By Arthur Mwenkanya Katabalwa, Stanley Gazemba writes an article; http://www.unaatimes.com/2011/09/an-african-living-away-from-home-a-sad-and-lonely-life-in-the-us/ , about a book, which chronicles the dire life of an African immigrant living in the USA. In the article, a line catches my eye about the book which is meant to make people think about immigrating. It reads, “…….Which is enough reason why all potential immigrants need to read this book; if only to take the scales off their eyes.” I say no immigrant wanting to make a life outside of his or her own motherland should read that book. I am yet to read the whole book but let me react to what Stanley Gazemba highlights.
First of all, any would be immigrant or indeed anyone already immigrated like I have, should ask some fundamental questions as to why they are in the country that they are in. What has taken one away from their motherland? Have they left by force or is it by choice? If it is by force, where one has to run away from persecution of any kind then the argument is different.
Let me on this occasion concentrate on some of us who have moved abroad out of choice. I live in the United Kingdom. And by all intents and purposes, The United Kingdom is my second home. Uganda, my country of origin, will always be where I came from. Now, I live in the UK and I had better make things work here.
When I had just moved to the UK, one of my relatives made a very interesting comment to me. She asked me to put a time limit on how long I was staying in the UK else I would always live in transit, where I would have fridges, shoes and all sorts of things by the doorway waiting to be taken back to Uganda when I returned. They would be there ten years later if I wasn’t putting a time limit.
My father, the Late Rev Laban Bombo once told me while I was wasting time as a teen-ager that life was not a rehearsal. This is it. No replay! So when one decides to leave their country of origin by their own choice to live in the UK, USA or Timbuktu, don’t waste time. I have met so many people here in the UK and in Europe, who have lived away from their countries for decades and in many cases the most productive time of their lives and they curse and reject the countries they are in. What a waste of time! One may as well be in prison. Because what I have seen is that people live like that with one eye on their country of origin and don’t develop what they have because “lumu tujja kuda ku butaka” (one day we will go back home). When?
But let me turn to those who are living abroad or are thinking of moving abroad. First of all, to those wanting to move abroad, the streets in New York, London and certainly in Stoke On Trent, UK where I live are not paved with gold. They are paved with grey concrete slabs!!! One has to work hard. I am not very sure of the state of the economy in my native Uganda at the moment. I haven’t been for a while. I have never worked there for more than seven months in all my adult life. But from what I remember when I last worked there as a fledgling journalist, there wasn’t much for me to do. Apart from passing time sitting at Radio Buganda with Shanks Vivie D or searching for scraps of work from The New Vision. Life was a struggle. If things have improved now, the passage of time and the growth in the economy have helped.
When I moved to the UK, I was made aware that no job was not doable. Thankfully my family had been through the UK for education and on holiday so I was warned. My attitude stopped at London’s Heathrow airport. Bills have to be paid. Back in Uganda, my mother used to ask me to run to the neighbor for a pinch of salt if we had none. Not here. It is just not the done thing. One doesn’t walk about to the neighbor’s house asking for a spoonful of salt. Sorry, but this isn’t Uganda.
The reality abroad is obvious. One is abroad. So, the sooner that one makes that adjustment the better. “Abroad” is just not dire for lonely foreigners. It is dire for everyone who isn’t on a decent income. And that is true for everywhere else. What makes the pill easier to swallow in a country where one is from is that that person will know how to survive. I have been in the company of a British man in Uganda who was broke. I wonder what letters he wrote back home about the situation in Uganda was because he had resorted to selling roasted ground nuts.
The article highlights the loneliness that many immigrants face abroad. This is a major problem. My father once told me that the loneliest place he had ever been to was London’s Trafalgar square. Yet he was standing there with about two thousand other people. One of my loneliest times ever was in Uganda when I went to boarding school at Busoga College Mwiri. Simply because I was away from home. I was just across the Nile not abroad.
Culturally, people need to understand that unlike like in the Ugandan public transport where one will know the life history of ones neighbour before departure, things aren’t done like that. But hope isn’t lost. Not everyone abroad is walking about singular. Efforts need to be made to develop a circle of friends. Attend events and civil functions. The danger always is that people from similar backgrounds tend to congregate together. This has led to ghettos developing. I am also riled by the failure for people to integrate. This experiment of liberals around the world forging a multi cultural society is a failure and a farce in my judgment.
Another viewpoint that was put across was that the poor immigrants are shocked by the weather. Let me put this across this clearly. Even indigenous people are fed up with the weather. It’s atrocious!! Why are European resorts filled to capacity in the summer with people sunning themselves? Because the weather north of a certain parallel is just terrible. When I have been on holiday in the Mediterranean I have been put on a flight back to the UK in a volcanic mood because like any one who has been on a flight descending into any major UK airport, break through the cloud and one finds that the darkness has settled across the land. Descend into Entebbe and one will not see a cloud in sight from Yumbe in the West Nile region where one feels properly in Ugandan airspace. On the other hand though, I look forward to the spring in the UK because everything smells so fresh. The flowers are a riot of color!!!
Living away from home isn’t as bad as it is portrayed. It is hard. Things are not as we have known them back at home but why are so many of us abroad despite the pain and anguish so depressingly put in that book? Because it isn’t that bad.
Wednesday 9 January 2013
Tia Sharp; A life cut short so young.
By Arthur Katabalwa
The following is an article that I wrote about Tia Sharp, a young girl who was found killed in her own grandmothers house.
