The Business of Life with Dr King
Dr Ariel Rosita King brings on a variety of International guests from various countries, cultures, organisations, and businesses to talk about turning
problem into possibilities! Let's turn our challenges in opportunities together!
The Business of Life with Dr King
Ambassador Ireneo Osama Namboka: A Journey of Hope, Ubuntu, and Global Unity
Ambassador Ireneo Osama Namboka, a beacon of hope and change, shares his transformative journey from a village in Uganda to the global arena, offering deep insights into his life's work in human rights. Through our conversation, we uncover the inspirations behind his impactful book, "Dreaming of a New Uganda," while addressing the profound issues his country faces, from governance woes to the future challenges for its youth. With sincerity and humility, Ambassador Nambouka calls on the younger generation to see themselves as beacons of hope and responsibility, leaving listeners with a powerful message of renewal and forward-thinking.
Our discussion further explores the essence of Ubuntu and the timeless principles of generosity, trust, and collective well-being that it embodies. Together, we reflect on the pervasive influence of Western values, advocating for a heartfelt return to empathy and solidarity. With stories that range from the ambassador's personal experiences as a father and grandfather to my own journey in a large African family, the episode underscores the importance of unity in our global narrative. We close with a call to action, urging listeners to take personal responsibility and embrace life's meaningful pursuits, ultimately contributing to a more unified and empathetic world.
The Business of Life
Dr Ariella (Ariel) Rosita King
Original Song, "Teach Me to Live one Day At A Time"
written, guitar and vocals by Dr. Ariel Rosita King
Dr King Solutions (USA Office)
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Teach me to live one day at a time, with courage, love and a sense of pride, giving me the ability to love and accept myself so I can go and give in to someone else. Hello and welcome to the Business of Life. My name is Dr Ariel Rosita King, and today we have a very, very special guest, ambassador Osama Nambouka. Welcome, ambassador Nambouka.
Ambassador Namboka:Thank you very much for having me, Dr King.
Dr King:It's an absolute delight to have you, sir. I would love for us, to start with, can you just give us a small history, which is enormous, of your incredible background as a humanitarian, a diplomat, a father, a grandfather and likely a great-grandfather.
Ambassador Namboka:Well, thank you very much, Neet, for inviting me to say a little thing about me, maybe my background, my childhood. I was born in the middle of the last century, I think approximately, but after the Second World War, in a village away from the city, because at that time my country wasn't independent from the British administration, it was a protectorate Uganda protectorate and I grew up in a typical village, from where I started walking to school, Sir, tell us what is a typical village.
Dr King:So many of us today have no idea what that means, including the social aspects of the village, and so on and so forth.
Ambassador Namboka:Right, and so I have a very typical African background as a child, but then later on, going to the primary school, secondary school, advanced level which we call higher and then the university, I joined what I would call today's African Eid and, after a first degree in my country, I went for my postgraduate studies in France and later on returning home as the law required, I joined this public service within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and I served for about 13 years. I served for about 13 years and, due to certain predictable African political instability for civil servants, I abandoned the diplomatic service and offered my services to the United Nations, where I became a human rights officer and served for about approximately 15 years when I reached my retirement age, and I've ever since remained committed to the promotion of the education and respect of human rights for everybody, everywhere and the everybody everywhere and the philosophy of Ubuntu. You are who I am because you are.
Dr King:I hope this serves as a little introduction of who I am, where I come from, dr King. Thank you so much, ambassador Namboka, really an amazing life I'd like to go to. I'd like to have a just talk to you a bit about the reason that you've decided to write this book. You've written other books and you're quite a busy gentleman. Please tell me what was the idea behind writing Dreaming of a New Uganda.
Ambassador Namboka:There were several reasons that led me to writing this book. It's my second book. I had written a book under the title Dreaming of a New Africa and in the course of writing that book I suddenly realized that something a little closer. Like you know, charity begins at home.
Ambassador Namboka:I am preoccupied by the condition my own people find themselves Conditions of poor governance, conditions of inadequate social services like health, hospitals, medicine, no guarantee for children to be educated, a lot of unemployment and really a kind of failed state in terms of what should be done compared to what other countries are doing.
