By Joseph Mbazzi Muguluma
The Oracle of Kifuuta Katooke, Kyotera, Buddu
Kichwamba – Kibale – Mubende – Mityana – Buloba – Busega – Mulago – Mawanda Road. 1989. One journey, one temptation, one bottle, and a lifetime of consequences.
Young man, put down your 128GB smartphone and listen.
You may have YouTube, Google Maps and a Toyota Harrier, but the road to regret has not been upgraded since 1989.
It still passes through temptation, poor judgement and the dangerous belief that a man can control every situation simply because he understands the rules.
I learnt that lesson long before smartphones became our travelling companions.
I was a young man with a promising future, a beige Toyota Corolla DX and the confidence of someone who believed he understood the laws governing the universe.
I knew geometry, understood physics and could explain the relationship between force, velocity and momentum.
What I did not understand was the force of temptation.
I knew how to calculate the trajectory of a moving object, but I had never calculated the distance between one reckless decision and the destruction of a marriage.
That is the story of my journey from Kichwamba Technical College to Mawanda Road, and how a man who had gone to teach Physics became a practical demonstration of his own failed lessons.
The Interview That I Passed, and the Examination That I Failed
In 1989, I travelled to Kichwamba Technical College in Kabarole District for an interview to teach Geometry and Physics.
I was not wandering around looking for adventure. I had a purpose.
I wanted to stand before young Ugandans and teach them about angles, forces, gravity, velocity and equilibrium.
I passed the interview.
I remember the satisfaction of that moment: the clean shirt, the professional ambition and the optimism of a young man convinced that life was finally opening its doors.
On the journey back to Kampala, my beige Toyota Corolla DX moved along the western Uganda highway as Afrigo Volume 8 played through a cassette player.
The tape occasionally wobbled, but the music continued.
I was returning home a successful candidate, ready to teach the next generation.
Little did I know that the road ahead had prepared an examination for which no university had given me a syllabus.
As Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart reminds us, a person’s ambitions do not exempt them from the consequences of their choices.
A man may have the intelligence to understand the world and still lack the discipline to govern himself.
I had passed the interview at Kichwamba.
The real examination was waiting on the road home.
Kibale Forest: When the Teacher Forgot His Own Geometry
Approaching Kibale National Park, the scenery changed. The forest stood thick against the horizon, the mist settled over the road, and the journey continued towards Mubende.
Then I saw two young women by the roadside.
One was approximately 18 to 20 years old. She travelled with me as far as the Kyegegwa junction, where she got out. The other, about 23, remained in the car.
She was strikingly beautiful, and I became fascinated by her.
In the language of Kifuuta, we have a proverb: Enju y’omulirwana ewoma, naye sijosula.
Your neighbour’s house may be attractive, but that does not mean you should make it your home.
It is a simple saying about boundaries, restraint and the wisdom of appreciating what belongs to you without feeling entitled to what belongs to another.
Unfortunately, I remembered the beauty of the stranger and forgot the wisdom of the proverb.
I was a married man, but I began entertaining a temptation that should have ended with a polite conversation and a safe journey for everyone involved.
From Naluyima Hotel in Mubende, where we stopped to eat boiled goat, to Kolping Hotel in Mityana, the journey continued.
What should have been an ordinary trip home gradually became a series of increasingly questionable decisions.
I called it chemistry.
My elders would have called it a man walking into a fire while carrying the matchbox.
The first lesson of this story is not that beauty is dangerous. Beauty is not the problem. Neither is every roadside encounter a threat to a marriage.
The problem begins when a person who has made a commitment decides that the excitement of the moment is more important than the responsibility of keeping that commitment.
I knew the rules of geometry.
I simply chose to ignore the boundaries.
Buloba: The Night Momentum Took Control
By 10 p.m., we had reached Buloba trading centre.
The evening had progressed into drinking. She took Bell lager, while I had brought along my preferred cognac.
We spoke, drank and continued towards Kampala.
By the time we reached Busega, the woman beside me had become so intoxicated that she could barely remain alert.
She was disoriented and no longer in a condition to make clear decisions about the journey.
I should have recognised that the situation had become a matter of safety rather than entertainment.
Instead, I continued.
I was the man who understood friction, acceleration, braking distance and momentum.
Yet I failed to apply the most basic principle of responsible judgement: when circumstances become dangerous, stop and reassess.
The car moved along the smooth tarmac, and I later remembered travelling at speeds I now regard as reckless.
I had mistaken the ability to control a steering wheel for the ability to control the consequences of my decisions.
By the time I reached College Inn in Makerere, my passenger was deeply unconscious.
The beautiful encounter that had captivated me earlier had turned into a frightening situation involving an incapacitated person who needed medical attention.
I struggled to get her out of the vehicle and into the hotel.
Then everything changed.
An askari intervened.
“Stop! The lady you have brought here is dying!”
Suddenly, there was no romance, no excitement and no clever explanation. There was only a medical emergency.
The lesson is straightforward: when someone becomes dangerously intoxicated or unresponsive, the priority is urgent medical assistance, not taking them to a hotel room or leaving them unattended.
I had ignored the warning signs until the consequences could no longer be concealed.
Mulago Hospital: The Reaction I Never Calculated
Hotel management insisted that the woman be taken to Mulago Hospital.
We transported her to the hospital, where medical staff attended to her.
And there, in the middle of the night, I encountered the person I least expected to see.
My wife.
She was on duty, administering care to patients.
Of all the places in Kampala where my decisions might have caught up with me, I had arrived at the one place where my private conduct collided with the person who had trusted me most.
She looked at me.
She did not shout. She did not create a scene. She continued with her duties.
