In the ghetto but not of the ghetto

This goes out to popular culturists, particularly artistes that have navigated out of the ghetto to the front page. Your songs play on our radios and your videos beam on our screens everyday while your concerts draw multitudes. Well, I’m challenging you today to use your influence to help the lost generation.

Artistes like these can use their platform and appeal to transform lives

Let me begin by saying I'm not going to congratulate you on that popular video in which you are surrounded by half-naked women taking turns to rub their bums on your crotch. You are swinging and swigging on a hard liquor bottle only pausing to smoke a Cuban cigar and exhale its smog through your nostrils. You are wearing a buggy t-shirt with words "Baad Boy" below the picture of a man with a pointed pistol. I'm not congratulating you because that projection may seem right to you but it actually is destructive.

I know you have got to hunt your meat, you know, put food on the table. But there is a better way of doing it than promoting alcoholism, drugs and debauchery. If the ghetto is colourful like you glorify it in your songs and videos, why do you live in a mansion and drive a Lexus while your ghetto friends have nowhere to lay their heads?

Before his spiritual metamorphosis, a friend of mine then known as Badda was so obsessed with Tupac Shakur that he smoked weed and started the Anti-Bitch Club (ABC) at school because his icon was a dope head that cussed and called women bitches. Just like Tupac was to Badda, you are role models to many and your conduct on and off stage has a profound positive or negative impact on your fans for which you’ll continue to be celebrated or disparaged.

I know it has been tough and the haters are many but that is life. Since the fall of man, the world has known nothing but violence, poverty, disease, unfairness and death. The rich and the poor alike commit suicide or get ravaged by all forms of intoxicants and substances. But your success and survival is testimony that even though you were born in the ghetto, as Jesse Jackson once put it, the ghetto was not born in you.

It is therefore your moral duty to use the platform and massive talent God has endowed you with to inspire the uninspired. Beef is not helping us. Give us love and encouragement, and we shall sing along into a better world and future.

The Ebola Scare: Lord have mercy!!

A couple of days ago, I was walking home when I met my friend Morgan and extended my hand in greeting.
“No handshakes, man,” he said with a nervous laugh, “have you forgotten?” He was alluding to the Ebola scare. I quickly understood, and we chatted on the unpredictability of the times. Earlier that day, a friend we went to campus with had collapsed in his office and died instantly.

Ebola has killed many Ugandans but few are taking precautions

And now with Ebola cases reported in Mulago, we had to be extra careful for sure. But being optimists, our conversation soon drifted to the brighter side of life, and we were soon cracking jokes and crackling. Suddenly Morgan looked at his watch and whistled. He had a date and was already late.

“I gotta run, man,” he said grabbing my hand and shaking it vigorously before he hurried off. In his excitement, he had forgotten we were not supposed to shake hands! I found that simultaneously funny and scary but not strange. It’s typical of Ugandans and Africans generally. Remember the story about Jacob Zuma having unprotected sex and diving into the bathroom shortly after to rinse any viruses off? One moment we are prudent, and another, incredibly imprudent.

First we come with all our guns blazing against HIV/Aids and become a model on how the pandemic can be outwitted. But a few years later, abstinence is forgotten, being faithful laughed at, and the condom mocked as an inconvenience as men and women go on rampage devouring each other. Now the infection rate is so alarmingly soaring that the other day the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton voiced her worry on our behalf. It is incredible how nonchalant we are about it.

Back to Ebola, you ask yourself what precautionary measures the government or other institutions have put in place since it was first announced the virulent epidemic had stormed Kampala as well? We were advised to avoid shaking hands but why are night clubs still operating? And why are people still hugging and shaking hands at church when they have been told they will contract the epidemic through close contact?

The absurdity of our recklessness or sheer stupidity brings me to the only conclusion -- that God is really doing a great job of protecting us.Otherwise we would have long been wiped out of the face of this earth. But how long will He wait for us to grow up? Because, evidently, even in the face of the most deadly plague, the word “precaution” is non-existent in the Ugandan dictionary.

The "Proposal" Question

Should a woman propose to a man? The youths of Makerere Full Gospel Church debated this question last Sunday. To some, the idea of a beautiful woman going on bended knee to pop the question to the man of her dreams would be exhilarating, and to others, revolting.  

