tells us how she was scared to speak up—how the incident shocked her! When people die, stories will always come up—true or false—and that’s normal.

But I have to leave the bloody scene. I cannot withstand the blood-soaked ground on which the little man rests, like wreaths on a lonely grave. I cannot withstand the praise of the Boda-boda men for their dead colleague. This brings another thought to mind: I think of coworkers who hate each other as though they own the company. I pity co-wives who compete for a place in their husbands’ hearts—women who even destroy the lives of others because they are jealous—they don’t want to share.

The world has become so cruel that it thrives in evil: politicians steal public money and baptise it with names like ‘token, service commission, tea, etc.’ The security operatives abduct citizens, who are never seen again, and call it a security matter; the government parades civilians in military courts and takes pride in the broken justice system.

People die of hunger, but politicians have the guts to demand an extended budget or supplementary funds to buy new cars. We grow sugarcane and process sugar, but it is more expensive here than in countries where we export it. We are voiceless! It is criminal to call out exploitation—the president will brand you an enemy of progress. How do you complain about injustice?

Witch doctors are now more trusted than religious leaders. It has become a world of pain and lies. And it is now abnormal for a few normal people—the world is a dangerous place to live—and, like pigs, we are eating each other! A CRUEL PEOPLE, CRUEL WORLD!