What your enemies will do to you

A couple fighting

Whenever you see the name Bagenda somewhere here in this newspaper or elsewhere,  just know and remember that when someone remains determined, while fighting to succeed, rare success is, at last,  achieved. You are going to win.   I wanted to write. I am a writer. A rare one.

It is not going to be a walk over for you to get to where you would like to go. There must be a struggle before  progress is made. Fight.

The opposition in this country makes a big mistake of thinking that those who worked for success can easily release it  into the hands of foes fighting them. Believe.

To become a different writer was my own decision. In the beginning I thought the friends and the relatives around me would  help me pave the way  I  had seen and already  using to what I wanted.  This did not happen.

Immediately I showed this world that I was determined to succeed and become a very important person in this world, the few real friends I had dumped me. Relatives called a wiseacre.  I became a lone while the entire world was on the other side fighting me.

Be ready for a big and  rare struggle.

People will do whatever they can to give you  all the reasons why you will never get there. Having seen my rich father travel this world and interacting with very many important people in this country including the current president of this country, I thought my journey to what I wanted would be the easiest ever. It became the hardest one instead.

It is a rule. All the people you today admire suffered before succeeding. Never believe it when someone tells you that they used an easy path to victory.

This world we today live in is full of competition. A  good writer like me will never tell you what he exactly did to write in such a rare manner. The order today  is different from the old one,  common in the 60s, the 70s, the 80s and the early 90s.

Politicians have a habit of pointing out the weaknesses of their opponents. It is a very known fact that most politicians are the same. He who thinks Museveni did a very big sin to lead his motherland for more than thirty years has himself been in the August house for more than twenty years.

My father was a journalist who courageously wrote despite efforts  by dictator Amin to stop him from doing his job. He championed journalism when fierce dogs, with authority to bite, were   barking.

God has decided. Man, who is today fighting to throw you down, will do nothing to stop you.

The struggle wouldn’t have become my life if even the very people I knew would wish me well didn’t join my enemies to stop me  from making progress. Discouragement is a needed stepping stone to success.

While poor with one trouser and two very cheap shirts with torn collars, I thought of how I would directly talk to people who thought that to be rich, powerful or great was for the selected few people born privileged.

I had no money in the beginning. All my late father’s close friends who would endorse or connect me to the well to do and powerful in the country  had started passing on. I was extremely nothing in the beginning.

I was almost illiterate. I had gone to some of the poorest primary schools in Kampala. The foundation was weak therefore, and the world with its naked eyes saw this,  but I believed.

You are ready to stand on pulpits informing us that you are important but I want to inform you.  Until you realise that this world doesn’t recognise those who are still nothing and poverty-stricken, you will never get any thing  from anybody,  to help you crawl to the top.

The top of the  ladder here is not over-crowded. There is a reason. We are very few able writers not because others watching and admiring us wouldn’t like to be what we are. No.

Very many people dream. Very many people would like be what you today look at and wonder but there is something always preventing them from rising up and move on whenever they fall. Words! People will say.

They said and barked like dogs. We never gave up. We carried on. We continued fighting on.  I am today a rare writer. I wanted to be in the beginning. Things were not easy.

It took me more than ten years to gather the self-confidence I needed. I suffered for more than a decade trying to seek what the difficult world had hidden from the poor and the rich. You will pay a price.

You will be slandered and ridiculed by people,  including your close friends and relatives. Never give up.

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