At the opening of a school built and donated to Kamuli District last week by the NGO, Plan International, retired Busoga bishop, Cyprian Bamwoze, decried the fall of the educational standards in Uganda. He lambasted the Education ministry officials for registering "Bichupuli" schools, while denying the Government ones their deserved attention, so as to revert to the former high standards of learning. Then he dropped a bombshell question: "How did we come to this?"

The answer to this is found literally everywhere in the country; so I think the venerable clergyman was merely posing a rhetorical question, whose answer he knows; or if he doesn't already, can very easily find.

But, first, to the donation. Plan International shelled out a reported 350b/= to build the secondary school. Unless really otherwise, why should a government surrender its responsibilities to donors? How does one begin to even talk of "patriotism", when they lack the individual pride that is a prerequisite for belonging to a country?  The 35th US president, John F. Kennedy, made this emotive statement about patriotism:  "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."

I hesitate to say this: Bishop Bamwoze should not have gone to open that school. Apparently, no Ugandan did anything to contribute to the construction of that school; except that we merely played the part of proffering a beggar's bowl. There is no "national pride" in that. And what Bamwoze was referring to was the fall in the moral fiber of all public officials, preferring to take bribes instead of working for the institutions. But the rot pervades everywhere, not just in the ministry of Education!

As a "man of God", Bamwoze must have first sought for answers in the Bible; I cannot pretend to anywhere near understand it as perhaps Bamwoze does, nonetheless, that is where I turned my attention in trying to understand how "we have come to this".

One of the scriptures preached last Sunday in the Universal Kingdom of the Church of God, that I attend, was Job 22:28. That was salutary, and did not seem to answer Bawmoze, so I harked back a little in the chapter. This is what the word of God says in the Jerusalem Bible translation in Job 22: 15-22 as Eliphaz, one of Job's three friends remonstrates with him.

"And will you follow the ancient trail trodden by the wicked? Those men who were borne off before their time, with rivers swamping their foundations, because they say to God, 'Go away! What can Shaddai do to us?'

"Yet He Himself had filled their houses with good things, while these wicked men shut Him out of their counsels. At the sight of their ruin, good men rejoice, and the innocent deride them; 'See how their greatness is brought to nothing! See how their wealth has perished in the flames'!"
Sometimes the language of the scriptures can be difficult to quickly decipher, but it is plain that the reference Eliphaz is making here is the amassing of wealth. Remember, Job was the "wealthiest man in the East." Does that ring a bell!

In any case I decided to turn to the New Testament to fully comprehend this prophecy. I found it in the Book of Titus. Paul is instructing one of the disciples on how he should administer the church in Crete.  Titus 1:10-12 is plain speaking: "And in fact you have in there a great many people who need to be disciplined, who talk nonsense and try to make others believe it.

They have got to be silenced: men of this nature ruin whole families, by teaching things that they ought not to, and doing it with the whole motive of making money." There, you have it!

In fact, it is probably here that the English language gets the word cretin; to define a good-for-nothing person, as Paul says in Titus1: 13, "Cretans were never anything but liars, dangerous animals and lazy." He continues in 1:15-16, that, "But those who have been corrupted and lack faith, nothing can be pure - the corruption is both in their minds and their consciences.

They claim to have knowledge of God but the things they do are nothing but a denial of Him; they are outrageously rebellious and quite incapable of doing good."

The word can be quiet stern as demonstrated by Paul. Bamwoze must surely know that the problems of Uganda are the cretans; and the country has come to this because the "leaders" are "incapable of doing good". The solution has to come through personal discipline and not preaching patriotism which we ourselves are unable or unwilling to practice.

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