Do Women Need To Reconnect With Their Cats?

Father Simon Lokodo, so I understand, is minister of ethics and integrity and hazarding a snippet at what his job description entails, “something to do with society and behaviour?” 

I think.

Anyway, he has beef with we in the media for – Abanooya on Bukedde TV and Blind Date on NTV – which he states, “promote prostitution.” Hmm!

What about Senga who teaches Bride-To-Be about sex and how to please? Will he send the moral police to raid hen parties and have Senga, Bride-To-Be and Girlfie’s arrested and paraded at the Media Centre as the unacceptable faces of decadent women? 

Sticking on the Senga trail, I hear her lectures are quite risqué - risqué enough to burst open the pimples that still linger on the faces of the Namagunga and Gayaza girls from their school days. Though Senga concentrates on what women need to do for men, I think there is a need to send her abroad to catch a lecture or two by US and UK Senga on what woman needs to do for herself.

Nicole Daedone is the UK Senga behind orgasmic meditation (OM). In 2001, she launched OneTaste and today she has a worldwide following of just over two million. OM so Senga Daedone says is a ‘mindfulness practice that involves stroking the upper left-hand quadrant of the clitoris for 15 minutes without interruption’.

Writing in the London Evening Standard early this month, journalist Anne-Celine Jaeger, who attended an OM seminar said: “I’m staring down the barrel of a gun. This however, is not a fashion show and the gun is a vagina spread out before us like a lotus flower. The well groomed vajayay belongs to Claudia, who along with Marc, is about to demonstrate OM. Marc begins by ‘safeporting’ – touching her thighs and moving his fingers to the hotspot where he starts shredding (guitar speak). I like that, mbu shredding. Think about it.

So, what sort of people, go to Senga Daedone’s OM seminars? “It’s not perverts” says Jaeger. The seminars are not held in backstreet dingy hotels while looking at the emergency exits in case of a moral police raid. “Everybody was there from mid-twentysomething couples to divorcees in their fifties to young mothers.” In other words, Namagunga and Gayaza girls would fit in.

Senga Daedone’s lectures are not about sexual gratification. People sign up for different reasons from ‘yearning to truly connect to others’ or as one attendee bluntly put it: “I came to reconnect with my ‘young cat”. I couldn’t use the given word that is used when referring to a young cat because it would floor Father Lokodo, you understand?

What women get out of OM is a starting point that rises, comes down, goes up again and has no agenda and cultivates energy. It’s here, it’s there, it’s everywhere and the end is a symphony of highs, a confluence of individuals so harmonious, so in tune like Berlin’s philharmonic orchestra is. There is nothing phonographic about it. It’s like poetry, touching someone’s soul along with an increase of overall vitality, energy, libido and a reduction of stress. 

Jeez! Why can't women be like us men? All we men want is to be simplistic and focus our linear goal-orientated mission of sending ‘40 million+ swimmers’ up a canal with no highs of Moses Matovu on sax and the rest Afrigo Band belting out Jim, and having a serious crash once the mission is over.

Now you see why, Senga, Namagunga and Gayaza Girl need to pack their bags and get themselves to Park Crescent Conference Centre in London to connect with their ‘cats’? And we would be cool with it.

Am sure we would.

Seeing men can attend, Father Lokodo might want to tag along and see for himself in case he decides to ban the seminars before they hit dusty streets of Kampala, Bushenyi and beyond. 

NOTE: Sunday Vision censor board found this article too risque for publication  

I'm Poor - Sh42m A Week Can't Feed My Family

Two weeks ago, this is what he told court. “I can be called a poor man. I don’t have the money to support my family...”

I’ve had to cut his statement short because, The Free Dictionary on Google is spewing out the definition of ‘poor’ which, it defines as: “Having insufficient wealth to meet the necessities or comforts of life or to live in a manner considered acceptable to society.”

Definition digested? We continue? The poor man is the Russian, Sergei Pugachev, once labelled ‘Vladimir Putin’s banker’ and who, is fighting a worldwide freeze on his $2 billion assets imposed by a London court at the request of officials in Moscow. Pugachev supposedly made his fortune siphoning off $1 billion in funds from Mezhprom Bank, which filed for insolvency in 2010.

When all your dime - $2 billion of it, is frozen by the courts, Pugachev must be justifiably poor because he has no income coming in. But wait a minute. The courts have not hung him out to dry, nor thrown him, his wife and kids onto the streets without a dime.

