Who is counting on who?

Ebenezer T. Bifubyeka (Ten)
Biafra, Mbarara, Western Uganda

She cries out:
I clean the air; ‘thank you!’
I regulate climate; ‘we wonder!’
I control floods; ‘we now talk about you on that!’
I filtrate water; ‘keep it up!’
I cry tears of landslides, droughts and floods; ‘please stop it!’
I make poor people more poor; claim lives and property; ‘God forbid!’
My condition of life is responsible for over 90% of your diseases; ‘are you a witch?’
I have decided to change climate; ‘you have no choice, we must harvest you!’

I nurture you with fruits of my resources, your biggest employer; ‘thank you!’
You dismantle me over foreign investors; ‘they are more significant!’
My wealth is natural capital; but you have been poor and you are still poor’ ‘True!’
As Nelson Mandela tells you, poverty is not natural but man-made; never blame me!
Do your activities on me eradicate poverty or escalate it? ‘Not sure; but we’ve heard!’

Have you counted my resources you are counting on?
Is your distribution and allocation of my resources leading to prosperity for all?
You offer 0.5% of your budget to my son, Tourism, your top foreign exchange earner!
Out of your 2008-2009 budget worth trillions of shillings, you allocated 0.58% to me!
As forests, is your budget appreciating my economic value worth about sh468 billion?

95% of you depend on my wood for energy, excluding trees for timber and construction,
I remain your asset base on which 80% of you depend! Should I wait for Obama?
All your eyes on UNDP; all ears tune to UNEP; where are your local hearts glued to?
Your national budget’s mind is elsewhere; can you exist without me?

Are you researching on how many of my rare plant and animal species get extinct daily?
Who cares about the imminent extinction of Batwa? What of my poisoned lions?
My fish species are running to extinction! I don’t see you mourn for that!

‘Wakama ente oragiha obunyansi,’ Bakiga say (‘If you milk a cow, you give it grass’).
The poor plow me, the rich harvest me, I don’t gain; ‘we can’t be equal,’ you tell me!
Sorry if you expect to attain the millennium goals with this kind of treatment!
I feed most local authorities; how much do you pay me? Only a huge ‘Sorry!’
I donate products but I’m not let to expand; my sons are raped to death; ‘sad!’
The fact remains, I’m in control of calculating equations of ‘prosperity for all!’
Bottom line: Uganda is the most endowed state; with poor people! Discuss…