Of town-folk and puffy egos

Over the weekend, I was invited to the just concluded Bayimba International Festival of the Arts 2015 in Kampala, to constitute part of a panel of five tasked with guiding discourse at a 'Poetry Symposium', on the art and its place in emerging African polities.

The audience was a conflation of art-savvy folks; practitioners and promoters, as well as the odd, curious, clueless onlooker.

This blog-comment is inspired, or rather provoked, by a stray statement made by a passionate audience-participant during the feedback session at the end of the discussion.

In responding to how art could be packaged to appeal to the broader sections of society, coupled with the removal of its arcane trappings – this commentator argued how art (and particularly poetry), is supposed to be a force for social change, with the foreseeable benefit of ‘lifting’ the rural-masses of Africa up to the ‘enviable living-standard’ of metropolis denizens like ourselves, the symposium's patrons.

While at first the comment infuriated me, for its condescension if not its outright sanctimoniousness; the angst soon abated and was replaced by a mellow pity.

Pity - for the vainglorious, stale-cultured, mind-automated, parochial and overly arrogant town-dweller who thinks himself superior to the simple rural-person in his rustic, manual and un-inhibited world.

The comments got me to thinking how misguided and even foolish we town-dwellers can be in evaluating the essential value of life and its experiences; ignoring simple fundamentals like community-centered happiness, health of family relations, mutual-trust and good-will; in our blind-haste to apply mindless slogans and indices like GDP, Per Capita, Productivity, growth rate etc. etc.

While the native in Arua, Gomba and Kisoro is primarily concerned and largely content with ploughing the earth for only as much as his family needs, harvesting crop with his neighbors, having brew in his pot, and dancing or fabling at the communal fireplace – the 'cityman' is insatiable in his appetites.

He seeks to constantly prove superiority over his fellows; a grander car, a bigger house, a sexier wife – his motto in life seems to be basic – outwit, outgun, outlive everybody else!

And it is very difficult to show this African ‘city-man’ how narrow his world is if he constantly thinks that happiness lies in watching European Club football every weekend, ensuring his wife’s nails are manicured and her hair permed, and buying plastic toys for his children to amuse themselves.

This city-man is often oblivious of the fact; that unlike the ‘villager’ whose meals are fresh, un-salted and organic, whose water is a pure gift from the depths of the earth and children more inventive because their play-ground is the entire village; his is a constricted world that limits his as well as his family’s potential.

In the rurals, children of both rich and 'poor' play barefoot in the open fields; rolling in dark loamy soils and splashing about in clear streams. The greatest risk to play is a thorn stuck in a foot. 

The town-man's children however, if he is a high-ender, have nothing but a few square-meters of concrete to play on, where the slightest fall implies an open sore; and if he is a low-ender living in the slum - the children's play things are essentially pieces of broken glass, sewer water and used condoms!

The city-dweller often lives in neighborhoods rife with insecurity and paranoia – where people fence and gate themselves in because they distrust and mistrust all others; where husband and wife use separate bedchambers, and children meet their fathers once a month.

The town-man lives in over-crowded cities where the air is one envelope of a foul miasma, where the water is poisoned both by the home’s in-hygiene and the water-works' chemicals; where the next person he meets along the street may clobber him to death, where his children must play indoors – behind walls and gates, lest they are molested or decapitated.

But seriously, there should be huge billboards at the points where the major highways connecting from the hinterlands join the city - at Spear Motors, Kyengera or Kawempe - reading;
'' Welcome to Kampala - where living is one endless purchase ...''

Hmmm - oba nsabbe gavumenti enyambe? 

African towns are nothing but hell-holes of rape, theft, hatred, mistrust and poisoned water and air.

And yet we, arrogant 'urbanites', have the effrontery and trenchancy to say we are better than the 'ruralites', simply because we can wear a pleated-skirt and polo-sweater to a cocktail party at the Sheraton, buy a few tablets of Swiss-chocolate for the girls we court, and wear red or blue nylon shirts branded with European Football Club insignia over the weekend!

I say – baloney!