Right now, information about the spread of coronavirus is everywhere – and not all of it factual. While Australia spends its time trying to decipher whatever Scott Morrison just said (and then backflipped on), and wishing we could just look to Jacinda Ardern instead, Uganda has come up with the best possible coronavirus song to get official information out there.
First of all, starting with “The bad news is that everybody is a potential victim, but the good news is that everybody is a potential solution” is the most encouraging line I’ve heard out of this whole pandemic.
Give it a watch.
Now while you bop along to that for the rest of the day, here’s a fun fact for you. The musicians you see in the video are Bobi Wine and Nubian Li. Bobi Wine’s real name is Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, and he’s a Ugandan MP – representing the Kyadondo East constituency in Wakiso District.
Bobi Wine is kind of a similar figure to Peter Garret. He’s been making music with a message since the early 2000s, and decided to try his hand at politics in 2017. He won his election very comfortably, and worked his way up to becoming a major opposition leader in Uganda.
He’s even been locked up for leading a demonstration against the current president, President Yoweri Museveni.
Across the globe, music has been a major way to help spread the message of what to do to flatten the curve. Vietnam gave us this incredibly catchy tune:
And the Ndlovu Youth Choir partnered with the South African government to give us this:
Bobi Wine’s version doesn’t just give us instructions though, it also gives a sense of hope which we’ve been so desperately missing over the last few months. Uganda’s coronavirus song is my favourite purely for the fact that it doesn’t send me into a spiraling depression.
“It’s a global pandemic we can never take for granted… It’s a matter of life we can never take for granted.”
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