SNAKE IN A POT

When I started this blog, I had resolved not to write about the injustice, unfairness and politics of either this country or my home country Uganda. But appropriately named “Snake in a Pot” which is from a Luganda proverb meaning being in a dilemma. I am in a dilemma and find myself going full circle to write this piece about our ever interesting and never short of surprises Uganda police. Just before I left Uganda, I was completely stunned when I heard one of the officers of the force that is supposed to serve and protect, declare that they will arrest all people who jog along roads in Kampala because they cause traffic jams. I was wondering if the officers had too much time and too little to do. However with the newest traffic crisis in Kampala, they definitely have too much to do but too little knowledge of how to go about it. In their quest to show the nation how prepared they are, the good old police men closed some roads and abruptly forced traffic in some obscures side ro...

I remember from some of my teachers (God Bless them) who took me through the early days of formal education that it was important to spell names and places of people correctly when writing. Whether it was English or Luganda (which were taught simultaneously at the time), the teachers always placed a lot of emphasis on ensuring that the spelling of what we were writing was correct. It is through these lessons that I got to learn the basic rules of spelling Luganda words. I remember that I learnt when to use a double consonant or double vowel in Luganda as early as 8years old and we always strived to write words depending on their pronunciation. That is why it was very confusing to me to read a word that sounds like ‘Entebe’ in the official name of our one and only international airport written as ‘Entebbe’. I have since learnt that this was a mistake made very early on by the colonialists in the official documents and no effort was ever made to correct it. I know that we as a cou...