Ten Thousand Dogs Later

I once met a guy who was on his way to the Bahamas or some such place of sunny climes and sandy beaches to write a novel, a political satire of sorts titled 'Ten Thousand Dogs Later'. He was quite impassioned about it and went on to explain how the premise involved political leaders and castration. This was about five years ago, I wonder how it all turned out.


I saw something on twitter yesterday to the effect that State House spent $2m on photocopying stuff, sheaves of paper, all of them mightily important, of course. I wonder if this is true and if perhaps the bill's not for an extended period of time, say 20 years. I wonder too, how this ties in with the e-governance policy I'm sure we adopted a while back, in order to minimise our impact on the environment; save the trees, buy a few thousand ipads for the empees, ministers and their cronies; emails have to be sent, especially to State House where they can be printed and then copied.

A hard day's work at State House

In light of such prolific copying activities and related pastimes, certain foreign governments have decided to reduce the amounts of money they give you. Their primary reason is that of all the stuff you've printed out and copied, there's not even ten pages that shows where their monies have gotten to, except that page that says:

•  Printing Draft Audit Report for Donors:                                                           $100K
• Copying Draft Audit Report for Donors:                                                            $100K
• Donor Draft Audit Report Discussion Committee:                                          $100K
• Donor Draft Audit Report Stakeholders Wshop:                                             $100K
• Printing Draft Report of the 'Donor Draft Audit Report Discussion Committee: $100K
• And so on...

 So they're not giving you any more monies, you can convulse and nod all you want.

I think they're right though, and should have stopped giving you anything the day you sat down, called yourselves an 'august house' and decided there was no other 'pair of balls' big enough to lead you, and so you were going to remove 'these' few sentences from this 'ki' document and print it again, and make a few copies to boot.

In fact, they should never give you anything for 'free' again; and you should never accept. What? That you're some street kid in dire need of a handout that you should be the object of their pity? Of anyone's pity? But you are, are you not? At least that's what they say about you when they take up their begging bowls and venture out there seeking funds for your sustenance. A few pictures, words and numbers and the report is ready! Send it to State House for printing and copying.

Dogs. That's what you're in for, ten thousand of them. They've been loosed on you and now they come sniffing, checking which pair of balls is sitting a bit too tight, a little discomfort, a trickle of sweat and then they'll pounce. They want to know who has been copying all these documents, who signed here and there, who cooked these numbers. But these dogs are harmless, they sniff and bark and then prance about, licking hands and feet, subjugated. What dogs are these?!

Dogs, rabid dogs {art used without permission}

Someone's going to have to pay though. It's not free you know, never free, nothing is. Someone's going to have to pay; with their balls. Is it you? I hear everything trickles down eventually, to you and that you're too ignorant to know what's good for you, so you must pay, for your ignorance at least, for wanting to not know.

Not to worry though, you have oil!

rrr

reave ~ reft { Isn't that a nice word, especially the past participle?} Incidentally it means, in one form, 'to  carry out raids in order to plunder'. You can find a better definition here, my choice of dictionary. I want to use it somewhere one day, maybe on this blog but I would like to have it flow into a conversation, it rolls off the tongue naturally considering the Kiga predilection to rrrs.

I came across it in a Neil Gaiman story on Fifty Two Stories, a short story collection blog from Harper Perennial, an excellent read if you ever get enough time.

:)

Perspectives

Henceforth, my dear philosophers, let us be on guard against the dangerous old conceptual fiction that posited a "pure, will-less, painless, timeless knowing subject"; let us guard against the snares of such contradictory concepts as "pure reason," "absolute spirituality," "knowledge in itself": these always demand that we should think of an eye that is completely unthinkable, an eye turned in no particular direction, in which the active and interpreting forces, through which alone seeing becomes seeing something, are supposed to be lacking; these always demand of the eye an absurdity and a nonsense. There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective "knowing"; and the more affects we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, the different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our "concept" of this thing, our "objectivity," be. But to eliminate the will altogether, to suspend each and every affect, supposing we are capable of this--what would that mean but to castrate the intellect?

----------------------------- Friedrich Nietzsche {On the genealogy of morals}

No disclaimers, please.

I'm in the process of building my business. I want to take it from a one-man operation and turn it into a respectable establishment, i.e. I want to graduate from being a sole trader to running a serious legal entity that will stand on its own even when I'm gone.

My primary motivation is money. I want to make enough money to be able to do certain things. I want to be able to hire the best minds to work with, to access the best tools and to deliver the best solutions/products to my clients and customers.

I also want to sweep some rubbish from the house that I am, that I have built and I need an expensive broom.

