FROM ZERO TO HERO: TALE OF EVERY TYCOON (PART 1)

BY CHRISTOPHER KISEKKA

On the very last day of September 2016, out of the 3.4miillon Ugandans, I was among the few thousands who grabbed that day Uganda’s leading independent daily which also brands it’s self as ‘truth every day’. As others, I bought the paper not because I report for the said newspaper but now as a reader.

Yes, I will accept that out of ten journalists, only two read newspapers beyond their by-line. But still I will accept that when I hold the paper my eyes will first dash to look for ‘BY CHRISTOPHER KISEKKA’ and after confirming that editors considered using my story, I now settle to go through it (the newspaper) at my own pace.

That days edition was interesting with a number of good stories and being a Friday, the sQoop magazine was inserted. 

The sQoop feature of that day had a bold title; The Ugandan Middle Class Trap; Once In, No Exist and I could not wait to read it.

The writer, Ian Ortega, goes down and write with an intro of a scene from one of my favorite movies; the matrix. Am very aware that it is yet to release another episode which am impatiently waiting to watch. The intro not only positioned me in mood but also motivates me to read the more.

To be radical, the writer expounded the matrix pill well so-that it fit in the matter he was telling, I liked his style. In his story, Ian shows a graduate who picks the middle class pill and then moves on with life in rabbit tunnel. To him, this is the wrong discussion s/he has ever made.

He explains well about the phases of middle class trap and if a reader was among the group could throw the news piece away with hunger.

Level five was the pick of the class(according to me) – point of no return, it sounded fit and all he wrote was not only true but it is the real life of such graduates from those elite universities he mentioned.

Let me hope that the writer was not also trapped in the same cage!

I think it was a good story for any student at university and if I was one of the university professors, I could regularly call Ian to teach such realities of the world to my students, but unfortunately I retired from the teaching profession and am not yet a professor.

The untold story

My colleague Ian navigated around the learned employed graduate of elite vasties - meaning he was already explaining a boy from a ‘somehow’ or ‘well-off’ family who can afford tuition and even make a graduation party.

University tuition is no joke to many parents in Uganda. It has left them poorer than they have ever been.

I have even heard people saying that a number of parents who send their children to universities in Uganda sell off some of their property.

This time I will move with that village boy whose parents can only afford to raise money for up to senior four and if God wishes he ascends to that low institution which is sometime not even recognized by Uganda National Council for Higher Education.

This is the person who got a skill for sustainable living and never dreamt of buying a mean of transport in such a bigger capacity that the Ugandan government has been promising its Local Council one chairpersons - a bicycle.

A person who (even) has never visited the Capital city and only goes to the major town of their sub-region towards Christmas seasons to shop for the celebrations which are even marked in the church. No more than that.

I am here telling a kind of that person who cannot find himself in a gym, sometimes even not seen by hot girls on the village since he hardly have any coins in his pockets.

He does not have conversation with the likes of Tom, Harry and Dick because they keep on speaking the country's 'British forced' formal language even with their kids and my poor lad last spoke an English word during those days when Mr Matovu (his former primary teacher) could threaten to beat up vernacular speakers.

Anywhere he is, he finds life more that the word hard.