Don't Deal With Losers

I was at Zone 7 the other weekend and hanging out with Gaetano Kagwa. Hang on a minute, that intro does not sound quite right. Let me start all over again.

I was at Zone 7 the other weekend and Gaetano Kagwa was hanging out with me. You see, I don’t hang out with people but rather people hangout with me.

So Gae and I were reminiscing about the day he came back from South Africa after his Big Brother experience. And though Gae who was a relatively unknown man before he went to Big Brother was capitulated into nationwide fame upon his return, one thing that he did do right was not to let fame go to his head.

He kept his cool and has always been keeping his cool unlike people like the footballer Dennis Obua, and who thinks that just because he plays his football in Scotland, it makes him a superstar with the right to throw his toys out of the pram.

In Uganda we don’t like dealing with losers. So Davis Kamoga won the sliver medal at one of the Olympics but do we care about him or mention him? No we don’t for until Kiprotitch took the gold medal at the London Olympics, we only talked about John Akii Bua and Dorcas Inzirukuru.

And this is where Gae has set a precedent. He did not win Big Brother so why did we waste our time on him? Well, we wasted our time on him because he was down to earth and a man who did not let fame go to his head.

To prove a point, does anybody remember who the other Big Brother contestants from Uganda were? Certainly not I though, I think there was some hapless damsel called Maureen. I think she was called Maureen or was it Barbra?

By the way Gae, your cap, the brown one that you left at the bar, don’t worry for it is not lost. I have it and you can pick it up when you are next in town.

Still on the same vein, there is also Daniel Ongong, who is the Marketing Director at Nile Breweries. Daniel didn’t start off his stint as Marketing Director. Rather, he was one of the ninja’s, the rank and file, a foot soldier who worked hard and rose through the ranks to his current position.

Daniel could brag and swell his chest if he wanted to but he has taken a leaf out of Gae’s book and has remained a level headed man, who is unassuming, well spoken and does not sneer down on people simply because he is a director.

However, like Obua, there are some ministers including those ministers of state who we don’t know and who by virtue of their minister status have let fame go to their heads.

As ministers they think that they have the right to jump a traffic queue because they are ministers and are above the rest of us. But when some unknown minister sitting in the back of some tinted 4x4 tries to squeeze in front me and when I don’t give him space it prompts his bodyguard to roll down his window to assure me, that is taking fame too far.

What people should understand is that fame is only a temporary thing and Uganda right now needs more Daniel’s and Gae’s than Obua’s and state ministers who could lose their jobs at the next reshuffle.