How To Do Elevators: The munakyalo’s guide

Have you ever been in an elevator?

If not, you munakyalo, you are so lucky. Please don’t let development bring these things to your village.

Presenting:

Things that SUCK about elevators:

1: There are no bouncers, no gate-askaris, no barriers to entry. Whoever wants can enter, no matter what they smell like. Full access to the lift is granted to all, regardless.

The way that last dude smelled I am not even sure those were gasses. Body odour smells bad. This guy smelt evil. I suspect it was curses and evil spirits we detected floating around him.

2: They are built to carry a maximum of eight people on average, but not built to accommodate these eight people’s personal space. The result is that you can and often will find yourself having to take the ride up from floor to floor with a stranger’s crotch in your bum, another stranger’s hair-bun in your nose, yet another strangers elbow in your armpit and you cannot even exercise your basic human right to say “Sh**”, because your mouth is muffled with your face in someone’s bosom.

3. a) Finally, lifts tend to have mirrors and lights in them. Long mirrors and bright white lights which will illuminate and show you yourself in highest clarity. For those of us who don’t actually reach full consciousness until three hours and four coffees after we get out of bed, the lift is the moment when we notice things like, shirt is inside out, socks don’t match, the bujonjo are filling your face as if you were vajazzling your eyes, and it seems you combed someone else’s hair that morning because nobody combed yours.

3.b): Also Because the lift is so quiet, and so echoey, with the white light and the cold, sterile, steel walls and that ghostly hum from nowhere that just makes it all more morgue-like, your mind cannot help but race to the most morbid station– you look at yourself in the mirror and see, beyond your face, your fast-shriveling soul, your rabidly-desiccating dreams, the ashes and dust that are all that is left of your hopes and ambitions, you see them fading, fading fading away.

What happened to that joyful little girl who wanted to be a singer? What happened to that playful little boy who used to dance in the morning? You look into the elevator mirror and it mocks you by just reflecting your question back at you.

4: So also, elevators should have snacks in them.

What Else I Have Written

You would not know it from the fact that my last posts were about chicken, fish, dogs and more chicken, but I am actually quite a versatile writer. I do a wide range of topics and issues. In this post I shall offer you, the idle passerby with time to kill because you are stuck in a traffic jam and are fortunately in the middle seat so no one will steal your phone, a few links to other things I have been up to.

First of all, let’s do some Suki.

Next: Here is a light-hearted piece that was written with no real malice or bitterness. Well, probably a little. Probably a lot. Actually, I HATE love! It was about Valentines Day and I wrote it for New Times Rwanda

Let’s escalate this to another level of intellectualism, wherein I raise the cerebral status to current affairs commentary such as that practiced by the likes of Trevor Noah and Charles Onyango Obbo. Political Satire! Ministry of Education wants to introduce a new curriculum and parliament is all butt-hurt because they didn’t get permission first.

Presenting: My Latest Piece for Nilepost, wherein we discuss the value of education and how, if at all, it should be improved.

Are you clicking those links? Are you thinking to yourself: “What an either inconsistent or multifaceted writer this one is! He does different writing forms!” Well, you ain’t even seen nothin with them goggles yet, fam. Cos I even did academic research essay on African History.

And honestly, I would like to be modest, but I can’t even kid about this: this is probably the best work I have done all year so far.

It’s a three-part article about General Seh Dong Hong Beh, the leader of an all-female army in 19th Century Dahomey: her story, her career, and what its implications are to those of us who are Africans in 2020. It is three 1,000 word articles so it will take a while to read. Feel free to bookmark and come back to it, but I hope you do take the time to finish it. I rarely write about things I truly care about but this one, is from the heart.

Nalo! Namutima!

Here’s the link. to part 1. The links to each successive piece are at the end of each other one.

Finally, a word from our sponsor. Anita Everything hit 1,000 downloads! Mama, I made it.

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Don’t you want to be like your friends whose sides are no longer intact? You want to be there fwaa, just wandering around with sides unburst? You click here and download the pdf of the book, fam. You do not need those sides. Let them burst.

