Money is not everything!

During the 5th annual Amakula Kampala Film Festival in May 2008, Black South African Vincent Moloi made a film about Leonard Johnson, a white homeless drug addict begging on the street in post-Apartheid Johannesburg. Leonard (not real name as Moloi later found out) had an ancestry of famous high class relatives from Europe. However, after ‘uneducated Blacks’ took over in 1994 as he complained, everything went down hill for him. The laid back white said his begging is not while sitted but just above the pavement while standing so he was not doing badly. Sometimes Leonard and his homeless friend would try to sell jewelry. Actually, he had a bed to sleep on and some of the gifts from generous passers-by he would use to pay rent. One day, a young woman who worked in a bank ran up to him and gave him some money because she had just been paid. How uplifting is that? His wise words are, “A man may have everything and still commit suicide…Why? It is because of his way of thinking.” Everybody came into this world to endure pain. If you want to live in it, you have to smile no matter your status. That is one thing I learnt from the meaning of my own Lugbara surname “Ayiko bua”; ‘true joy or happiness can only be found in heaven’…Here it is just “kiwani” (unreal or fake), but it has to be there for us to survive for a moment… That is why some people create their own dreamlands and others enjoy them as paintings or movies which relieve them from depression.