Ambassador Namboka:So, concerned for my own situation as a parent and a person that should show a sense of responsibility, concerned about what comes of my own children or their future.
Ambassador Namboka:And, as you said a little earlier as you started this conversation, where do our grandchildren go if we can't guarantee them safety and balanced governance within our own country? Are these going to be running all over the world looking for refugee status, working under deplorable circumstances, if they don't die, trying to cross deserts and oceans? And so when I say dreaming of a new Uganda, I'm saying to myself we as a generation have failed to deliver what should have been an entitlement to our children and grandchildren, and so I bring up issues of our history, I describe ourselves and comparing our situation with other countries that were even worse off when we became independent 62 years ago, and so I call upon my own generation in the country, our children, who are now in their 40s and 50s, and maybe 30s, projecting the roads to the future, even for those that are grandchildren, born and to be born. That's why I got this book written.
Dr King:Thank you, it's really wonderful. And may I ask so? You're looking also. It's a letter to, or a communication to, the new generation. May I ask, sir, what would you like to tell the current young generation about their responsibilities and their privileges, not just in Uganda, but in Africa and around the world? Because young people really take to you and listen to what you have to say, and usually you have an incredible connection with young people.
Ambassador Namboka:Thank you very much, dr King. Under the theme of the business of life. Really, I think that I want the young generation to see themselves, and each individual young man, woman, to see themselves as a project in life. And when we talk about a project within the context of growing up into an adult or even in the commercial sense of surviving materially, we must get our young people to understand that what you do must be properly premeditated, properly planned and a kind of roadmap established by each individual. I find that, while my generation has really failed to meet the expectations of our younger compatriots on the continent and in the whole world, maybe we need to ask our young people to be a lot more methodical, determined, focused and focus on things that matter. Unfortunately, the world is so confused in a way that a lot goes around as information that isn't necessarily essential, and we need to get guidance. We need to get the sense of what is right and what is imperative, why people succeed or why people fail and avoid those paths, those roads that have led to prediction.
Ambassador Namboka:And so my book is a message. It starts as an apology On the part of those that are of my age in Uganda, in Africa and in the world because we are world citizens. Today I say we are sorry. We should have done better and we had every reason, every means. We got greedy, we got short-term interests prevailing over long-term efforts of endurance. And I'm saying the succeeding generations will do better when they lean on the side of ethics, an element of morality in public affairs. An element of morality in public affairs when you're entrusted with a responsibility, like maybe you become a headmaster or you're a manager of a government, of a company. Be ethical, be unselfish, be kind, consider each person as a fellow human being, and this also means, for those that, like me, have lived abroad, a sense of recognizing that creation made us one human race and that what's good for the goose is good for the gander. There are no special groups of people that may be entitled to everything at the expense of others starving, and so this book really comes as an invitation to my own countrymen and countrywomen, to all Africans on the continent and again to the world at large, to revisit our choices, which we have until now, and to be humble and acknowledge where mistakes have been made, not to persist in the wrong. This message, I particularly feel, should go to those among the young people that are likely to assume places and posts of responsibility as political decision makers of the countries they occupy. Tomorrow, when they assume responsibility, we've been let down.
Ambassador Namboka:Be true to yourself A lot of what is happening to our population in Africa Ugandans in Africa is failure to recognize and respect science and morality. If a law says you are elected to be a leader of your people on the basis of the messages, the promises you offer, be bound by what you say. Keep your word. Don't embezzle. Learn to be satisfied by what is legitimate and provided for, because these people who laid down those laws reflected and knew what should be enough. But we are running in to get more than it due to yourself. But we are running in to get more than it due to yourself. And this has been a source of lunacy, of massacring big fractions of our people, leaving mortality and infant mortality. Take so many of our innocent citizens. Because we don't have a heart, we don't consider the side effects of the mistakes we make, of the wrong things we do.
Ambassador Namboka:This is part of the content of the book I'm leaving in the hands of those that will be citizens of my country tomorrow. I also actually do mention something to do with how you get indebted. It's like an individual. We should learn only to borrow money that we can pay back. It's also a basis for respectability. But for over 50 years half a century most of our countries my own country, uganda included will keep running around and begging and asking for loans and external debt we are leaving for our succeeding generations is unacceptable, and we don't have anything to show for the money we've borrowed when we hold officers of responsibility in our countries. So maybe to let you continue with the questions you put at me, I think we just need to revisit the whole project of independence. You can't be independent without being responsible, without assuming responsibility, and this way we can salvage the condition the African continent has come to be as a laughing stone. That would be my remark for my message to all that will come across this book as you read it.