Finally, a word from Mw. Sabu of Miggo District.

Ride For Ma Dawgs!

Dogs are okay, I guess. I would prefer it if they had the modesty to wear pants but that is not enough to start any major grudge.

If anything would stir a real quarrel it would be in the area of their manners. I wish they had the manners to shut up at night while we are trying to sleep.

Take this transcript of a recent conversation among a few Kyanja dogs.

One of Them: Maguja! Gwe mwana plotti ki? What’s up fam! What’s going down there in mukigagga?

Another One: Snoop! Out here we are balling! It’s lit af! Mwana, bakyali tuli eno tumeketa magumba just. Patte afta patte. Fall in, gwe.

Original Dog: Dude, for real?

Other Dog: Forreal, son!

Original Dog: Like. Furreal, dawg?

Other Dog: Furreyoreeyo!

I can hear all this from my apartment that is, according to the sonar app on my phone, half a kilometer from both parties. 

Intermittently, as Snoop makes his way to the venue of the feast he will yell out updates of his progress.

Snoop: Maguja! Eh, mukyali yo eyo? I’m round the muyembe, with squad. They want in.

Maguja: Pull up, pull up! Dude, we are out here partying like human bazungu! Puuuullluuuup!

That is when another dog joins the conversation.

New Dog: Snoop, oliwa? Ogenda ku patte ya Magujja? You fox! You can’t even holla?

Snoop: What do you mean? What do you call all this noise we are making if not hollering?

Maguja: Aate ani ono? Gwe, aani akuyise?

New Dog: Temummanyiira, mbwa mwe. You know it’s me, Doglas. 

This is when aggression enters the conversation and it turns into an argument. Within a rapid minute, there are insults and threats flying over the suburb.

Maguja has squadded up and all his dogs ride or die with him. Meanwhile, the other faction also rolls deep, so there are twelve voices barking back.

Snoop, in the midst of all this, is plaintively, but loudly, howling for peace and understanding.

Tabaala ofe. Wandya k’enyama

They will do this all night long.

That is not enough to make me hate dogs, though. In spite of this, dogs are loyal, friendly and intelligent enough to be trained when domesticated. I suspect that even non-domesticated members of the species can be trained, and If KCCA or our local government authorities actually cared about us, they would go around training stray dogs in night silence, teaching them to shut up while we are trying to sleep. The fact that they have not isn’t evidence that dogs can’t learn to shut up, it is evidence that our government doesn’t care.

Dogs aren’t like cats, which are very stupid.

Don’t be fooled– what looks like the aloof snobbery of an elevated mind that is above the petty needs humans is not intelligence. That is just what being too stupid to understand who’s boss looks like when it is packaged in fur that walks nicely. Cats are idiots and would be extinct by now except for the fact, fortunate for them, that they are inedible.

Idiot.

Cat lovers, I don’t judge you, Cats can be valuable as fluffy moving cushions that decorate the living room and eradicate rat issues, but dogs are much more functional in the general sense, and preferable in the moral sense. 

Whereas your cat will watch you die with barest milligram of interest, your dog will fight for you and save your life.

I recommend that those of us who live in Kulambiro, Kira and other areas with muggers and robbers get dogs that we can train to meet us at the taxi stage and then escort us home through the dark pathways the bandits infest.

With a dog by your side, you will not only get home with your phone and laptop safe, but if you trained it well enough, you might also have a canine mouthful of mugger’s flesh you picked up on the way.

Ideally the dog would bite the ass. If you are accosted by Ssuna, Gabon, Mobutu, or any of the K-Side Crips, it could go for the balls, but in the dark you might not recognize the assailant. If it is Cinderella, Bettina or Nana Badness and the dog lunges for balls, that will just give them an chance to escape. So train it to go for the ass. Always the ass.

You can also train it to go out and tell its peers to shut up at night when we are trying to sleep.

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How Did It Know? How?

