You ever seen a video that reaches right into your chest, and rearranges your internal organs? I watched it three times. Three times! Like some kind of digital self-harm. And each time, it just hurts more. Picture it with me: A casket.
Oh, a magnificent casket. Draped in imported lace, shining so bright from the polish of money, you could check your reflection in the lid. A hearse—hired at great, astronomical cost— groaning down the road, carrying all the “honor” money can buy for the dead.
And then… we arrive at the destination. It’s a hut. No, hold on—let’s be accurate. It’s not even a hut. It’s the memory of a hut. Walls melted away by the rain like cheap ice cream. Thatch completely eaten by the wind.
The door hanging on by one hinge, looking like a broken tooth in an old man’s mouth. A home that died a slow, quiet death… long before the person inside it ever did.
The crowd is massive. The weeping is loud, theatrical, shaking the trees. The coffin? Worth a small fortune. But standing there, looking at that pathetic ruin, I had to ask out loud to an empty room: Where on earth did this person LIVE?
Welcome to the saddest funeral in the world. Where death gets a promotion… while life was forced to sleep on the floor. Let’s talk about Scene One. If this was a parent… then we failed the class, we failed the exam, we failed the semester.
How do we sleep in tile-floored, Wi-Fi-connected houses in the city, while our mother sleeps under a literal open sky inside her own house? How do we contribute thousands of dollars for a velvet-lined casket? Hire a Mercedes hearse?
Buy matching suits for the burial delegation? Slaughter three fat cows for mourners who didn’t even know her middle name? Yet… we couldn’t buy her two bags of cement?
We clothed her corpse in lace, while her body was wrapped in rags when she was breathing. We gave her a luxury hearse for one single day, but we denied her a secure roof for twenty years.
We weren’t honoring her. We were preparing for her exit. We were buying our ticket to look good on WhatsApp status updates. And that broken hut?
That hut is the star witness in a trial we’re all losing. It stands there, pointing a crooked finger at us, saying: “You saw me. Every December you drove past in your German sedans and you saw me.
You patted her on the back and said, ‘Mama is strong.’ No! Mama was suffering!” The crowd cannot cover that shame. The lace cannot hide the neglect.
And then there’s Scene Two.
If this was a man… the big guy, the crowd-pleaser. He didn’t starve his family; he starved his future. He lived for the applause. He bought warm beer for every friend at the shopping center.
He was at every single funeral, every committee meeting, every wedding— beloved, popular, present. Everybody knew his name. “Hey, Bra’ Tichafa!” But his own house?
He didn’t even know what color the leaking roof was. He invested heavily in being seen, instead of being sheltered. He built a bulletproof reputation out in the village streets, while the walls of his own bedroom were crumbling into dust.
And now? The very crowd he fed with his last coins has turned up to see where he actually slept. And they walk around whispering, trying to hide their shock.
Because at the end of the day, let’s be real: A good name cannot keep the November rain out of your blankets. And a round of applause from the boys at the bar… cannot hold up a sagging wall.
Honour is not a performance we put on when someone stops breathing. Honour is what we do when they are sitting right in front of us— needing a jacket, needing a meal, needing a wall that won’t fall down in a breeze.
We cannot build a five-star mansion for a corpse… that desperately needed a dry room while it still had breath in its lungs. Book says: “If anyone does not provide for his own… he has denied the faith.” And for the builders of empty fame: “Put your outdoor work in order… after that, build your house.” Translation? Fix your yard before you fix your mouth to preach at someone else’s gathering. So here are your new epitaphs, folks.
Let’s stop lying on the tombstones: HERE LIES A MOTHER Who was left to rot in ruins, While her children saved lace for her coffin. She lived in want, but was buried in wealth. May history judge what we called “honour.”
And for the local legend: HERE LIES A MAN Loved by crowds, forgotten by his own walls. He built a name across the district, But left no roof over his head. His fame was loud… his home was silent. Let’s do better while they’re still here to complain about the food.
© 2026 Prof. Fradrick Kasese. All rights reserved.
