Experience should be respected

 

 

A giant ship's engine broke down and no one could repair it, so they hired a mechanical engineer with over 40 years  experience.

He inspected the engine very carefully, from top to bottom. After seeing everything, the engineer unloaded the bag and pulled out a small hammer.

He knocked something gently. Soon, the engine came to life again. The engine had been fixed!

7 days later the engineer mentioned that the total cost of repairing the giant ship was $20,000 to the ship owner.

"What?!" said the owner.

"You did almost nothing. Give us a detailed bill."

The answer is simple:

Tapping with a hammer: $2

Knowing where to knock and how much to knock: $19,998

The importance of appreciating one's expertise and experience...because those are the results of struggles, experiments and even tears.

If you do a job in 30 minutes it's because you spent 20 years learning how to do that in 30 minutes. They owe you for the years, not the minutes.

THE SINIYA SPIRIT

 

The Gates of SINIYA Open wide like a road to the garden of dreams.  Cool air and silence as you watch a  never seen revelent design of Great Kennedy Hall and welcomed by the manifesto *SCIENTIFIC ORIENTED BOY CHILD*

Welcomed by smiles of junior prefects little knowing that you will soon become their servants.

As long as you are still with your parent,  you are a prince, as they lead you to your domintory smiling and carrying your mattress. 

Every one waves for you in the compound, and strong men escort you as your bodyguards. 

They lay your bed well. And help you to escort your parent back. 

On return, the story changes. Your case broke open,  an army is waiting for you like lions craving for Daniel to be thrown in the pit. The rest is history. 

By evening, you have a million stories to tell. 

Anger first fills you, but very soon you start to learn that what happened to you almost happened to everybody, that that's the road to the crown of SINIYA spirit. Then day after day, it is nolonger torture but lessons, and soon you begin to love the way SINIYA teaches life lessons. 

And you get learn that 

We work like a team, we share resources. Your basin seazes to be yours alone the moment you enter the gates of SINIYA. The same applies to your sugar, your pocket money, your samples, and sometimes your clothes.

 We believe that we are all powerful. Power belongs to you today, tomorrow you lose it. You are powerful in s3 than in s5. 

We fight to remain united. We wake each other up for morning porridge, and preps and we share assignments and tests solutions.

We don't leave anyone behind.

And when we meet as Old Boys, the first word is SINIYA oyeeee... 

STUDENTS of the ONLY SINIYA. UNITE!

The Batooro

 I have always seen people dissing the most polite and humble Nation in Uganda.. the Batooro. Comedians have made a fortune over throwing jibes about them. At times I don't find it as funny because I believe all of us are Ugandans. However, at the peril of my OBs and great friends whom we met in High School, Kyomuhendo,  Businge his young brother and Andrew M. Mwenda that I met at Makerere University when he had a part time stint as a Lecturer of Development Economics and  assured  me in 2001 that he would marry a mufumbira, and up to now, we are still waiting. 

But allow me to share my experience with this aimble group of Ugandans. 

The first mutooro I interacted with was Patrick.  You see when you are from an upcountry school, he was from Nyakasura School and I was from Kigezi High School, as a few real westerners (I use the words "real westerners" because there were other westerners who had grown up and schooled in Kampala, therefore their realness had been compromised), we automatically had to connect. 

I had never heard anyone speak rutooro  but because I knew Rukiga, i could pick. Credit to him I learnt alot of Rutooro from him. As S. 5. new students, in the 1st one week it was basically orientation. However, every after supper that's around 7PM, Patrick would disappear. The rest of us would be mixing and mingling in that time trying to learn some luganda as well as learning to pronounce words like Sajest for Suggest not what we used to pronounce as Sagesti, Patrick would be no where to be seen. After 4 days I asked him where he used to disappear to after supper and he told me politely, in rutooro, niimba ngire mukitabo, to me ekitabo was was a book. So I asked him, we barely have any notes, we haven't been introduced in library, did you come with your own books. He said Naangwa, ekitabo  nimanyisa in the bed. Now I learnt that a bed is ekitabo further investigations later alone actually reveal to me that in real RRR (Runyakitara) a bed is ekitabo. But again there was a word he used "naangwa" to him he meant "no" yet in Rufumbira it means "but". So I learnt 2 words in 1 minute.