How did it know? We already perplex our pretty little heads with this question every time we find an advert on our timeline, feed or other form of social media buffet presentation, but it is going to get worse — we are going to have to add intensity to the way we ask the question, increase the pitch and go, “But I mean how. Did it KNOW!?”

First we got used to the usual: when you type, “Oh, man, I am hungry. I wish someone could just bring me a load of fried chicken! I would love that! LOL! Chicken emoji. Eating emoji.” Then refresh the facebook page and there you go: an advert for Jumia Food, Safeboda food, and Mama Nabikoko and Sons Chicken Services Ltd, where they actually let you slaughter your own lunch.

Chicken hate the internet

We got used to that. That was a bit intrusive, but well, it made sense.

Then came the creepier bit: When you swivel round in your office chair and toss the crumpled ball of paper expertly into the dustbin with one perfect shot.

If no one else is going to say it, you say it yourself. “Oh yeah! I’m amazing! Kapwaya!” 

After acknowledging your skill you turn back to your TL and what the… why are you getting ads for Maize Flour?

And Mase’s latest album?

And an android game about Mazes?

And an invitation to apply for the Quapire Online Academy?

He clicked on the ad. Now, What Next?

It just got worse. I don’t even do facebook that much any more. I don’t have time to do menus mbu to pay OTT. Sirina Budde. I don’t have the boods.

But I was there recently because I have no attention span, no impulse control and when you lack those two at a time when you don’t have enough data for youtube, where else do you go?

I hit facebook and this ad…

The ad led me to this product.

What the ancient geriatric fossilised what is this?

How did it know! How, I mean HOW! Did it EVEN! KNOWWWW??

Because I didn’t even know. I had just touched my nostril that morning while brushing my teeth and noticed that it was a bit crowded in there. My morning grogginess was not yet ready to permit my accustomed Sherlockian sharpness so I had left the deduction that my moustache was growing upwards in place.

It was only when I saw this ad, and then poked my nose, and felt all the hairy hairs hairing all over the nostril…

It was only when I poked my nose and it felt like a weave in there...

It was only when I poked my nose and wondered for a second whether I had inhaled a furry animal, probably a very small nkeberwe that it hit me.

How did it know? It just saw me and decided what ad to bring?

I am now afraid of clipping my nose hairs in case it uses the clippers to see further into my skull and starts reading my thoughts.

I don’t know how I will explain having  black polythene bodybags, shovels, baseball bats and lime on my TL.

Teach A Man to Cook A Fish

There’s a way we tend to think that the Patriarchy is our friend. Homeboy, It isn’t. It is mean and disloyal and pretends to offer privilege but under scrutiny, this privilege turns out to be a backhand pimpslap.

For one example, let’s look at cooking.

Men being equally human to women, have equal alimentary canals and equally require food, preferably cooked and delicious.

Patriarchy decided that we should not cook and left us to rely, even though we have the same capacity to deploy hands and gas and fridges, on someone else to cook for us.

When we were children this made more sense, but look at us now, grown adults who still don’t want to feed our own selves?

We are compelled to use our hands to tweet bile at the women who don’t come to our kitchen’s to do onions and tomatoes on our behalf.

Patriarchy is a pimp. It is going to play you whether you are the hoe or the trick (trick, or mark, is the term for customer. Apologies for the fact that I just reduced your moral status by making you one of those people who now know pimp terminology. It is too late now. Also, the pimp’s main hoe is called the bottom bitch. This applies even in cases of male prostitution. Let me stop now).

Gentlemen, or if you are not a gentleman, dude, not being able to cook for yourself makes you a child, not a man. Not being willing to cook for yourself makes you a spoilt and silly child. 

Get an onion, a tomato, a knife and an egg, then take charge of your own life.

Eat my son

In fact, don’t just make eggs. Make some malakwang, empombo, some Peking duck and a Caesar salad and invite friends and loved ones to the table. There is honour in feeding others.

Me? I’m out of gas, so invite me over as well. I’ll bring Cecilia.