Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night

This is what should happen to all your fucking Bonny M Christmas records.

More wickedness next year. We’ll be back.

A Dash and a Splash.

I am a busy man. A very busy man. I don’t have time for malarkey, codswallop, or any of the many varieties of nonsense others in the media are constantly getting up to. I am a busy man. Silina budde bwakuwankawanka, to put it succinctly.

I should translate that Luganda phrase for the benefits of readers in Burundi, but there might be kids reading and wankawanka sounds like it could turn out to mean something filthy.

A few minutes ago I was struck by thirst. I decided to slake that shit with a Splash. (Buy Uganda, Buy Quality). So I leapt up off my desk (I am very agile for my age) and sprinted out of the office (my age is 44, thank you for asking). Up the staircase I ran, down the corridors I flew, through the alleyway I rocketed, past Vision Voice Radio and out of the door I torpedoed, headed with conviction and single-mindedness of a guided missile to the container that sits  hideously outside our beautiful new office building.

There are no canteen facilities in our office building because it is beautiful. Too beautiful for our administration to permit any chance of rats and roaches.

I got to the container, handed the rude woman there a five k note, and said, “Give me Splash, you balding witch!”  With her, I have learnt to practice preemptive rudeness.

She gave me my change and I jetted back to my desk at similar speed and following a trajectory similar to the one exhaustively described already.

Only when I got back to my desk I could not find the Splash anywhere.

I thought to myself, “Mr Bazanye, you have finally lost it.”

The Splash, not my mind. This mind is so big it cannot be misplaced.

I could honestly not remember. I was about to get all my colleagues to stand up and empty their pockets. There was going to be some frackas in this office, I swear, until sanity (other peoples’ sanity) prevailed and someone suggested I go back to the rude woman.

I had to eventually walk back, at more sober and sedate pace this time, to the container to get the Splash I had bought and left lying on the counter. The rude woman snorted at me as she handed it over.

If there is a point to this whole story, I hope you find it soon.

My President is back

Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni has been Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni for over two decades. That is enough time for an old man to forget a lot of things, and so when he recently had to (or chose to, if you would rather take his spokesperson’s word for it) fly back from Washington DC in the economy class section of a commercial airplane, I am sure there were a few things that he had to re-familiarise himself with.

I myself have flown economy class before, you know… I will pause now to look closely into your face to see what your reaction to that will be. I am wondering if you read that and take it to mean that I usually fly first class but once decided to slum it and see how the po’ folk fly. No? You know me and my Akamba ways? Well. Let us proceed then. Sorry for the detour.

As a person with more recent experience flying economy class I can only imagine his discomfort when he discovered that he had to deal with:

The Safety Drill: Before the flight the flight attendants stand in front of the class and explain/ demonstrate what to do in case of emergency. This has the unnerving effect of reminding passengers even before they leave that YOU MIGHT NOT REACH.

Elbow Rasslin’: Economy class on planes is like First Class on buses — the seats that are next to each other come with only one arm-rest that the passengers on either side have to compete like gladiators for. Only the quick and the strong and the brave survive. You snooze and you lose. Having survived as an African president for over twenty years, though, I am not worried that Museveni conquered the armrest. Owned that bitch like he did the Congo.

Baby meals: They serve food on the plane. Wait, don’t get excited. They don’t serve that much food. They give you tiny little portions and the last time I had a runty meat pie and a can of coke that was half the size of a normal can of coke. That can looked underdeveloped. Immature. Unripe. I thought I was defiling it by drinking it. I wanted to send it back while singing that Maurice Hasa song, Kaleke Kasome.

Now, the president, being president and having been so for over twenty years, might not be accustomed to being starved like this. I imagine a scene when he demands that they “more him on” and the attendants have to execute maneuver 24d for Code Blue. That is, when a passenger asks for more food, they are required and trained to A. Keep smiling B. Tase the fool.

Other passengers: He travels fastest who travels alone, they say. He also travels wide open and vulnerable to all sorts of attacks from annoying Other Passengers. I was going to write here about the sorts of irritants the President would find himself having to deal with but I was reminded of what Samali, my friend, said to me the other day while I was musing about this flight. I said, “I wonder if the guy next to Sevo looked at him and said, “No offense, but you look kind of like Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. No offense.”

Samali said, “No sooner would Sevo begin his ‘The banyankole have a saying…’ than the other guy would realise his mistake, put on his headphones and pretend to hum a song.”

In short, Mr Museveni needn’t have worried about other passengers annoying him.

One sunny morning in Kampala

In the taxi the other morning I encountered two forms of women. One alert, the other in a state of slumber, head tipped back, mouth lolling open and quite fine, in spite of the indecorum of her posture.

It offended my sense of morality to see a hot chick snoring in a public transport vehicle, so I poked her in the shoulder and woke her up.

Crossly, I asked, “Why are you sleeping in the taxi? Did you spend the whole of last night having sex or what?”

Through half-mast eyelids she still managed a sluggish sneer as she asked back, “What’s it to you?”

I explained that I was a journalist, so she told me that yes, she had been having sex the night before.

I advised her to take better care when having sex prior to taxi journeys and she thanked me.

Oh, wait. You were expecting a point to all of this?