One of the things I've learnt about doing business is that when you're perceived as a small fish, you'll spend an unfair amount of time fighting for everything from an honest job to a fair price,  a shred of dignity and your own fucking money. It's not fair, it's not just and equitable and demands of you, if you're going to get by in such a manner, slightly more than your fair share of ass licking.

I want to stop kissing some ass. No sir, not me, you can go 'eat it'.

*

You know what a contract is? It's a formal agreement between two or more parties outlining the various ways in which each party is going to fuck up the other and what they're all going to do about it after that. Human interaction is based on contracts, most of them unspoken but expressed in one form or another.

I made a deal with myself a long time ago that I would take all the happiness I could from this life and then some; I promised a younger me that we would be everything we wanted to be, that we would never be afraid to take the stage and dance, for ourselves, for the songstress, for life. It was a binding agreement, a life contract, a marriage of will and spirit.

I have found myself standing in front of him, that me of yesteryear, making excuses, issuing disclaimers when he tried to egg me on, to remind me of an ancient contract signed in undaunted will and shining spirit. I have felt shame, guilt and the impotence of inaction.

I shall feel them no more.

**

"Please don't fall in love with me."

"Why?"

"I don't think I can reciprocate."

I have said as much to someone else and in my thinking then, I was doing them a favour but of course I realise now that I was only afraid of being remotely responsible for another's happiness, however fleeting. I did not feel capable of giving as much and I can only imagine how many doors I left unopened in the chambers of my heart.

***

O ye of noble spirit, rising with the dawn, look upon the deeds of this man and find your brother.

****

If I say I shall, then I shall will the spirit and you will have all of me, nothing less.

C'est Magnifique!

La vie est là
Qui vous prend par le bras
Oh la la la
C'est magnifique !
Des jours tous bleus
Des baisers lumineux,
bss bss bss bss
C'est magnifique !
Donner son cœur
Avec un bouquet d'fleurs
Oh la la la
Mais c'est magnifique !
Et faire un jour
Un mariage d'amour
C'est magnifique !

------- Cole Porter

One last kiss

Sober Saturday mornings, fading dreams and longings
Memories of night, fairies drifting by take flight
Whispering wings teasing stringing me along for the shindig
Music! O muse, sing.

Laughter

The most noble man is he who with a good conscience can wholeheartedly laugh at his follies and pursuits and still keep straight enough a face to bear the gravity of society.

Come, tell me a joke and if it does not crease the edges of my mouth, then tickle me, tickle me.

Transient

Roll it up
Roll it up
Roll it up
Ere the flame burn out and it's cool to the touch
Taste red drops running down the hand
Grasp eternity's hour in your hand
Munch, lunch, soon it will all be mulch
Seed the ground and ears sprout to hear the whistling wind and peck the dirt
Give and receive what was at the start
Of what rises when the flames die out
Take part and when he sings at the sun, depart
Pass by the man on the curb

The Free Spirit

After such a cheerful commencement, a serious word would like to be heard; it appeals to the most serious. Take care, philosophers and friends, of knowledge, and beware of martyrdom! Of suffering "for the truth's sake"! Even of defending yourselves! It spoils all the innocence and fine neutrality of your conscience, makes you headstrong against objections and red rags, it stupefies, animalizes, and brutalizes when in the struggle with danger, slander, suspicion, expulsion, and even worse consequences of hostility, you have to pose as protectors of truth upon earth:—as though "the truth" were such an innocuous and incompetent creature as to require protectors! and you of all people, you knights of the most sorrowful countenance, dear loafers and cobweb-spinners of the spirit! After all, you know well enough that it cannot be of any consequence if you of all people are proved right, you know that no philosopher so far has been proved right, and that there might be a more laudable truthfulness in every little question mark that you place after your special words and favorite doctrines (and occasionally after yourselves) than in all the solemn gestures and trumps before accusers and law courts! Rather, go away! Flee into concealment! And have your masks and subtlety, that you may be mistaken for what you are not! Or feared a little! And don't forget the garden, the garden with golden trelliswork! And have people around you who are like a garden—or like music over the waters in the evening, when the day is turning into memories. Choose the good solitude, the free, playful, light solitude that gives you, too, the right to remain good in some sense! How poisonous, how crafty, how bad, does every long war make one, that cannot be waged openly by means of force! How personal does a long fear make one, a long watching of enemies, of possible enemies! These outcasts of society, these long-pursued, wickedly persecuted ones—also the compulsory recluses, the Spinozas or Giordano Brunos always become in the end, even under the most spiritual masquerade, and perhaps without being themselves aware of it, sophisticated vengeance-seekers and poison-brewers (let someone lay bare the foundation of Spinoza's ethics and theology!)—not to mention the foolishness of moral indignation, which is the unfailing sign in a philosopher that his philosophical sense of humor has left him. The martyrdom of the philosopher, his "sacrifice for the sake of truth," forces into the light whatever of the agitator and actor lurks in him; and if one has so far contemplated him only with artistic curiosity, with regard to many a philosopher it is easy to understand the dangerous desire to see him also in his degeneration (degenerated into a "martyr," into a stage- and platform-bawler). Only, that it is necessary with such a desire to be clear what spectacle one will see in any case:—merely a satyr play, merely an epilogue farce, merely the continued proof that the long, actual tragedy is at an end: assuming that every philosophy, in its genesis, was a long tragedy.

