By Ronald Egesa Leonard
On Thursday, it was reported that a man almost set Cafe Javas on Kampala Rd ablaze using petrol. It was also reported that he had with him swords. The man mentioned in question was Revence Kalibwani who represented Uganda at the 2010 Mobile Monday in Helsinki, which were won by another friend of mine – Alex Nyika. Some media outlets have referred to him as a terrorist, while others have alluded to mental illness. Having worked with him 10-11 years ago and interacted with him just two weeks ago, I can say that schizophrenia took the better of him. I am simply re-echoing the views of my friend Alex Nyika. I also agree with Nyika that the late Revence Kalibwani was a polymath. This was something that you could detect within a few minutes of engaging him in conversation. Anybody who knows me closely may understand why the death of Revence has really touched me. I am guilty of some of his strengths-cum-weaknesses; to dream big; want to live in the dream immediately and very strong convictions.
In 2006, I got a job a software developer at Digital Solutions and Revence had also just joined the company. The Technical Director was fond of recruiting what he called ‘hungry, smart kids’ as programmers. His interviews included an IQ test and essay writing. Revence and yours truly perfectly met that description and we easily sailed through the interviews. Every single day, Revence came up to challenge something in the products of the company, including those authored by our Technical Director -Paul Bagyenda. He would move over to my desk and say; hey Egesa, look, here is another piece of sloppy programming!!! I tried as much as possible to ask him about his school life and he told me that he was not proud of school. He simply said that his dad did him a favour by exposing him to computers and BASIC compilers early on. These took up his mind and he lost interest in formal school. At that point, because everybody in our tech office was a computer addict, it was hard to detect that somebody had schizophrenia. We all spent a lot of time interacting with computers and had demented social lives.
I quit Digital Solutions in 2007 and decided to concentrate on what I considered my baby; Magezi Solutions. Later, Revence Kalibwani stayed on a little longer until he also moved on to found a company called Scyfy Technologies (www.1st.ug). We could chat on phone and email once in a while. I remember him telling me that some of his stuff had been taken up by UTL and I was happy for him because when we were beginning to learn python programming language back in 2006/7, he was obsessed with how Telecom billing systems work. Revence was well read. I remember we could shift from one topic to another and the conversation would keep flowing. In him, I could feel that I had met a guy with roughly similar views on many world matters. We shared a low opinion of how the Education system works and how the world operates.
In 2015 and 2016, after a series of disappointments from people that I trusted, I retreated to my own circle and found solace in writing. I have only managed to make public a third of the writings that I pieced together during the last part of 2015 and 2016. Writing helped me to reduce the pain on my heart and to gain a little hope that this world can be better if I can get people who think and work like me. It was not until 2017 that I discovered that while I thought that the writing aided me, it also sank an already depressed soul deeper in a depression. Many intellectuals suffer from depression and the world will never know because the guys just keep writing and writing about their favourite topics. Revence, like myself, spent a lot of his time typing away at the keyboard or scrolling through and reading stuff on a myriad of topics. These two can make an already bright chap to become a polymath, but the risk of worsening the depression situation once it sets in is very high!
A few months ago, I was talking to a student intern and I cited Revence as an example of a self-taught computer programmer. I checked out the website of Scyfy Technologies and I found there different stuff. It was now showing stuff of abapoto.ug and had the General Declaration of Abapoto (Truth.1st.ug ). I decided to give Revence a call and he said that he would reinstate the scyfy page later, but for the meantime, he was focused on the abapoto movement which denounces the secular state of Uganda. He urged me to sign the abapoto declaration, which I read and did not find harmful, so I signed. When the issue of registering (or is it re-registering) our sim cards came up, Revence, outed another declaration (http://abapoto.ug/static/bin/declamail.txt), which he shared on some tech fora, but many people largely ignored it. I am one of those who opposed the harebrained scheme, but did not ever imagine that Revence was serious with his declaration.
Last week and early this week, there was a heated exchange on the subject of how the National ID project was handled on I-network and Revence was at it again. He blasted a number of chaps and denounced Islam. He irritated a number of souls, but was firm in his beliefs. He actually shared his notice that he gave to Cafe Javas (http://abapoto.ug/static/bin/islamail.txt ) and still we did not take it serious.
Ironically, around the same time, a day after my birthday (on 1st August 2017), I wrote on Facebook under my reflections that I considered Religious extremism a sin! It was one of the things that I wished people knew! My spirit felt that my family and friends ought to know that extremism is dangerous. Little did I know that Revence would fall as a result of extremism.
To some, you have died as a martyr, while to others, you have died recklessly. To others, you have died a Christian extremist or ‘terrorist’. One thing is clear; the world of computing and software development has lost a serious soul. Schizophrenia has taken the better of you comrade and robbed us of your intellect, wit and skill. Rest in Peace Revence Kato Kalibwani. May God strengthen Ella and the kids.