Peter Kagayi and his publisher, Nyana Kakoma, have both recently been the subjects of our #WriterWednesday feature. This weekend, inspire yourself with  Peter’s poetry. Peter’s collection, The Headline That Morning, is available in print and audio from So Many Stories.

IN 2065

Nothing will have changed that much,

Except I will be over 70 years

The roads will be the same

The politics will be the same

Kampala will be the same

In 2065 nothing will have changed that much,

Except I will be over 70 years

And I will go to Mulago to cure my rheumatism

And the doctors will say there is no cure

And the boda- boda man at the stage

Will recommend to me a West-Nile witch doctor

And I will go to my grandson’s school like my grand-father did

And I will be turned away, for old age will be something forbidden.

The president will be the president we have today,

And in a wheel chair he will give the Nation Address

Only his son, then a field Marshall, will read it on his behalf

And he will talk on his behalf

And he will rule on his behalf

In 2065, nothing will have changed that much,

Except I will be over 70 years.

And Makerere will be on strike and Major- General ‘Something’

Will order open-fire on the students

Because their demand for fried beans

Will be a threat to the security of the State.

And U.R.A will be taxing the air we breathe,

The many times couples kiss,

The fart we excrete,

The words we speak

And the way we die

And will determine those who go to heaven

And those to hell

And tax their corpses differently

In 2065 nothing will have changed that much,

Except I will be over 70 years,

And teachers will be begging on the streets to feed their families

Their wives will sleep with tourists to make a decent living

The syllabus will be the same shadow of what colonialists left behind

With systems too archaic and too alien to offer anything essential

And the students will remain cabbages and potatoes

And the ratio of the jobless to the job-hopeful

Will remain nine to one

And like that life will move on,

And like that nothing will change.

In 2065 children of eight will be using contraceptives

Children of eight will be going to night clubs

In 2065 children will not be children

They will be eating fellow children for breakfast and for break at school

And they will not wash their hands and will offer you a hand-shake.

And we will be the people in that future

Built from a present that promises not much

Except ageing

We will be there hoping to die soon.