Playing golf at 8am.

There comes a time in the life of a human being when the mind is in a perpetual state of war. This is especially so when a human being is a parent; when that human being begins to ask the relevance of an education system that is structured to dance to the dictates of a colonial power even at a time when Africa is independent, whatever that means.

So it has been with me. It is especially painful in my case because I have spent the better part of my life in the service of a Ugandan education system that was designed in the industrial age and is hell bent on producing workers for industries that have long ceased to exist, or so I think.

What triggered this state of war was a pedestrian event. I was driving along Acacia avenue, just by the Golf club and there was this slight traffic jam whose cause was a string of golfers crossing over the busy road on a zebra crossing that was designed for them. It was 8 am. 8 am!!! A time when any right thinking Ugandan is at an office desk. A time when dutiful citizens are working diligently to egg out a living from an unforgiving economy.

A time when schools across the country are in session and the teachers are bellowing and drumming regurgitated notes into children who have been torn out of sleep. A time when the market women at Nakasero, Nakawa, Kalerewe and Luzira markets have settled into the business of selling their wares. A time when the lady of the night is in deep sleep, that has been occasioned by a fruitful night. A night, that has enabled her to secure fees for her horde of children.

There was something very wrong with that picture. As I sat at the steering wheel, waiting on the golfers to saunter across the road, it hit me like a ton of cassava chips. The difference between them and the majority of us is like that between night and day. The difference lies in the type education that we permitted to permeate our minds.

 Education is known to shape the thinking of any human being. The way we all turn out to be is largely as a result of the education that we received or continue to receive. My thinking, and dare I say, the thinking of any sensible individual is that while the rest of us are subjecting our minds to an educational system that is based on the idea that money is the root of all evil, those golfers at that seemingly productive hour subjected their minds and continue to subject their minds and the minds of all that are close and dear to them, to the Ecclesiastical idea that: A party gives laughter, and wine gives happiness, but money gives everything.

This difference in educational philosophy gives rise to the colonial mentality that seeks to produce worker bees whose exclusive purpose is to toil so as to fatten the queen bee. The Ecclesiastical idea, arguments life itself:  life is to be enjoyed. It is meant to be an adventure, where one finds solace in the pursuit of any thing that engages the heart in the perpetual dance of excitement.

A human being cannot enjoy life, when willingly kept under lock and key from 8 am to 5 pm. It is impossible to contribute meaningfully to an existence, when all one is, is a cog in an industrial machine that perpetuates the rat race. It is a given that even when you win eight gold medals at the winter rat Olympics, you will still be a rat.

It is my honest submission that we should study money; the history of money, the geography of money, the physicality of money, the science of money, the literature of money, the economics of money, the mathematics of money, the English of money…the everything of money.

Our children should know the power of money. They should know how to harness it. They should be able to put it in the line of fire instead of swelling with the mistaken belief that the more one works, the more one earns. They should be able to multiply it a trillion fold. They should be able to be of effective service to themselves and to their kith and kin.

Then, and only then, will we be able to be at peace with ourselves, in the knowledge that our money is hard at work for us: that we can engage in more meaningful engagements like playing golf at 8am.