That silence was more devastating than an argument could have been.
I had spent the evening pursuing excitement without considering the woman who had built a home with me.
Now I stood in the presence of the very person whose trust I had placed at risk.
In Physics, Newton’s third law describes the relationship between forces acting on interacting bodies.
In human relationships, the consequences of our actions are rarely so neatly calculated, but the principle offers a powerful metaphor.
Our decisions affect other people, often in ways we do not anticipate.
The bottle at Buloba was no longer merely a drink. The stranger in my passenger seat was no longer merely an attractive woman.
The journey had become a confrontation with the consequences of my own conduct.
The woman I had brought to the hospital remained unconscious for a period, and the experience left me shaken.
For approximately three days, I found myself caught up in the hospital ordeal, unable to escape the weight of what had happened.
I had gone to Kichwamba to teach Physics.
At Mulago, life had turned me into the lesson.
Mawanda Road: The House That Had Become an Answer
After the ordeal, I drove to Mawanda Road, where my home was.
I expected to return to familiar surroundings. Instead, I encountered a silence that seemed to swallow the entire house.
The doors were open. The windows were open. The rooms stood empty.
My wife was gone.
There are moments when a person finally understands that the consequences of a decision cannot be reversed by wishing for a different ending.
That was mine.
I remembered Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, in which the forces that fracture a community eventually leave it struggling to recover what has been lost.
But on Mawanda Road, I did not need a novelist to explain the destruction.
I had contributed to it myself.
I had placed the knife against the foundations of my own home through my choices, and now I was looking at the emptiness they had helped create.
I drove to Nakawa to look for my wife at her parents’ home, but she was not there.
Amid the unrest around MUBS Nakawa, my car windows were shattered, and the vehicle came close to being burnt. I fled for my safety.
The day had brought another reminder of how quickly circumstances can turn beyond one’s control.
Later, I returned to College Inn, hoping to find the woman who had accompanied me from Kibale.
She had disappeared. I had no reliable way of contacting her or discovering where she had gone.
The encounter that had seemed so exciting at the beginning had left me with uncertainty, fear and regret.
The woman I had chased was gone.
The wife I had taken for granted was gone from the home.
And the beige Corolla that had carried me towards what I thought was an adventure remained as a reminder of a journey I wished I could repeat differently.
Afrigo could still play.
But the music could not restore what my decisions had damaged.
The Laws I Should Have Taught Myself
Young man, let us return to the blackboard.
A teacher’s greatest failure is not necessarily getting an equation wrong. It is understanding a principle well enough to explain it to others but failing to apply it when personal discipline is required.
My experience left me with several lessons that deserve to be written down.
The law of boundaries: Attraction does not cancel commitment. You can acknowledge someone’s beauty without turning that admiration into an invitation to betray your partner.
The law of momentum: Small decisions can gather consequences.
A conversation becomes a flirtation; a flirtation becomes a deliberate choice; and a choice can change the course of a life.
The earlier you recognise a dangerous direction, the easier it is to change course.
The law of responsibility: When someone is dangerously intoxicated or unconscious, their safety takes priority over convenience, embarrassment or reputation.
Seek emergency medical help and ensure they are not left alone.
The law of trust: A relationship is sustained by more than the presence of two people under one roof.
It requires honesty, consideration, accountability and respect. Once trust has been damaged, apologies alone may not be enough to restore it.
The law of the road home: Success outside the home does not excuse irresponsibility within it.
You may pass an interview, earn a salary, acquire a vehicle and impress an entire community, yet still fail the examination that matters most to the people who depend on you.
The Final Formula: How a Home Becomes Empty
If I were to reduce the lesson of 1989 to an equation on a classroom blackboard, I would write:
Marital commitment + unrestrained temptation + irresponsible drinking + poor judgement = consequences no man can reliably predict.
It is not a scientific formula. It is a warning drawn from experience.
The mistake is to believe that intelligence makes a person immune to foolishness.
A man can teach geometry and still misunderstand boundaries. He can explain velocity and still travel too fast towards disaster.
He can understand the laws of motion and remain ignorant of the emotional damage caused by his actions.
And he can believe that he controls his life until he arrives home to discover that the people who gave that life meaning have made a different choice.
Young man of 2026, your vehicle may be a Harrier rather than a Corolla DX.
Your entertainment may come from YouTube rather than a cassette player. Your journey may be faster, your phone smarter and your opportunities greater.
But the essential questions remain unchanged.
What do you value? What commitments have you made? What are you prepared to risk for a few hours of excitement?
And when the consequences arrive, will you have the courage to accept responsibility?
If you have a good woman building a home with you, appreciate her while she is there. Do not wait for an empty house to teach you the value of companionship.
If you are unhappy in your marriage, confront the problem honestly.
Seek dialogue, counselling or a responsible separation rather than creating a crisis through deception and reckless behaviour.
Above all, do not mistake the ability to pursue a temptation for proof that you are strong enough to manage its consequences.
The road from Kichwamba through Kibale, Mubende, Mityana, Buloba and Busega to Mulago and Mawanda Road remains a journey through Uganda’s landscape.
But for me, it became a journey through the landscape of my own mistakes.
Banange, by the time you grow old enough to understand life, you will have seen a great deal.
The wisdom lies not merely in surviving those experiences, but in learning from them before someone else pays the price.
I went to Kichwamba to teach the laws of Physics. Life sent me home with a lesson in human responsibility.
And whenever Afrigo plays, I remember that the most important examination is not the one you pass before a panel of interviewers.
It is the one you face when nobody is watching.
The Oracle of Kifuuta Katooke
Kyotera, Buddu.
