I am fast becoming a hardened criminal. The other week I bribed a cop; now I am one of those people who have been trying to defraud the Electoral Commission of Uganda. My career in crime started innocently enough – all I wanted to do was make my parents think I was a responsible citizen by registering to vote.

I was successful on my first attempt about a decade ago, and although I don’t remember who I voted for, I felt a tiny bit of patriotic fervour. And then I moved out of my parents’ house, changed towns and realised I could not vote in the village any more. So when the next round of voter registration was announced, complete with the promised technology of photography, I went to my new ‘village’ to register. However, the machines at the Electoral Commission refused to recognise me. I did not appear in the new voter register and was therefore unable to vote in the last election. It was a little bit annoying because at the time I had a better idea of who I wanted to vote for and why.

Recently a new voter registration exercise was announced and I thought this time round I might get lucky. I have moved back to my village of origin, so I thought I had a better chance of getting registered. So I lined up and had my picture taken and did the responsible citizen thing once more.

Yesterday, I was informed that under Section 16 of the Electoral Commission Act, I and people such as myself will be prosecuted for registering more than once. Yes, the EC has unveiled my diabolical plan to vote once in Jinja, cut off the finger that has gone into the indelible ink, jump in the car, drive madly to Kireka and vote a second time, thereby ensuring that my candidate carries the day.

Generally speaking, a person who registers more than once with exactly the same name and exactly the same details is not a criminal mastermind – just someone who has been frustrated by the loopholes in the voter registration process. One might suggest that the logical thing to do in this case would be to delete all prior registrations and retain only the most recent. That way if I try to vote in any other place I will be frustrated, and if I genuinely have registered at the station nearest to me, my right to vote as a citizen of Uganda is defended.

However, there are many things in this country that rarely run on logic. Therefore I suppose at some point tax money will be used to prosecute me. When that time comes, I hope you will remember to bring me some cigarettes in jail. I am told that they are more valuable than dollars if you want to buy yourself some ‘votes’ from the other inmates.

Published on Sunday August 15, 2010

One of the most interesting moments of last week for me was the front page picture on The New Vision of the 25^th. Yes, the one where an MP dished out a firm forehand to a beggar woman. I must say bravo to Kennedy Oryema for an excellent shot; it was a refreshing change from stage managed politician handshakes.

For the record, violence is never the solution. If everyone who was wronged resorted to violence the world would have ended long ago. But that does not change the fact that I felt the MPs anger and frustration. Look beyond the slap and see the healthy thick arms and the fat cheeks on that beggar. Then look at the emaciated child in her lap. If you do not feel anger then you need a slap too.

I hate able bodied beggars. Why should anyone with two arms and legs and a brain and a home be on the streets trying to guilt us into financing their lazy lifestyle? And if these women are making babies to assist in the begging process, then it follows that they have men and families too. We all have problems, but what gives these people the right to bring theirs to the street?

Perhaps it was depressingly fitting to see that story on the front page in the leading daily on Africa Day – the day when we supposedly celebrate our Africanness. Last year around this time I was whining about how we Africans do not want to take responsibility for ourselves; how we want to forever be helped, aided and assisted. I ended on the optimistic note that now was a great time to be an African, because we had a unique opportunity to learn from other people’s mistakes and chart our own course.

I had my optimism slapped thoroughly when the next Africa Day dawned brightly with this – healthy, able bodied women carrying an innocent starving child to the city to beg. I don’t know who deserved the slap more – the childless one who can walk around with a starved baby, or the mother of the child who handed him over for this nasty business.

Karamoja has an entire ministry dedicated to it, but even in Jinja, there is a village of them – women scavenging in our backyards and garbage skips while their children beg and camp on the streets. And the authorities let the village grow, sending them the message that it is okay to do what they are doing. We need to stop using ‘backwardness’ as an excuse to cultivate stupidity and laziness. A lack of technology should not automatically mean a lack of common sense, dignity and human compassion. We were proud hardworking human beings before ‘civilisation’. We cannot allow ourselves to degenerate into idiocy now.

Published on Sunday May 30, 2010

I used to have an account with the Post Bank a long time ago. It was my first ever account and was usually always empty because I thought of it as a temporary holding pen for my spending money. I abandoned it after my university allowances stopped coming through. Recently, I found the little pass book and decided to go and find out if I could resume using the account.

I took my old book and my hopes to my nearest Post Bank and the woman at the customer help desk told me the account was dormant and I would have to begin the process to open a new one – complete with passport photos, letter from my employer and note from my LC. I asked why the old one could not simply be reactivated since I had been through the process before and the information was right there on her computer screen. I got a blank stare and a standard useless answer: You just have to open a new one. I hate it when I ask a logical question and get an illogical ‘that is just how we do it’ answer, but that is the kind of customer service I have come to expect.

