You are mad!

By Ebenezer T. Bifubyeka.

EVER seen a lunatic? I am sure you have. Perhaps you have ever mocked or laughed at one. Not knowing that you are mad too! Have you ever beaten or abused someone? If so, consider yourself a compliant member of the lunatic community!

I don’t remember laughing or mocking any mad person. But I do remember writing about a mad woman who delivered triplets! Am I mad too? How about you? If you have not laughed, mocked or written about lunatics, you must have been conquered by anger!

If so, how do you judge anger? I believe anger is a symptom of madness! And this is where I base to conclude that everyone on our beautiful planet ‘earth’ – is mad but some are more serious in ‘madness-business’ than others! It’s this madness that make us sin!

Do you see yourself sin? Others see you sin! Some sane people expose their high degrees of insanity by killing! Mad people are not only the lunatics that roam the streets naked or in tatters. Even anger or bankruptcy can upset your mind anytime and you run amok!

Anger can control one’s face, turns it ugly and the fellow goes mad! All people are mad but the levels of madness vary! Is your level of madness low, average or high? If you met a person fighting or abusing another, would you differentiate him from lunatics?

A Muganda would say, “Zivudeko!” to imply that the ‘mental-wires’ are disconnected! You may not be serious in madness like lunatics but your small volume of madness can rise! A minor character that drives you to sin or offend others - emanates from madness.

Many people commit all sorts of sacrileges. When medically examined, they are found normal! Maybe the amount of madness must be at a certain level in order to be medically detected? If there is no such standard level, then the ‘madness test’ needs adjustments!

· Live indicators of madness in Uganda:

Recently, a father aged 41 in Rubindi in Mbarara district ‘rapes’ his daughter of four years! When arrested, he pleads to the Local Council one court that he was tempted by his child’s smooth thigh! It flabbergasts me to hear that this man is mentally tested and is found normal! Is he “really normal” – although he is found to be?

More so, a house wife slaps her maid thrice on the face. She then leaves home with her husband, leaving their 1.5 year-old child with the maid she has assaulted. The house girl decides to revenge. She wraps the innocent child in banana fibers like banana bread, puts it in a saucepan and places it on a cooker! She “cooks” the innocent child like food!!!

After getting the “food” ready, she leaves for the village! Her hungry bosses return for lunch, they call the maid to no avail. The housewife picks the “food” from the cooker to serve it. Opening the food, she just faints and so does the husband! Extreme insanity!
Another man in Bushenyi district kills three children of his brother-in-law for failing to pay him sh200,000! Certainly this indicates symptoms of mental sickness in this guy although he is not psychiatrically sick! Don’t you think he has a problem ‘upstairs?’

As if that is not enough lunacy, another 34-year-old man in Kyabugimbi in Bushenyi beat his 33-year-old wife over palm wine, which his nephew had brought him from Nasarawa State in Nigeria. The wife had served it to her six visiting Bakiga in-laws from Kabale.

The irate father of two jabbed the generous wife on the right breast. She fell to the ground and defecated in her G-string! She wrapped the faeces in a black polythene bag alias Kaveera (facing a ban in Uganda) and took it to report the obstinate husband to police.

Reaching there she started straight away: “my husband has punched me on the breast. I defecated like a hooligan! And this is the exhibit!” she said and placed the stinking package of sheet on the police’s reception desk! “You hoodlum, take away your filthy stuff!” “Did you call me a ‘hoodlum?” “Yes,” one officer replied. “You are a lout!” she barked as she ran away, with her ‘packet’ in the right hand. It was a story of the year!

Insanity in schools: students from a school I won’t mention here for safety purposes, stole a white and black goat and painted it with black shoe polish until it all turned black! They left it tied to the tree near the owner’s residence but he couldn’t recognise it! At night, they returned to slaughter and share it amongst themselves - only to be nabbed by vigilant owners. Each of the perpetrators earned himself 12 ugly strokes of the lash before they were expelled! It startles me whether their parents sent them to school to steal or study?

Madness in the Church! You have seen these new religions splitting mainly from Church of Uganda. The new ones pray loudly like they are possessed! Whether sane or insane, such people are misguided and its time government investigated them! Why?

Because it’s obvious that one cannot ask for something from his superior while shouting at the top of his/her voice. For example, can you shout at your Dad to give you school fees? If people can talk gently to George Bush, then why should they shout to God who is a trillion times or even more than a “quintillion” (1,000,000,000,000,000,000) times greater than Bush? This is food for thought! Try to reason it out in your free time.

