"During our days............!"

By Arthur M. M. Katabalwa.

That really funny cartoon was circulating on the internet yesterday. A man lay slumped on his settee, his lights completely out with a doctor leaning over him asking his wife what she had told him that had led him to conk out. Her response? She had told him that the school holidays had come to an end! The poor man could not take it. He fainted. Not because he was still enjoying the company of the kids, it was because of the expenses that all parents are facing round about now.

I also received a call as well from a cousin of mine who happens to be a teacher. I joked with her that the time was about right that the little cretins went back to school leaving the world to adults. She complained as well that the holidays have been too short. So it isn't just the parents who are dreading the end of the school holiday, the teachers also don't want the kids back!!!

The problem is the preparations that parents have to go through so as to get their kids back to school. I have watched a colleague of mine preparing and I have been shocked. Her son goes to a boarding school on Masaka road and I thought that she was shopping for a shop! Crates of soft drinks, cartons of UHT milk accompanied with powdered milk, cakes and all sorts.  And I hear that the price of powdered milk has gone up. I asked her whether the kids were not fed at their school and she said they were. In fact at this school they are given buns every breakfast with their porridge.

I used to hate a conversation with my father which started "During our days......", well during our days we were never like this. If one had an extra metallic box full of "grub" they were lucky. Things have changed. Kids are very, very expensive these days. When I went to boarding school at Busoga College Mwiri I was lucky if my father gave me more than UGX10000 for the month. The other day I heard of a student at one of the leading boarding schools (on Masaka road again they seem to be rich down there) who was found with 2.5million shillings as pocket money. Now I wonder who has sense: the parent or the student. Some students at this school have been given so much money by their wealthy parents that they have now started speculating on the currency markets as their school shop never at any one time have that much stock so they have to find ways of using their money. Else, as I have been told they on occasion escape to Kampala to better spend their money.

Other than the mounds of "grub" that parents have to take I have heard allegations that there is a school that is advising parents that students can have mobile phones. Mobile phones? This is leading down a slippery slope I must say because one cannot then give their child a "kabiriti" phone. For those who don't know what a "kabiriti" phone it is the most basic phone that one can master. They can just about make a phone call but they have a battery with a life one might say it runs on plutonium. The batteries run for a whole week. Students are going to ask for the latest gadgets. And then what are they accessing on the internet? "During our days......." the joy was in the letters we wrote quoting verses from songs sung by Lionel Richie or the Bangles to impressionable girls. The cards sent had to be from Aristoc else it would be sent back. Now they are going to whatsapp themselves writing in that ghastly short text.

"During our days...." one could book for a space on the school bus which would help parents and pick kids up from the City Square now known as The Constitutional Square. In fact so many schools had buses wait for their kids that it was the last time that many students had the chance to see off their sweethearts. Now? No way. A student would rather be seen dead than being seen boarding the school bus at the beginning of term  and for that matter all roads will be a nightmare on Monday and the subsequent days as all these spoiled brats are ferried back to school in the air-conditioned comfort of their parents 4X4s.

I used to tell my father that times had changed from when they used to walk God knows how many miles to school.....bare foot in the dark through forests....on beds of thorns... ( I think some of that stuff was made up) but I will also pull that stroke. "During our days..." and I hope that parents taking back their over pampered children borrow a leaf from what our "good old days" used to be like and let the kids enjoy their childhood and not transfer home comforts to school. But then so many of us are the main culprits because we have let the situation just like our parents let us have it so easy in their eyes.

mwenky99@gmail.com