Does it really matter who pops the question?

One young man argued: "Feminists like to say whatever a man does, a woman can do even better. Let them get better at proposing to us too!" Of course such arguments drew prolonged hilarity, but more importantly they got me examining the relationships I know, have read or heard about. And my conclusion: today's women have taken over the dating world and are the ones proposing to us, even though it has not robbed us of our virility. 

A woman sees a handsome man and decides she wants him. She rummages through her closet and pulls out the most flattering lesu, wraps it around her curves and starts strutting in front of the man. Men being visual beings can be easy to nail that way, even all the way down the aisle. 

Also consider the cohabiting cases of today. Most women deliberately get pregnant and use their pregnancies to blackmail men into marrying them. Those are some of the subtle ways women are proposing to us. They have perfected the art of proposing so excellently that massive numbers of men are living in the delusion that they are the ones that loved, wooed, popped the question and conquered! It makes me laugh to think about it.

 But when all is said and done, it doesn't make you less of a man just because a woman proposed. If you like her and want to be with her, the rest of your life and vice versa, does it really matter who pops the question? In countries like India women have the official duty of being the chasers of men after all. As one debater put it, "The only thing a woman cannot do in India is to become a man!" And marriages there are probably more stable than marriages in Uganda where the man takes the lead. 

In all, I choose to be a rationalist. If a woman has no problem proposing and the man has no problem being proposed to, let them be. This scenario will not make a woman grow beards neither will it make the man lose his manhood. Moreover, "proposal" is only an eight-letter word. Conformity is sometimes deformity. Also remember the road less travelled oft makes all the difference.

The Power of Taking the First Step

I want to inspire somebody that has been debilitated into passivity because of the prevailing circumstances. The times are tough, no doubt, and there is a lot of griping. People are complaining about the weather, about heartbreaks or unrequited love, about underpayment or unemployment and so much more that has left many on the verge of surrender.

Taking the first step makes all the difference

Most of these people think it is the job of arthritis to paralyse but nothing paralyses faster than living under fear. We must inoculate ourselves of pessimism and reawaken the firepower within to take on the world and live the fruitful life we all desire.

I have heard stories of those that die impoverished and embittered because their employers didn't reward them in accordance with the loyalty with which they served. At the risk of sounding insensitive, I will say that your employer is unbothered about your welfare beyond the workplace. You must decide the life you want and strive to attain it.

Some look at their apparent lack of "connection" and at their background and give up before even trying. In his latest book, The Breakthrough, Nicholas Aruho talks of how most of us dwell on the past while the present is leaving us too. He sites the common form of greeting in the morning - "how was your night" instead of a simple "good morning"” that the English man likes to use, meaning the latter focuses on the future (morning) and not the past (night).

The moral is that we must begin to focus on the present as we walk into the future with optimism. Those who dwell on the past are fated to become useless slabs of salt, figuratively speaking. The world is tough but we are tougher since upon creation, God gave us the right and wisdom to subdue it.

To live meaningfully everyday is to become an action-oriented man because action is what we need to shape the rosy life we want. If for instance you want to go for further studies, go pick forms and file an application now. If you've been admitted but have no tuition, start knocking on doors of financial aid. Out of 100 people, 99 might shut the door in your face but the one that admits you in may be all you need to make your dream come true.

The significance of taking action now is best captured by Robert H. Schuller when he writes: "You won't start winning without a beginning."

When A Man Is In Want of A Woman

To a man that is in want of a woman to marry, achieving the "American dream" is winning the woman of his dreams! If you've not yet attained the considerable means that girls today look for in a man, spates of panic set in. You know getting her to say yes; sliding a ring down her finger is going to be possible only when you're among the lucky few that find a woman of foresight; one that will not judge you based on your present circumstances. 

To a man, getting her to say "I do" is the real "American dream" 

That would be pretty cool and the sooner you're hitched the better. You remember the first time you saw her. It was a night you knew (without any shadow of doubt) that woman with her arcane proportion of elegance and the rare self-assuredness was going to be your wife. It was also the night you became a man; the night you realized you had to put away all the playing and get real. It was a good sign seeing you roll your sleeves and stand in front of the big mirror to take a long, studious look at yourself. 

"That girl's going to be my wife," you told your reflection in the mirror even when you knew it was not going to be easy. Not that you care about being accused of having no ambition. You're a man of easy circumstances that loves spending time reading books and it got you wondering whether she would understand. But even if she does, you can't get married and retain your routine because where there was only you, now is a woman. Moreover if she's a big man's daughter raised on bread and butter, can she live happily with a rough-hewn son of a peasant without the security of a posh apartment? 

You hang on to that old bit about unlike poles attracting, and you know she likes you yet the prospect of losing her to the richer and more sophisticated guys strikes you. The anxiety even seeps into your sleep as you start dreaming fighting off men and doing everything to shield her.  

"You're all mine and no vulture will take you away from me," you tell her and reach out to kiss her only to realise it's a dream! You get down on your knees, man, knowing that the Creator of marriage knows what's in futurity and grants all who trust Him the desires of their hearts.

When Does Satan Become the Choice of the Majority?

Life has a way it forces us to stop and think. Wednesday, July 11, was the day I paused and thought again. On that day two years ago, terrorists bombed hundreds of soccer lovers in Kampala. That World Cup final found me home broke and bored. I dozed off on the sofa and dreamt about a man with a machine gun frenziedly shooting into crowds while from his small mouth issued the most vindictive expletives I ever heard. I woke up with a splitting headache, and it took some time before my head cleared and I realised the horrible noise emanating from my tv was connected to a terrorist act that had just happened at Kyadondo Rugby Groung that night. All that blood, the screams…such goriness.  

When does satan become the choice of the majority?

This week as we remembered the victims of that horrific experience (my friend Moses Serugo lost a brother, rest in peace Daniel Wasswa Ddunga) I wondered when the innocence we are born with transmogrifies into beastly viciousness leading to murder. When does Satan become the choice of the majority?  Is it when we are born in broken homes where those meant to protect and love us instead give us a taste of hell beforehand by torturing and abusing us? Is it when employers throw meritocracy out of the window in favour of nepotism while our first-class degrees gather dust?  

 African-American rapper The Ambassador, in one of his songs blames the "three-man comradely" - the world, flesh and the devil. But it's his observation that any culture without Christ is easily robbed of its worth, that speaks mostly to me. You cannot have Christ and behave like three Ugandan policemen I saw on TV during a demonstration bashing a helpless woman like they had been sent by the king of demons. They followed her into a roadside gutter unleashing their batons on her and ignoring her pleas of mercy. It was the angriest I've been at those scoundrels masquerading as policemen and desecrating the noble uniform of our police force. Think what that unlucky woman is capable of if ever she gets a chance to exert revenge on her tormentors?   

Optimism for a better world can only come from amending our ways and being reconciled with Christ. That's what will save us from the fear and despair precipitated by terrorists and monstrous police men clobbering a harmless woman. To all the people that stood by the sufferers of July 11, 2010, God bless you.

Confronting our pride and fears

What is the root of inhibiting factors in human beings? I was pondering this last Sunday. It was my big brother's birthday. I wanted to hug him and say "Happy birthday" with all the love I was feeling but did not. Ironic and paradoxical seeing that I do not fear him.

My big bro Julio was my childhood hero

He is the debonair big bro I grew up looking up to in the 90s, with his boxy head (French cut) and a passion for fashion (denim jeans and super-cool sneakers)! He was then in "Jovoc" – the coolest high school in Mbarara where he learnt to tell hilarious stories of high school escapades and to pull smooth dance moves that made him the envy of every guy in the neighbourhood as all the "beautiful honeys" clamoured for his attention during holiday socials.

He also shaped my taste in music with his collection of Luther Vandross, Bobby Brown, Tevin Campbell, Baby Face and Montell Jordan, among the quintessential artistes of the heydays.

Last Sunday, as we celebrated his birthday, memories gushed back like water from a broken tap. That is when I wanted to hug him and thank him with all the love I was feeling for the good times he gave us when growing up. But I did not want to be seen displaying emotions, so I blew it, and big bro will probably never get to hear how much I love him.

