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.