Rather, they told him: “Hey Pugachev, don’t worry about the Russian officials. This is London. We won’t seize your £12 million valued house, so carry on living in it. Plus we will also give you £10,000 (sh42m) a week to live on. Considering your (once) wealth, it’s not much, but with adjustments here and there, you can make do on it - can’t you?”

Are they nuts?! He screamed poverty because he can’t make ends meet and you better be holding on to your underpants and knickers for his reasoning. You see, a £10,000 a week, grace-of-court allowance, is not enough to pay for his two house-ee’s, three nannies, two drivers and wait for it, wait for it - a live-in doctor. Yes, you read right - a live-in doctor.

But Sergei, if you got rid of Driver, Nanny, Doctor and House-ee, it would save you money. Plus, why not sell off the house, buy one that’s cheaper and pocket the change?

Here, we have people who live on less than 20k-a-week, but pay rent, get to work, eat one meal a day and may have sh200 left over for one luxury – a tot pack of Royal Vodka.

If Ugandan Mullah found himself in a situation where the High Court froze his assets but was given sh42m a week to live on, would he also cry poverty? Of course he would as he tries to comprehend a ‘miserable life’ on what was once pocket change.

However Mullah, this would be your new lifestyle. There would be more rolling of the dice at Kampala Casino’s roulette tables or flying British Airways but Egypt Air. No going to Sheraton Hotel for Sunday brunch or splashing out sh10m to buy a CD that some dreadlocked ganja smoking Rasta hobbling about on one crutch is launching in Hotel Africana’s car park.

Out go the sh400m+ Mercedes, Range Rover Sport and X5 for a sh12m Toyota Premio from the bond. The 8k+ beer at Serena will be swapped for 3k beer at Nampeera’s. The Kololo mansion would be vacated for a house in Najjera at not more than sh1.5m a month. And no more splashing $4,000 per term for your very daft kids to go to international schools but, sh800,000 at a local school like Buganda Road.

If you still cry sh42m-a-week is poverty money, I’ll take you to the slums of Katanga and Kikubamutwe, where families, who given the chance to live on a mere 40k a week, would think Easter has come early and be deemed a Sudhir, a Wava or Mbire, to envied by their really pitiful neighbours who only earn 5k-a-week. 

Women's Day, Handbags, Shoes or Is It Airtime - What Do Women Really Want?

We men love our women. We love them because they are our grandmothers, mums, sisters, aunts, nieces, girlfriends and wives. We also love them because they are CEO’s, princesses, queens and even first ladies! Despite the love we have for them, one thing we don’t understand is why they want. And keep on wanting.

Women look at us men as dogs - selfish ball licking dogs who don’t care. But they forget that even selfish ball licking dogs make sacrifices like we did to get this day, March 8^th, declared International Women’s Day. Years back, the learned men of the world met up for an afternoon of beer and muchomo and thought: “What can we do for women to make them feel loved? What trinket do we throw their way to stop them b****ing?”

Flowers and airtime were out because we already did that. How about a half kilo of byenda (entrails)? No, because she snobs byenda as a poor woman’s supper. Dinner? No, because we’ve overdone that for her and her five+ baleebesi friends she tows with. If we take her out, why can’t she suggest a kafunda? Why do all her suggestions have to be places where we get little or no change from 50k for two drinks?

While I have always wondered why I wasn’t at that learned meeting, those present toiled with ideas till eureka(!) struck. Somebody came up with the idea of a public holiday. It has to be a Muzungu Man thought, because to African Man, Al Shabab, ISIS and Taleban Man, the concept of women having a day off – let alone a public holiday is utterly ridiculous. It’s not written in the scriptures and it goes against all their ethics as men. 

But Woman, listen here, what did Ugandan Man do? He bit his tongue, relented and consented to the holiday. Al Shabab, ISIS and Taleban Man on the other hand refused. And so did Muzungu Man, because Women's Day, is not a public holiday in the UK like it is in Uganda.

Despite bending over backwards and presenting women with a public holiday, they still want. They want to do things that men are supposed to do – which is fine with us. But when the dinner bill is presented, she is not man enough to present her purse and pay the bill. When gifts are being ferried at a kwanjula, she doesn’t lift the matooke but the small box of Mukwano tea bags. When she’s buying something that costs 4k, she’ll ask us for that 4k, because she 'only' has a 10k note which, she does not want to break. 

When we are with her, her phone is for receiving calls, but never outgoing calls. Outgoing calls are made on our phone using our airtime. And when she has used up all the airtime, she's not man enough to at least dip into her purse, pull out a ka-5k and buy airtime, but with those rolling 'whatever' eyes will say: "airtime has gamed" then stretch out that ever wanting hand so we can load it with 10k for her to make more calls. But do we b**ch? Nope, not at all. Instead we grimace and bite our tongues.

