If You Don't Know, Simply Ask!

It is said that: “If you don’t know, ask for nobody will ridicule or mock you for not knowing or asking as the case here may be.” And today’s cowardly deeds come from the idyllic islands of The Seychelles in the Indian Ocean and from the sand dunes of Dubai’s desert.

It was some year’s back that I found myself in The Seychelles for a four day sojourn courtesy of V&A, a brand under the Uganda Breweries umbrella. Though I am not a V&A drinker, the powers that lurk behind the closed doors of Uganda Breweries in Portbell felt it necessary that I should be there to cover an event for them – an event in which the winners of a V&A promotion had earned themselves a free the trip to the island.

Now somewhere on the outskirts of Kampala is a town called Matugga, a town where the winner and his girlfriend hailed from. And I have to admit that I have never been there though, I do know where it is.

For Matugga Chap and his babe, it was their first trip abroad. When we got to The Seychelles and had checked into the luxury hotel right on the coast, I duly got a call from Matugga Chap telling me all about his room and how it even came with a fridge laden to the hilt with an assortment of beers. My room too had a fridge – rather a mini bar but from the experiences I gained from my previous travels abroad, I know that you raid the mini bar at your own risk, for the prices are often three fold more expensive than in the hotel bar, which is quite pricey too.

So Matugga Chap invites me to his room to drink from his fridge or rather mini bar and that we did. We even went one step further in that we cleaned it out. As we drank, Matugga Lady was watching TV and it is only when I went to use the washroom that I found she was doing much more than watching TV. She was sprawled out on the bed in nothing but a small skimpy towel and should I dare say, playing with herself! Yuck though I wanted to linger and watch! I quickly retreated to give her time to get dressed, but she could see what the fuss was all about.

And later when she served us the last two cans of Carlsberg, she sauntered over to the balcony where we were sitting, still in the skimpy towel and showing off a ‘way over groped’ bust that was brown but teetering on an orange colour. And all Matugga Chap could say as her boobs dangled in front of me was: “You see this woman, if she had not been with me, she would never have gone abroad.”

And for the next three days, Matugga Chap was ecstatic whenever we returned from a shopping spree to find his mini bar was once again full that he invited me to keep on coming round for drinks, an invitation which was very hard to turn down.

However, come check out day, he got a rude awakening. The hotel slapped him with a bill of over $200. And when he looked round for support from me, I had long vanished into the waiting taxi. He cursed like he had never cursed before. When he asked if I knew that the mini bar was not a free thing, I simply shrugged my shoulders and wanted to tell him that: “If you didn’t know, why didn’t you first ask?” But as he acted like he knew everything from the moment we set foot in the hotel, I let him be. He learnt his lesson.

In Uganda I have a number of Asian friends and the more that I hang out with them, the more I have become accustomed to eating chillies and hot foods. Eating hot spicy food takes more than a while to get used to. In the early days, my eyes would literally shed tears by the bucket full. And this would be followed by the need to gulp glass after glass of water. But over the years of hanging out with my Asian friends, I got so used to eating hot foods. I was like them.

Well I was until I got to Dubai. We were out in the sand dunes – somewhere on the road to Abu Dhabi were we had settled down for a midnight feast. The feast had everything from a whole lamb roast to other Arab delicacies including chillies. But I was a master of chillies. And when our Arab host told me to be careful as I heaped my plate with a table spoon full of chilli, I told him not to worry. But he gave me a cautious look and grinned.

As we sat down to eat, along with his friends, they were watching me as I filled my hand with a good dose of chilli along with some cuscus. It was hot but it went down well. This is mild stuff I thought. Five minutes later I started to sweat like I had just done a stint in the sauna. I was pulling at my shirt and trying to get it off.

My eyes rolled out tears and my stomach started acting funny. At this stage Host pointed out to a cubicle some 800 meters away and advised me that is where I needed to be. I barely made it there because my sphincter couldn’t hold it anymore. My bowel was spitting not only fire but also what a bowel is supposed to spit out. And when I say spiting fire, it was literally burning that even using tissue to clean myself up was a scorching issue. I couldn’t wipe rather I had to dap myself clean. And having a pee wasn’t any easier. It was like my wee wee had been left to soak overnight in a bowl of hot peppers. I couldn’t just pee. Rather I had to pee in small droplets to ease the burning sensation.

I guess Host could have told me but since I acted like I knew everything there was to know about chillies he let me be. And like Matugga Chap, I too learnt my lesson.