I’m also important after all!

Just last week I experienced a life changing moment. I have no idea how life changing it was, but I remember thinking so at the moment. I was walking on some dusty road ( obviously it had to be so – you know your city), doing some math’s in my head wondering if I would have enough transport back home from town. Then I started weighing how important it was for me to actually go where I was heading. The transport could have been used the next day.

So there my mind was stuck in economics of budgets, costs, reimbursements etc that I didn’t recognize the bicycle coming my way. It was too late to move away from the road. On the other side of the narrow road, was a hen minding its own business. Wonder what was on its mind – politics of hens? I didn’t seem to care about it all the same, both our lives were at stake -and mine at more stake because I was aware of what was happening. The one thing on my mind was how people would talk about me; that I died of a bicycle accident? Some deaths are so low profile, people wouldn’t even mourn. Obviously, I knew the cyclist was going to save the hen for two reasons. It’s a delicious creature and the other because killing it would win him mob justice.

Poor me!  I stood and waited for my wrath. I had even closed my eyes and then I heard a woman uttering but the only word I coded then was enkoko. Poor thing! First thing I saw was it hopping in pain. I felt pity for it but that was the first time I ever felt very important in my entire life! I had survived. I felt like a hero! 

Someone chose to save my life over a hen’s which some people would have battled for and perhaps one getting himself killed in the process?

A hen! That delicious thing that when well prepared can make you restless until you have it in your grip. That cyclist may never know what he did, in fact he must have left upset and sometimes I worry that perhaps, he regrets having saved me instead! As matter of fact when I got back to my senses I fully coded what the lady had actually said; that ‘gwe, enkoko eyo esobola n’okusasurira abana bo sikulufiizi’. 

That was an insult of sorts, to the savior and the saved. How could she say a ka hen could educate all his kids? Even if it was long term that would be very long term, like after the next two generations. And then about me, it’s like she doesn’t give a damn-not like she should have, but then compared to the hen, I stand more chances of becoming the President of this country – don’t argue. I could also live longer than the hen and I stand more chances of being remembered and celebrated; nanti, ‘basiima ogenze’.

To the cyclist, you rock! You deserve a medallion come Independence Day.