For the last three weeks, we have been running ‘Exhibitions’on social media, especially on Twitter.
The idea started with a tweet, which many could have taken for a joke. Their doubts were not far from mine. For I was only throwing a stone into the bush.
That is why I had to say that ‘a friend of mine’ was planning to hold a pothole exhibition, and that what I wanted to do on Twitter was only preliminary. It was a fictitious friend. The response from the Twitter public was exciting, and overwhelming.
All I needed now is to make the idea clearer, and to impress it upon everyone that we were as serious as mosquitoes in the dark. Fortunately, it doesn’t take much effort to ask an orphan to cry.
With a few preliminary reminders to Kampala residents to take as many photos as they could over the weekend as we prepared to start on Monday 17th April, I could tell that the fire was already catching.
The idea was to get armed with pothole exhibits and wait for any of the responsible bodies and individuals to tweet so that we flood their tweets with pothole images, to make their Twitter spaces look as ugly and shameful as Kampala. I had learnt that KCCA’s spokesperson, Simon Kasyate, was looking for me.
Knowing his sweet tongue, I didn’t want to give him early audience, lest he convinces me into calling it off. I avoided him like a pothole, until it was late to talk about stopping it.
When Monday came, KCCA stayed away from tweeting. So we had to go for Plan B – tweeting the pictures allover. I started off exhibiting on the President’s tweet about the Sudan war.
It was a video of an ambulance struggling to get to Kiluddu Referral Hospital through the sprinklings of road in potholes on Salaama Road. Then it rained potholes of all manner of shapes, sizes, and depths all over Twitter.
On the third day, we agreed to start supplying humour out of the grim photos. Of course, Ugandans need no special invitation to a laughing event. They might even climb the fence. We had a chance to laugh about the incredible face of what we call a capital city.
We saw beaches, ships, and fish ponds creatively photoshopped into the city. Some planted actual banana trees in roads. We thought these would as well have the effect of embarrassing the concerned authorities, if embarrassment is still possible in them.
In a short time, the Exhibition was the talk of every media house. KCCA issued a press statement, explaining herself. There wasn’t much, but you could tell the pressure. Parliament discussed the issue.
And later the President ordered the immediate release of 6 billion for filling potholes. Little, but reaffirming our resolve, and emboldening the exhibition idea. Giving KCCA two months to first sort themselves, we voted where to take our torch next.
The undisputed winner was the Health sector. One of the things that have come up strikingly in the exhibitions is that there are so many Ugandans burning with pains and frustrations for which they have no outlet. Street protests have been literary criminalized, and with the ‘drone’ phenomenon, many people are careful what they say and where.
The exhibitions seem to give them a ray of hope and alternative ways of speaking. I do not agree with those eulogizing street protests though, both the virtual and the physical have their own roles, strengths and weaknesses.
In their fear, many people are looking for a ‘savior’ who would be willing to carry their cross, or to lead them out of the desperation. I have been receiving an average of about 30 messages inbox everyday. Many are requesting me to talk about their problems. Some are simply thanking me, while many are begging me to never betray them.
So high is the desperation that even people who don’t know who Spire really is are already suggesting: ‘Spire for President, Spire for Lord Mayer, Spire for MP – Kampala Central. They are yearning for caring leadership. Attendant to some of these genuine expressions was also the suspicion that Spire must be up to something. They wonder if I am not scheming for a political position.
You can read the suspicions of a person whose heart has been severally broken before. They hardly trust. They’ve seen so many political opportunists. Now they can hardly believe that one can genuinely be concerned about the well-being of fellow human beings without scheming for something. They suspect you have political ambitions.
They know that we’ve become a transactional society where everything and everyone has a price. That no one works out of altruism. They feel it’s just a matter of time, and I will join the litany of heartbreakers that are now belching their way.
Then my friends in academia! Quite an interesting lot. Many have reduced themselves to mere spectators in matters concerning national governance, neither do they want to see a colleague delve out into public spaces – which they feel are not theirs.
They spend quality hours theorising about a society they never want to actively contribute to changing – selfishly imagining that someone will come and bring the change they desire.
Some have appreciated the exhibition and chanted on. Some think they are very special with their many degrees; too special to be seen mixing with the everyday.
I would see some of them discussing my activism in their groups, with a sense that they understood what was going on better than anyone else. Some found ways of dismissing my work to justify their silence: ‘Spire is up to a political scheme; he is seeking for attention; he is NUP; …’It is a nasty picture.
Many of us are in chains of sorts, but academics are in bigger ones – facilitated by an illusion of freedom embedded in a thick mix of hubris and chronic fear.
jsssentongo@gmail.com
The author is a teacher of philosophy
Source: The Observer
Share this content: