Things we know, remember and love...

I remember when Blue Band was only eaten when you had visitors and it was treasured and cherished.Those moments are the highlights of any kid who grew up in in 'revolution years" Yeah. We are the children of teh revolution.
The best though was always when you got some much cherished red plum jam Zesta from Kenya.

Find a GIRL…

Who calls you HANDSOME instead of hot.

Who calls you back when you hang up on HER.

Who will stay awake just to watch you sleep.

Wait for the GIRL who… kisses your forehead.

Who wants to show you off to the world when you are in your sweats.

Who holds your hand in front of HER friends.

Who is constantly reminding you of how much SHE cares about you and how lucky SHE is to have you.

Who turns to HER friends and says, ' That's HIM!!

HONEST, HONEST SCRAPS.

I was tagged by this here woman Sybella and so when it all came down tothe matter I remembered beeeme had tagged me too but I have been negligent about responding to people's needs. But here goes:

1. 
   
   I believe the Baganda tribe has the greatest legacy of all the peoples of this country. We [us, non kingdom people] will never see, or know, the glory and the true heritage of having a kingdom dynasty almost 4 centuries old. Or being part of something large, powerful and disorganized.
   
   
   
2. 
   
   My most embarrassing moment in my life was during my Senior Four Physics Final Practical Exam. The exam required to measuring sand and finding a balance. Being the best in my class made me panic; and I wet my shorts. Right there. They brought me a basin to stand in for the rest of the exam so the pool wouldn't spread. That shit messed with my head.
   
   
   
3. 
   
   I don't talk to or entertain relationships with virgins. Some people think its harsh, I think of it a safeguard against something I will tell you later.
   
   
   
4. 
   
   I don't E.V.E.R. let people touch my head or my face. I wear glasses and y'all know how that gets. Unless we are intimate and even they cant touch my head.
   
   
   
5. 
   
   I hate football.
   
   
   
6. 
   
   The third initial in my tattoo stands for the name of a guy who saved my life - Thrice! When he saved me the last time, I took his name so I would always remember.
   
   
   
7. 
   
   I secretly believe my calling is to be a preacher because I'm a gifted speaker but, like Jonah, I am running away from it consciously. We'll talk when he has a better deal!
   
   
   
8. 
   
   I find that I can't relate/stand people who can but are too lazy to speak English properly. I begin to secretly resent their laziness, and then eventually cut them out of my company and my life. Damn bad influences!
   
   
   
9. 
   
   When I date a woman I fully submit myself to her will, thinking nothing else. When I leave I never look back. My form idea of immortality does not entail salt pillars.
   
   
   
10. 
    
    I am a terrific cook and I relate to people a lot depending on how well I perceive they can cook, or appreciate good food.
    
    
    
11. 
    
    I love eating- the smells, the aromas, the sound of sizzling butter on the pan, shiny knives in a cabinet, bright silver pans, polished cutlery, and the scent of 6, 7, 8, or 15 different food types served out.
    
    
    I would like to tag Mjay, Valentia and the Rogue King.
    

Growing Into The Heroes We Dreamt We'd Become...

As a child growing up I was always in love with heroes. But I was a Ugandan kid going to Buganda Road Primary School. I don't remember much from Mr. Mpenje and Miss Asio Stella or Mr. Mpagi or what they taught me at the time because it was amorphously assimilated into my greater knowledge of the world and life.

But i do remember my heroes back then. Very boldly. Very clearly. Recently I met someone who reminded me so much of who I wanted to become when I was growing up. Talking with her, I realised how far I had come; so many detours, so many many roads. What surprised me though was how easily me and this person got into this conversation, you know? One moment she was playing cagey and hard to get and then the next, the dynamic had shifted and we were like age old buddies. As we talked, I realised how special this person was.
You know the way the brain is triggered by the very slightest of things. How a sound, a smell, a flash of something can unlock a whole era of memories? Yeah she did. She said something about childhood heroes and father Abraham. and I...
.....
just spaced out.
....
It was too much. My mind delved into how, when I was younger, I used to want to return to school just to talk about e-works, and the Mutant League and Punky Brewster. But none of these was more interesting, educative and obsession-compelling as the green haired, smiley, deep-voiced Captain Planet!

I would have given my world to be him; I think i actually might have. He was cool, non-violent, a new metaphoric champion for the environment and the wave of environmental consciousness that that stood for.

A creation of Ted Turner [yes, the billionaire magnate] to find ways of merging education and Entertainment in the early '90s the show was a huge success in establishing environmental awareness clubs at high schools in the US. The idea seemed to be that if there was a way to teach children through entertaining them, then the world and the next generation of the planet would be a safer place.



I am much older now, more seasoned, perhaps even slightly jaded but for that instant in her presence I felt that it did not matter, whatever I'd had become; I had failed to be a planeteer.

