My ffene tree flowered and bulged so fast that I started counting days to the maiden swallowship. Thne days turned into weeks and weeks into months. And now it is looking like that Mityana guy Francis Zaake and his wait to teach his former boss AAA "real leadership" lessons.
Yeah, I don't mean that this because ffene is yellow, I'm saying I can understand what Zaake is going through in his wait for AAA to appear before Parliament's Committee on Government Assurance and Implementation—a committee on which former the only-recently-might AAA now serves as an ordinary member.
My wait for this ffene to emit that great scent that only Tabu Butagira in this world says is offensive has made me realise that the village geezers were right when they said that the man who announces a feast before harvesting his yams risks entertaining only flies.
It is a lesson that Honourable Zaake may now be learning the hard way. Some weeks ago, with the confidence of a village blacksmith who has already measured the bride price before meeting the bride's father, he announced that he would teach Anita Among "real leadership."
It was a declaration that rang through the country with the force of a church bell on Easter morning filled with the pita-pata of raindrops. The guy talked with such determination you would think all the punches he has taken in over the last few years were lessons in leadership.
The country settled down to watch what promised to be the greatest educational programme since the missionaries convinced my Luuka buddy Isa Alideki's grandparents that reading was more profitable than chasing edible rats in the forest dinner.
Parliament opened its doors. Members took their oaths. Committees were constituted with the solemnity of bishops selecting cardinals. Permanent secretaries appeared carrying files thick enough to stop bullets during committee sessions that Mr Sam Ibanda tells me has more tea flasks than sense.
Ministers shuffled in and out of committee rooms looking like schoolboys who had forgotten their homework. Government assurances were demanded. Reports were tabled. Voices were raised. Microphones trembled. Everything that ordinarily happens in Parliament happened with admirable punctuality.
Everything except the one event that had excited the nation. The student never reported to class. Like my ffene, she is anywhere but before Teacher Zaake.
One imagines Honourable Zaake arriving at every committee sitting with the optimism of a new headmaster on opening day. Somewhere inside his briefcase must surely lie neatly arranged lesson notes. The first page probably reads, "Introduction to Real Leadership." The second, "How to Lead Without saying Shut Up! I say Shut Up!"
These notes, carefully prepared in the enthusiasm of victory, must by now be acquiring the colour of the last newspaper Daily Monitor before Gava happened. Knowledge, after all, is like roasted maize. It is best served while still warm. Leave it too long and even goats begin to lose interest.
Now Teacher Zaake must be looking back at what the elders in Mityana said in passing but he thought were out of pride. They told the fella that the hunter who sharpens his spear for too long eventually begins to suspect the antelope has received intelligence from the forest.
Honourable Zaake must by now be entertaining such suspicions. He sharpened his lessons with the enthusiasm of a missionary arriving among pagans, only to discover that the chief sinner had quietly stopped attending church.
Now Zaake keeps craning his neck at the X posts of Dickens Honeystraw Okello, a pencil-thin annoyingly suave and debonair journalist who has acquired the penchant of sniffing AAA's affairs better than detectives promised a promotion to IGP if they delivered anything more than Chris Obore already knows.
From Dickens' Straw of Honey updates, Zaake has learnt that AAA is unwell and could require specialised treatment abroad. Dickens said AAA might be on a plane to those world class medical facilities abroad but that to get that going, she might first need to be approved by Parliament.
Gosh! Did I hear that Zaake's is quietly lobbying for the Speaker to let his committee do the review of the medical request so that at least he gives a seminal lesson or was that my longing for the ffene to ripen that was playing in my mind?
Yeah, I can see onourable Zaake working the corridors of Parliament with the urgency of a man chasing the last taxi after curfew. The Committee on Government Assurance should immediately expand its mandate. Why stop at government assurances when the nation requires leadership assurances? Before any medical referral abroad is approved, surely someone must establish whether the patient has attended the compulsory orientation on real leadership.
We cannot continue exporting leadership deficiencies to foreign hospitals. That would amount to dumping untreated political conditions on friendly nations.
Imagine the committee summons.
"Honourable Among, before we discuss your travel itinerary, there remains the small matter of Lesson One."
Doctors may protest that medicine cannot wait. Immigration officials may wave passports in the air. Airlines may insist that boarding time has arrived. But rules are rules. Even schoolchildren know that you cannot sit the final examination before attending the first lesson.
In fact, the committee could save taxpayers even more money by conducting bedside tutorials. Why should a patient travel thousands of kilometres when the lecturer is already available in Kampala? A modest whiteboard could be wheeled into the hospital room.
If intravenous fluids can drip patiently for six hours, surely leadership can drip into a willing student over three.
Should the doctors insist on overseas treatment, then Entebbe International Airport ought to establish what may be called the Leadership Clearance Desk. Needless to say, manned by Honourable Zaake.
The tragedy, however, is that Honourable Zaake appears to be discovering what every village teacher eventually learns: the most difficult pupil is not the noisy one. It is the absent one. You cannot discipline an empty chair. You cannot examine a missing candidate. You cannot graduate a student who has mistaken the timetable for decoration. The classroom may be immaculate, the chalk fresh and the blackboard polished until it shines like Olara Otunnu's CV, but education remains impossible if attendance itself has gone on leave.
Perhaps that is the deepest lesson politics has reserved for the honourable chairman. It is one thing to promise to teach leadership. It is another to persuade leadership to report for class. As our elders liked to remind us, the river does not refuse to quench a man's thirst; it merely waits for him to bend.
Poor Zaake has been standing on the riverbank, gourd in hand, calling patiently for his only student. The river is still flowing. The cup is still empty. And somewhere in the distance, the school bell continues to ring for a lesson that refuses to begin.
So Honourable Zaake, in Kakira, my a sugarcane cutter once told an Indian boss that when the bride refuses to come to the altar, the groom should first inspect his own dancing. I'm not blaming you, Zaake. Thing is that the woman has behaved like the moon in the rainy season—everybody knows she exists, even with her Rois Rois, but no one can point to where she is.
As citizens, let's help Honourable Zaaeke get his lessons done otherwise he might think the ffene is quietly rotting from inside to avoid being eaten.