Slowly but steadily I kept learning Rutooro and I can confidently say that I know Rutooro. So recently, we had a function in Kyenjojo, I was with my parents in the car so we arrive at around 6PM and the rendezvous was a certain hotel called Akanyasi, I think because they have an outstanding  grass thatched structure. I dint know the place so I stopped a boda boda rider to direct me. He tried to casually explain to me, without pointing fingers to where we were going but just mentioning names of turn points. I just asked him how much it was to get to that place (all this in pure rutooro to the bemusement of my "passengers") he told me it was 1k. I told him geenda mumaiso nkuhonderere.. move in front of me I will follow you. My key passenger Charles Sendegeya who is my dad btw, told me, Robert be honest, have you ever dated a mutoorokati, to which I told him the truth. No. I know up to now he cant believe it.

Fast forward, we seated at the hotel after dinner then I ask the waitress to serve us drinks, she politely walks, I am avoiding using the word sluggishly, to the counter which was inside. 10 minutes later she wasn't yet back. I walked there only to find her chatting and laughing with her colleague in the counter. I ask her whether she had forgotten, and guess what, she was like, naangwa ndiyo ningareeta kyaari. Sorry I dint forget I am bringing them. I walk back she follows me puts the drinks on the table but with no opener. I asked her where is the opener, kangeende ngireete taata. Let me go and bring it please. I just laughed, If you follow the vibe. Anyways 5 minutes later the opener was brought. So we asked her to bring double double to avoid future delays.

Now the killer was this boda guy, my cousin and I slopped to town to look for a hard drink but everywhere we went they dint have what we wanted, so I thought fast and got a very brilliant idea, let's ask these boda guys since its them and hawkers who know every corner of their towns. 

Those who know Kyenjojo at the stage to Kampala, there's a boda boda stage. I politely greeted them, baptized myself empaako, then asked, nituseruura amarwa agibakweta Black Label lundi Jameson? Kugarabure, nitwiija kutwara redi leebo. We are looking for alcohol called Black Label or Jameson but in case we  don't get that, we shall go with Red Label. This boda guy who was listening attentively, confidently told us, mugende aho muduuka yabayindi.  You go in that Indian Shop behind you. Hearing Indian shop we were more than sure, this was it. We walked minus reading the sign posts because there was too much light.

 We entered with the confidence of Kiptegei entering State House to meet HE after winning gold medals only to find the big indian shop was a Pharmaceutical Shop. I gave up.

Nice read dear friends

LANGUAGE BURRIER

 

Knowing that not knowing a language is a barrier happens once you are in a situation that requires you to know that language you don't know. I happen to have interacted with people who speaking different languages and I must add that I can comfortably speak over 7 Ugandan languages whereas internationally apart from English and Kiswahili, I can only pick a few words in French and some little Spanish. 

A friend of mine of Rwandan origin who grew up in Masaka - Uganda once told me how she went to Kigali and needed to use a moto as they call boda bodas there. Yes she could speak Kinyarwanda fluently but because, like in Uganda, Kinyarwanda has been infiltrated by some french words especially among town dwellers, it was not going to be your daily casual walk in the park.

So the lady who is at Remera asks the boda guy, that how much it was to Town (Kigali City Centre) in Kinyarwanda. Nangahe kujya mumuji? The Boda guy tells her ni cinq cent (500 Rw Francs) but poor lady didn't know an ounce of french and having alot of Ugandan influence she had to negotiate.. oya ndaguha magana'tanu (No I will give you 500Rw Francs) The boda guy also comfortably told the lady ngaho icara tugende ... Fine you can sit and we go. They rode smoothly to her distination. However, something keep itching her mind why the guy accepted her offer immediately.  It was until she reached home and asked a cousin who had grown up in Kigali and therefore knew french that she realised cinq cent was actually the same as magana'atanu. What an embarrassment. I am sure many have experienced this or something related to this. Crazy world.

So, yours truly got a opportunity to study a short course in the Holy Land as they Jews call their country, Israel. It was a 2 weeks course in International Project Planning & Management, from Galilee International Management Institute ((GIMI).  A short period but the scope of coverage was more extensive than our typical semester system covers. Every second you waste you end up eating into your time. If you delay doing a task, you will find when your meal card has expired. If you are supposed to entre the dining hall at 7:15pm and finish at 7:45pm, should you go there at 7:46pm, your meal card will be retained and you won't get food. If you have an assignment, which are done online, once it clocks time out, the computer turns itself off before you even save the little work you may have done. Very serious people there.

