Tales Of The Lockdown

I have always fantasized the life of a hermit. All alone to your pristine thoughts and vices, away from the prying and judging eyes of the world. Totally free from daily obligations and routine. It has always seemed like a pipe dream. No ambition, no comparisons. Just you and your merry bunch of whatever you are dreaming. You know that depiction of Hollywood where the world goes silent and emerges in post-apocalyptic mode, with human sophistication abandoned for basic survival.  How I wish this was about mad max and his desert race in the most awesome machines, it wasn’t.

At the turn of the year, business was really slow, we were quick to estimate and blame this on the upcoming elections. In theory a year away, it always causes an economic bubble that negatively impacts competent economic activity. At the same time, news reports were filtering in, of a flu like virus that had attacked Wuhan Province in China, nothing scary here. Many strange diseases are always reported in the Far East but somehow we are insulated. SARS, Spanish flu, Avian Flu were always touted as potential world game changers and to us Ugandans, they ended up conspiracy theories or footnotes in the 24 hour news cycle that has been popularized by parabolic antennas. I personally believed the vicious cycle of reporting as propaganda from the “western” media houses to tarnish what is widely accepted as the Chinese economic muscle. It didn’t help that the leaders of this faraway lands started blaming China for whatever was happening.

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To me, the fight against the Corona Virus strain of 2019 was a distant fight divorced from my reality. So you can imagine my dismay when sometime in March, the supreme leader declared a slowdown of economic activity as a precaution towards the Covid19 as the virus is now widely known. Not a pretty sight, years of economic activity grinding to a halt on a whim. In the beginning (I have a great urge to mimic President Zuma, “in the beninging”), we were cooperative.  

News filtering through showed mighty European capitals and cities we were taught to believe as perfect, bleeding as the body bags overwhelmed the health care providers. Leaders of economic powerhouses totally looking helpless as the body count went into movie mode. We watched TV with interest. I renewed subscription as I now had to spend days confined at home.

When the first phase of the lockdown was announced, my instincts kicked in. Having spent my formative years in Gulu, I knew of many things, the man in charge always wants to use any means to show absolute authority. In the beninging we could use personal cars to move around as the regular public means have been suspended attracting derision from those who had opted to buy land before cars.  We treated this as a holiday, widely accepting that within 21 days the nightmare would be over and we would be back to our normal routine. We tried in a way only Ugandans can, to push ‘Kitu kidogo’ and keep our hustles going.

I was advising for suspension of our rent collections as the graph had already shown a dip in consistency, for the first time in 3 years, I was facing full default. I took an instinctive decision to suspend further activity and concentrate on hibernation. A decision that angered many of my clients who were using our remittances to plug the leakage in their own financing. Needless to say, I am dusting my CV. That is when the first case of the dreaded Covid19 was reported on Ugandan soil. A trader who had used the Entebbe International Airport, Dubai en-route  Entebbe. The joke was that he was so impatient to import phone chargers!!!!! The general mood on social media was of impatience because it was widely accepted that after 21 days without Covid-19 cases, we would be allowed back to our old normal life.

Only that the headmaster marshalled in and declared martial law. We were in war mode. The streets were deserted, trucks were allowed to move around and I used that loophole to move around. Roadblocks were the norm. Social media activity flourished. The Ministry of Health kept on updating us on a graph which initially showed that almost all infections were those who had recently used foreign transit points.  

For the first time since 1976 and that one time the Presidential daughter was heavy with child and had to be rushed to Germany for a pristine birth experience, the Airport was closed. All flights suspended which wasn’t peculiar given almost all air activity across the world was reduced to 5%.

As we hounded and hunted the regular travellers for being show offs and bringing the calamity closer to home, the government swung into action. First promising us food, then opening a hotline and donation centre. We were buoyed by previous success stories Uganda had when it came to fighting pandemics. We were the first country to literally confront AIDs when CDC in the USA thought it was limited to the San Francisco gay community. We had gallant heroes in the fight against Ebola, a fight the current Health Minister Dr. Ruth Aceng could understand all too well as an alumni of Lacor Hospital. Even if years of divested priority had left our health system limping, we believed that we had what it takes to fight this disease that was dropping Italians like a wilted harvest.

Two days after the announcement that the state would provide relief food, a favorable zoning law found me declared among the vulnerable poor and food aid was duly delivered. Mealie meal (maize flour/posho) and beans were put at my veranda. Oh jeez, that is when the scandals started dropping. The food was barely edible and even in my worst prison days at Budo Junior School when Kayongo ran a looting corporation that ended with the death of many young girls, had I seen beans that bad and uncoordinated, let’s not discuss the posho.

On WhatsApp, the reaction was different. First how the hell did I qualify to be vulnerable poor that I got the first food ration? Then all social media pictures started making rounds of beans so varied they would have made Jack of the beanstalk fame a very shrewd trader. To call it food was an insult, so much was the uproar that even the Prime Minister Ruhakana Rugunda broke stride and criticized the quality. The supplier who is commonly known as APONYE a city businessman also shouted back claiming that, is what he was paid to supply. The figures weren’t tallying we were paying 5000Ugx a kilogram for beans that were probably not worth 1000Ugx a kilogram. How did he manage to get such poor quality beans in a large quantity so promptly? Then the masks started coming off, the procurement procedure was flaunted as Godparents took precedence.

