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Age, memory and Tokigwatako
Age, memory and Tokigwatako
One thing I like about this country is that when you forget your age just look for the priest who baptized you. You have got to do it very fast before the opposition politicians drag you to the laboratory for carbon dating.Do you remember what you ate for breakfast this morning? For sure if you don’t remember then you are likely not to stand for presidency in 2021. Your memory is gone and all you can do is to sit home and play with grandchildren and count the numbers of animals on the farm. The truth is that when age comes looking for his bride you can’t hide. Even when you don’t know your real age you will be reminded.
There you are at a gathering and you see a colleague across the room. As you walk over, you suddenly realize you can’t remember the person’s name. Odds are you are not suddenly developing Alzheimer’s disease, although many people jump to that conclusion.
You are simply experiencing a breakdown of the assembly process of memory, a breakdown that many of us begin to experience in our 20s and that tends to get worse as we reach our 50s. This age-dependent loss of function appears in many animals, and it begins with the onset of sexual maturity. If the situation is worse at 50, what about when one clocks 75?
If you don’t want the president to touch it as your campaign slogan states, repackage your massage to the voters. Ask them if the president needs time to rest and sleep or not. Sleep is important to memory. Although scientists don’t know exactly how it affects the brain, it has been shown that sleep aids storage and retrieval of long-term memories.
There is such a thing as “false memory”. Researchers are beginning to understand that the human mind can create, exaggerate, distort, or re-invent a memory after a traumatic experience or something that impacted them greatly.
There are many more factors that go into memory capacity than just age. Age can and often does negatively impact on memory capacity, but aging doesn’t necessarily always affect memory. This is the line of argument that those niggers with yellow ribbons should be using to be able to keep their captain on the political saddle.
An older person, who has an active lifestyle, including regular physical activity, mental activity, and social interaction, could have a short-term memory as sharp as someone several decades younger. And older person with a more sedentary and isolated lifestyle will likely show poorer short-term memory retention.
Don’t forget that happier people like those living in the State house also have a better memory than people who are stressed or depressed like those living at Kasangati. Another advantage of an old president is that you are sure that he is about to die.
In fact the MPs putting on red/ orange ribbons should ask voters, during consultations, if they want the president to die in office or not? Otherwise the obscene Ugandans I know are likely to support the idea that the man should be left a gikwateko. After all who doesn’t like okugikwatako?
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