Women are so hell bent on being on our manly level. When they started pumping weights so they could have a muscular body like Ivan ‘Mr. Kampala’ Byekwaso’s, did we stop them? We were against them having muscular bodies but no, we did'nt stop them. When they grew hair on their chests between their boobs because men have hairy chests, did we stop them? Again, we did'nt like it, but we did'nt stop them. During sawa ya maalavu, when they figured that they too ‘can be on top' and do all the riding, did we complain? On that one, we really liked but again, we did'nt stop them nor did we complain.  

This public holiday, while they are out and having a blast, we will be at home and all hungry because she’s not there to cook for us. But will we complain? No.

On a serious note though, women don’t need a public holiday. Every day, we men applaud them for doing all they do to make the world a better place – even if it means them wanting to do a man’s job.

I know because Lucy, Penny and Esther who are all empowered women at Sunday Vision, rule the paper, while not forgetting Jennifer Musisi, who has shown the men at KCCA that her style of wearing the trousers and pulling up the zip, is much better for the development of Kampala City than theirs. Happy Women’s Day!  

      

When Knowledge Matters

All is not well at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Media reports have it that High Commissioner and Ambassador are worried about their futures because contracts have expired with no sign of them being renewed. Others live in dilapidated missions, while some wait for Appointing Authority’s signature.

Foreign Affairs say Ministry of Finance has not released money and Appointing Authority has not had the time to sign appointment letters. The appointing authority is President Museveni. But I obviously know better. It has nothing to do with money or a signature, but global social norms.

Chew on this.

In the UK, the Foreign Office in a review of its diplomats came to the conclusion that they have to undergo a stint at The Diplomatic Academy before taking up a posting. The academy will train them throughout their careers from foundation to expert level because “the world is too complex for individuals to grasp without help and where it was once a matter of elites talking to elites, now it’s about having to operate in many different registers in public, private, on TV and on social media.”

Here and during the Idi Amin era, before our athletes went abroad to compete, they went to camp to learn the ways of the host country – ‘the-what-to-dos’ and ‘the-what-not-to-dos.’ Today those camps don’t exist.

When we go abroad – athletes, diplomats and all, we simply hop onto Emirates but, we have little knowledge of the social cultures and norms of the countries we are going to because we figure as long we can read, write and speak a language that sounds like English, we have the knowledge.

I have never been to Finland and neither had our ambassador – until he got the posting. Until he got there, I bet he had no idea that Finns don’t like being hugged or kissed; that two or three minute conversations are common and should not be interrupted? Did Johnson Agara, our ambassador in Istanbul, know the Turks get deeply offended if the sole of your shoe faces them before he went there? I doubt. And neither did our ambassador in Malaysia know that insisting on eye contact and saying: “Hello, I’m Galabuzi” (or Nampeera), is not the done thing.

While M7 has not told me why he’s is not signing any foreign appointments, am sure he won’t do so until he has the right calibre person to send. He simply can’t pluck people out of the depths of a Mawokota, Kamuli, Kamwenge or whatever village and post them to Azerbaijan, Montenegro or the UAE, for who knows what diplomatic storm they might whip up when they do the wrong thing.

Fifty years ago we lived in a monoculture and all that concerned us was that corner of Uganda that we lived in. Today we are surrounded by other cultures and increasingly, we travel and do business abroad. But wouldn’t we be more successful if we were able to understand how the different cultures and societies operate?

If Foreign Affairs also open up a diplomatic school, they might as well open it for all of us. Knowledge you see, would have helped that man who sat next to me on a 12-hour KQ flight to Thailand. While I ate and quaffed enough Carlsberg’s, he looked on with envy - his throat all dry and a stomach that rumbled in hunger. When the trolley passed, he’d bark at Stewardess: “I don’t want!”

Ten minutes to landing he whispers: “Eh, are you not worried about your bill - you have been drinking since we left Entebbe?” Seeing I had the knowledge, with a smirk I told him: “Bill? All drinks and food are part of the cost of your ticket.” With that, his stomach rumbled even louder as I cracked open another Carlsberg.


   

When Life Is All About Being Idle

TB: “Yo Dude, you good, you paying, what you up to?”

Dude: “Ah bleak TB, just passing time.”

The conversation with Dude was to the point and lasted a mere three minutes. What I found interesting was the notion of him “just passing time.” Passing time is a saying – if it can indeed be termed a saying that I have heard of, but really don’t know what it means.

