The public reading and why i am so freaked out right now!

What:  Public reading

When: Thursday 17th September 2009 at 4:00pm

Where: the National Theatre Auditorium.

 theme: A  Reading Family: Linking Reading to Nation Building.”

The intention of this event is to promote Ugandan Creative Writers and encourage reading especially of Ugandan authored books.

 The main authors who will read from their  work are Dr. Susan Kiguli (The African Saga), Lillian Tindyebwa (Recipe For Disaster), Dr. Patrick Mangeni (A Leopard In My Bed and Other Stories), Captain Ulysses Chuka Kibuuka (Of Saints And Scare Crows), and Joseph Mugasa (Pulse Of The Pearl). Other authors include the three winners of The Beverly Nambozo Poetry Award and Lantern Meet of Poets group.

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When the Rwandan genocide took place, i was 8 years old and i really did not understand what the whole thing was about. save fo the fact that my dad was always in serious meetings, made sure to call a certain place every day at the same time without fail and that whole thing of people’s fingers in fish,  i just could not understand the magnitude of what was happening.

I have often heard people call Rwandans mean and hardhearted people who could kill their own. I have even heard people say that such a thing would never happen in Uganda or any other country because no one can be as ruthless as those ‘banalwanda’.

during the Mabira Saga there was a threat on the lives of Indians here in Kampala and i just could not believe the course we were taking. and then the post colonial violence in Kenya left me speechless because whereas we had pretended to be so heart broken by the genocide in Rwanda, we had not learnt a single thing!

and now there is this Bafuruki thing going on and the Kabaka-Kayunga saga and i am so scared of what might happen to us!

you see, i was seated in a taxi this morning when CBS broadcast it’s morning news. ofcourse the Kayunga thing was among the top stories. there was a man infront of me who was so infuriated and this is what he said: ” Ye lwaki bajooga Kabaka waffe bwebatyo?…hmmm?…Tebamanyi nagwebazannya naye. Tujakubookya! Nze singa naliyo eyo ekayunga tewali munyala yandivuddewo mulamu!” (Why are they undermining our Kabaka?…They don’t even know who they are playing with…We will BURN them! Me if i had been in Kayunga no munyala would have left alive!”)

I have Kiganda blood in me but i am terrified by Baganda. not because they are bad people but because they have power that is so silently potent and loyalty that is so extreme(you remember how they literally brought New Vision to it’s knees) it scares me…and frankly i don’t even get what this Kayunga thing is about! But it is the sentiments of such people like the man in the taxi that scare me so. and make me realise that the genocide was not limited to ‘mean and hard hearted banalwanda’ but that it is something that we should all be afraid will take over our hearts.

i’m just worried. let’s see how the Kabaka’s tour turns out this saturday.