---------------------------------------------------- Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche.

To be or not to be

"There is an ancient story that King Midas hunted in the forest a long time for the wise Silenus, the companion of Dionysus, without capturing him. When Silenus at last fell into his hands, the king asked what was the best and most desirable of all things for man. Fixed and immovable, the demigod said not a word, till at last, urged by the king, he gave a shrill laugh and broke out into these words: 'Oh, wretched ephemeral race, children of chance and misery, why do you compel me to tell you what it would be most expedient for you not to hear? What is best of all is utterly beyond your reach: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best for you is---to die soon.'"

--------------------------------- The Birth of Tragedy, Friedrich  Nietzsche

Stretching

So you've decided it's time  to go to war against that beer belly, those chips and chicken thighs or that pizza (read peet-sa) @$$ that keeps sending you to the 'boutique' for another pair of jeans. I know he says he likes you with some meat, that he wants stuff to hold onto when the riding gets a bit vigorous, that your wobbly bits are just so cute, but please, why do you think he keeps staring at that chick at Chillies?

Do I look fat, sweetie?

No, honeypie, but...

 And you guy, why do you think she keeps avoiding those cuddly moments when you're in the mood, watching videos of Tyrese and exclaiming, 'banange wow!', hanging out at the rugby club when you're watching soccer with the boys and hinting that you should revive your eons long defunct rugby career, huh? Why do you think?

This is not a sport! It's called entertainment, people are laughing, at you...

 Me, I don't know why, but if it has occurred to you that you ought to do some roadwork, get the old engine racing again, perhaps jog to Taste Budz for a 'Meat Eaters Deluxe', then you're going to need some help getting started, right?

Enter a million fitness gurus and gym instructors who have no doubt failed at all else in life and would rather spend the active chunks of their days telling others to do 'one more rep' or move 'leeeeft, right, left right, left right, left right, and back and front, turn around...'

"Those who can do; those who can't teach; those who can't teach teach gym; those who can't move their arms or legs teach us to laugh at others."

 Anyway, your motivations aside, the first thing you'll be told to do is to stretch your muscles, loosen your limbs, warm up, get the blood flowing, 'woo hoo!, yeah!'

This is allegedly meant to help keep your muscles from getting sore as well as reduce the risk of injury but according to research conducted by this guy, these guys and this guy there's no point.

"Stretching before or after exercising does not confer protection from muscle soreness. Stretching before exercising does not seem to confer a practically useful reduction in the risk of injury, but the generality of this finding needs testing. Insufficient research has been done with which to determine the effects of stretching on sporting performance."

 Which begs the question, why? Why do people stretch when they're about to embark on a 'seemingly' major feat of physical exertion?

Aaah!

  I've come to the conclusion that it's all about steez, you know, showing off. Have you ever been involved in a near-fight? The kind that's thankfully stopped by that one friend of yours who's not as high on testosterone or the things you've been imbibing. There's always the guy who's screaming to be let go and he shows the other guy what's up. He prances here and there, arms flailing, trying to break through the protective cordon around him and run to his death. That's the equivalent of stretching before exercising.

Chill me! Chill me and I show him! Raargh!

Meanwhile this is the guy he wants to 'show what's up'.

*deep breaths*

So, back to the stretching. That means all that stuff professional and especially amateur sportsmen and most especially 'fitness freaks' do is for show and if there wasn't an audience, well, then they'd probably just get on with it, like you do on that early morning jog by your lonesome, or that stroll down to the bakery or take-away.

Tosser!

Show-off

Um...7.5/10..that girl's gonna rock it!

A very bad idea!

WTF!

We're going to the Y.M.C.A..we're going to the...

Somebody's watching me

How to come last in a marathon

Before the fight

Fight Night! Guess who didn't bother to stretch

Okay Jack, only 1000 reps and we're off to work...

10/10!!!!!

