Life is not Politics

Cant stop thinking.

That kind of day, bright and sunny at the break of day, but has become overcast. A strange, grayish light all around. It is supposed to be a public holiday.

Well, it is. But my love is already off to work, and I will be following. Soon.

Life is not politics. What do I mean by that?

I have gotten tired of following the ups and downs of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. It is boring, really. They are playing a high stakes game, trying to score points off one another. Like children in the field, their game is ridiculous. So ridiculous that it is painful watching them play, knowing that the result will be the most powerful ‘individual’ on our planet.

But life is not politics. However high the stakes are for Obama and Hillary, they are playing a fools' game of public opinion. It will not change what they are, what they were, before they began playing this stupid game. But, us human beings do mind it. A lot.

Closer at home, I just read of more political games. Uh, not in Zimbabwe, where the farce is continuing. But in Uganda. An article in the government daily talked of a strange incident, when two men drew up at the petrol filling station owned by the guy who challenged the incumbent president at the last elections. As the pump attendant started loading their car with fuel, they got out and stood aside. Soon after, the car engine ‘caught fire’.

Strange fire it was. Nobody was inside the car. The engine was switched off. And the two men ran off, as the Pump attendants put out the fire. Needless to say, the car was not claimed.

Strange happenings. Right out of a thriller.

What makes me think that they were state 'security' agents?

Politics is a strange game, where, for some very apparently huge margins, very stupid things are done. Any wonder that the Zimbabwean opposition leader has opted to stay out of the country as the ‘votes are counted’?

But life is not politics. It is a down to earth struggle, fight for survival. No surrogates employed, or hired. And, so often, it is our very lives on line, in a day to day struggle that is almost too much to believe.

Talked of the neighbour’s wife who is in hospital for a broken leg. She is still there.

Our hospitals are a strange callous mixture of cruelty and inhumanity, where compassion is expected. I am not sure that we have the worst hospitals in Africa, maybe not. I am no expert.

Her leg is broken. She does not have the money for an operation, so she stays on the ward. Waiting for the months it will take to heal. Meanwhile, she looks on at the misery around her, and hears of the struggle to meet ends at home. (With her out of the equation, home finances are not going to be better.) And to get treatment, pain relief, a doctor to push her case, etc, etc, money is needed. A very real struggle. A far cry from the pretend struggles of political surrogates and ideologies.

Life is certainly not politics, nor the pretend struggles of politics.

It is much more than that. Yet human beings are such political animals that they will continue equating life with politics.

Labour day, May 1^st. A new month, and a new beginning, everywhere. Have a good month.

GayUganda