Dr King:Thank you so much, ambassador Mboka. It actually looks like a map, a way forward, a way to figure out how to get from where we are, which is not a lack of independence, a lack of umbuntu social responsibility I am because you are and very much people looking at the short-term gain for individuals, which really at the expense of the long-term for the community. I really want to thank you because it looks like this book. Dreaming of Uganda is actually can be dreaming of a new Africa, dreaming of a new world, because I believe that this book, especially when you're speaking about what's really important I believe in humanity is first to apologize, to recognize we made a mistake. We want to say sorry to you. This is what we've done. We'd like you to do better and this is why we'd like you to do better.
Dr King:I really believe that this can be used worldwide, because worldwide we're having these issues. I'd like to thank you, tell us more about your incredible family and also, given the fact that we're looking at women's education and we're looking at people that are abled and differently abled, and looking at all children, all young people, all those who are able or not as well abled, having human rights and having their human rights recognized, able, having human rights and having their human rights recognized. Can you tell us more about how that personally affected you and how, as a result, you go out and you give to so many young people in light of your experiences?
Ambassador Namboka:Well, thank you very much again. Dr King, I'd like to say, just as I was listening to you, that you sort of come across just as someone who was inside my mind, my heart, as you so clearly articulate those points of morality, of being sorry, of dreaming of something that would be better. And I thought before you asked me to describe something that relates to my personal life and family. I think something that I feel hasn't been given space or room for humanity is the African cultural tradition. That were positive. Of course, every society will have some downsides to their culture, but Africans encountered people from outside the continent with their own traditions, with their own philosophies, and they had certain traditions that were very, very central to collective well-being. I'm talking like this because generosity, trust, a sense of shame and hate, detestation for insolence and lack of respect was very strong in our traditions. I find that we have degenerated. We no longer seem to recognise that there there must be a limit to one's freedom, because Ubuntu goes back to what I think the Quran and the Bible, the two mostly known spiritual books on the continent today, though the Quran and the Bible very often refer to the Golden Rule, if you consider that Africans maybe 5,000 years ago, that's about 500 years before Africans got to meet the Western civilization, people lived by the golden rule Our progress in assimilating and taking on civilization from the Western world the Western world. Ironically, although the Bible talks about it, the day-to-day teaching and learning does not sufficiently emphasize Ubuntu or the Golden Rule. I thought I should make that connection between Africa's traditions solidarity, caring for those that are less able than we are, love for all children. In a village you have no situation where a child can be in trouble without everybody running in. You don't have to be the father of the child in trouble. This isn't exactly what we learn today as we go to school and become westernized. The West probably lived that way before, but today there is a kind of not getting involved in other people's troubles and I beg that Africans resume, go back to that spirit of the golden rule a lot more and integrate it in whatever we copy intelligently from societies like the Western world that have got technology and a lot of beneficial things, but the golden rule should be the basis as we go into that direction. With that, then I'll come to a little bit of what my personal history had been.
Ambassador Namboka:I said that I came from a very remote African part of the continent, of the country of the country, and I had a very strong dosage of this African spirit of solidarity, of empathy, of, you know, being in the place of your friend's position. I was born in a family that was quite large, although not so large in the African context. My parents had 12 of us children and, as I said earlier about the problems of infant mortality and maternal mortality also, out of the 12 children only seven of us survived and because of the limited resources, the economic poverty on the continent, my parents were only able to educate me. There were two sons, my elder brother and I, and the two children that were taken to school were me, my brother and I, but I was the only child that went as far as go to a secondary school, university and so on. So my trajectory has always looked to me like a rare opportunity among many that deserved that opportunity and didn't get it. In turn, we've had a family with my wife and we've had six children. Fortunately, our children are all alive again, partly because things have improved. As I said, there are things from the Western world that came and are positive More protection of those that are born, although today things are deteriorating on the continent, in my country too, but 50 years ago the situation was quite sound, with the new relevance, if properly embraced.
