By Justine Namara
You have probably heard the phrase “oyogeza bwaavu” tossed around in your social circles. Maybe your friend said it after you refused to order chicken yet your mobile money balance was smiling. Perhaps your colleagues burst into laughter when you carefully folded the paper bag from the supermarket because “it can still be useful”. Or maybe someone looked at you carrying an empty Blue Band container home after a function and declared, “Eh! Oyogeza bwaavu.”
Ugandans have a gift for turning serious matters into comedy. We laugh, everyone joins in, and life moves on. But behind that familiar phrase lies an uncomfortable question: Does poverty leave when money comes, or does it sometimes remain in the mind?
Some people grew up in homes where every shilling had a name before it even arrived. New clothes were for Christmas, meat appeared only when visitors came, and a bottle of soda was shared among four children. Those experiences do not disappear simply because your bank account has changed.
Negotiating with childhood
Take Sarah Namuli, for example. Growing up in Kamwokya, she watched her mother stretch one cup of beans to feed eight people.
“Today I earn enough to buy almost anything I need,” she says. “But when I enter a supermarket, I automatically look for the cheapest brand. Sometimes I pick something, calculate, return it to the shelf, walk away, then come back for it five minutes later.”
She laughs at herself.
“My friends think I am stingy. They don’t know I am negotiating with my childhood.”
That sentence probably describes more Ugandans than we care to admit.
There is always that uncle who owns rental houses but still carries sachets of sugar from hotel tables because, after all, “someone has already paid for them”. There is the auntie whose refrigerator is worth more than the family’s first house, yet every margarine container becomes permanent kitchen storage. Open her cupboard and you will discover enough plastic containers to open a takeaway business.
Then there is the famous plastic bag full of plastic bags. Somehow every Ugandan home has one tucked away somewhere.
And who has not heard someone proudly say, “Don’t throw away that box. We might need it one day.” That mysterious ‘akabox’ can spend five years in the store without anyone remembering what it was being kept for.
When survival becomes a habit
Forty-two-year-old Paul Mukasa, now a successful building contractor in Wakiso, remembers sleeping on a papyrus mat as a child.
“I don’t throw away timber offcuts, nails or empty paint tins,” he says. “My children call it junk. I call it future projects.”
His wife has tried several times to clear the store.
“She says the place looks like a scrapyard. I tell her she doesn’t understand investment.”
Whether it is investment or organised confusion depends on who you ask.
Growing up without enough teaches valuable lessons. You learn gratitude. You learn not to waste food because tomorrow’s meal is never guaranteed. You learn to repair almost anything with wire, string and determination.
But sometimes those survival skills overstay their welcome.
There are people earning comfortable salaries who still refuse to take a special hire, even when they are running late, because their minds keep saying, “A boda boda will do.” Others have enough money to replace a worn-out mattress but convince themselves it can survive “one more year”.
The other extreme
Not everyone responds to poverty by holding tightly to money.
Some react by spending as though tomorrow will never come.
“My father used to tell us to admire chicken from a distance,” jokes David Lule, a businessman in Kampala. “When I got my first good salary, I ate chicken almost every day for two months. Then I realised I had become poor in a different way.”
The latest smartphone, designer trainers, expensive perfumes and endless nights out suddenly become proof that “we have suffered enough”.
Before long, loans replace savings.
Learning to live differently
Finding balance is perhaps the hardest lesson of all.
It means buying quality shoes because they will last longer instead of replacing cheap ones every few months. It means enjoying a family outing without feeling guilty. It also means resisting the pressure to impress neighbours who may themselves be surviving on loans.
Poverty is real. Many Ugandans continue to work tirelessly just to meet basic needs. It would be unfair to dismiss genuine financial hardship as merely a mindset.
However, the experiences of poverty can quietly shape our thinking long after our circumstances improve.
So the next time someone laughs and says, “Oyogeza bwaavu,” smile. Then ask yourself a more important question: Am I making this decision because it is wise today, or because I am still obeying yesterday’s fears?
