THE SHOESHINE
I wonder why everyone reasons no further than their noses these days. How many times are we presented with an opportunity to make money and instead of grabbing it with two hands, we splash it all over the news and cause the people responsible to go into hiding!

I’m talking about the recent stories all over the news. The pastors, Seya’s posters, the Balaalo. Name it. Now what clever people should have done is simple. For starters government should have commissioned a study to find out the revenue earning potential of all the churches in the country.

This would have been the best bonna bagagawale scheme the country has ever seen. First of all, the consultants sent out to the field to carry out the study would get hefty allowances and we all know that allowances have never harmed anyone.

Also since most of the roads are impassable, they’d be provided with four wheel drive cars and this we all know translates into profits for the middlemen and the car dealers, not to mention the kickbacks that the people issuing the tender would be given. Again more people would have been made happy in the process.

The consultants armed with their laptops would camp at some posh hotel and, since they can’t be bothered to go interviewing villagers, would subcontract the work to some jobless university graduates. These would in turn cook up some of the information so as to avoid spending very many days in the field and thus save on the money. There’s no need to explain how handy such money is to our clansmen who have no jobs even after carrying heavy degrees.

Because the people who gathered the data for the survey think like the rest of us, the unanimous conclusion in the report would be that these churches make a lot of money and taxing them would raise more money for the state coffers (I wonder where that place is). Within no time Madam Kagina and her boys would be tasked to swing into action supported by a cast of hooligans from KCC and at the end of the day, even the government will be happy.

The same could have been applied to the Balaalo problem and potholes, because I’m sure Chogm is only being organised so that when all the visitors are here and have been shown the newly painted roads, our politicians will tell them that they could have done better but the money wasn’t there.

And there is no guessing that the visitors will ask them to conduct a study to properly understand the problem and recommend solutions - something we’ve always known. But we’re not that clever and that’s why instead the taxes are on basket makers in the village, and university graduates will continue blaming the government for not giving them jobs - as if it forced them to go to school in the first place.

klashoeshine@yahoo.com