Dr Kaliisa was brutally honest and vastly knowledgeable

Death is such a wasteful thug that’s for sure. The reason for my outburst is clear and certain. Death is very wasteful let me repeat this for double emphasis a very known feature within Biblical Greek exegesis.

I can’t fathom why we would head to Ruhaama to put into the ground a well of both knowledge and wisdom like Dr. A.A Kaliisa. Those of you who did not meet Dr. Kaliisa in person and only knew him from his television program or from what’s been said of him know half the man.

I first knew him from his analysis, which is off course out of this world on all accounts. Brains of that nature aren’t always in plenty. It’s no surprise then that from a very early age he was serving this nation in many respects in the top echelons of our society.

My professor warned me never to judge people by their level of education, insisting as he explained, that education is meant to chance decision-making.

Otherwise how can you explain to me why someone who studied and allegedly passed accounts and auditing with a distinction would be broke! If decision-making is not improved after education, education never took place!

When and if someone is properly educated you just tell from a conversation with him or her. Dr. Kaliisa was very well educated plain simple. Of course there are people who in all fairness should sue their former training institutions for obtaining money by false pretense because they paid for an education that they never got.

I don’t want to suggest names here and now but I know a few… Dr. Kaliisa was very well educated and he naturally became an educator. He had such a calm demeanor.

This gentle giant of a man from Ruhaama spoke very deep, articulate Luganda  and had good reasons for doing so! I don’t remember too often hear him speak any other language and yet he was fluent in a few…You tell the quality and ability of a head from how many languages that head can grasp. Now you can go on and judge your own head using the same formula.

When I joined NBS Television where he had an office and a Tv show, I took interest in a man who said things as they were. Those of you who know me know I say what I see as I see it.

I loved him for that. You knew from him what it was. He was never abusive and derogatory but had brutal honesty the type of ‘I shall say it and what happens will happen.’

Then the humbling thing of them would later come my way:  I was summoned to his office. He asked me who I was, and what I had studied. He listened to my education story and then he told me how he had watched what I said and what he liked about it.

Here I was being appreciated by a man I admired to bits, a man so wise, a man so cheerful and happy all the time I saw him. We then built a huge relationship. He encouraged me to keep the brutal honesty no matter what the cost would be. I consulted with him on many things because he always knew!

He had sources and could help one stay out of trouble.  Then there is the special attribute he had, his approach to matters divine a reason some within his faith saw him as too liberal or controversial.

I hate to meet people who become extremists on matters Allah or God. He was a scholar and scholars are never extremists and some negligently call them liberals. In the midst of left and right on matters God, scholars are usually the centre.

He and I shared deeply after I was given bail and much did he have to say that grew me.

Dr. Kaliisa “knew”! These days we have the idiom “If you know you know”…

But let me say this as someone who interacted deeply and widely with this man now gone too soon that Dr.A.A Kaliisa was knowledgeable.

He loved this nation. There were things that would happen done by the state and he would call me in to discuss them, and then he would in love for the nation get into and out burst asking what sort of rubbish that was mentioning names of individuals and how they had no sense of understanding the implications of their actions.

These are people he knew so much about and yet here they were messing about. These things he would never say on his television show and yet he had the facts. I am sure we say too much this days very recklessly.  He knew so much more than he said on air, which is a fact.

I have learned from him how to hold back most of what I knew. He knew “statecraft” and was magnanimous to those managing the state because he had lived and seen a state being managed from up close and personal in the Amin days. Suffice to say he knew how hard it was…

I am indebted to this great man. The best I can do it stay true to my values like he was to his. Say things that ought to be said which often are much less than what I know.

Dr. Kaliisa I still hurt that I can’t come to your office again to see your smiling face. It’s painful that the things we all hated will continue to happen and I can’t come to you so we debate who it was and what they were up to.

You left me too soon. I shall continue to do all we agreed. Fare well, lest we forget you Dr. A A Kaliisa.