Ambassador Namboka:We in my family, my wife and I, have a very special parental role because among the six children, one of them was born deaf and blind children. One of them was born deaf and blind and in a continent like Africa, in a country like mine, this is a child that wasn't going to survive. As I said, children, the infant mortality, is very, very high already on the continent. Fortunately ours survived. But the one that was born deaf and blind and therefore dumb, has been a kind of scripture in bone and flesh, our child being a blind and deaf child. But on the 1st of July this year this person with disabilities, unable to read, unable to speak, unable to see, reached the age of 50.
Ambassador Namboka:But living as a parent of this girl has been a very special school in humility, in appreciation of things we take for granted, because I speak several languages personally and I still have my eyes and I have not worn even glasses for a single day. I still hear, I can hear, but I'm over 70. These things are things that make me feel guilty for my past, generally in my country, because we've been privileged. There are people like my daughter who never had eyes to see, who never heard a thing and can't speak. But if I fail to see my position as a privilege and therefore use my conditions to pass on a message to get people live in appreciation rather than greater selfishness, then I fail to know what purpose. And this is why, when we talk about the project, the business of life, what am I living for? Or does it not matter that we ask ourselves on little things just as on big things?
Ambassador Namboka:I'm grateful to the Creator that, out of my wife and I, a child with these special difficulties in life that was born to us Very often these kind of children cause problems, sometimes even wreck marriages and that we've had the inspiration to take care of this child and take care of her with her sisters and brothers, with her sisters and brothers. For us it's a noble mission that I think, as you asked me to say something about myself, is a situation I should share in the spirit of Ubuntu. You are and therefore I am, you are and therefore I am. That this world gives us so much that we don't recognize as privilege, and I think that a degree of humility, of modesty, will help this world become a better place. You can't abuse the strength the Lord has given you and those who don't believe in God, it's okay. But believe in something about humanity. Don't be a bully because you happen to be strong, because we don't deserve the things we seem to take for granted. Some people have no hands. There are those, as I said, that can't see, but those of us that have had a chance to learn several languages because we can hear going to school, where so many never went to school, and when you get to school and you've got these privileges and you're given a public office, you become a hyena, a wolf, actually probably an idiot Place in the place of responsibility. These are the issues I thought I should mention.
Ambassador Namboka:When we talk about the business of life, we have to live for others, however humbly I think we need to live for others, however humbly I think we need to be prepared to take some little time, a little minute or minutes every day and say I am so fortunate to be alive. Others have been swept by hurricanes and say I am so fortunate to be alive. Others have been swept by hurricanes, others have had air accidents. There is so much that could have happened to each one of us alive and because we have been fortunate. And because we have been fortunate, we should be prepared to avoid causing suffering to others, stubbornly pursuing wars where recommendations for an alternative, for mutual safety, is communicated to humanity and we say no because I've got weapons, I've got the money, I've got the technology. Some of these things will be held against us if we aren't careful. I don't know, dr King, if my conversation goes in line with what you had when you invited me to speak about the project life as a project.
Dr King:Ambassador Namboka, I'm just. You know, I think, after knowing each other for so many years, you know decades. Every single time we talk, I learn something different about myself, about you, about the world, and I want to thank you. You brought such a gift to all of us, speaking about ubuntu, humanity, your book, apology, basically, you have taken us around the world in humanity and the business of life. I want to thank thank you, sir, for being our guest and please, please, everyone, remember umbuntu. Thank you, ambassador Nambolka. And any last words, sir.
Ambassador Namboka:All the pleasure and honor is mine. Thank you for thinking about sharing these moments with me In the interest of humanity at large, of course, starting from my own country, from my own family, from my own people. I hope this is a message that makes sense to a wider audience in my country, on the continent and globally. Thank you so much, Dr King. You're a wonderful child of Africa, of the world, and indeed a piece of creation that is helping humanity look at ourselves with more sober eyes. Thank you so much.
Dr King:Thank you, sir, and to our audience, thank you so much for being a part of this small part of the day of the business of life. And remember if I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, then when? And I have added if not me, then who Go out, go forth and do the business of life?
Ambassador Namboka:Thank you, thank you, thank you.