Knickers In The Post

When it comes to sex matters, Ugandans like to think of themselves as being conservative. Before the current NRM government came to power in 1986, seeing a couple walk down Kampala Road and hand-in-hand would have be the talk of town. A couple kissing would evoke not only whispers but glaring stares.

But Uganda 2011 has changed. It is no big deal now. It happens everywhere and so frequently that nobody gives a hoot. But still there are other things that happen behind closed doors that people will swear never happen. In some secluded shops in Kampala, sex toys are being marketed to that discerning shopper who likes to think of themselves as being feisty in bed.

It was in 1989 and we were on a rugby trip that took us from the Midlands in England and, over the channel to France. From France we went to Germany, Holland and Belgium.

By then I did not think I was naive about sex – especially when it came to fetishes that were being practiced by our English friends. In parts of London, every inch of the phone booths is filled up with one kind of sex advert or another. They range from: ‘Big breasted blonde seeks mature man for afternoon of no-holds-barred sex’ to ‘sexy tigress wants to whip you’ for example.

Those were the adverts that I was able to stomach. But there were others that I didn’t quite understand and also found too hard to swallow. Take this advert for example: ‘Blond nurse can send you her soiled knickers’. If not that: ‘Glamour’s female banker will send you her urine.’ Each of these adverts was rounded off with an address.

My best friend at the time was the Geordie Gary Nesbitt, who came from that rather drab northern English city of Sunderland. The town was so drab, that I often wonder why Sira Kiwana, decided to make himself the only Ugandan known to have lived there.

Getting back, Geordie Gary Nesbitt and I always had this feeling that most of the adverts were some kind of scam operated by London’s notorious sex underworld. But whatever reservations we had, we felt it was a scam that was worth spending 25 pounds (sh85,000)on. One weekend and after taking down the contact address of Blond Nurse who is in a position to mail you her soiled knickers for a fee – perhaps as a way of earning extra cash seeing that at the time the nursing profession was not the best paying job in England, we did the needful and sent off our dime.

A week went by and every morning when the postman turned up, he delivered nothing but bills. Another ten days went by and again no knickers but bills. Then one Friday, the postman this time, rang the door bell to give us our mail rather than push it through the letter box as is the norm. And the reason why he rang the door bell? He had a package that could not fit through the letter box.

The nondescript brown envelope got our hearts racing. What this it? Would it be worth the 25 pounds we had spent and the nineteen or so days of waiting in anguish for? When Gary ripped open the envelope, a plastic bag – one similar to those used by the police to store crime scene evidence fell to the floor and its contents were all too evident. They were indeed knickers and on close inspection, they looked soiled – well they had a ‘browny streak’ running through them.

It was the most disgusting thing I had seen and of course I fled the room and left it to Geordie Gary to whatever it was that he did to them!

Back to my trip to Europe. , at one point we breezed into a small town called Bruges on the Holland/Dutch border. Just to give you some history, Bruges was one of those towns that had seen fierce battles between Adolf Hitler’s Nazi’s and the Allied Forces. And despite the battering that it took, it has since been rebuilt with all the scars of the war erased.

Bruges filled up with families on a Sunday. In just about every store, hypermarket, café, restaurant or store that we walked into, there was a family presence. In some cases, there were three or more generations of families – something that you do not see in Uganda.

And it was into one hypermarket that we piled and only to find it was a sex shop with more floor space than your average warehouse in Kitgum that stores grain for The World Food Programme.

The first part of the store sold the usual stuff – Playboy, Penthouse or Mayfair magazines. But the further in that you walked, the magazines got more graphic as did the titles – Hustler, Knave, Pus**y amongst others. In the far back of the warehouse were toys that would put a smile on the face of anyone into sadomasochism sex. Handcuffs, masks, chains, whips – I think you all get the drift. While all that was an eye opener, what took me aback is that the Belgians and the Dutch from just across the border are pretty much open when it comes to sex. Adults don’t shop for sex toys alone. They take along their great grandparents, young sons and daughters, sons and daughters’ in-laws, uncles and aunts!

Like I did, am sure that many of you would have fled the warehouse for it was almost as sordid as seeing your average Ugandan Christian and well to-do family deciding not to go to Lido beach over the Easter weekend but down into the seedy depths of Bwaise to watch kimansulo! But if anybody wants the address of Blonde Nurse – you know the one with the dirty underwear, just holler, txt or send me an E-mail for I Googled it up the other day.