But after I left her and as I contemplated this I realized that in many ways, I had become the hero I had always dreamt of becoming. In the more subtle features, in the finer points I still had the rough edges [its nearly impossible to be educated and not be crass. Learned is a whole different matter] but I had the bone structure down.

To be a gentle soul, be considerate, be giving of self in time and effort, to constantly adapt and be versatile in order to meet the challenges around us, to be able to accept defeat gracefully [still struggling]. But the true hallmark of any hero always has been and perhaps will always be; to be willing to do the right thing...at any cost.

WOULD I?

I often think about what I would be like if I were not going through life as a hapless wanderer. Had I been born 100 years ago would I have made a fine herds boy? If I had been born in 10,000 B.C. would I have been the man that my woman required me to be?

Would I have been the bravest man in the village, raiding the neighboring village and returning with 12 heads and a child’s skull? I ask myself if I would have had the courage to stand and say “I challenge you to fight me to the death!!” to a seven-foot-tall Acholi warrior and not wet the little sheepskin wrapped around my waist.

I wonder whether if I had been born 50 years ahead of now if I would have been able to cope knowing that white bread had been phased out for whole grains? Would I have coped in a world without dool? And that’s not without mentioning the all-important lessons learnt in school as you scrimmage for Membe (the layer stuck at the bottom of the pan when you make posho); throwing punches for a single bun...

I am sorry but I have to break to tell this…

At which juncture I must now tell you about a classmate of mine. When I was in St. Mary’s, that all so prestigious school, I was a lot of things but the one thing I was not was a errant law breaker. Twice a week every class got the number of buns equal to the number of its students. This statement meaning that not all 42 always got their buns.

Every class nominated a leader.

The leader collected the buns.

The leader distributed the buns.

Our class leader was a guy who was called O’scar. No, call him Ndikito [suffice that he was of the northern connection]. Ndikito was a rugby player with some semblance of muscle. In class, like most villages, we had a class clown: Rogers. Classic. Fool. Most irksome bastard ever.

One day in that ever so serene place called our dinning hall at break amid the porridge and tea O‘scar came in with the little buns that looked like a whole sachet of little new-born babies’ feet. I mean each individually. As he served the buns someone caused some commotion, there was a scuffle and out of the panic everyone grabbed in to get a piece of the bread before it got finished. And a melee ensued. Trust me you don’t want to be scrimmaging with 40 adolescents who fancy themselves gentlemen and are about to starve.

Rogers jumped in, classically, and holding onto one section of the polythene bag never let go.

And so it came to pass that while the melee went on he escaped out of it. With one bun. One measly bun. Uno. He slowly unwrapped it out of the bag that had clung to it like a film and quickly popped it into his mouth.

Now unbeknown to our hero, Oscar had escaped from the other side of the melee too. Without a bun. No bun. Zero. Nada. As he circled the melee, he came up behind Roger popping his baby foot into his mouth.he circled Roger. In a flash motion, and i mean in a flash motion, Oscar’s hand flew to Roger’s face and struck with a thundering stop as it made contact.

The colors of the rainbow flashed across Roger’s face in pain, anguish, shock, horror, humiliation[because the melee suddenly stopped], and the finally that little emotion called resignation flashed. For Oscar this was perfect. And as the last wisps of the emotion flashed across Roger’s face, his massetta [jaw] muscles released and unclenched to open his mouth out of which the bun fell. Unchewed. Undigested. Right into Oscar’s waiting hands. He put the bun in his mouth and watched Roger in defiance. He was taller, faster, stronger, higher pedigree, better in class. Roger was beaten.

WTF?!?!

Yeah St. Mary’s was a dog-eat-dog world. I quietly slipped my bun into my pocket to be eaten later.

And now resuming the main story...

or sometimes planning a heist from a whole bread van and eventually a whole bakery. [yeah yeah I'll tell you my story up country and the bakery next time]. would i be able to live in a world where sex was 1984-esque only for procreation? Robbed of the pleasure of the one night stand?

Could I have lived without experiencing such near death experiences? Knowing what I know now I think I would never have given that up. Knowing that I could never shoot another rubber-band-bullet; sniping an unsuspecting sleeper out of his bliss into his piss? I don’t know.

Now as I stand here looking I think things could have turned out much better or equally worse. And the very possibility that I might not be here but for a series of accidents makes me savour each moment even more and I almost feel like I am walking on wings.

!! HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL!!

SONS...

I have recently learnt that when fathers bear sons they know them at birth. That while fathers give their sons up to 90% of what they appear like; hair, eyes, bone structure and other physical aspects, mothers give about 85% of the "brains" or whatever you call it; be it cognitive ingenuity or what other coinage you might have for it. The key reason why you can never tell a man a son is not his if he can see his family nose on the kid, or why the African adage holds that not-too-bright-spawn bring shame to their mother.

