Over a week ago, I honoured an early morning appointment with Urban TV in eastern Kampala to discus Uganda’s 52 years of Independence live on air. While the strange aspects of our post-Independence history have been said over and over again, the youth who did not witness them first hand still get amazed when told some detail.

My interviewers were a 20-something girl called Malaika, born after Yoweri Museveni took power, and a 30-something called Gaetano, known for his Big Brother Africa appearance some years ago.

Somewhere during the 45-minute show, we were reviewing a documentary on pre-Independence Kampala when to their shock it was revealed that the grand mosque on Kibuli hill was built with a Ush10,000 donation from an Indian businessman, Jaffer Bandari, on land donated by Prince Badru Kakungulu a few years before Independence.

“Were those Uganda shillings?” they gasped.

I explained to these young Ugandans that in my own living memory, one US dollar exchanged for seven Uganda shillings for a long time. So, yes, ten thousand Uganda shillings was once enough to build a great mosque.

“But many people who saw the mosque being built for Ush10,000 must still be around today, when ten thousand can hardly buy anything,” Malaika observed.

They tried to figure out what Ush10,000 can usefully buy today in Uganda and the most significant purchase they came up with was airtime.

Because the time ran out — as it always does on television — I did not tell them that ten thousand shillings today is actually over one million shillings if you want to compare with money values from 27 years ago or earlier. This is because in 1987, the Uganda shilling was devalued and two zeros were struck off all values, along with a 30 per cent conversion tax.

For every one million shillings you had in 1987, you were given Ush7,000 on conversion.

In other words if instead of donating it to build Kibuli Mosque in the 1950s, Jaffer Bandari had kept his Ush10,000 and had to exchange it for new currency in 1987, he would have received 70 shillings. It is not conceivable for Bandari, if he were alive today, to call Kampala’s Muslim Community and declare a donation of 70 shillings to construct a mosque on land donated by a prince.

That is how terrible inflation can be. Of course, the inflation Uganda has suffered since the official destruction of the economy in 1972 is not the worst the world has seen. There was Germany where money’s value was deteriorating faster that you could count it, so that if you agreed on a price for something, by the time you finished counting its price had changed.

Then we have seen Zimbabwe, from where a Ugandan referee returned a couple of years back and amused people by announcing the Zim billions he had earned for officiating a match. But it is not wise to compare your situation with those who are worse off.

Otherwise, we would never work harder. We wouldn’t even seek treatment on falling sick, since others have been more sick before us.

Ugandans need to stop talking and start working. What Uganda needs most today are leaders to show people the potential they all have of becoming rich through work. How I wish we stop talking of the glorious past, and instead focus on the possible glorious future!