Uncle Rwamiti tells this story from his stool at the petrol station forecourt, late afternoon, when the dust has settled and people begin speaking honestly.

“My nephew,” Rwamiti begins, “people think the danger comes when a car breaks down on the road. No. The real danger comes when it does not break down—but quietly refuses to belong.”

There was a man in Kampala—educated, respected, well-intentioned.
His organisation had decided it was time to go green. The donors were watching. The peers were already posting photos. Someone said, ‘Hybrid is the future.’ No one asked, ‘Future where?’

The car arrived silently. Too silently.
It did not complain. It did not smoke. It did not make noise.
It looked like progress.

At first.

For the first six months, the man was proud.
Fuel bills were lower. Colleagues nodded approvingly. Drivers spoke of screens and modes they did not fully understand but respected anyway.

Then small things began.

A warning light that came and went.
A mechanic who shook his head and said, “This one needs a computer.”
A computer that was in another country.

The car still moved.
But it no longer felt settled.

One morning, the battery refused to cooperate.
Not dramatically. No breakdown. No rescue truck.

Just a quiet refusal.

The driver waited.
The office waited.
The meeting started without them.

No one tweeted that part.

Rwamiti leans forward at this point.

“You see,” he says, “the problem was not the hybrid. The problem was that no one asked where this car would go when it got tired.”

They had imported technology without importing:
• judgment,
• patience,
• skills,
• or an exit plan.

The car had a future—but not here, not now, not like this.

Soon, the organisation faced an awkward truth.

Selling the car was difficult.
Fixing it was expensive.
Explaining it was embarrassing.

So it sat.
Not broken enough to discard.
Not reliable enough to trust.

A very expensive lesson parked quietly under a mango tree.

Rwamiti pauses. He always pauses here.

“In our villages,” he says, “we never ask only where something comes from. We ask where it will go when it no longer serves us.”

He looks at the forecourt, then back at you.

“A car that cannot go home—has no business coming.”

Then he asks the question that matters:

“Before you buy this hybrid or electric car…
do you know where it will go when it gets old?”

And he says nothing more.