Face to face encounter with a ‘creative’/smart beggar and the problem of traffic jams.

Face to face encounter with a ‘creative’/smart beggar and the problem of traffic jams.By Edward Magumba

On Thursday last week, I drove through Kampala, during a traffic hold, one shabbily dressed beggar with youthful looks approached me with a begging bowl. I ignored her but she persisted, so I put on a mean face and looked away. She gave up and went her ways.

But before the lights could let us go, another one appeared from nowhere, she rubs her hands on my windows perhaps to get my attention, I give her one glance and look away, she also persists and unlike the other one, this one even starts cleaning my windscreen. Somehow my heart softens, because she has done some work for me (even though I didn’t ask her to do it) I give her some money. I was amazed and impressed by her creative mind and her desire to do some work for the money she was asking for. When we work for money, we tend to attach a lot of value on it, but if we receive it freely,some of us tend not to use it wisely.

Both were not disabled, neither did any show any visible signs of illness or mental retardation,so my guess was,this is probably a mindset problem/disease that’s disturbing many of us Ugandans.They probably have the physical and mental strength to do work if they chose to, other than being on the streets.
Their physical appearance resembles that of people from Karomoja, so I assume they are from Karamoja or their parents/descendants came from there. I don’t know if coming from Karamoja is a good justification for some of these people to be on the streets but am one person who is opposed to the habit of begging as it takes away our pride and dignity. So this ‘spirit’ of begging by people on the streets and the likes should be strongly discouraged,we should instead encourage our people to embrace a positive attitude that cherishes the importance of working for money.

Re-claiming our pens (authoring the direction of our lives), taking responsibility of our lives and engaging in sustainable and productive activities is what will help us Ugandans and Africans at large.The idea of looking at others or people from far away to solve our problems should be despised.

Another encounter I had was with traffic Jams,every time I drive through Kampala, one thought that always comes to my mind is that hopefully one day, someone will receive the wisdom to solves Kampala’s traffic Jam problems. Imagine it took me over two hours to drive from down town Kampala to Mukono;lot of traffic hold up, boda-bodas riding in crazy ways, a lot of human traffic, etc. Now,who is to blame? Politics? People’s Pride? political arrogance? or What?

I don’t know if this a sign of development or what, but if our country is to reach its so-called vision of 20-40, then our city leaders would need to find a solution to the traffic jam problem. A lot of valuable time is lost in jams, time that can never be regained.
Assuming only 1000 people were delayed by two hours in the jam of last Thursday, if that time was directed towards a productive activity; see how much would have been accomplished.
I doubt if there can be much personal and national growth if we keep on wasting valuable time.

In the book of John Maxwell’s 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, under law of the Lid number 1, he says “leadership ability is the lid that determines a person’s level of effectiveness”. I wonder if our failure to solve some of our problems-like the huge traffic jams and feeding our people has something to do with the leadership abilities/limitations/low lid of our policy makers ?

Wish you all a Blessed Week.

Blessings- Edward Magumba