Tia Sharp was a 12 year old girl hardly known by anyone beyond her south London home. By all accounts, there seemed to be nothing different from this young girl with all girls her age around the country. On 3 August while the rest of us were enjoying the Olympics on TV, Tia was reported missing having last been seen at the home of her grandmother Christine Sharp, 46, in New Addington, Croydon. It has now been reported that the partner of Tia Sharp's grandmother Stuart Hazell has been charged with murdering the 12-year-old.
This is a truly tragic story which sadly has been seen repeated around the country on several occasions. Young girls like her murdered by people with whom they are supposed to feel safe with. Mr Hazell has yet to be convicted of the murder of Tia. But to all this lies another footnote that hasn’t been well documented.
Mr Hazell was partner to Christine Sharp, grandmother to Tia. At some point in the past, Stuart Hazell was also partner to Natalie, mother to Tia. One starts to question how matters came to this.
It has also been reported that Stuart Hazell was a convicted drug offender. My question therefore is why did Christine Sharp invite to her bed a man who had been seeing her daughter and had been convicted of drugs offences? She then later on leaves this young girl in the same house with this man as she goes off to work supposedly a night shift?
Without a doubt relationships between adults fail and that is one of the fallibilities of man. However, in such instances, kids must be protected when these things happen. I wonder what Tia thought of Hazel? I don’t know if she knew him when he was with her mother but surely this matter would have come to light at some point. How then would it make her think about adult relationships? With Hazell bed hoping between daughter and mother would that put relationships in a better light?
I am certainly not perfect. Relations breakdown. After that breakdown there is a point where any level headed adult draws the line where their children’s’ stability is concerned. Where their children's' welfare is of no compromise or discussion. What we see here is a failure to respect that. Tia Sharp was oscillating between two homes where in one of them the male was boyfriend to the women therein at least at a certain point. Catherine Sharp on the other side should have known better not to invite a person convicted of drugs offences into her bed. Worse still, a man who had shared a bed romantically with her daughter Natalie. Children are involved. I find it incredibly sad that we adults fail to respect that and go on to satisfy our libidos.
Louise Thompson a mother from Weston Super Mare said “Sadly I think some people conduct their lives in ways very different to others. The ones that conduct themselves in the widely accepted way [then] get accused of throwing around stereotypes, but I can't help but feels if the cap fits they (the ones who conduct in the less accepted way) should wear it. Awful circumstances but it reminds me of the Shannon Matthews case (thankfully that little girl is alive but what she must have going around her head is anyone's guess). I just find the whole thing leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth”.
Tia Sharp interrupted our viewing of the Olympics. Indeed some people may not have heard of her story just like that of Shafilea Ahmed. Hopefully their tragic deaths will not be drowned out by the roar from the Olympic stadium.
The following is an article that I wrote about Tia Sharp, a young girl who was found killed in her own grandmothers house.
Tia Sharp was a 12 year old girl hardly known by anyone beyond her south London home. By all accounts, there seemed to be nothing different from this young girl with all girls her age around the country. On 3 August while the rest of us were enjoying the Olympics on TV, Tia was reported missing having last been seen at the home of her grandmother Christine Sharp, 46, in New Addington, Croydon. It has now been reported that the partner of Tia Sharp's grandmother Stuart Hazell has been charged with murdering the 12-year-old.
This is a truly tragic story which sadly has been seen repeated around the country on several occasions. Young girls like her murdered by people with whom they are supposed to feel safe with. Mr Hazell has yet to be convicted of the murder of Tia. But to all this lies another footnote that hasn’t been well documented.
Mr Hazell was partner to Christine Sharp, grandmother to Tia. At some point in the past, Stuart Hazell was also partner to Natalie, mother to Tia. One starts to question how matters came to this.
It has also been reported that Stuart Hazell was a convicted drug offender. My question therefore is why did Christine Sharp invite to her bed a man who had been seeing her daughter and had been convicted of drugs offences? She then later on leaves this young girl in the same house with this man as she goes off to work supposedly a night shift?
Without a doubt relationships between adults fail and that is one of the fallibilities of man. However, in such instances, kids must be protected when these things happen. I wonder what Tia thought of Hazel? I don’t know if she knew him when he was with her mother but surely this matter would have come to light at some point. How then would it make her think about adult relationships? With Hazell bed hoping between daughter and mother would that put relationships in a better light?
I am certainly not perfect. Relations breakdown. After that breakdown there is a point where any level headed adult draws the line where their children’s’ stability is concerned. Where their children's' welfare is of no compromise or discussion. What we see here is a failure to respect that. Tia Sharp was oscillating between two homes where in one of them the male was boyfriend to the women therein at least at a certain point. Catherine Sharp on the other side should have known better not to invite a person convicted of drugs offences into her bed. Worse still, a man who had shared a bed romantically with her daughter Natalie. Children are involved. I find it incredibly sad that we adults fail to respect that and go on to satisfy our libidos.
Louise Thompson a mother from Weston Super Mare said “Sadly I think some people conduct their lives in ways very different to others. The ones that conduct themselves in the widely accepted way [then] get accused of throwing around stereotypes, but I can't help but feels if the cap fits they (the ones who conduct in the less accepted way) should wear it. Awful circumstances but it reminds me of the Shannon Matthews case (thankfully that little girl is alive but what she must have going around her head is anyone's guess). I just find the whole thing leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth”.
Tia Sharp interrupted our viewing of the Olympics. Indeed some people may not have heard of her story just like that of Shafilea Ahmed. Hopefully their tragic deaths will not be drowned out by the roar from the Olympic stadium.
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