Chicks Can Embarass!

I would like to think that I am a hard man – the Jean Claude Van Damme, the Chuck Norris of the media world for I have seen stuff that would not only make a Billy goat puke but also give Joseph Kony sleepless nights.

But just when I thought I had seen it all, a spanner gets thrown into the works that made me shriek with embarrassment. This is how my hardness (and not in the actual sense of the word) unravelled.

Embarrassment - Season One

For arguments sake, let’s call her yellow Merc Jackie M. She was off to San Francisco to attend a convention and along with OPP we were to give her a lift to the airport.

But we had to ‘catch’ before we left for the airport and that we did from Miki’s Bar on the Munyonyo road. We got so carried away with catching that when we realized what time it was, it meant there was going to be a mad dash for the airport.

So into the Range we clambered sped off to Ebbs. In the panic to get to the airport on time, one thing that Jackie M did not do was to go to the toilet before we left.

Somewhere past Kajjansi, her bladder which was swirling with more than eight bottles of TML needed to be relieved. And it needed to be relieved straight away.

OPP had no choice but pull up to the side and out she shot and ran down the grassy verge. Now the mechanics of a woman going to the loo are far different than it is for us men. We men just flop ‘Segwanga’ out and that is it.

Jackie M being a squeeze, had to pull up her skirt, squat and hover in her butt in the air while she did her stuff. I presumed she would have done all that while facing away from the road. To my horror, when I looked out of the window, she was facing the car and what I saw was not a pretty sight!

The squirt so to speak, looked like a water fountain that was experiencing some form of mechanical problem for the squirts came out in five second spurts before dying down. And with that, she yanked up her G-string, pulled down her skirt and was back in the Range.

Embarrassment – Season Two

Clement K and I were in a small road side joint near Zone 7 having lunch which was served by a rather attractive young girl.

After she had served us lunch, she sought to chat with us – something that we were both okay with since we found her attractive. As the conversation flowed, it was broken by the shrill of a baby crying and with that, she went into a back room and reappeared with a baby whom she breast fed.

Okay, okay, wait for it! However, once the baby was done, Young Girl did not put her breast back. She let it hang out for a good twenty minutes while she had a conversation with us.

Our polite coughs to draw her attention to her boob which was hanging out of her blouse fell on deaf ears. At one point she even looked down at it, massaged it but didn’t put it back into her blouse.

Embarrassment – Season Three     

There is no way that my editors - CW and LP will publish season three’s details for they would get fired. If you really want to know what went down, e-mail me on tbukumunhe@googlemail.com and I will send you the vile details. Till next week.

Caught In The Middle

I am not one for being abusive. Okay I have sworn but I try to do so only as a last resort. When we talk about abuse, we think verbal abuse as in swearing. But there are other types of abuse that society has seemingly accepted and embraced. Have a read of this.

Chapter One: Child Abuse

It was late and we had stopped in Kansanga, in a bar that is known to stay open till the wee hours of the morning. It would have been 3:00am and that is where we found her sitting at the bar with not a care in the world.

But she had to care because she had a child with her – well not exactly a child but a baby who I would estimate was no more than three weeks old. Worse still, she was sitting next to a loud speaker that was belting out enough decibels of the song Jim by The Afrigo Band to keep Kansanga awake.

I had to ask and I did but not her, but the owner who was quick to offer a line of defence. He said: “But she came in at 5:00pm!” So she came at 5:00pm, it is now 3:00am.

When the lady sensed I was making a fuss, she called out to her partner who straddled up to me and assured me that, what his wife does with his kid is none of my business. “You can take yours home early if you want but don’t get involved in my affairs. Is it your kid” so he assured me.

Chapter Two: Mentally Incapacitated Abuse

I am not too sure if ‘mentally incapacitated’ is the correct wording to use. I have heard people use that while others say ‘retarded’. But whether it is ‘mentally incapacitated, mentally challenged or retarded’ people who fall into this bracket are still people.

However, we in Uganda take a dim view of them. In Wandegeya when she walked in to beg for a dime for something to eat, the waitresses were quick to react. In fact I have never seen waitresses move that fast! She picked up an empty bottle of mineral water and hurled it at the mentally incapacitated woman. And she did a verbal follow up in Luganda calling her everything from ‘stupid, mbuzi (goat) to mulalu (mad).

When we tried to tell the waitress that what she was doing was wrong, she looked at us and without batting an eyelid, she said: “In here we do not entertain mad people.”

But it didn’t stop there. A waiter turned up and with all his rage, he emptied her out onto the streets. With much regret nobody did anything, nobody said anything.

But I did and the response from the waiter was curt: “You can go and join her on the streets but not in here.”

To the waitresses, if you happen to read this article which I doubt you are, the mentally challenged are still people who have rights just like you and I have.

What are we supposed to do then? Do we keep quiet when we see a four week old baby being propped up on the bar counter at 3:00am? Do we also mind our own business when we see the mentally challenged being thrown out of places, being ridiculed and abused?

I have always tried to intervene in such cases, but the response I always get is: “TB, it is none of your business, leave it alone”.        