In my opinion, the madness in these mushrooming Churches may culminate into dangerous cults like Joseph Kibwetere’s. Hundreds of parishioners perished on March 17, 2000 in his Church at Kanungu! Are we heading to more crazy massacres of this kind?

Besides, people are turning such churches into business ventures. Formerly, reverends were called by God to serve. Today, they are called by ‘greed to satisfy!’ As you read this piece, pastors who demand lots of money from worshipers in exchange of blessings – are the talk of the town in Kampala. It no longer matters for a pastor or a reverend to be a genuine ‘born-again’ Christian before he becomes one! Sad! This is a tip for writers.

A man in Ibanda district catches a reverend ‘sleeping’ with his wife! He hides in a cupboard. The irate husband locks him inside until morning! He hires four men to carry him to his Church where he is chased out of the cupboard, naked before his flock! He runs away. He is missing in the village and nobody knows his whereabouts!

Look at madness that has unfolded from my mother church at Ruharo in Ankole Diocese. The diocesan Electoral College has nominated two blood brothers to replace the outgoing bishop! What does this indicate to the believers and members of this church? Strange!
Madness has crawled to pastor’s homes. The press recently reported a rich Pastor in Kampala who publicly divorced his wife for cheating on him. According to the story, the wife was having sexual ‘affairs’ with a manicurist, of all “professionals!” Wacky indeed!

Leave alone fornication. Last month, I heard and watched a report on WBS TV about a man who threw his sons - aged seven and nine – into a pond! The boys drowned and their bodies were retrieved by police the next day! Their father was nowhere to be seen and he was still on the run. Tell me; how do you differentiate this man’s madness from lunatics’?

However, many middle-aged men in Mbarara, mostly taxi drivers and riders, normally masticate herbs - like cows! They believe that garlic stimulates sex and help prolong sexual intercourse! Their teeth have turned greenish! This is more than being weird.

I have also unearthed some element of madness among highly respected public servants. In late 1990s, we had a professor at Makerere University who was madly in love with alcohol. This guy could booze and sleep in trenches along the road, until morning! Jeez!

Imagine, the whole professor - armed with a “pointed high degree,” I mean the doctorate of philosophy (PhD) - the topmost degree in academia. No matter some DJs call that PhD: ‘Permanent head damage;’ this guy abuses it by turning into a slave of alcohol!” Believe me, this is not stupidity neither is it a curse. It’s utter madness!

The university students he teaches also contain units of madness in their mental calabashes: in my former class of Mass Communication (from March 1996 to June 1999), some students would forego lectures and rush to watch a soap opera, “Sunset Beach!”

Was Sunset Beach one of the course units on the curriculum? Wasn’t it madness prompting those students to dodge lectures? How can one forfeit studies that determine the future at the expense of a mere movie? I don’t understand this! How about you?

‘Gifted by nature’ is said of Uganda. Government intends to clear part of the 312skm Mabira forest and plant sugarcane! Yet we have a disaster of load shedding on the plate! The paucity of hydro electricity follows the decline of the water levels in Lake Victoria.

Clearing of forests and wetlands has caused drought, leading to the two-metre decline of the water level in this world’s second largest lake! Instead of thinking of replanting, they think of cutting more trees! And then increase electricity tariffs everyday! Madness!

Think of a neighbour who returns at night, drunk, shouting and howling like a wolf! Besides, in the next door, Mr. X plays music at a loud disco volume! Yet there are many tenants in that storied building! Aren’t there some contents of madness in such tenants?

Madness abroad: In South Africa, the most reputable nation in Africa, an ugly belief has been reported there - that sex with babies - of even weeks or days old - cures AIDS! If this is true, such superstition boosts the spread of diseases to the girl-generation down there. They are loosing virginity! Dire!

Madness overseas: This is the grand-grandmother of all madness: some men especially in the western world are marrying fellow men! Strange but true! It’s crystal clear that a man has no female’s sexual organ. Where does the husband insert his ‘mingling stick?’ And among the ‘male-couple,’ who acts as a wife? Tell me this is not extreme madness!

As if that is not mad enough, a man married to a woman demands for anal sex!!! He leaves the “‘Ituri’ province” that God created for sex (among other uses) and ‘penetrates’ the anus!!! His ‘thing’ definitely gets smeared with shit! Indeed the whole act is ‘shit!’

Warning: Be careful of pedestrians you meet on the streets. They are mad in one way or the other! They are a time bomb! Watch out because their madness can erupt any time! Never trust them. Don’t trust anybody! Not even me because I don’t trust myself!

·Ends.
Word count: 1,829.