{UAH} UGANDA PREPPING TO CASH ON AMIN AS OTHER BABOONS STILL SOLICIT CASH FROM HIS "BIGGER THAN LIFE" NAME
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7:48 PM |
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Jal Paddy,
My Aunty Juliana turned 80 this month.
We had a surprise birthday for her this weekend deep in the villages of Surrey, just a few minutes’ drive outside London. Aunty first came to the UK in 1958 on a scholarship to study nursing, which she did for four years before returning home. The Amin terror years got her scampering out of Uganda in the late 70s and ending back here in the early 80s, where she has stayed since then.
The lady built herself a life in East London from where she raised and educated her five kids successfully. She tells me she feels very contented and blessed that at 80 she still manages to live a full, independent, normal life, free of the common shackles of old age like dementia, immobility and boredom, amongst others. Her days are much busier than many 30-year-olds I know.
Aunty still does the occasional one or two day shifts a week at work to keep herself busy and her other days are filled with church engagements, voluntary work and entertaining her grand kids and relatives. There are a few niggling questions I am yet to get the courage to raise up with Aunty. The big one is when the old lady plans to call it a day in the UK and move back home.
What makes this a nagger is, having lived more than half her life in the UK with the occasional visit back to Uganda, it is tough figuring where the old lady calls home. I can bet you Aunty is much more comfortable navigating her way around London streets than she would be on Kampala road.
The kyeyo life continues to have its fair share of horror and lavish stories in equal measure, but what the majority seem to agree on is that most kyeyo destinations provide a much more straightforward and orderly everyday existence than home. In Aunty’s case, it may mean a generous pension and other preferential treatment and comforts that come with being a senior citizen or simply the fact that London is where she feels most at ease and at home.
Over to a young family like mine, it boils down to having access to a modern, free, medical, social and education service and the expectation that the laws and systems in place will always treat me as fairly as it treats the next guy and his family.
To many other kyeyo folk, it’s all about earning a livelihood or building careers with not that much regard as to what part of earth that is done. At the end of the day, the question of when to return home still stands. My good friend Kasibante tells me he has given himself another two years and he is out of here, which is exactly what he said last year and the year before that.
While another buddy has just got his legal papers to stay after close to seven years of being ‘underground’ and so the ‘returning’ question is one he doesn’t want to know. He is quite happy talking about visits, though.
Back to my Aunty Juliana, I believe whether she chooses to live the rest of her life here or returns to Uganda, the decision she makes will be the right one. Bless her.
Your friend,
Chris.
oyokris@yahoo.com
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