Does anyone actually train people specifically in customer service? Or do we just trust that the companies which hire customer service people are able to give them sufficient instruction to make them useful? The goal of customer service is to get me to keep spending money on a product or service, yet most companies treat the department like a very distant relative. Unless you know how to work the CHOGM procurement circuit, money is hard to come by. You work and you plan to make every penny count. That is why I write often and with feeling when it comes to things that make me spend my money. If I am going to hand even a shilling over to you, the least you can do is be useful and act like you appreciate it.

Customer care agents often have inadequate information, never have any real power and rarely show initiative with cases they are not immediately able to handle. They also appear to have no supervisors they can consult in the event that they cannot handle your problem. It is not good enough to tell me you don’t know what the problem is with your network but if I wait it will come back eventually. It is not good enough to give some pretty young thing a desk and a phone and a list of 10 answers and then unleash her on an unsuspecting public. If you are going to do customer care, then do it properly or not at all.

Published on Sunday May 23, 2008

I love being Ugandan. I love living in this country, the weather, eating fresh fruit and having a village to call my own. Sometimes, however, I wish I wasn’t a statistic in a third world country. On some days, like yesterday, I wish I were the absolute monarch of a little island somewhere with huge oil and gold and diamond deposits. Then I could sit on my little throne and deal with the rest of the world on my terms.

Yesterday I spent three and a half hours baking one of my parents in the car and wondering whether my other parent had fainted from hunger inside the American embassy. You see, because I am a third world statistic in an impoverished, badly governed state, it therefore follows that when me or one of my own attempts to leave this country and enter another statistically fantastic one, we get treated like cow poo – to put it politely.  I have had much practice in cutting off my nose to spite my face; therefore I shall pen this rant and watch the bridges burn.

I have a high tolerance for nonsense because I am generally a timid person and I am easily frightened by threats of violence. I do not, however, take kindly to people giving my parents a hard time because as their last born it is my exclusive right. So when an embassy makes me go through the farce of making an appointment with them a month early, then shifts the appointment by 5 hours, and then makes my 80 year old father pay them to sit in their fortress for 3 and a half hours doing nothing I am more than a little bit angry.

It doesn’t help that the embassy does not allow you to bring in either food or telephone. So he had to sit in there on his 9am breakfast and finally got a snack at 5pm when they deigned to release him. I tried calling the embassy to enquire about how much longer it would take and whether my dad was alright and I was informed that no one knew the mysteries of the workings of the great embassy. In fact, it could be 4 hours or longer, and no, they would not check on my father for me. The operator’s tone seemed to imply that I should feel blessed and honoured that we even were granted access. If I could have reached through the phone and smacked the smugness out of her tone I would have.

I could argue that not all of us are impoverished desperate semi-literates looking to wipe bottoms and sweep streets in the Promised Land. Even if we were, everyone deserves to be treated with human dignity and consideration. However, they are just going to keep on doing what they do because Yes, They Can.  I am a statistic and my dear old dad just wants to visit his grandkids and take a much needed break. So all I can do is misuse my little space to rant and then go back to the embassy today to line up yet again and pick up the visa. This is officially the most powerless I have felt in ages.

Published on Sunday May 9, 2010

For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat.

2 Thessalonians 3:10 (King James version)

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I just got back form the supermarket – which seems to be every third shop in Jinja, but that is not the point of my tale.

Outside this particular supermarket I am now and then accosted by a rageddy woman with a bundle of junk on her head and tied around her back, begging for 100 shillings. I always have 100 shillings when I leave the superkarket – I am loaded like that. But I have never and will never hand it over to this woman.

If you are severely disabled, or someone who has lost their fingers to leprosy, I will hand you whatever change I have, no questions asked. But when you are an able bodied, sane and clean woman, younger than my mother, you best take your nonsense out of my face. You see, my father is 80 years old, and my mother isn’t far behind. They wake up every morning at 7am and by 9am they are at their place of work. So excuse me if I do not find your lazy ass an emergency.

Even though I have consistently refused to give the hag money, she consistently continues to accost me when I leave the supermarket. And then to insult me when I refuse to give her MY money. Which I worked hard for. I do no care how wicked I look shooing the woman away – on the principle of the matter I shall continue to refuse to give her money. So there.

Ranting over; regular programming can resume.

Today I was taking some young Basoga back to some Busoga boarding schools. I was going through the whole “did you bring brooms and TP” nonsense, when lo and behold, a big new ambulance pulled up next to my car in the parking lot.

If you are assuming it was an emergency, you are incorrect. It was someone bringing a child to school. Complete with a driver who stayed baking in the car the whole time. (I hate that, by the way. People need to give their drivers slightly more respect and consideration in general).

So anyway, there was a brand-new, probably-donated-by-some-foreign-government, ambulance from Iganga Hospital dropping a child at school in Jinja.

I will not even go into the question of on how many levels this is wrong. I will just say: Only in Uganda.

Once in a while I will put up a segment called Only in Uganda.

This category of posts is all about the weird, wacky and sometimes wonderful things that can only happen in Uganda. I have my long time friend and brother-in-law Andrew to thank for the idea.

Feel free to mail me comments, pictures or ideas about things that only happen in this our Banana Republic.

angela@angelakintu.com