Ssuuna Hood
The other day, my father called me into the sitting room. He was already seated, newspaper folded beside him, glasses pushed up like he was about to read scripture, but instead, he just looked tired. Not the “I didn’t sleep well” kind of tired, this was the tired of watching history repeat itself like a badly written TV series.
He leaned back, sighed deeply, and said, “You know I was 20 when Museveni became
president?” I blinked. “Eh?”
“Ya, you heard right , Twenty. I had just finished school. The country was a mess, Idi Amin had come and gone, Obote had returned with his usual drama. People were tired. And then Museveni showed up like the new guy in the neighborhood who promises to fix potholes and ends up bulldozing the whole road.”
I laughed. He didn’t. “He said he was here to rescue us. That Uganda had suffered enough. My son, we clapped. We believed. We actually believed. Imagine that.”
My dad paused to sip his mujaaja tea mixed like the bitterness needed reinforcement. He went on. “That was 1986. Now I have kids, and you are all grown up. Some of you have jobs. Some of you are thinking of fleeing the country. And the same man is still sitting in State House like it’s his ancestral home. What kind of landlord refuses to move out even when the lease expired two decades ago?”
I tried to interrupt with something hopeful reminding him that SC-Villa recently won a major trophy after a 20 year drought, but he quickly waved it off.
“Eh, don’t give me that ‘maybe next election’ nonsense. We’ve danced that dance. The constitution had term limits. Gone. Age limits. Gone. Next, it’ll be ‘no human limits.’ We’re being ruled by a permanent fixture. Like a pothole that became part of the road design.”
He laughed to himself, bitterly this time. ”We have lived entire lives under one man’s rule. We got jobs, raised children, lost friends, got wrinkles, bought land, built houses, paid taxes, paid bribes, went to funerals, survived COVID, ooh basically everything under Museveni.”
“And what hurts most,” he said, setting his cup down, “is that now, even YOU are living the same story. My own children are now adults under the same regime. And if we don’t change anything, your children, my grandchildren are also be born into this political Groundhog Day.”
He sighed again. “It’s not a presidency anymore. It’s a lifestyle.”
I asked him what he wanted.
He shrugged. “I’m too old to riot. But at least I can talk. You, write. You young people like writing and tweeting. Maybe it will reach someone before we’re all too tired to care.”
So here I am, writing. Because my father is tired. And frankly, so am I. Not just of Museveni, but of the idea that Uganda belongs to one man and his family and the rest of us are just tenants waiting for eviction notices from history.