It all makes me wonder why we cannot be vulnerable with the ones we love and care about by revealing our innermost feelings to them. You are dying to tell someone you wronged how sorry you are but you do not want to be considered weak. You do not want to raise hands and dance in church because it would embarrass you! It is called pride, and it is the reason few men ask for directions when they are lost.

Pride and fear are the most inhibiting factors in human beings, and the most dangerous. The woman of your life is taken by another man because you feared to profess your love for her. J. Harv Eker, author of Secrets of the Millionaire, writes how "Habitual fear can trick us into believing that we can't act, that we shouldn't act, that acting toward what we really want is going to lead to pain because that's what we've been taught or because that's what happened before. You're never going to be happy or successful if you don't get beyond fear."

Which is why we MUST cast off our pride and confront our fears NOW!!!

There are still some men of honour

As part of celebrating this year's Fathers Day, I read Edwin Louis Cole's Strong Men in Tough Times and found some illuminating insights I wish to share. You and I know the world is decaying at a worrying speed, and Louis Cole thinks it's because men are not standing up to be counted. The unruliness, the poverty, the tragedies, the immorality and all the ugliness are connected to the breakdown of strong pillars in society.

Members of the Men's Ministry of Makerere Full Gospel Church in a praise and worship session. Under the credo "iron sharpenth iron" they help each other to be the men God created them to be.

And Louis Cole argues that never has the call and need for strong men been greater as is today. Sadly, few are heeding the call seeing the majority are lost pursuing the big bucks than building society. They have been duped into believing the true definition of a man rotates around driving monster cars, owning lakeside bungalows, walking the red carpet and such hodgepodge.

The author puts it this way: "In the quest for self-fulfillment, self-awareness and self-gratification, masses of men have lost what it means to be a man, a hero, a leader. We have sold morality for economic privilege…in frustration we have succumbed to the stresses of eroded manhood and lost our ideals to immoral, illegal, unethical or irresponsible actions."

It's legitimate, of course, to want the fine things in life. But if the culture of materialism and consumerism gets us applying the Machiavellian principle of "ends and means" whereby integrity is hurled through the window and conscience ceases to poke us, a tragedy so voluminous is guaranteed. It's here that we observe a moment of silence.

But we shall do a U-turn instead. Because I believe not all men have been emasculated. Some out there are striving to be the leaders and heroes God created us to be; men that are not misusing their manhood. When I talk manhood I don’t mean the thing(s) between the legs! I’m talking about attributes like integrity, moral excellence, a God-fearing spirit, patience, political savvy, immeasurable courage, decisiveness and an inner strength by which a real man overcomes temptation and soars into greatness that changes the world.

These are the men the world is crying for. Strong men "who will overcome drifting philosophies and bring order, hope and dignity back to a world." That's the litmus test. Let the boys sit down, and the men rise up. Or should we gain the whole world here and now but lose our souls?

Envying the Chinese

Recently, I watched live on CCTV as the Shenzhou-9 spacecraft "blasted off" into space, and tears came into my eyes. I cried because, for the first time it hit me that I might die without witnessing something magnificently Ugandan; something that would make Ugandan hearts somersault with pride; that would have the whole world shed tears of envy and die wishing they were Ugandan!

Flying higher like this traditional dancer from Rwanda

Please do not tell me about the Kiira EV, and the man in Katwe alleged to have assembled a plane from scraps before he was allegedly foiled by the police when he allegedly tried to test it! Do not tell me because it will only serve to exacerbate my misery. I mean did you watch that beautiful manned monster spacecraft with its trio astronauts including a woman, whiz into the high heavens?

It was another terrific leap of Chinese adventure toward the fulfillment of the country's ambition to become the major world player in space exploration. While that was happening in East Asia, a pothole was enlarging on a Kampala city road, a national budget that does not make sense to an ordinary Ugandan was being read, a Ugandan businessman was importing matchboxes (yes, from China!) and malaria was killing a Ugandan child and jiggers devastating some feet somewhere in Busoga.

By the way, did you know that China's national anthem is called "The March of Volunteers" and that its national flag has a big star and four small ones? So, while they march like an army of ants onto star-dom, we are busy singing to God to uphold us, meanwhile our Crested Crane (poor beautiful bird) is facing extinction, and a wetland is being developed! I know Uganda is not China as is not Spain but do not remind me!

