Forty Days, Forty Nights, My Fave Writer Turns Forty

This is a reflection by one of my best authors/writers when he clocked the magical 40 years of age. He writes a regular column called The Riddle in The Daily Monitor, where it appears every Saturday. I always make it a point to read The Riddle every week and it makes me reflect on a number of issues that he tends to raise. My favourite were the series on Idi Amin, which were enlightening [especially to those who were born in the 1970s and later, as we have a distorted view of our history courtesy of those in leadership who have deliberately twisted it to serve their narrow interests]

This guy has a knack for tackling subjects that get agitated, angry enough to write back, soul search, question their long-held beliefs, to mention but that. I remember way back in the 1990s, he used to write radio reviews that the 'leading' radio stations then pull full page adverts to counter his observations, quoting research figures from Steadman and Associates and other research companies.

It is during this time [and because of his knowledge of radio, having worked at three stations] that I met him and interviewed him for my undergraduate research project "Impact of Liberalisation on Government-Owned Electronic Media". This is not to flatter him [since I admire his writing] but I can say he was helpful.

In his article below, I have highlighted in green what I felt resonate with me in some way or the other...read on, please.

Forty days and forty nights alive on earth

On June 26, I turned 40, something that surprises and amuses me. I used to think that when one was 40, one would be a serious, mature person, but I still feel I am as childish as when I was in primary school.

The 1990s that were my hardest and most frustrating, with the benefit of that teacher called hindsight, are now the years I am most grateful for. They taught me, to use the expression of the English poet William Wordsworth in 1798, to “see into the life of things.”

I am grateful that I have lived to discover the truth about the most disturbing chapter in Ugandan history, that of Idi Amin. To now know with factual and documentary proof that Amin is not the man we thought he was and that he did not kill or order the killing of the thousands of Ugandans that died between 1971 and 1979, is a truth I will cherish for the rest of my life.

The fact that all over the world, millions of people have the same general and false view of Amin, from the most respected and prestigious universities and newspapers to the semi-literate man on the street, is what finally makes me realise that there is a level of deception so deep, so universal, so cunning, that it can only be explained by the existence of the master of deception, the devil.

It is this realisation that all, from the finest to the most humble of minds can be as easily deceived as little children. It ended my faith in formal classroom education.

William Shakespeare, for all his brilliance characterisation and the magnificent language of his masterpieces, could only paint in eloquent and memorable terms the true, irrational, hypocritical, vain, evil, and cowardly reality of human nature. But not even he could explain to us why, in the first place, we humans are predisposed to dark, evil, greedy impulses.

Why do man-made machines like computers, calculators, atomic clocks, microscopes, slide rules, and integrated circuits work almost perfectly for most of the time but the human beings that designed and made them are always subject to daily mistakes? To that we still have no answers.

While at Makerere University in 1989, a friend introduced me to a book called Please Understand Me: Character and Temperament Types, written in 1978 by two American clinical psychologists, David Kirsey and Marilyn Bates. That book has had a greater impact on the way I view the world than any other book except the Bible.

It drew me to believe in the idea of predestination. 90 percent of how we feel, react, think, plan, and behave at the core of our personalities was pre-programmed when we were born.

Just by watching or listening to a person for 30 minutes I can determine not only what type he is but also how he will react and behave in most situations most of the time. Where I once required, say, ten years to understand a person, I now need only two hours.

This brings me to the Bible. We Christians claim that the book called the Bible is the word of God. But I think the Bible was either badly written or too compressed during the editing that it failed to fully get its message across and it has ended up confusing more than enlightening us, and yet it has the truths of eternal significance.

The Bible explained, among other things, the law of biogenesis (all life comes out of life and all species reproduce after their own kind), explained the water cycle, the fact that the earth was a sphere and not flat and it was suspended in the air, all these centuries before scientists in the 15th century A.D. started “discovering” these scientific facts. Yet today, ironically, most scientists dismiss this enigmatic book as a relic of the Middle Ages.

Finally, I’ve seen corrupt and greedy people rise to the top and become prosperous; but I have also seen honest and truthful people succeed just as much. I have seen inocent people arrested for crimes they didn’t commit. But I have also seen drug traffickers and murderers arrested and locked up in jail for crimes they committed.

I have seen honest and sincere religious people suffer and live lives of poverty, but so too have I seen thugs and petty thieves struggle and not have enough money. So it is not necessarily a fact that honesty does not pay or crime pays. We might as well be ourselves and live by our conscience.