Is it a Ugandan invention and something that we own the exclusive worldwide rights to? If we do own the rights, where are they kept? My guess would be in the vaults at Uganda National Bureau of Standards. So I placed a call to them.

“You want to know if we keep the rights to just passing time” so Lady on the other end of the phone shot back. 

“Yep, I want to know if Uganda invented them and if we did, do we own the copyright.” The line went dead shortly after. I called back but as soon as Lady heard my voice, she hung up.

I tried Google and he too was not forthcoming but one person who ought to know would be 18-year-old Nephew and this is what he had to say. “But uncle, you must know. It’s passing time, like I can wake up and decide to spend the morning passing time.” I was not with him and sought further clarification.

“Okay, sometimes I don’t have anything to do so I go into town and pass time. You know how it is these days, don’t you?” We obviously weren’t playing the same chess game but after more probing I came to understand that it had something to do with being idle.

In Uganda, it’s seemingly no big deal if one is idle. In western Uganda for example, Munyankole Man passes time by squatting at the roadside to watch speeding Gagga buses en route to Kigali. In Kampala, Muganda Man passes time by tugging at his crotch as he watches cars being clamped. In Gulu, Acholi Man is still fascinated at the way his Casio ‘disco watch’ flickers, with the Langi’s absorbed in trying to work out how many different ways they can rotate a tooth pick inside their mouths while we Basoga, stare intently at our toes waiting for the next jigger to hatch.

Passing time so I later found out is not exclusive to Uganda. The British also pass time and they do it by writing letters to a granny called Deidre. Deidre then passes her time by answering and plastering their letters in The Sun newspaper so other people can read her response as they pass time waiting in reception to see Doctor. Check out Robert.

"Dear Deidre, I have always wanted to be a woman. I feel I was born in the wrong body and had hoped the feeling would go away, but it just gets stronger. I am 26 as is my girlfriend. We cohabit but she is talking about having kids and I feel it would be unfair to bring them into a relationship knowing I want a sex change. I don’t know what to tell her.”  

Robert.     

Robert really has the time to pass to be writing silly letters to Deidre and I can understand why she would respond to him and the rest who write in. She’s a granny and if grannies are left to pass time, they end up senile and perhaps that is why The Sun gives her two full pages a week.

That said, I really hope that kesho when I wake up I have something to do, for if I were to spend the day passing time, what would I do? Would I write to Deidre and tell her how I’m off to Mbarara to meet Munyankole Man so we squat by the roadside while tugging at our crotches as we count the Gagga buses speeding by?

Will Getting Rid of Pork In Books Appease IS, Al Shabab and Boko Haram?

The world is in disarray and part of the problem has to do with religion. Here, Muslim Cleric is being assassinated. In Nigeria, Boko Haram is on the rampage – abducting school children and killing innocent civilians. Syria and Iraq have IS who want to behead anybody they come across for a dime while Al Shabab contend themselves with sending Suicide Bomber into neighbouring Kenya.

With all this insecurity, we look to the powers that be - Ban Ki Moon at the UN, Barack Obama and his Secretary of State, John Kerry, the UK’s David Cameron and more importantly, our own Foreign Minister Sam Kutesa, who holds the chair at the UN Security Council to sort out the mess.

While Kerry and Moon rake up frequent flyer air miles shuttling in and out of the worlds trouble spots in the luxury of their private jets, they do little except utter two words they both have in common. “We denounce....” They denounce what’s been happening in Syria, Iraq, Paris and Kenya and leave it at that – words that do not solve the problem.

Enter Oxford University Press (OUP). OUP is a printing press and they print books. In fact, OUPs only contribution to the greater good of mankind had been to publish its bestselling reference book – The Oxford English Dictionary, plus the Oxford Annotated Bible and a number of kiddies books which, have made their way into classrooms all over the world including Uganda. And I guess we have to thank them for that.

With their successes in the literally world, the folk at OUP now figure they can make a contribution to solving some of the world’s problems – especially those that offend the Muslim world.

Their solution is so simple, it will have Moon, Obama, Kerry, Cameron and Kutesa kicking themselves and saying: “Eh WTF! How come we didn’t think of that? The solution has all along been right under our noses!”   

Three weeks ago, OUP banned “pigs, sausages or anything else which could be perceived as pork...” from its books because it would “avoid offending Muslims.” Now you see why Moon, Obama and the rest will be kicking themselves?

