By Ndawula Ronald
An old friend of mine visited me last week in search of employment having been pushed off the street where he was working as a hawker of old clothes.
I actually sympathized with him when he narrated what he is going through ever since his capital of shs 70,000= was confiscated by the KCCA enforcement and his landlord became a nuisance about needing her rent and when he locked the house for his children yet he slept in the cells for 2 days!.
He told me how he wished he was dead but when he looked and thought about the plight of his children if he committed suicide he gave up.
I comforted him by pointing to him that I was also jobless and more so bankrupt.
I informed him that for every dark cloud there’s a silver lining.
He should realize that for every door closed God opens another one.
The problem we usually get is taking and wasting long and material time fidgeting with the closed door and fail to look for the other opened one.
In many incidences we find ourselves in situations where we’re lost at what direction to take after a setback,
We sometimes think we have bad luck or were given a bad hand in life. I have come to realise without doubt that life is built in opposites.
Like in Newton’s third law of motion, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”.
When the night approaches you for sure know without doubt that day will come.
When your go uphill you will at some point go downhill.
When you cry you will at some stage laugh, when you get yourself in hot weather, know for sure cold weather is on its way, guaranteed!
When I sat with my friend for about 30 minutes he came to realise that he was more gifted and had more opportunities than he had thought.
I told him he can make this set back into a stepping stone or can turn lemonade into the lemon he is got.
This revelation made him strong to face life hopeful, enthusiastic and happier, not to mention he parted with my shs100000/= to give him a head start in hawking fresh chicken at a commision from my small farm earning 1000/= per bird and he made about 200,000/= in the first week alone.
In less than a week, his esteem is recovered, hope restored and above all his attitude normal.
Then, this made me think how many people who are like my friend Sam , who have been pushed off work by the overzealous KCCA in the guise of a vain attempt to clean a perpetually dirty city In the pretext of cleaning it?
Does KCCA operatives know that there are hawkers on Wall street in Newyork but the city remains clean?
I wonder how many families have been left without food and children going to turn criminals because the people doing this lacked empathy to understand that those hawking dont have another alternative to make ends meet.
In a country where employment is a challenge and and by becoming a slave in middle east is the only option left for Ugandans, I think job creation should have been given priority to a fallacy of a clean city.
Trust me KCCA and government, you will never clean a city which inhabits the unemployed, the desperate and the jobless because in their eyes things are up side down.
To them what you think is dirty is clean and what you think is clean to them is dirty.
Thank you.
Ndawula Ronald, the former Chairperson of Luwero district
