When you are a young man who has been favored with a good education, acquired a bachelor’s degree in law, a relevant post graduate qualification in legal practice and chanced upon a job in an upcountry station where you are paid in big dollars and treated like an expatriate by the community you serve, a swagger in the poise is to be excused. But be ye not deceived, the good value of the bullion I earn is not all there is to my job placement. As a matter of fact my employment benefits include among others the privilege of being chauffeured around in a brand new Isuzu Double Cabin pick-up, it suffices to note with tinted glasses, the true reckoning for a gallant son of the pearl of Africa, who has read his books and earned his place in the echelons of influence. Anybody who has read Henry Barlow’s famous verse knows the role of the chauffeur and the chauffeured in building the nation and perfectly comprehends what I am talking about.
Off course the young man at university still struggling to
make ends meet and hoping that the gods will smile upon his fortunes like they
do on mine will grin with envy at this tale of a good life but the good life
can also be an albatross of sorts bedeviling one’s progress in some ways. I
will lend an explanation to the assertion. Of late I am almost chocking on the
soft allurements that have been thrown my way by the matronly denizens of
Karamoja who are possessed of stock in the form of marriageable daughters.
I must say, there is something about money that makes men,
even those with the most haggard of features, handsome; not that I think of
myself less endowed in that regard, far from it, on the contrary if there was
any doubt, based on the recent developments, this question has been settled
beyond debate. I am handsome. Because everywhere I go in Karamoja, I see girls
clustered in groups of two, three, sometimes four, throwing glances to my
beckoning, evidently praying for a possible opportunity of engagement, pointing
to the direction of my going, and speaking in concealed whispers, there goes
Mr. Handsome, one of us must marry him. A Muganda would say Musumba Zak ayogeza
aba karamoja obwama. And they imagine I don’t hear them but I do. I obviously
distrust their motives and I do suspect that their entreating may constitute a
bigger scheme aimed at channeling my hard-earned cash to their whims but I also
know that there are some amongst them who honestly think me handsome. But even
then I must avoid the temptation.
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| At the Karamoja Cultural Gala 2015. Photo Opp with a random participant in the Gala |
No wonder that these days when I sleep I dream of Karimojong
girls waylaying me and threatening me on gun point to either serve them with my
seed or get murdered in cold blood. Fortunately I always wake up in the process
of bargaining for my life, before committing to the abomination of giving away
my seed in such coerced circumstances and before the trigger is pulled.
Evidently, some guys will assess my case and accuse me of
squandering opportunity. They even call it opportunity. Truth be told, I agree
that for every person, male or female, there is nothing unpleasant about being
courted. That is why my belief is that anybody above twenty five years of age who claims to be single
and contented must be living in denial.
Yet to everything in which I am involved I must consent.
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| At Karamoja Cultural Gala 2015. Random photo taken of participants in the Cultural Gala |
