While the big city in the east was sleeping, or at least while officials imagined it was business as usual, some smarty pants came up with the Elgon Festival.
From the reports and pictures, it looked like a fete to rival the world famous Reed Dance ceremony in Zulu culture, an annual celebration of virginity. It is not clear why there were half-dressed girls at the Elgon Festival.
The organisers seemed to have been very economical with the details until the very last minute. Security, local government officials and other key personnel approved the procession and were later shocked by the people who showed up and their scanty dress.Â
Uganda is a rich society with diverse cultures, many of which we hope to keep alive for future generations. There are tribal dances for many occasions; joy, sorrow, entertaining royalty, celebrating the seasons and plenty of other reasons. The big question is whether to maintain the authentic and sometimes shocking nature of the traditions or amend them to fit in the current times where the popular drive is towards modesty.
The Mbale festival and its semi-nude participants coincided with the filming of a busload of students from one of Kampala’s schools bumping and grinding in a most indecent fashion while on a school trip. Once the pictures went viral, it sparked a debate on school tradition. Did these things really happen a lot in schools and were we merely spared the details due to the absence of phone cameras in the past? The jury was still out by press time.
Many people swore on social media that they had done the same or even worse in their school days. Others swore the opposite; that there is no way they could have gotten away with anything so graphic or any kind of dancing in such close quarters.Â
Who is fooling who? Are we aware of things in our society that we would rather pretend are not happening? Perhaps there is a fraction of society that is living in an insulated sanitised plane in which we do not see the lewd until it hits us in the face on social media. After this, it feels like our innocence is gone. We now know that our colleagues and contemporaries were dancing dirty in secondary school long before we thought any of it was happening.
The conversation is out there. Our children are going to these schools where these things happen. Most importantly, many have the internet and television so they are watching those music videos and taking notes. None of it is new. The world is not quite the innocent place to send our children. Teenagers will be teenagers, we have been told. Teach them the right way and pray for them, hoping they will remember when caught up in the storm of peer pressure.
This was the time for some honest talk. Who are we and what have we done when we thought our parents were not looking? Some people did much and others maybe nothing at all. Both groups are now stuck watching the next generation get down and dirty. So what are we going to do? Choke it down to hormones and let them live it out of their systems or try to get them back on the straight and narrow?
In both cases, the Elgon festival and the school bus, the public was caught unawares. Too late, the horse had already bolted and was doing a naughty jig on the streets in full view of the camera. We were left fumbling to explain the nude and unsavory behavior.
