We bought the convoy and buried our own

He was not a poor man. That is what hurts most.

When his back started aching, this son of Tooro did not sit to boil herbs. He did what any Ugandan with money does.

He went to those big hospitals in Kampala. Cold air-conditioning at the door, glass door that opens by itself, polite English at reception, and a bill that can kill faster than disease.

He paid. They laid him on the table. Switched on X-ray and MRI. Then a good Ugandan doctor looked at the films and said words that should shame us: “We see nothing.”

Think about that night. 2 am. Pain sitting on your spine like a stone. You have paid, and a seemingly qualified man tells you your pain is not there. He was dying. And Uganda could not see it.

Because he had money, he got what 45 million Ugandans never get – a chance to know what is killing you. He bought a ticket to Nairobi. In Nairobi there is a machine. It does not care if you are minister or boda rider. It does not speak Luganda or Runyoro. It just sees.

PET scan. That machine did not say “we see nothing.” It said “I see cancer eating your bones.”

One year later, he was dead. But at least he died with a name for his pain. How many die daily without knowing the name? How many mothers in Bududa are told “it’s just back pain” until they cannot stand? The Observer wrote on X post we should nail on every government gate: “A PET scan costs about $3m (Shs 11.7bn) or approximately 17 Land Cruisers.” Seventeen. Not 100. 17!

Picture 17 white Land Cruisers in a line. Brand new, smelling of plastic. Each costing over Shs 650 million. Each to carry one man from mansion to office. Now picture one cold room in Mulago with one machine. Same price as 17 cars. No fuel allowance. No per diem.

No driver. It will work 15 years, day and night, telling 45 million Ugandans “I see something, we can save you.” Between 17 cars and 45 million lives, we chose cars. Go to any district on a Tuesday morning. Check the parking.

RDC, Deputy RDC, DISO, CAO, LCV Chairman. New Land Cruisers. Dusty tyres, shining roofs, washed with taxpayer money. We buy them every year. No MP says no because every MP wants one. But a PET scan for the whole Republic, from Kisoro to Karamoja? Zero.

How do we tell the mother sleeping on the floor in Mulago that we can buy a car for a man who attends funerals for the President, but cannot buy a machine that would have seen her cancer when it was small as a groundnut?

Uganda is not poor. Uganda spends wrongly. Okot p’Bitek warned us in Song of Lawino: “Ocol says he is a modern man… But he has forgotten how to carry his own mother who is sick.”

That is us. Vision 2040, glass buildings, but we forgot our sick mother. Mary Karooro Okurut writes in The Price of Our Silence: “A country does not collapse when thieves steal. It collapses when honest people watch thieves and learn to clap.”

When did we learn to clap for convoys? A Land Cruiser serves one person. On our roads, four to five years, then scrap. Fuel Shs 400,000 weekly, driver Shs 1m monthly, tyres, service.

In five years, over Shs 1 billion. It cures nothing. A PET scan serves 45 million people. It lasts 10-15 years. One specialist. In 15 years, hundreds of thousands scanned. Catch cancer early, treatment is 10 times cheaper.

No land sold. No flights to India. It pays itself in under two years. One is vanity. One is life. Why vanity? Because in Uganda power must be seen. Karooro calls it “The theatre of power” in When the Drums Stop Beating.

A minister without a convoy feels naked. A PET scan is quiet, in a basement. So, to leaders, it is useless. And the ugliest part: The man who signs for 17 more Land Cruisers will never suffer his decision. When his back aches, he won’t queue at Kiruddu at 4 am.

His secretary will call Entebbe and be flown business class to Nairobi, London, India. He will lie in the machine his government refused to buy. They privatized survival. Patriotism is for the poor to die for. Treatment is for the rich to fly for.

When your father dies, they will come in V8s, give you Shs 500,000, and drive away in the car that would have been his machine. And we will say “Thank you Mheshimiwa.” Okot p’Bitek says in Song of Ocol: “The pumpkin in the old homestead must not be uprooted!” Our pumpkin is compassion. We uprooted it and planted Land Cruisers where we should have planted life. Until we see a convoy and feel anger, not awe.

Until we see a hospital with no drugs and feel shame. Until we choose one machine that sees cancer over 17 cars that see nothing… We will keep driving in first-class luxury to bury our people in third-class graves.

mukphix@gmail.com

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