I have also learnt that when Zeus and his brothers came of age they deposed their fathers, the race of TITANS and took power over the universe as we know it. Zeus, a particularly bad boy, cut off his father's genitals and cast them into the sea for being a philanderer( but I believe in those days it was "Lover". Cronus was shocked. His son had emasculated him because he was a philanderer but to think that he himself had deposed his father Uranus and forced him to disgorge all his children he had eaten. Karma 101. And look at how Zeus(left) turned out; the greatest womanizer on those windy slopes of Mt.Olympus!


Yes, we turn out like our fathers only in greater stature, stead and the prevarication multiplier fully turned on. We lie more them, are braver than they were, we philander more than they ever did and yet bear the ever-increasing beauty of our mothers. This is true, for it is genetically impossible for daughters to be uglier than their mothers*( except when Brad marries Angie and the recessive factor kicks in! but we all expect that!) yes, daughters are always cuter than their mothers! and how we love to love (and inadvertently hate to hate) those things our fathers loved! If you think I am lying ask the Bush family.
* In cases where a daughter is not as beautiful as her mother the reason is either

• Her Father had totally useless genes
• Her Mother self reproduced (not common)
• Her Father pretended to spill the "seed' but actually faked it.
• There is a twin somewhere in the family(don't ask me where)
  

But its when the sun has set on your exploits and you have the sexperience of one old Thomas Rush that you truly realize that you are only as good as the genes your father passed onto you, which includes the ability to appreciate humor...or judge it. No offense to some of you, its new its hot. Deal.

These are my thoughts, feel free to disagree, agree or comment.

......of Accidents and Ugandan Jewellers

Sorry I have been out of the blogosphere (shady word) for a while, but i got knocked down by a car.
So I am returning from a late night sojourn at a friend's place at around 11:30pm on Sunday night. Sundays are normally quiet but this is a particularly a serene evening. I am on a motorbike, here called Boda Boda whizzing through town. As I approach the last turn before I get into my neighbourhood, right at the Wandegeya roundabout- famous for having no roundabout or functional streetlights the rider tries to turn into the opposite lane. Suddenly there were lights bearing down on us with ferocious speed. I had an instant to say: "Hey dude look out for the car!!" before we were smashed and thrown into the road on which I was strewn in utter bamboozle(ment).

In the instant that all this is happening I feel the car tires screech to a halt and the bike go under the taxi (read matatu) and the crunch of rubber against steel as the bike is chewed up by the vehicle screeching to a halt. I honestly cannot say how I got there but I was standing away from the accident a few seconds after it happened. 

And just as the vultures (read lumpens/hoodlums/vandals/scum-sucking imbeciles all rolled in to one) set in to scavenge the accident and anything it might have brought in (some blasted idiot left with my school note book!!- can you believe!) I was hit a wave of nausea. These guys were the kind that would knock you out at an accident scene just to be sure that they robbed a dead guy, you know.

I was feeling numb so I immediately call the venue of my last sojourn and inform them of my detour in travel plans. I promptly inform them of the feeling that I think I might be dead and as such could they arrange to see me just to be sure that I am alive.
I am now alive and fully well thanks to the powers that be and my O-ve blood.(its just super!!)
Which reminds me of a thought I was just pondering; how poor jewel dealers in Uganda are...
I mean like gold jewellers. Uganda must be the only country in the world where jewellers are poor. This thought was provoked by a shady calendar I saw in an office somewhere that had really plain pages and a picture of an Indian woman on it. So I am asking myself how does an Indian jeweler market jewellery made in China adorned on an indian woman designed on a paper printed at the cheapest place on Nasser road(a place where I hear you can anything made; even the ancient sea scrolls- if you can pay) to a Ugandan who pays with money printed in Europe without giving the impression that the Ugandan is inferior?
While everywhere across the world jewellers go on holidays and are always travelling to attend conventions or just to plain re-stock their stores in Uganda they just sit and sit and when they are tired they sit some more because the Ugandan has the art of jewellery almost down to a tee. 

They have "Gold" for special occassions and then they have 'gold' for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.... The idea is that the you cant know which the real gold is. Is it the one that can stand the wear and tear of the mad house called Kampala and the fake for the special occassions because it shines so much? Or is it the other way around because the fake can fade and no one will know?hhhhmm..... My thoughts took this turn for a while and I was pretty convinced I was right.

I muse over this and in this state I asked a woman of considerable repute to enlighten me on matters in this regard and this was her response:
"You buy two pieces of fake gold and wear one more often than the other, that way you are always shining!" This Ingenious woman of kampala added, "That way we can all avoid wearing real gold. Its much cheaper"

Together, For the World...And Beyond

Cheers