However, and this is where I roll out the upper cased BUT. I am no expert on foreign policy and neither is Pork Roaster at CHOGM in Bunga or those in Ntinda, Wandegeya and Luzira but jeez, I really don’t see Boko Haram, IS, Al Queada and Al Shabab saying: “OUP nailed it! Getting rid of pigs from their publications has over night solved the 200-year-old feud we have been having with the Christians.”

Also Muslim Friend has never indicated to me that he won’t buy a book because it has a picture of a pig nor has he demonstrated or thrown stones at pork joints that are close to mosques as they are in Ntinda and Wandegeya and I have not seen him or his kids hiding under tables or throwing up when a pig has idly wandered past. Khalid Mahmood, a British MP and who is Muslim criticised OUP saying: “That’s ludicrous. That’s absolute, utter nonsense and when people go too far that actually brings the whole discussion into disrepute.” Hear, hear. 

Seeing OUP has made a non-issue a big deal, what will IS, Al Queada and Al Shabab do when they see Book Hawker selling innocent children’s books that contain the words “pig and sausage.” Will he become a marked man?

That said, I am not taking any chances and I have taken the precaution of tossing my OUP printed bible onto the sigiri because there is mention of pork – Isaiah 66:17, along with the kids ‘piggy bank’ and will scatter the ashes in Lake Vic to get rid of the evidence just in case Suicide Bomber decides to drop in. Better safe than sorry.

When Women Throw Parties For Their Ovaries

Some men argue that women in their quest for liberation are taking matters a trifle too far. I am not one of them so I think. However in Saudi Arabia, Imam is up in arms because some women want to drive cars, a practice which for women is illegal in the kingdom while in Iran, Imam insists that if women are to play football, they must still wear the hajib.

In Pakistan, Cleric will behead his daughter for having a boyfriend while in Afghanistan, Taleban is disgustingly appalled that some families allow their daughters to go to school - an act they deem heinous and punishable by death.

In Uganda 2015, I think women do as they please, though it’s still a crime for them to talk about their vaginas in a monologue and in some cultures, eat the chicken gizzard.

Despite that, women still march forward. They started off with household parties - swapping kitchenware, then on to lingerie parties where they bought the skimpiest of underwear from women who had travelled abroad and brought back the latest offerings from Ann Summers.

They didn’t stop there. In came the sex toy parties where women who we (men) thought were prudish and shy like the ones who work for Sunday Vision, NSSF, Centenary Rural Bank and Sanyu Babies Home snapped up the toys to...hmmm, let’s leave it there shall we, followed by Senga and her explicit ‘how-to-pull’ parties.

With women blazing up the corporate ladder and holding down top jobs, they find themselves in a dilemma of having to juggle family aspirations against career ambitions.

Yesteryear they would have given up on a career due to the dictations of a ticking biological clock but, not anymore because an exit clause now gets them round that hiccup – ovum or egg freezing, and what’s more, is that they are doing it in style.

Abroad, women are not just going to see the doctor for a private consultation and leaving it at that, but throwing egg freezing parties. These parties have many of the same components as an Ann Summers lingerie party or Senga party – music, shrieks of laughter, wine, beer, nibbles and all set up in somebody’s home.

What women are forking out for after agreeing to attend one of these parties is not a new airtight container from the supermarket, but oocyte cryopreservation – otherwise known as a possible extension to the fertility sell-by-date: a batch of frozen eggs. One doctor throwing such parties in London is fertility expert, Dr. Aimee Eyvazzadeh whose patients call, “the egg whisperer” and whose attendees to her parties get a 10 per cent discount off the 

cost of egg freezing.

So why throw a party? Dr. Eyvazzadeh says: “The parties are meant to empower women to learn about their fertility, so they know what options they need to consider in the future.”

Egg freezing works with women having to inject themselves with hormones for 10 days before the eggs are harvested and it’s not cheap with London clinics charging £5,000 (sh21,500,000), plus an annual storage charge of £250 (sh1,075,000) and £6,000 (sh25,800,000) for the eggs to be re-implanted.

While egg freezing parties give women an opportunity to fulfil their careers and still have children, Taleban, Cleric, ISIS and Imam – basically men in general, don’t have sperm harvesting parties – probably because we are embarrassed about having to reveal how our sperms are harvested.

Plus from the depths of Mattuga, Muganda Man would flip and descend on Bulange while throwing stones and making noise for Katikkiro because his all important sexual machismo is being stripped away by an unjust wife who has refused to settle for menial jobs like being a receptionist or a secretary but, jeez, she wants to be a CEO and sit at the helm of the boardroom table!