Real Men Go Back Home

Like many in the Diaspora, I’ll do almost anything to meet up with a friend from back home; someone who still lives on the Continent – a person who will allay my fears or give me some news on how they find the economy, the life, the infrastructure and the pace of development. Its a few minutes to 11:30 pm and I just returned from one such visit. My old friend from the late 1990’s was visiting the New York | New Jersey area – and as soon as his primary host told me this friend of mine was at the house, my wife only caught a glimpse of me as I rushed away from my home cooked dinner.

But, like all those other times you meet up to discuss the good old days, all of you cannot help but wonder what happened to your country. They tell you of the impenetrable traffic jams and unfathomable darkness due to load shedding. You are told that the dust floats around your head like locusts in season and there’s the tome that wheel burrows, motorbikes and taxis compete for the road with women selling roasted delicacies over open fires. You wonder if this friend exaggerates. They do not. They tell you the ‘horror’ stories – of the drowning of a woman in an overfilled city drainage; of the hours and hours it takes to get from the airport to your house and how one has to take their phone charger with them to work and also to dinner at the swanky hotel considering that the hotel has electricity. You wonder how hotels can have full occupancy and yet they charge between US$ 300 – US$ 1,000 a night … But you are warned off such thoughts. That’s just life in the Pearl of Africa, they tell you.

Back in the comfort of your new life, you sit at your table, in front of your laptop computer that accesses the Internet wirelessly and apparently, effortlessly. You wonder what it would be like to be back home. But what would you do without modern amenities like cold water? You think back to the time of war. You survived those dark days and can go without ice for a few months. What about the food? Will you afford a proper meal? What is a proper meal? Aren’t fellow Africans surviving on less than a US$ 1 a day? What is a few missed ‘proper’ meals? You tell yourself that you will brave it out. Real men do not ‘punk’ out just because a few luxuries are missing. You continue the process of eliminating things off your list. You have a solution for the lack of electricity: candlelit dinners and pressure lamps just like your grandparents had [back in the day]. You’ll hire a full time driver once you get home and into the comfort of the ‘big’ job. You will ‘hang’ with the other ‘yuppies’ in the hotels and lounges – and charge your phone like all the others. Yes … It can work and you will be surrounded by family. That should make things alright.

And what about the Internet? You pause. You cannot survive without the Internet. You cannot be waiting for the traffic to subside. You need to be doing something. You cannot be back in Uganda waiting for the progress to happen. Your head starts to boil in rage. You reach out for the phone and wonder who you will call to vent. Uganda is 9 hours ahead and so it is way too early to start another’s day with griping. After all, they are living in the middle of the malady that is Africa! The wife does not understand the things you talk about; thus, you are back to being all alone.

Because things are always changing in the West; because the powers that be are more responsive to public pressure and seem to be more propelled by the guilt of not having a functional system, one gets used to a certain way of life. One has expectations and does not expect to be disappointed. It is the New Year and so there ought to be fresh beginnings. We should aspire and should wish all those benefits we have on those people that need them the most. Africans and those people we in the Diaspora left back home need working hospitals so that women do not die from child birth complications. Roads ought to work so that the trucks and taxis transporting resources can use less and less of the expensive gasoline. Children ought to do their homework, eat their dinner and go to bed on time with the support of their parents instead of needlessly waiting out the traffic jam by sitting in the car while their parents enjoy a beer on the road home. All these things are reminiscent of dark days gone by. And yet they are happening in 2012.

And just like that, the many dreams you had of returning home in glory are burned alive. How can you go back home when the very things that you now take for granted are going to cause you untold misery? What would you prefer – a comfortable life style in predictable surroundings, or the passion and pain that comes from living in a fledgling economy? Contrariwise, how can we continue to say transient things about countries that were supposed to have taken off by now? Was Independence not attained in the 1960s? What happened? Where did the lost decade go? Who should be blamed for all those things that have gone wrong? Should you be guilty for not being part of a revolution to get your respective country working again? Why aren’t you home? You say you will be there soon. And you say to yourself: You need more information. And so you wait for the next time someone ‘reliable’ comes to give you the truth. And your soul aches. You are nothing but a traitor. Your friends – the ones who come from home – are the real men.

Dennis Matanda,
Editor | editor@thehabarinetwork.com