THE LOW DOWN - ANTONY MWANDHA

Since joining, I have maintained my tax administration services classification.  I tried to leave the field and hit the road well in real estate until I met Lucifer’s brother in form of a Danish man called Soren.  It is a story for another day.

ET:  OUTSIDE ROTARY? 
AM: I belong to a twelve year old fraternity called the Corner House Fraternity.  It is the epitome of greatness!  Many members in the club have interacted with them at various levels; indeed, many have addressed the club and shared with us their respective and varied experience.

That fraternity has formed many relations, both at home and beyond.  My wife belongs to the mama’s league, 55 strong and my kids belong the kids league 112 strong. 

The strength and integrity of the fraternity has supported many members of the fraternity in joy and pan.  It is one that I am proud of belonging to and hope to become the chair by 2020.

Whereas I am a shy person, I open up only among those I know, so some may actually take for face value the jocular man kumbe wapi!

AM: Fun has decreased in intensity as the desire to stabilize takes center stage.  I used to love driving fast, I did the Kampala Mombasa drive a couple of times bringing Mercedes cars for sale.  I once did 204 KPH! I enjoy a deep discussion over beer, it is interesting to see people lose their lines of thinking and yet they still sound coherent.I recently took to Pictionary in which I trounced Sslaongo’s team, I love racket games specifically badminton and table tennis, which I played to national level.  On the other extreme, I like to be in my “nothing box” thinking about nothing in a quiet place.  It soothes my soul.

ET: DOWN TO BUSINESS
 AM: Articles in the stripped gears, 

ET: WHAT IS YOUR HIGHER CALLING?
AM: I want to own the most profitable concrete products factory.  I want to be a brand name in concrete home solutions.  I want my business rivals to chat among themselves and decide which one of them is number two in the industry.

My passion is deep rooted in our family business which Lucifer stole from us.  It was a great enterprise which served many Rotarians.  Upon my father’s demise, I grew it to new levels and I remember with sadness Rtn. Baroraho telling me to leave my job and concentrate on the factory.  But there were other factors at play and it was not possible.  We played into Lucifer’s hands.

ET: A WORD TO THE WISE
AM:    I have many but here are some:

1.       “NO BODY MAKES YOUR MONEY FOR YOU!” E.G. Wampa Mwandha 1941 – 2002

ET: READ ANY BOOKS LATELY?  

AM: I have not (yet) read Rich Dad Poor Dad but I have read almost the entire collection of Wilbur Smith.  He has unique style that thrusts you into rapid motion and lends credence to Mercedes products.  His unique descriptive diction spares nothing, he can even describe smell!  I love most especially “The Elephant Song” it took him three years studying Elephants in the Congo before he could write the book.  I have read all Dan Brown’s works Angels & Demons etc, The legal-detective books of John Grisham including The Firm, The Client, Testament etc  I recently learnt that Robert Ludlum wrote the Bourne series; I will look them up.

ET: OK LETS GET TO THE WHACKY AND CRAZY
AM: I resisted corporal punishment at school.  The teachers picked on me (you have to believe me) so they took me to the staff room and started hitting me and preventing my exit in a typical kijambiya fashion.  I feigned collapse and they stopped.  I jumped and run out; of course one of them, now deceased, called Bazibu, (what a name!) mostly known for being a sadist pursued me and caught me in the middle of the soccer pitch and dragged me back to the torture chamber.  I got freedom, when the Deputy Head Teacher passed by.  I walked out in my be-draggled uniform and stood in the courtyard across from the staff room.  I assembled an arsenal of rocks and dared him to come.  He did but amidst rain of glass.  The staff room windows shattered one pane at a time, until he checked his advance.  He was cautioned but he never left my case.

ET: LAST WORD
AM: I like reading especially from the greatest collection of speeches of the 20^th Century. http://www.americanrhetoric.com/top100speechesall.html

In 1917, Emma Goldman fought the early conscription efforts into war.  She and her colleagues, both journalists were arrested for their activities.  In a robust response, she addressed the jury which was shamed by witty analysis of the arrest.  Below are two paragraphs, the first was the begging of her address to the jury and the next was midway.  You can judge what makes me tick!

“Gentlemen of the jury, my comrade and co-defendant having carefully and thoroughly gone into the evidence presented by the prosecution, and having demonstrated its entire failure to prove the charge of conspiracy or any overt acts to carry out that conspiracy, I shall not impose upon your patience by going over the same ground, except to emphasize a few points.  To charge people with having conspired to do something which they have been engaged in doing most of their lives, namely their campaign against war, militarism and conscription as contrary to the best interests of humanity, is an insult to human intelligence.

It is organized violence on top which creates individual violence at the bottom.  It is the accumulated indignation against organized wrong, organized crime, organized injustice which drives the political offender to his act.  To condemn him means to be blind to the causes which make him.  I can no more do it, nor have I the right to, than the physician who were to condemn the patient for his disease.  You and I and all of us who remain indifferent to the crimes of poverty, of war, of human degradation, are equally responsible for the act committed by the political offender.  May I therefore be permitted to say, in the words of a great teacher:  “He who is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.”  Does that mean advocating violence?  You might as well accuse Jesus of advocating prostitution, because He took the part of the prostitute, Mary Magdalene.”