16 December 2007
When Uganda watchers open our November/December newspaper files, they will find a contrast so stark that the superstitious would think fate could only deal (bonga) with cruel malice.
"Ebola Strikes Again", the Daily Monitor announced on November 30.
The day before, the paper had devoted the front page, most of the second, and the whole of the third page to the rather odd enterprise of guiding its readers on a descriptive and pictorial tour of the presidential suite at the Serena Hotel, where Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II had stayed during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.
The last few days of November were a kind of relief from the bilge of "positive reporting" about Chogm that had been pouring out. And now a tour of the "Queen's Room" (although perhaps aimed at readers who were known to be generally fascinated by - and indulged in fantasies of - luxury) reminded us that the chief guest, like all the other guests, had indeed left.
Broadly, the papers of the second fortnight of November form an assemblage that mirrors beauty and hope; and those of the first fortnight of December read like the 'Chapters of Death.' Fate has juxtaposed these two print media experiences, and we can only marvel at the symmetry that God and the devil have mutually worked out for their beloved country.
Do you remember the Mimic Queen; or, rather, the lady Member of Parliament, Hon. Akumu Mavenjina, who was "deposed" as the Mimic Queen during the Chogm protocol rehearsals?
Well, Hon. Mavengina represents the women of Nebbi District in the 8th Parliament. As she went on about her Queen put-ons, the scourge of bubonic plague was ravaging her constituency. But it seems the women are significantly more vulnerable than the men; and for a surprisingly simple reason. The Minister of State for Primary Health, Dr Emmanuel Otaala, and the Director General of Health Services, Dr Sam Zaramba, have explained that, in Nebbi, women sleep on the floor, while men sleep on beds.
During sexual sessions, the women join their husbands, but thereafter return to their place. The rat flea, whose theme park is a dusty floor, and which transmits bubonic plague, jumps only six inches high. Only the women (and possibly kids) are in its range. Indeed, Dr Otaala and Dr Zaramba reason that if everybody slept on beds, there would be no plague in this country.
Well, I suspect that the rat flea might be rather more resourceful than the two health honchos are inclined to acknowledge, but the point has been made. Look beyond Dr Otaala and Dr Zaramba. Hon. Mavenjina and her type are paraded as testimony of progress and empowerment for Uganda's women.
Every six months, a new district is created, and another woman joins Parliament. They guzzle taxpayers' cash. Instead of fighting the wars of ignorance, beds and disease at home, they fly and roam around seminar and conference halls and get even more cash from "donors". They are isolated from the millions of their constituents grovelling in the dust, and they are groomed to look and act First World when The Queen and her Commonwealth minions come to town.
In the 'Chapters of Death', bubonic plague is joined by meningitis, cholera and yellow fever, and - most frightening of all - Ebola, whose eruption may have been revealed in "slow time" by officials who placed the success of Chogm above everything else.
The geo-pathological pattern of the epidemics (their concentration along the western belt that borders the Democratic Republic of the Congo) also reminds us of the trail of conflict, looting, disease and death that Uganda (and Rwanda) left in that country.
If our State House-linked pastors and prophets were not busy distracting our attention by praying for Kampala's garbage, and possibly plotting to seize the city in 2011, they might have helped us to understand whether the plagues are a God/sevil (divine) punishment for Uganda's sins in the Congo, or retribution for the NRM government's excesses at home.
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