It’s long since I last strolled through downtown Kampala. I hardly knew what the area around the old Taxi Park looks like after so many years of having no reason to check out that hood.
Having been forced to go shopping at Gaza Land and later eating lunch at some structures surrounding the Nakivubo Stadium, I was shocked to see the bustle of economic activity going on over there. Ugandans are working their arses off to etch a living. The picture I saw was totally different from the one that social media tends to portray. People are serious about what they are doing and that is not something to be ignored.
This quickly took me back to some articles I have been reading online of the boda boda riders’ attacks on motorists. Alot has been said about what the possible causes could be and I do not really want to delve into that for now.
However, as someone that supports Small Business owners to set up their operations, I have a natural tilt towards those self employed people littered all over the city.
I do not want to summarily state that the boda boda riders are reckless before taking us back to the law of energy conservation we learnt while at school that states thus: Energy can neither be created nor destroyed – only converted from one form to another.
Energy is inherent in every human being you see around as well as all items in our environment. That energy expresses itself in different ways. It could be mechanical (just like machinery), academic, sexual (masculine or feminine), graphical, written, spoken, commercial, criminal etc.
Research has proven that the negative utterances we make tend to have a greater impact than the positive ones. Replace utterances with energy.
How that energy is utilised is dependent on one’s environment. There is a young lad I know who is very bright and charming. He could easily sell an eskimo a fridge. This guy chose to tread a path that saw him visit Kigo Prison a number of times. I had to sit him down, understand him, only to realise that he needed to exude his brilliance and unfortunately got a chance to do so with the wrong crowd. We have had sessions together and as I write this, he is on the path of total reform.
Ugandans today are faced with very trying moments in their lives, and this is happening world over. The crime we see is a sign of so many simmering tensions which if left unattended to, could very easily lead to a bubble bursting.
The energy that we see being used negatively can be converted into positive use if we chose to deliberately follow that approach. Remember, energy will never disappear. It only changes form.
Many of these youths we see out there and consider reckless are actually potentially positively productive, some have tried but failed and only need a helping hand to scale greater heights.
We spend alot of money and time on workshops and seminars that hold no meaning to that young lady making rucksacks from recycled plastic material or that young man earning a living through raising worms for sale.
Let us not bluntly follow the condemning bandwagon of the kind of criminal activities going on. We need to ask ourselves what we can do to proactively change the situation for the better.
WHile there is alot of misery going on, there in equal measure is alot of positivity that we can look forward to.
Let us be the change Makers for the change that we want to see.
James Wire
Technology and Business Consultant
Blog – https://wirejames.com
Twitter – @wirejames
The Wire Perspective 