Daddy's Range Rover

Cars! Boys and by the time they smell gasoline, hear the crunch of a gear going from 2nd and into 3rd or the squeal of tires, they are on the fast track. When I was growing up, it did not matter that I was only 8-years old. What did matter was like many boys out there, an 8 year old ‘could drive a car’. When I hit 14, it did not matter that we had not been to driving school nor did we have a driving license. What did matter is that, ‘WE KNEW’ how to drive. Period!

We were fast learners. We watched our parents or anybody who drove and picked up tips from them. Driving school? Hmm, driving schools were invented for the annoying and mbu prim girls – and yes I say again, the annoyingly mbu prim girls from Namagunga and Gayaza and the sissy boys with weak scrotums.
Jonathan Musoke was perhaps the first person from school that I saw drive. Another was Bernard Kajura amongst others. These boys were barely 15 years old and yet they were driving. It was imperative that we were driving at that age for out there, there was a crop of females to impress. And it did not matter what car you drove. As long as you drove, that’s all that mattered.

But how does a 14 or 15-year old get hold of a car I hear you ask? Of course we didn’t ask our parents. We they went to work, we simply stole the cars – a trend that still happens today. And in the deep of the night when they were asleep, we’d pushed the car out of the garage and away for a night of partying.

Of course I was not about to left out of the car driving rat race. I too had to make a name for myself not only at school, but amongst the girls who went to Greenacres, a school about an hour’s drive away from The Grange School that I went to in Kenya.
Then it was the turbulent 80s. And in those turbulent 80s while Jim along with 27 of his pals had taken to the bush to show Obote a move or two and a certain judge cowered under his bed, we were daring teens, showing our parents more than a move when it came to making off with their cars.

I was in town for the Easter sojourn and the highlight of the sojourn was discovered in a matter of minutes in the garage - two cars, a Fiat 127 and a Range Rover. It was a ‘fast forward’ moment for my brain. It thought: “The holiday is over and you are back at school a hero and in demand amongst the girls from Greenacres.” But ha, let me rewind the script and tell you what exactly happened.

As soon as Mr. and Mrs. Bukumunhe – my parents that is, went off to work, I was in the garage deciding which of the two cars would make the impact I so desired. Of course it had to be the Range but if I had an ounce of common sense (well it is difficult to find a 14-year boy with an ounce of common sense) I should have gone with the Fiat. I had driven the Fiat before but never a Range. To say I was in control of the Range – ha, I never was. I didn’t drive the Range. Rather the Range drove me and I barely controlled it from Kansanga where we lived to Makyinde where I had gone to squirt my name.

As I drove the streets of Makyinde, I came across Jonathan and Ian who I guess were idling but with some hot girls in tow and here I am pulling up in a Range Rover! The girls swooned, Ian and Jonathan drooled malusu (saliva) while I was beaming and on the verge of a massive ego ejaculation. Back at Jonathan and Ian’s house, phone calls were made and chaps rode over on their ‘Chopper’ bikes (anybody remember them?) to see me, the star of the day in a Range. When they turned up, I sneered at them because they rode bikes instead of driving a Range.

Time though was almost up. At 1:00pm my folks would be home for lunch so I had to scoot after all, the mission of my name doing the rounds had been accomplished. And in front of a crowd of boys and girls, I lit up the Range and with elbow leaning on the window, I drove out of the gates and that’s when Range Rover showed me a move.
Its V8 engine kicked came alive that it leaped a small wall, careered across the road, bouncing off a wall and came to a standstill after crashing through a wall and was left overlooking a house in the valley below!

As the damaged Range hung there, my adoring female fled home and did most of the boys while my face popped millions of ready-to-be-squeezed zits and the need to be in the depths of Siberia where my parents could not find me was top of my agenda.
With no idea of what do, I sat by the side of the road and wailed – I think I even pissed my pants. I don’t know how my parents found me, but I wailed even louder when they turned up – not because I was relieved that the ordeal was over but because the hiding I was going to get was just round the corner. And when we got home, I wailed even louder and like the judge I mentioned earlier, I too cowered under the bed for with dad and his anger, it was no longer sweet home but more of a fierce battle in Luwero triangle.