deny a man fish and he will work for a day

“sir please help me with 500 i haven’t had lunch” one beggar repeated this phrase with such clarity and frequency i could think of a million ways he could earn a living just from the statement....if only it wasn't so irritating

beggars come in different sizes and shapes, the only thing all have in common is the fact that they have vowed not to work for another day in their lives. it’s like they are retired people whose pensions are supposed to be paid by passers by 

but why would one wake up early and head for the street to beg for a living,

is it because one is crippled?

well so is butcherman, sam gombya and the street vendor who sells ladies fashion accessories at the lower gate of pioneer mall who happens to be crippled in both legs but resisted the lazy urge to beg for a living

is it because one is mentally challenged?

one would argue that by the time a human being is coordinated enough to figure out that if he positioning himself strategically on the street and holding his hand out while looking miserable can get enough money to buy lunch, he is not mentally challenged, he is just lazy

maybe he is just a kid brought to the street every morning and monitored by his poor parents while he begs ?

yes parents send their kids to streets every morning to make money but some send them with goods like maize, compoud brooms etc to sell ( these are business activities which don't need much capital to engage in) not to beg

     

the fact that we have fallen for their con just makes the problem worse. i see "good Samaritans" giving these beggars money and walking away with this "proud of my self" look, like they have just cured cancer, not knowing they have just made a problem worse

see these beggars are on the streets today just because someone gave them enough money to make it through yesterday and those street kids do not go to school because these "good samaritans" make the streets lucrative for them. these kids will grow up without knowing much about the value of hard work. by giving money you are creating future thieves, so if you have a range rover in your future plans, don't cry when it is stolen. you created a monster

the solution

of course the best solutions to this problem are systematic but you and i can also play a significant role in making this problem go away

as an individual all you have to do is walk by, mind your business and pray it rains.  if we all do this i guarantee you, in 3 months, there will be no beggars on the streets

but incase that fails, government should intervene. It should fine or arrest all the good Samaritans giving money to beggars. if it finds this hard to implement, it should give the public powers to make a citizens arrest of any good Samaritan

alternative occupations

it would be mean of me to suggest chasing these people off the streets with out giving them options, here are a some of the productive activities they can engage in without much adjustment to there daily schedule

one can cover a pothole with their body and help a vitz to smoothly pass over

since beggars stand in the sun the whole day they could hold solar panels on their heads and help supply electricity to the national grid 

acceptance

no plan is complete without a contingency plan. so in case the above plan fails we should take steps to formalise the act of begging and treat it like any other formal business activity

for starters, they have to pay taxes, by the time those who work hard to get their money pay taxes, what of those who get money with out working

next, the street children should make a monthly contribution to nssf, so they have savings to fall back on when they are no longer cute enough to attract donations from sympathisers or savings to fall back on when i become president ( which ever comes first )

it's not brain drain....its just drain

a friend of mine thinks he has no business being in africa. his goal in life is to make it to america and never come back. if all goes as planned, his son will be the next obama (though not as smart…trust me)

this is commonly referred to as brain drain.....but for brain drain to occur there has to be a brain involved. am not saying my friend is stupid, but let's examine the facts

who in their right mind would go outside africa to look for money?

if you are to look at the list of africa’s wealthiest people, six of the top ten are self-made and none of those six amassed his wealth through being under-employed in a foreign land i.e. “doing kyeyo“ if you prefer to put it so glamorously

even when you narrow it down to uganda, bad black aside, the same thing applies: sudhir ruparelia left uk in 1986 without a million to his name but amassed all his wealth in uganda. geoffrey kirumira can't even spell the word kyeyo (yeah I know it’s a luganda word). patrick bitature on the other hand went to the uk to study, but he didn't end up marrying some overweight briton in her late thirties just so he could legally over stay his welcome, he came back and made his wealth in uganda

i know an argument can be made that there is more money abroad than in africa. but this doesn’t hold much water if you consider the fact that three of the most valuable companies on earth (exxon, petro-china and walmart) have to come to africa to make money and the remaining two (microsoft and apple) can’t afford to ignore africa’s potential any longer

in other words we struggle so much to go abroad to make money when the people abroad have to come to africa to make money so they can pay our wage for keeping their toilets spotlessly clean

i am not ready to admit that my friend is brainless, so let’s entertain the idea that theft is more lucrative when you are abroad in a bid to redeem his dignity

no self-respecting thief will claim that the grass is greener abroad. if you’ve been following the gavi funds scandal, the opm accounting scandal, the chogm funds scandal, the national identity card project…….generally if you have ever followed current affairs in uganda for at least a day, you know it for a fact that theft isn’t only more lucrative in uganda, the president gives thieves medals on hero’s day

maybe it’s the fact that america is more developed than uganda in so many aspects

this makes sense, for a second, before you consider the fact that america too was once poor. we should also consider the fact that it didn’t become wealthy through americans migrating to england to be street performers. china too was once poor by first world standards but no one credits its economic success to remittances from racially abused immigrants                              

and if you decide to ignore our narcoleptic inclination, you’ll find that we have more potential than both 18^th century america and 20^th century china