Maybe it is not in our DNA to assemble the largest space station and have an expedition to the moon, but can't we be a little more ambitious? Can't we dream big and pray big? The world's best motivational speakers have said if you want to do something really great you must first believe and then ask God what is beyond your reach.

May be it is time to start believing in the Uganda Cranes to become the first African soccer team to lift the World Cup in Brazil in 2014. That surely will make the world pause and recognise us. And it will wipe away your tears and mine, and replace them with smiles as gigantic as Lake Victoria.

Love in its realest form

This goes out to all the big-hearted people out there. To the men and women of the world that understand love in all its veracity. A love that causes you to spend your time and money to go and encourage someone in prison. A love that will have you fasting and wearing your knees out praying for someone to get well or a job. A love that will have you sharing a good meal with the under-privileged. A love that will have you calling someone to "check" on them or say I love you meaning it.

A love beyond measure, a love whose quintessence I cannot capture in words. That is the greatest love of all. A love that does not just issue from the lips, but is lived with action. A love with which you will lay down your life for your friends physically or other. This is the type of love for which Jesus was nailed on the cross. It is the kind of love that drove Mother Teresa into abandoning the relative comforts of the convent to be among the dirty, hungry and homeless people she called the “poorest of the poor” on the stinky streets of Calcutta.

My friend Naomi has a big heart

We are talking about a love above self. The Luthers (both the reformist and the civil rights leader) were driven by this love too. It is this love that got Abraham Lincoln to oppose slavery and deliver the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 emphasizing that all men are created equal and therefore there was "no moral right in connection with one man’s making a slave of another."

Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi and the 13-year-old girl Aisha Nabukeera who died rescuing her friends from a dormitory fire all embody this love. In a world driven by capitalism and materialism, this love has no doubt waned but can never be extinguished where people are. My friend Naomi demonstrated this recently when she mobilised friends to contributed Shs5,000 each to help homeboy Johnson who needed Shs64m for a cancer operation in India. By the time of writing this, more than Shs1.5m had already been collected.

This surely is love in its purest form; a modern-day example of loving thy neighbour as thyself (the second greatest commandment). So let us love one another unreservedly. It really is all we and the world needs – real love. Nothing less, nothing more. Again, here is to all the true lovers in the house!

Overcoming 'Approval Addiction'

One thing honest men will plead guilty of is staring at women. We've even been smacked for it, but we can't help ourselves sometimes seeing how women have made an art out of flaunting what their mamas gave them! Just like the other day, I met a bunch of girls that left me gob-struck. If the sun was not up in the middle of the sky, I would have assumed they were headed for a pole-dancing display! Their lips were painted with unimaginable intensity and their breasts were jouncing in the open as they swung their legs in leggings and high heels. But the winner was the woman that had nothing else on but a little sweater that stopped just below her swaying hips. And she kept pulling it down, and I wondered why she had worn it if it was that discomfortingly short.

Teen pressure can make us do crazy things for approval

Then it slowly hit me that these women were suffering from what my Pastor Fred Wantaate, preached about last Sunday – "Approval Addiction" – a terrible need for affirmation from people especially significant individuals in our circles. Most women seeking validation will do anything including pulling half-naked moves to attract the attention of men just like the goody two-shoes is wont to say yes to everything and everybody in order to preserve his/her goodness.'

In the process you lose yourself as you let others consciously or subconsciously determine the terms of your lifestyle. You’re afraid of losing their friendship so you accompany them to a night club when you don’t like night clubs. You want to remain a virgin till marriage but your friends say virginity is archaic so you lose it to please them, and end up losing your life as well (God forbid.) That's how perilous approval addiction can be. And it all comes from a lack of confidence.

Listen, your worth does not come from being loved and accepted by others. That enlightenment is the cure to that terrible disease called approval addiction. If your friends don’t appreciate you as you are, let them take a hike! The God that gave the breath of life approves and loves you beyond measure, so rejoice and accept who are you are.

As the pastor advised, "Accepting yourself is key to everything else that flows from your life. If you don't accept yourself then you will never feel free to be yourself and you cheat the world and yourself out of God's unique expression through you."