SNAKE IN A POT

While reading Dr. Clarke’s column in this week’s Sunday vision (The Sunday Vision, 9th October, 2008) there were a couple of arguments that I found rather blemished – which is quite curious, considering that he is one of the most balanced columnists (and my favourite) that still remains in the Ugandan print media. Firstly, Dr. Clarke opined that people in a sub-Saharan African country would have not voted a person of mixed race like Obama into office if he were to stand for presidency. To put it in his own words ‘chances are that he would not even have been considered’. While I don’t agree with his view, I found it interesting. For once, here is a white person living among black people insinuating that black people (the biggest victims of racism in Europe and America) may actually be the biggest racists living on planet earth. Whether he is correct or not, is another story which I am not ready to delve into without statistical data. The second argument I found strange was when Dr. ...

It is totally a different experience and I did not regret a single minute for having signed on to the London Marathon. Before 2003 I had never run any thing longer than 5km although I remember that in my early school days, long distance running was my favourite of all the different disciplines of athletics. In 2004, armed with enthusiasm and a fully bloated man’s ego, I registered for the 10 km race of the Nairobi Marathon. 2 months earlier I had been dared by my wife to run the race and beat her finishing time of the previous year’s race. I run the race and completed it in 45 minutes, which of course was far better than her 1hr 20min of 2003. It is only after then that I realized that despite being in my fourth decade on planet earth I probably still had a knack to run long distances. I immediately promised my self to run the 2005 marathon and even raised the bar to half marathon. Unfortunately I did not run the Nairobi Marathon in 2005 (instead ran the 10km race of the MTN K...

I cannot claim to know much about the economic mess that the whole world is now entangled in. Words like credit crunch, sub prime lending, toxic loans do not make much sense to me. However, I am intelligent enough to understand from my reading that the global slowdown that has affected economies of the different countries is to a large extent the fault of the collapse of the housing bubble in the US. Elsewhere people have argued that there are other factors such as the “Iraq War” and the desire to achieve the "American Dream" by any means necessary. The latter is what some people have referred to as GREED. The greed factor in this crisis is that the salaried chief executive officers and the middle rung bosses of Wall Street were being paid huge salaries and bonuses even as they were meeting their targets through dishing out the toxic loans. I'm neither an economist nor a politician; however it occurs to me that if one country is to bring the brink of financial de...

I have read a lot about Coca-Cola’s involvement with anti people practices and in the past I have dismissed them as a media campaign to discredit a successful company that has served the world with a drink for generations. However, my latest discovery is the final blow to that inner part of me that has so much clung on to coke even with stories of unethical practices. You see I love coke so much that even when the doctor advised that I should take less sugar and specifically pointed out that I should not take more 300ml of coke every week, I still drank Diet Coke after convincing myself that it contained less sugar. The truth is that I could not fathom the idea of being separated from my favourite drink of years. We have all read about Coke’s alleged unethical practices in the past. Their continued stay in South Africa during its apartheid era (even when its competitors left out of morality) made Coca Cola effectively an accomplice to human rights abuses and I know of friends who...

On 1st Aug 2008, we were in party of 4 (2 Ugandans and 2 Egyptians) travelling to Bali on Valuair. The manager on duty at the check-in counters barred the Egyptians from checking in because ‘they did not have a visa to Indonesia’. Despite repeated attempts to explain that Egyptians could obtain a visa on arrival Indonesia, the manager could not let them check in. Even when we managed to log on to the Indonesian Embassy website (thanks to good internet connectivity in Changi Airport) and showed her that Egyptians could get a visa on arrival, she did not let us check-in. After 30 minutes of embarrassment and repeatedly taunting us with ‘go and get visa first’, she came back and merely said you can check-in. There was no apology of any sort, not even an attempt to explain that there had been a misunderstanding. On the 3rd of August 2008, we were scheduled to fly out of Bali back to Singapore and little did we know that we had another episode of embarrassment by Valuair waiting for u...

July 2008 has been a month of firsts. It is the first time that my mother visits London or travels by plane for over an hour. A few years back, she was not feeling well when she came to visit us in Nairobi and instead of making her travel by bus to Kampala from Nairobi, we booked her on to KQ for one way back into Kampala. It was her first time, but the strong and confident woman she is, it did not show on her face or in the way she acted. On this occasion when she travelled all the way here, she was not with me but I made sure that she was in the competent hands of another relative who was coming to UK on official business. Victoria keeps insisting that I am offering unsolicited help, because she (Victoria) knows that despite her limited education, her mother in law is confident enough to travel anywhere in the world. My reaction to that is that Victoria overrates the old lady’s confidence but I must admit that her confidence and perseverance sometimes baffles and inspires me. ...

So the former First Lady of the United Kingdom (I wonder where this leaves HM) has released her memoirs “Speaking for Myself”. There is nothing surprising about an autobiography from a famous and modern woman like her who has been praised by fans for maintaining an independent life as a barrister and refusing to live in the shadow of her husband. I haven’t read the book and though I have an undying fondness for memoirs and biographies, I cannot promise that I will read hers in the near future (I haven’t been able to dispose off her husband’s which I read in between other books). However I have been intrigued by some of the reviews I have read in the press. Apparently Mrs. Blair reveals that when she hooked up with Tony, she was already running two boyfriends. "Tony and I took the bus. It was a double-decker and we went upstairs. It was completely empty and by the time we got off we knew each other better than when we'd got on. And even better the next morning." -The M...

In February 2008, my wife and I were supposed to travel to Nairobi for a friend’s wedding. You see a wedding is not like a funeral, months (sometimes years) of preparation and planning go into the whole affair like the life of those involved (especially the bride) depended on that one day. We had planned long before the now infamous elections of 2007 and post election violence that followed that we will both be in Kenya for Irene’s wedding. My presence in particular was important because it was supposed to be kept a secret and was supposed to be a pleasant surprise (hopefully) to the lovely couple, who are both great friends of ours. As the wedding day approached, news of the killings and violence in Kenya continued to stream through our tube much to our disappointment. For once Victoria became a regular follower of the newscasts. D-day was fast approaching as more and more scenes of violence continued to be played out in front of our eyes. Every after News at Ten, we looked ...

I have been following divorce cases in this country with a kin interest. From the much publicised Macca-Mucca divorce (Paul McCartney and his now ex-wife Heather Mills) to the almost unknowns. What is standard and consistent is that women go to courts fighting for their up keep and monthly allowances. One most recent one even asked to be paid a pension. First and foremost, I appreciate that I come from a typically 'backward and primitive’ African society where we may not know much about issues associated with development, but I need to understand a few things, why is that it is always women that ask to be paid when a marriage comes to an end and not the men? I understand when a woman may have spent all her time at home looking after the kids and thus no time to pursue their personal careers but in cases where both a man and woman professionally work and earn an income why should be the sister and not the bloke to be paid. I would expect everybody to go their way at the end of...

The events in Kenya were a reminder that tribalism is alive and well in Africans. There was a time when it was claimed that introduction of a national language in Uganda would help stifle any tribal sentiments, this position now appears untenable especially that the majority of Kenyans speak Swahili. When I arrived in the UK about a year ago, I went to the Ugandan High Commission in Trafalgar Square to get information about any social groups and/or networks for Ugandans in the UK. I was shocked when the good gentleman sitting behind the counter at Uganda House told me that he only had information about cultural (read tribal) groups like Baganda, Acholi and Banyankore and where they met. Sensing my surprise he added that he could also get me contacts for NRM and FDC members and where they met. At that moment it downed on me that despite the rhetoric, tribe is the most important form of identity to Africans. I have now resigned to the fact that as Africans we will always identif...