As ghetto youth nearly beat up Kusasira for not giving them money, this week!

They banned satchets so now we have to take quick shots. Let’s do this to the news. Starting with:

Uganda Museum is to receive an international grant to give it a facelift, fix the cracks and maintain the crumbling bits etc, all thanks to the Getty Foundation, about which Nilepost reporter Jonah Kirabo knows more. 

https://nilepost.co.ug/2019/11/26/uganda-museum-wins-getty-foundation-grant-to-receive-badly-needed-facelift/

Nilepost commentator E Bazanye knows less and is actually a bit confused at the concept of renovating the building. It sounds a lot like modernising it and this stands at odds with the whole museum phenomenon. Museums are supposed to be about the ancient, the old, the relics, the fossils; they are supposed to be the graves where we tend to the past.

It seems somehow wrong to go to host history in a modern building.

If anyone listens to me, I hope they will use this grant to instead go to West Nile and find the oldest hut in Uganda-- It’s there. My friend Pato told me about it. It’s the same hut Speke visited when he was looking for the source of the Nile. He knocked on the door (yes. We had wooden doors before colonialism) and asked the owner-- “Pardon me, I am searching for the source of the Nile, you wouldn’t happen to know where it is, would you?”

The owner didn’t speak English so Speke had to proceed to Jinja and the rest, as they say, is colonialism. The point is, the Getty grant should be used to close the current museum and take all the artifacts and exhibits to West Nile.

There's no real reason the national museum has to be in Kampala? Give me one good reason why Kampala thinks it is more historical than West Nile. I didn’t think so. Now, on to our next shot.

*******

https://nilepost.co.ug/2019/11/27/police-commanders-trained-in-using-cctv-cameras-as-museveni-prepares-to-open-new-command-centre/

Forty-five Police officers have completed an eight-day course in the use of CCTV cameras, as Kenneth Kazibwe reports for this self-same newsite we love and call Nilepost. 

It fills E Bazanye, who reads Nilepost,  with confidence in the police to hear that no expense is being spared in the fight against rising urban crime. Far from sparing, we are incurring expenses in things like teaching the cops how to watch TV.

This measure is going to entirely eradicate urban crime, I am sure. We will soon have to concern ourselves with the corresponding escalation of suburban crime instead.

Because unless you plan to be leaving your phone and wallet at Jinja Road Junction, Rasco Banton and his thugs will be waiting for you in Kulambiro.

But let us concern ourselves in the meantime with what will we use the cameras for when there is no more crime. Of course our well-trained cops will have to continue watching TV. I hope that the training includes post-crime scrutiny so we can use the cameras to do more, like find where I parked when I can’t remember, or to see if Josiah is lying when he says he is just at Nakawa, and of course providing an artistic outlet and a ready audience for dancers. Don't pretend I am the only one who feels the urge to break into a jabba dance every time a CCTV camera is spotted.

Finally, this is not a recent story but we need to address this last shot at the behaviour of the youth who turned rowdy at St Agnes Church Makindye Division, as Nilepost’s Muhammad Matovu reported last week, when newly minted presidential advisor Catherine Kusasira didn’t show up with the cash handouts they were expecting. Kusasira was not aware of the meeting that was organised, my colleague reported. 

 

https://nilepost.co.ug/2019/11/18/youth-turn-rowdy-as-kusasira-fails-to-deliver-handouts-to-them/

 

Former presidential advisor E. Bazanye commiserates with Kusasira, knowing that I, too, had resigned from that job. Mostly because the ghetto youth kept asking me for money.

But this act, viewed as rowdiness, actually points to the issues and problems facing the ghetto youth today: poverty, neglect and marginalisation to the point where the education they receive is so inadequate, they don’t know the difference between the English word "Advisor" and the title "Agent of Some Form of State/National Sugar Daddy Institution"

I think Kusasira should call Jennifer Lopez, secure the relevant copyrights, and release a Kidandali version of the song I Ain’t Yo Momma.

And then advise her new appointer to get to work on sustainable solutions to ghetto poverty and unemployment because handouts are not going to solve the problem. The kids need jobs.