Unmasking the Bean Weevils

I have been to a number of schools in my life time. Anyone who has been to schools in their early 2000 understands this concept better-I am not sure about those schooling today, they hardly know it perhaps-apart from learning it as one of the insects that attacks food. At our times in school, the mere presence of a weevil in bean soup was enough cause for a massive alarm and even a strike. The boys at one of my favourite college on a hill, never took chance, not any single bit! Each time some weevils made their way to the bean soup, they made it known to in charge; the Dinning prefect, food master and teacher on duty. The line of authority would summon the head chef to explain why the boys were having “weevil soup” instead of the usual bean soup. Fumbling, the head cook would only extend an apology and promise to improve on quality of beans, or storage, or storage materials and routine check-up of the beans stored.

To us, badly prepared posho was not as worse as eating forced “animal protein” in the name of weevils. In fact, the head cook would attempt to find a temporary solution by pouring some amounts of kerosene into the sacks of the beans as a mitigation measure. Little did he know that this actually worsened the problem-for our bean soup turned into something-it was “kerosene soup.” The kerosene soup was inflammable! The boys got up in arms again and demanded an explanation.
In an attempt, this time round thinking he was smart, the head cook told the boys that he had found lasting solution to this so called weevil; that he discovered kerosene would kill the weevil and in fact deter the beans from being infested by the same. Little did he know that his methodology actually caused more trouble- again, the problem was not the bean weevil, but the head cook his store keeper perhaps his crude storage methods and defunct mitigation measures.

That is Uganda today, it has been mentioned that we have many bean weevils in various soups. What is annoying is that everyone laughs about it, they don’t care. If it were my fellow boys at the college on the hill, there will have been an immediate summoning of the line of authority to explain why there are weevils swimming in our soup! The good thing is that it is the head cook admitting that there are some weevils in the bean soup, the unfortunate bit is that he is not telling us why, what went wrong, and what him as the head cook promises to do about it.
We have continued to be served with weevil soup for a long time, look at the roads when it rains; in fact, in Uganda, when it rains, after five minutes, instead of the water disappearing, it is roads, cars, police stations, homesteads disappearing. Tonnes of drugs are being destroyed while we still cry about lack of drugs in hospitals, closing down schools that are dear to parents and pupils and saving those that even a mango tree is best for a class, spending billions in lavish “victory parties” (read-shame parties) and borrowing trillions to pay salaries and much more. The annoying bit is that this happens every day, it gets top on news, sometimes it gets a full page pictorial-just a routine of announcing the new weevil in our soup.

For how long shall we continue to eat the weevil soup; for how long will the head cook continue to identify the bean weevils and do nothing about! At this point, every Ugandan should borrow our ways of dealing with this problem, back then. I am sure many of the boys are reading this article and know exactly what to do when the weevils invade our bean stock!
To my old boys, don’t eat weevil soup; raise the issues as you used to, summon the responsible centres, throw out the weevils and perhaps the store managers or worse still, pour away the entire stock of beans-there are fresh beans on the market-fit for purpose, that will transform this nation to great heights! Get rid of the old bean stock. My boys of the great college on the hill understand this!

By Michael Aboneka Jr