The Fracas Over Menvu Worth 2k

Things are tight the world over as far as money is concerned. The Euro zone is on the verge of collapse, Greece is just short of going to the dogs while Portugal and Spain are on bunkenke with their economies.

Uganda too, has been hit and I suspect that there are only a handful of people like Sudhir, Wava, Mbire, and Kirumira who are not feeling the economic pinch and can still afford to go to Serena and drink beer for 6K, or imported Heineken at 10k!

The rest of us have scaled down our outings to bufunda’s where a beer still costs sh2,500 though if you did go to the depths of Namuwongo, I do know of bars where a drink is a mere 2k.

We no longer have a full tank of fuel that the orange fuel warning light is permanently lit and we no longer buy a pack of fags, but ‘separates’. Smokers will know what I mean.

Down Kinawataka Road, there is a small shop run by – ah let’s see, let me call them Tom, Kilama and Acordi for arguments sake. Tom and Kilama run the shop, while their sister Acordi, who is still at school, sells bogoya or is it menvu and fried cassava to earn some pocket money.

Acordi takes her business seriously and is not one known for giving credit. But she did, to Lady who lives in the hood and who took menvu worth a mere 2k.

Two weeks down the road, the bill had yet to be cleared so when Lady’s husband turned up at the shop, she threw in a polite reminder that his wifey owed 2k.

And that was it. The man cut more than just a wire! He unleashed a string of swear words that would make a hardened man like Kahinda Otafire, who is used to vulgar words, squirm.

Then he stormed down the road while shouting at the top of his voice: “Do you know how to do business? Am I the one who bought the 2k menvu? You can take you and the rest of your menvu and f**k off then disappeared out of sight only to return ten minutes later and still seething.

He went on and on that his rants attracted not only a small crowd, the passing motor traffic also slowed so that they too could be in the mix.

The storm eventually calmed with our chap walking off still vexed at the thought that he might have to pay sh2k bill.

Looking back, there is something that does not make sense. Why would a man scream for the whole kyalo to hear that, his wife had taken a banja of 2k and on menvu of all things and failed to clear the bill?

In fact most people in the shop assumed that he had been swung a mega bill, something along the lines of sh250,000 and that is why he was making noise and noise which even I, would have found justifiable.

But he screamed for a mere 2k worth of menvu! When he eventually left, to placated Acordi, I paid the 2k. The following day when he was told the bill had been cleared by a ‘Good Samaritan’, he did come to the shop to thank me but didn’t refund my 2k.

I thought of making a big fuss about it and go screaming for the whole kyalo to hear, but sanity prevailed 

    

Y'embeera!

‘Y’embeera!’ In the circles that I hang in, that is the new Luganda word or is it phrase which is fast spreading that soon, it will become everyday talk. It stems from a news clip on NTV when a thief who was being whisked off to CPS told the reporter: “y’embeera” when asked why he had done what he did. Y’embeera is supposed to mean ‘such is life’ or ‘for the prevailing situation of the day, such is life’.

But before I get into the meat of today’s article, let me throw in a preamble. I don’t like using such fancy and intelligent words because people would say I am trying to be John Nagenda or a Peter Mulira, but what the heck.   

In Bugolobi, there is an Italian restaurant next to Shell. And in that restaurant, I suspect that the waitresses who all seem to have legs that soar like skyscrapers, have been told that they must pout. And by pouting, I don’t mean they pout their lips or cheeks but, they pout their bottoms.

Most of them walk around like they have a carrot stuck up their bottoms. Their butts ride high and pout higher than your average chicken can muster when it shows off the ‘chicken triangle’ on its butt. It is enough to put you off your pizza but, if you find ‘chicken triangles’ a delicacy (which I don’t – it’s gross thing to eat), then looking at the waitresses pout their butts as you eat might just be the thing for you.

The waitresses also go through phases when they become complacent and being complacent is a number one Ugandan disease. We don’t care anymore. We leave things as is and we do not complain about shoddy work.

By the children’s play pen at the Italian restaurant, there is a notice board that has something to do with management not being responsible for injuries and so forth.

Nothing wrong with that except that the painter contracted to paint the sign, rather that spelling the word ‘parents’ as parents, he chose to spell it as ‘parients’. He must have seen the error, but he still took it down to the Italian’s and I presume he got paid for his work.

The Italians who run the restaurant do speak English and while the word parent is not complicated, why accept a notice board that has such an obvious error in the first place? Ah, I know why – y’embeera!

And there is a lady who runs a secretarial service shop a few blocks past Zone 7. She does everything from typing to typesetting, business cards and so forth.

I can see you waiting with baited breath for the ‘but’. There is ‘a but’, because why would anybody give her business when on the sign post outside her shop, the word ‘business’ is spelt ‘busness’?

I tried to point this out to her but in typical Ugandan style she shrugged her shoulders and began to question why I was making such a fuss. If that was not enough, she rolled her eyes and said: “Y’embeera”.

And with that, if the painter does shoddy work at your home, the house-ee messed up or the car mechanic did not deliver, don’t vex. Just roll your eyes and say ‘y’embeera’ and move on for it is the Ugandan way.