Holland is one of the most picturesque countries in the world. It is joined by Belgium on the south, Germany on the west, and the North Sea on the East and North. It’s total land area is about a quarter of the state of Missouri in the US, and yet it has a population of nearly 15 million people. This is the land of windmills, canals, flower fields, dairy cattle, cheese markets and traditional costumes.
The Dutch have a saying “God made the World, but the Dutch made Holland.” When will Ugandans make Uganda? In the Military, the Standard Operating Words are “Classified” and “Restricted”. Truth is defined as that which is real, genuine, certain, valid, factual. Truth is actuality, that which can be trusted because it is the things that are. Two eminent Ugandan Persons made history this week; Justice Alphonse Owiny Dollo the Chief Justice proposed an extension of retirement age for his lot to which I counter propose hither contracting, Kenyan Justice David Maraka prior to extension. The Rt. Hon. Jacob Oulanyah Okori the Speaker of Parliament adjourned the House Cine dine yet the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces is meant to seek belated permission to deploy our forces to pound ADF along with FARDC in the D.R. Congo. For starters Cine dine means no specific time of return.
Uganda is a country that can be compared to a sentence without punctuation, in brief we can be said to be sophisticated predators. To make my argument more compelling, a week ago Ms. Lucia Pinochet, a widow of the fallen Chilean General Augustino Pinochet died at the age of 99 a few days to their general election interestingly the population went into ecstatic celebrations instead of mourning because she and her husband persecuted their citizens in the ’80s and went on to elect a youthful Gabriel Borich aged only 35years. In 2005, the then Commandant of the Kimaka based Army College sanctioned the Late Brig. Gen. Noble Mayombo to invite the late Lt. Col. Lazarus Orwotho considered to have been one of the finest of senior army officers in Obote II regime to present a syndicated lecture to the bravest of UPDF. On the first occasion Lt. Col. Orwotho declined the invitation as he feared that Ugandans hate the truth. The late Mayombo had to go through the late Brig. Gen. Peter Kerim who came from the same West Nile region as Orwotho who accepted the invitation and the senior soldier in him drove him to present an exciting truthful paper to a quiet Central Lecture Room (CLR). I had been invited as an observer and observed that the Room was so quiet that one would hear a pin falling. Orwotho was meant to present facts and nothing more pertaining the Luweero Triangle Bush War.
The more than 50 Ugandan, Tanzanian, Kenyan senior officers turned in their seats uncomfortably when the “Lecturer” told the listeners in their faces that he (Orwotho) pounded the NRA in Luweero because at that time they were a National Army and had a duty to protect the Country and her Citizens. He went on to ask why they(UPDF) were hitting Kony rebels hard in Northern Uganda? I personally thought that Lt. Col. Orwotho was going to be arrested at the end of the Lecture. It was surprising that he received a standing ovation instead. During Q&A time he had this to say and I quote that “when one comes into an Arena where others control the oxygen, the intruder is suffocated”, this attracted a prolonged laughter from the tough men in uniform. I didn’t know I would meet Lt. Col. Orwotho again but I was lucky to share a hotel during CHOGM 2007 with a Princess Ms. Ruth Nakayima from Busoga Chiefdom, we laughed when I reminded him about his moving lecture at Kimaka unfortunately Brig. Gen. Mayombo had passed away months earlier. So where did we go wrong wanting to set a whole house on fire just to roast a rabbit for supper in a place like Kayunga. Are the retiring Generals driving the NRM revolution to slip off the Agenda, or Is the ship (Uganda) sinking? Are the young Commanders’ dismissive attitude not going to negatively affect the Country’s image? Is their exuded arrogance, not brushing off the Late Orwotho’s audience’s discipline? Isn’t this indiscipline pilferaging (stealing in small quantities) the NRM support in the whole Country? Pilferage, one of my Swiss female Lecturers at Kenya Utalii College (Nicknamed as Africa’s Harvard of Hospitality) explained as lifting items in small numbers and that this can deplete the stocks of the whole World.
There is a lesson we can learn concerning the Conservative Party of Prime Minister Boris Johnson of UK who lost a crucial by-election the same Thursday of Kayunga by-election a constituency CP had held for over 200 years yet it was a honorable defeat even if it means that Boris Johnson is on his way out given the fact that even his Minister for BREXIT resigned from government in the same week coupled with an ongoing investigation whether there were illegal Christmas parties at 10 Downing street against #Covid SOPs. Morality as taught by Thich Nhat Hanh “The past is gone, the future is not yet here and if we don’t go back to ourselves in the present moment, we can’t be in touch with life.” We cannot blame Obote’s ghost to have run mad in Kayunga.
Nabendeh S.P Wamoto (0776658433/0752658433)
simonwamoto@yahoo.co.uk