Now back to my language experience.  In our cohort, there were different students from across the world but majority were Africans and whereas we were doing the same course, the mode of instruction was different.  Some did it in French, others in Portuguese and then us in English.  So there was this very beautiful lady from Angola. I must add that she fitted in all the attributes I regard as a complete beauty. We stayed in the same apartment, same floor, door after door. We also had the same timetable for everything apart from classes. So going to the dining we would move together, evening excursions together, everything. Unfortunately we couldn't even greet each other verbally for spoke Portuguese and the only word I knew was Comusta. Not enough to mean anything, anyways.

I would wave at her or even knock on her door to wake her up and she would do the same but in sign language. I was always feeling I should tell her how I felt about her, which I did actually but in English and everything was agazi.  Even when I looked at her closely, it wasn't hard to see that the feeling was mutual. Life went on like this for all the time we were there. On our last day after graduation, we had our final excursion to the Dead Sea, we carried our bags to the waiting bus, sat next to each other through out the journey from Galilee to Dead Sea, through the West Bank. We went to swim in the Dead Sea - By the way the Dead Sea is below Sea level so even if you don't know how to swim you still can float. Don't be misled I ain't no swimmer.  She dint swim but was at the shores laughing at me with her well shaped dental formula spiced by a glittering black gum that made me melt inside. If you get the grip.

From the Sea, at around 7PM we walked to the bus holding hands BUT NOT TALKING still. Entered the bus gazing at each other like idiots till we reached Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. She was using a different plane back to Luanda, Angola and I was on my way back to Uganda aboard Ethipian Airways. Magically we hugged for about 5 minutes i looked straight into her eyes and saw a tear drop. She gave me piece of paper where she had scribbled some words which I couldn't read apart from the email address she had written at the end of the letter. When I reached Uganda I unpacked my stuff but failed to get the paper to use Google assist or even reply her via email. 8 years later, I have never heard from her and vice versa.

That's how not knowing a language can be a barrier. 

The baganda say okutambula kulaba, okudda kunyumya.. when you travel you experience and can only talk about what you saw. Please make sure your children learn as many international languages as they possibly can.

let my brother get it too

 ```An African man was given the opportunity to ask for

anything he wants

 

The condition was that, whatever he gets, his brother would receive double.

He thought about asking for a house; but he did not like thought of his brother having two houses.

so he thought about asking for a million dollars to go to his

bank account; but again, he was unhappy with the thought of his

brother having two million dollars in his account.

The man sat down

and thought hard, “What can I have and still be better than my brother when he has double?”

so, he thought of having one of his eyes removed so that his

brother might have his two eyes gouged.

This sounds like a very unlikely story; however, this is the typical mentality that has set Africans backward for ages and caused witchcraft to thrive in Africa.

an African wants to be better than his brother at all costs

The African man is only careful:

-to share his beer, not his books;

-to spread his diseases, and not the cure;

-to transfer his problems, and

not the solution

when an African man fails, he wishes his brother same fate so that he won't be the only one who had tasted the bitterness of failure.

An African man is happy when evil besets his brother.

When most African men succeed, they want to enslave their

brothers; they try to make the class gap between them and their brothers widen daily.

An African man wants to outperform his

brother in every area and most African men do not want to let their brothers have any chances of success because they want to be the only ones succeeding.

when an African man gets to sit on a seat of authority, he wants to

keep it to himself and refuse to give anyone else a chance to sit.

in African schools, students who can afford textbooks do not let other students borrow their textbooks because they want to stay top of the class or they don't want to give another student the opportunity to perform better than them.

when one independently discovers the way to success, an African man who refused to give directions would still do all he can to stand in the way of that success.

An African man is ready to spend money to intimidate his brother and make him look like nothing.

africa will become better; When we begin to share books to pass knowledge, not just our drinks.

When we begin to let others also lead without our influence.

When we begin to give the same quality

of food and clothing to both our children and our maids.

when we let our servants eat on the same table with us.

When the boss lets

his lower staff get paid before him.

Africa can become progressive when we begin to look out for each other rather than stand in the way of one another.

when we can sincerely say, “let my brother get it too, and if I can't get it, let me help him get it

 The Problem with Africa```👌👌👌👌