As we thought that was enough for the scandal, the Speaker of Parliament paraded a man so endowed with a beard, my follicle-challenged chin rioted. He had the miracle cure and the man whose name I can’t remember was to do it so fast within a couple of months our little part of the world would be disease free. He was seen with the President for a photo shoot. The most powerful lady on paper then headed back to the August house to parcel out money to her fellow legislators. Her boss, wasn’t impressed and promptly commanded a reverse of fortunes. Egg on the face, the lady from Busoga was left raging. The man with a hat had overstepped any known structured administration that is elected to declare RDC’s hitherto forgotten appendages of the regime as the most important persons.

 The MP’s were to deliver money to the RDCs, the forgotten Vice President who is always known as the social distancing champion was seen carrying his to the district of Masaka, a monthly reminder that he is still number two. Some cheeky district legislators sensing it was there turn to eat, accepted to share the spoils amongst themselves in Ntungamo district.

The MP’s weren’t left to hang dry, the Lannister promptly doubled the loot and handed it over to them, the social media public was livid. But who cares, when any sign of protest is met with violence. The speaker was left in a political limbo as the son of Kaguta continued to extend the lockdown.

What had started as a solid stand, was starting to get voices of dissent from many quarters mainly as the figures fleeing the treasury into the Covid19 wormhole needed a lot of computing to ascertain. Then comes the usual friends of the despots, the Bretton woods institutions with countless loans. Government was borrowing and at least the twitter intelligentsia were calling it irrational and with limited characters showed disgust.

John Pombe Magufuli in Tanzania forever a Covid19 denier, declared all the tests faulty and inconclusive as brake fluid tested positive for the dreaded virus. He promptly suspended any state backed fight against the virus and football resumed as social distancing was bluffed. Pierre Nkuruziza in Burundi suspended all election observers and went ahead to preside over elections that later sent him to an early grave just as he was set to become the supreme guide to patriotism. Truck drivers continued to fatten the curve as community transmissions were moving slowly.  

As yet another Presidential address approached, the cases spiked as calls for the land borders to be shut were increasing. Also suspicious were the general public that the figures were being doctored since anyway this emergency had the political apparatus on a treasury run. Okay Cars were allowed back to the roads with a limit of 3 people as we awaited taxis to help us move around. Bad Black who was at the forefront of mobilizing her fellow “girls” to avoid truckers, emerged to claim her arrears. Threatening to expose a few people who regularly use her services, she was paid and rescinded her earlier position of course in the fashion where you receive a giant bag filled with legal tender. Dr Stella Nyanzi was in the news a lot with a picture of her being dragged like a goat to the slaughterhouse. She also wrote a lot telling us of how the opposition want to keep the incumbent in power, she seems to nurse political ambitions and her new found purse will guide her, honestly at this point a long time without any income or exercise or stimulation had reduced me to a wide berth of nonsense.

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The taxis were released but with a lot of complications and for the first day, I walked around hoping to catch one. When the jungle madness returned, the fare was triple of what it was before the lockdown since the omnibuses were working half capacity, the conductors had lost the famous banter as a long layoff is bound to cause. With expensive humorless taxis back on the road, we were stuck for hours in a notorious gridlock, productivity dipped to almost negative. Half of town had closed down, with the assistance of the notorious Local Defence Units (LDU) who came and reminded those whose shops weren’t part of the essential services to lock up. See one of the presidential directives was very vague, it allowed Malls to open while arcades would remain closed. Rumor had it that an enterprising landlord just went on to strip the word arcade off his building and replaced it with mall. Whether that gambit worked or not is a story for another day.

In all this melee, we learnt of the Kavuya family, people so important that the airport had to be opened for them to walk back into the country, yet the LDU’s watched over us like hawks waiting for us to set one wrong foot and their brand of summary justice would be executed. The Kavuyas weren’t to be outdone as they popped up in the news again. This time for an emergency caesarean section that could only be carried out in Nairobi. They were demanding for the airport to be opened to allow this to happen.  I sat in my small bed sitter wondering what kind of rotten luck visited the likes of us who have to hide various body aches.

Scientific election road map (I am yet to know what this means to give full commentary), was announced with the State’s still maintaining most of the directives of a full lockdown, Robert Kyagulanyi a.k.a Bobi Wine met Dr Kizza Besigye and they formed or agreed to work together, sure as hell, the good Colonel will be on the ballot as his habit is won’t to happen, what is doubtful is whether the red berets will swim with the sharks. The Bad man from Kamwokya who hasn’t had the chance to sing to us for a longer time gave us a lockdown show which was well attended going by the numbers who live streamed. His vice president elect Francis Zaake wasn’t so lucky as he had to spend part of the lockdown literally locked down and alternating on a hospital bed. His was a crime so grave, labelled as attempted murder, he was caught distributing food, a task so divine it was only designated to the Covid19 taskforce.

A lot happened and I really want to tell you the stories, I am still reeling from the financial shock of all this for me to go on, as the world lifts the veil and slowly returns to the old habits like Arsenal picking up losses at every turn. We maintain the full emergency laws with a few twerks as just the other day, the cars which were allowed to ferry three passengers had increased capacity to four, as we complained of the lack of radios and media delivery options in the countryside to deliver political messages.

The above happened in slightly over 90 days.