                                                    

awwkay, may be the fact that he is a professional can help us put the “brain” back together with the “drain”

not all africans who go abroad are half baked and unskilled, actually many are well trained professionals (who should know better)

according to the international organization for migration, africa has been losing 20,000 professionals each year since 1990

the sad part is, the continent is losing the very people it needs most for economic, social, scientific, and technological progress. case in point, 38 of the 47 sub-saharan african countries fall short of the minimum world health organization standard of 20 physicians per 100,000 people

to fill the human resource gap created by the exodus of the professionals, africa employs up to 150,000 expatriate professionals at a cost of US$4 billion a year. when you add this to the billions of dollars african countries spend every year training professionals who end up practicing abroad and you will catch a glimpse of the intellectual horse power or lack of it, of these migrating professionals

i give up

the foreigners on the other hand, see africa for the gold mine that it is. they leave the countries we risk our lives to get into and come to africa, setting up companies that that exploit our minerals and tap into our growing market. through this, they make more money than that any immigrant would ever dream of and they do so with their dignity intact

yes i know the the situation in africa makes it hard for one to stay home but if you keep spending time at the neighbour’s house just because it’s better than yours, you’ll never fix your house.

letter to the tree huggers

recently some business entity in lugazi had plans of replacing a forest of trees with a forest of sugar canes. this would probably have created thousands of jobs on top of having ripple effects throughout the economy, but the tree huggers couldn't let this happen

it begs the question, aren't we respecting trees a little too much, are we putting the trees a head of human needs?

let’s take a look at some of the said “benefits” of having trees around

they help support life on earth, by this we are talking about helping  creatures like snakes and mosquitoes enjoy their stay on earth......okay, either these environmentalists are immune to things like venom and malaria or they are high on something

trees also help maintain the quality of water and air, the basic essentials for the existence of life which would be very good if we did not have industries dedicated to providing these kind of services ie. air purification people, the air conditioning guys, the mineral water guys, the list is endless. so in actual sense trees are stealing jobs from us and the fact that they are doing so with our devoted support is just plain ridiculous

things like medicine, which many believe are essential to human health, are got from trees. looking at this from the shallow point of view, the point where our environmentalist friends seem to be stuck at, this is a good thing. but given the fact that supply tends to create its own demand, the fact that trees provide medicine means we have sick people around, if the trees didn’t provide medicine we would only have two kinds of people; the living and the dead and no sick people to worry about. yes we would have less people, but who said the human race was endangered.

“trees act as carbon sinks absorbing carbon dioxide and keeping global warming at bay”, if i had a nickel for every time i heard this, i would buy a noose. 

for starters, one cannot definitively claim that global warming is manmade. how sure are we that the temperature changes the earth is undergoing are not natural cycles which the earth goes through every 100,000 or so years?

for finishers, environmentalists sit in their overpriced, partially eco-friendly offices where they are secured from reality and predict the end of the world like the world is going to fall apart while science and technology remain stagnant ,which isn’t the case. science keeps advancing to solve the various problems faced by the human race, for instance the iphone 20 (iphone xx) could have an app which turns green house gases into chocolate.

am not saying we should cut down all the trees, hell no, this particular tree am sitting under while writing this should be off limits to lumberjacks.

the egyptian paradox

when blacks are writing their résumé, they make it point to highlight their contributions to the civilized world, like building the pyramids at giza and how the greek philosophers were influenced by ancient egyptians

for example here is a verse from freemasons a song by rickross and jay z1

“...big contracts, big contractors

built pyramids, period

we masters

no caterpillers, it was just a lot of niggas

a lot of great thinkers and a lot of great inventors...”

okay, i know you don’t really care much about the rumblings of a fat man drunk on mild success, so let’s see what the black scholars have to say

chikn anta diop, a Senegalese historian has argued that pythagorean theory, the concept of pi, geometric formulas and the screw and level are only some of the inventions from north africa

george g. m. james in his book the stolen legacy argues that the ancient egyptians developed the concept of the right angle, which is the basis of the pythagorean theorem. it is reflected in the designs of the ancient egyptian pyramids, which were initiated centuries before the birth of pythagoras2

philosophers such as plato and aristotle and scientists such as copernicus, kepler, galileo, and newton based their works , to some extent, on pythagorean ideas3

the funny thing is though, we blacks refer to modern day egyptians as terrorists or arabs (on a good day) but rarely call them africans. for some reason, we are not so proud of them yet we take credit for their work. we like to think that the modern day  egyptians are cut from a different cloth compared to the ones we are so proud of, but this is hardly the case, recent DNA studies have indicated that ancient egyptians had an approximate 90% genetic commonality with modern egyptians, which would make the current population largely representative of the ancient inhabitants

if we don’t feel comfortable being associated with the modern egyptians, then we shouldn't take credit for the blood, sweat and tears of their ancestors.

 3-universe of numbers by ralph m lewis

 2-the stolen legacy by george g. m. james

 1-rickross ft jay z freemason