Class will not teach your child.
Money will not teach your child.
Power will not teach your child.
Work will.
I planned what my children will be. And that is what they are now.
What is remaining is Charm and Luck from God, and from the gods of Kifuuta, Kyotera, Buddu, and the Goan gods where my great-grandfathers' maternal blood comes from.
From Primary One to late Secondary, I mingled my kids in all types of construction on site. They lifted cement. They mixed concrete. They sat in site meetings as support staff with a small notebook. I made them prepare payrolls.
And they would whisper to me: Taata, is this big salary for Eng. Luswata, or is this fat salary for Nalubula the Accountant?
That small question was a driving screw that entered their brain. That screw made them become 3 Engineers in one roof, an HR / Industrial Psychologist, and a Purchasing Officer - ALL trained in Uganda. I have never asked anyone with my social connections for a job for my kids. They don't look for jobs. Jobs look for them. Because they were employed at age 8 - employed in learning life.
NOW LOOK AT THE ASIANS - THEY UNDERSTOOD THIS 100 YEARS AGO.
Asians train their children in shops, workshops, hotels, garages, carpentry. From toddler to adult, the child is in the business.
That's why India and China have the biggest cottage industry in the world. It is not government money. It is family training.
A child in Gujarat knows how to count stock before he knows how to count in school. A child in China knows how to repair a phone before he learns to write an essay about a phone.
I have a close friend of mine, a Lebanese in Zambia. I have known him for 15 years - Azim. His son, from Grade 1 until UNZA University, every evening he is in charge of the wholesale business. Not playing PlayStation. In charge. Counting. Selling. Managing workers.
And the business is very strong and very successful. Why? Because generations and generations carry on the business when they are still toddlers. The father is not building a shop for himself. He is building a son for the shop.
And look at us Africans? We are on rampage, taking kids to overseas universities. 80% come back with weird characters, challenging the status quo. They come back with an accent, but without a culture.
I got drunk in engineering because my Jjajja Naidoo would go with me on all sites. I was his 1st Muzukulu. He taught me how to make a wall straight while other kids were watching TV.
And I love cattle and coffee because my Jjajjas - both paternal and maternal - used to be with me while milking or harvesting coffee. They would tell me:
"This coffee is paying your school fees."
"This milk bought you the first bicycle."
My Jjajja Muguluma would make me push his bicycle on the hill and not give me a lift to church. He was not being cruel. He was training my legs and my heart. He taught me how to feed the cattle and to look after his coffee.
Can you imagine? That coffee is still standing today. 50 years later. The coffee Jjajja planted with my small hands is still paying fees for another generation. That is what I call a future.
THIS IS WHY WORLD LEADERS AND GREAT FAMILIES FAIL:
- Mobutu Sese Seko. Built palaces with gold taps in Gbadolite. Took his children to Switzerland. Taught them class, money, power. Never taught them how to plant coffee in Equateur. When he fell, his children could not return. No root.
- Gaddafi. Gave his sons guns before he gave them a hoe. They knew how to command an army, but not how to build a house. When the guns went silent, they had nothing to hold.
- The African Big Man in Kampala today. You have a mansion in Lubowa, Naziba, Seguku, children in Toronto. When you die, they will sell your house, sell your cows, sell even your cemetery, because in Canada they burn the dead and bury in community cemeteries. They will take your wife - their mother - to an Old People's Home, because that is what they saw in Europe - that love is a government van that takes old people away.
They will do it not because they hate you, but because you never trained them to love your soil.
KIFUUTA ORACLES MESSAGE TO THE FUTURE:
Do not lie to yourself that overseas universities will shape the future of your kids.
Overseas will give them a paper. Kifuuta will give them a root.
Take your child to the site. Take your child to the shop. Take your child to the kraal to milk. Take your child to the coffee shamba and tell them, "This coffee will pay your fees."
If you give them only class, they become arrogant.
If you give them only money, they become wasteful.
If you give them only power, they become brutal.
But if you give them work as toddlers, they become generations.
Asians have built cottage industries because their children grew up in cottages working.
Azim's son will own that wholesale in Lusaka for 50 more years because he started counting at 6 years old.
My coffee is still standing because my Jjajja put my hands in the soil at 5 years old.
The future of Uganda is not in Boston, London, or Toronto. It is in your garden in Kyotera, your workshop in Ndeeba, your site in Lugazi.
Build your children there. And the gods of Kifuuta and God in heaven will add the charm and the luck.
Ffe ewaffe Kifuuta Kyotera Buddu, twalula abana nebanaba ne Kyoogo on River Nakyajja in Namaata Forest, at our ancestors' place in Kafuuluma, Kyotera, Buddu.
