{UAH} Ukraine lessons

By Dr. Olive Kobushingye

A lot of ink and emotion have been spent on condemning the racist mistreatment of blacks in the Ukraine. 

Credible footage shows blacks being pushed off trains or being barred from boarding trains that are taking people to safety. 

These acts are evil, and they should indeed be condemned.

But before we exhaust ourselves with anger at this monstrous behavior, let us spare some minutes for reflection.

Right here in Uganda, we have people pushing others off trains, and those people are not white. 

You ask, where is this happening?

The train is a great metaphor. It has limited capacity, and it is moving. There is such a thing as missing the train.

Let us take the train to better healthcare, for instance. 

Our healthcare resources are finite, and there is such a thing as dying before one gets an emergency operation, or a dose of life saving medicine.

But a small group of the powerful are consuming most of the resources, and effectively pushing the less powerful off the train. 

Children are dying in their mothers' arms at poorly funded hospitals for lack of an antibiotic. 

An unseen arm has yanked the child off the train.

A young man who could have been at work next week if his hernia was fixed will die in the Casualty Department because of lack of anesthetic. 

Some unseen arm has pushed him off the train.

People are violently condemning racist Ukrainians, yet they are quick to justify this behavior in Uganda.

This is how they start. 'If rich countries such as the USA are not able to afford free medical care for all their people, how can a poor country like Uganda aspire to do that? It is impossible!'.

This is all the encouragement the selfish and powerful Ugandans need to keep pushing the poorer citizens off the train. 

If the privileged want champaign from Southern France and caviar from Russia while on the train, there will be no place for the poor taxpayer to eat katogo on the same train.

What about education? 

Parents have sold household assets to pay for education. 

It is not very good education but that is all they can afford, because there are few seats on the train to good education at the international schools.

And when those kids try to board the train to employment, someone is right there at the entrance to push them off. 

As the train whisks some kids away from poverty, the majority are stranded at the platform, with few options.

The people who are pushing these Ugandans off the trains are Ugandan themselves. The traits they use to choose who gets on the train are not color or citizenship. It is family ties. It is tribes, clans, languages. It might be the shape of one's nose, or their accent when they speak certain languages.

It is no less evil than the acts being condemned in Ukraine.

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