Pity the African child raised in the highly industrialized countries. Her heart and passions are in her parents’ homeland, but her world is far removed from the reality she encounters on her infrequent visits home.

My favourite story about Ugandan Diaspora children is about a brother and sister whose mother took them home to Kabarole, Tooro. Upon discovering that their poor cousins were walking and running outside with bare feet, the visitors asked their mother why she enforced rules back in Canada that prohibited the children from stepping in their backyard without appropriate footwear. “Mummy, that’s unfair!” they scolded her. “Our cousins’ mummy lets them play without shoes!”

On a visit to Kigyezi and Ankole in the late 1980s, our children, not yet 10 years of age, excitedly informed me via telephone that the entire experience was akin to camping. Why? Because they were enjoying food cooked with firewood; taking their baths in reed enclosures that also served as urinals; fetching water from spring wells; and sharing beds with cousins in small cramped bedrooms. 

Where my wife saw challenges, our children envied those who enjoying such free living as a matter of course. However, the children were severely distressed by the sight of two young men slaughtering a chicken for them. “That’s very unfair!” one of our children protested. “How would you feel if that was your life?” 

The chicken murderers and our children’s uncles responded with laughter, which further infuriated the girls, prompting them to summon their mother to intervene.

My wife’s explanations that the chicken they thoroughly enjoyed eating back in Canada were also victims of murder probably elicited suspicion that she had joined a conspiracy to inflict cruelty on the innocent birds. 

In 2005, my wife and I took our younger children, and two of our nieces, on a visit to Mparo and Kahondo ka Byamarembo. The journey had started well until we reached the Equator along the Kampala-Masaka highway, where the girls proclaimed their bladders ready to burst.

The only facility at the Equator at the time was a pit latrine. Within a couple of minutes, the girls returned, their crestfallen appearance underreporting the disaster that had befallen them.

One of them had inexplicably had her slipper fall into the latrine. All four had found the complex mechanics of squatting to empty the bladder beyond their comprehension. It did not help that the assault on their olfactory senses discouraged deep breathing. 

The musical accompaniment by fat blue flies that buzzed to and from at high speed persuaded them to flee, my niece arriving with a single slipper and all four still laden with full bladders.  

It was not a laughing matter. Relief came 50 km further West, at a clean restaurant in Masaka whose environment and facilities catered to an exclusive clientele. 

My father joyfully received the children at his home in Mparo, complete with a gift of a live goat, for which the girls expressed deep gratitude. The dinner that evening featured a delicious meat dish. Upon learning that what they had just enjoyed was the gift from their grandfather, tears began to flow, a situation made worse by the hearty laughter by dinner guests and nearly all the girls’ relatives present. 

On another occasion, one of our older daughters shocked our relatives and others in Kampala when she walked over to a gentleman who looked very familiar. Pointing at the man, our daughter said: “Don’t I know you from somewhere? I think you have been to our house!” 

The gentleman was the ever gregarious Ruhakana Rugunda, then a senior minister, (now prime minister of Uganda) who, upon hugging the young lady, found himself in a joyful dance with our carefree daughter. 

Her breach of protocol and tradition scandalized some of my relatives and probably made everyone else uncomfortable. One of them apologized to Dr. Rugunda for the behaviour of our wayward daughter. 

As always, Dr. Rugunda would have none of that. Instead he exchanged numbers with the young lady and the two arranged to meet before she returned to Canada. 

In the intervening years, the girls, now mature women, have become great advocates for positive change in their homeland. They all have an understanding and compassion partly born of their childhood experiences. Their upbringing in materially comfortable homes has not clouded their appreciation of the difficult circumstances that hundreds of millions of African children must endure every day in their struggle for survival. Two of our children frequently speak of a desire to serve their people back in Uganda. My nieces are certified humanitarians and human rights advocates. 

The disconnect between African Diaspora children from the realities of their ancestral worlds is very understandable, even justifiable. Their inability to follow the rules of stiff deference to titled men and women is not due to bad manners. It is normal behaviour for people who have been raised in environments that accord them full rights of citizenship and freedom. 

However, the shock that their free spirit inflicts on their socially conservative relatives back home is equally understandable and justifiable. Different upbringing. Different expectations. 

This disconnect invites scholarly examination by our social scientists. It might give us clues about another cultural disconnect that is very consequential in the lives of the majority of citizens.

There is a disconnect between Africa’s rulers and their subjects. The self-indulgence and self-congratulatory declarations by politicians claiming growth of their societies even when serious poverty and social deprivation continue to bite the citizens suggests people living in different worlds.  

The endless misuse of public funds, with lots of the cash wasted on the insatiable appetites of the greedy ruling class, suggests inexplicable blindness and deafness to the people’s cries for sustainable help. 

A president and his courtiers do not seem to see the obscenity in a large presidential fleet of high-end motor vehicles in a land where a woman in labour must make do with a painful journey on the back of a Boda Boda. And these are the lucky ones. 

The cure must come from a changed political culture and a transformed belief system and behaviour of the ruling class that puts citizens first. How we achieve this mindset change ought to be the central debate among those who seek to lead Uganda in 2021 and beyond. Over to you, ladies and gentlemen.