Take me to heaven

Iron Sky

Take me
Take me to heaven
Up to the mountains
Into quiet
Bluegrass gardens

Take me
Let's leave together
Lost in the moonlight
In the land of
Perfect dreams
Hold me
Hold me forever
I close my eyes to
See if memories
Reappear

Longing
Longing for those nights
When starlight was bright
Under the great
Great great sky

La la

Take me
In your arms hold me
Don't ever leave me
Never will I
Be the same again
Take me
Just for one moment
Just one more time
In your arms close
To your heart

Hold me
Ever so tightly
I close my eyes
But the memories
Disappeared

Longing
Longing for those nights
When starlight was bright
Under the great
Great great sky
Starlight
Starlight was brighter
Starlight was bright
Under the great
Great great sky

--------------------- Laibach (Iron Sky Soundtrack)

Immortality

“I mean, they say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Banksy

Piss off!

“People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.”
---------------------------------------------- Banksy

On Cricket

After years of patient study (and with cricket there can be no other kind) I have decided that there is nothing wrong with the game that the introduction of golf carts wouldn't fix in a hurry. It is not true that the English invented cricket as a way of making all other human endeavors look interesting and lively; that was merely an unintended side effect. I don't wish to denigrate a sport that is enjoyed by millions, some of them awake and facing the right way, but it is an odd game. It is the only sport that incorporates meal breaks. It is the only sport that shares its name with an insect. It is the only sport in which spectators burn as many calories as players -- more if they are moderately restless. It is the only competitive activity of any type, other than perhaps baking, in which you can dress in white from head to toe and be as clean at the end of the day as you were at the beginning.

Imagine a form of baseball in which the pitcher, after each delivery, collects the ball from the catcher and walks slowly with it out to center field; and that there, after a minute's pause to collect himself, he turns and runs full tilt toward the pitcher's mound before hurling the ball at the ankles of a man who stands before him wearing a riding hat, heavy gloves of the sort used to handle radioactive isotopes, and a mattress strapped to each leg. Imagine moreover that if this batsman fails to hit the ball in a way that heartens him sufficiently to try to waddle forty feet with mattresses strapped to his legs, he is under no formal compunction to run; he may stand there all day, and, as a rule, does. If by some miracle he is coaxed into making a misstroke that leads to his being put out, all the fielders throw up their arms in triumph and have a hug. Then tea is called and everyone retires happily to a distant pavilion to fortify for the next siege. Now imagine all this going on for so long that by the time the match concludes autumn has crept in and all your library books are overdue. There you have cricket.

-----------------------Bill Bryson in Down Under

Of shared meals and stolen worlds

I don't like eating by myself so much so that I would go to the extent of saying I 'hate' it.

Hate is a tricky word. You toss it out there nonchalantly, perhaps remarking to a friend on how you hate people who talk too much and can't mind their own business and you go on for the better part of a half hour even going to the extent of tossing in a few examples, some picked from your mutual pool of friends or more likely from your exclusive (you think) pool of acquaintances. Lips pursed, mssschew and a few one sided conspiratorial chuckles punctuated with question marks inviting your friend to share in your ire and the apparent mirth you seem to derive from this exercise. Your friend stares at you, hmmms and aaahs at the snide remarks and thinks to him/herself that its about time they un-friended you and that they just might actually dislike you enough to say they hate you, out loud, to another friend.

I dislike eating by myself and yet I have done it a whole lot lately. In fact, right now I'm off to find some food that I will hopefully enjoy and not feel sad about the eating alone.


*

Fast forward several days later and I am happy to report that I didn't eat alone that day, in fact, last night I had dinner by candlelight with a special someone and the fear of falling has left me.

**

Hands off dammit!

 Some bajaj guy nicked my book. I had a copy of NEMESIS by Isaac Asimov which I've been carrying around and leafing through every spare minute I get. On bajis (pronounced bajiz (which I'm told is (the reading) beyond pretentious)), in the taxi, in any waiting room, in the middle of  a boring conversation, during the 'State of the Nation' address and any spare minute I get. I've taken to reading a lot again, after a stint of a few years during which I could hardly muster much interest in reading anything that didn't tend towards the philosophical and I'm happy to discover that I still enjoy filling every spare moment I can get with words.

Back to the bajaj guy and Asimov. So I get a taxi from Kamwokya to town and I want to stop at a clinic on Bombo road next to City Oil but the taxi takes Nakasero Hill Road, better known as 'ku Public Service' so I get out and decide to take a bajaj or baji from there to my destination. I jump on the first one I see, which is coming down NH road, and tell the guy 'ku City Oil, pronto, pronto' and he turns round faces up and heads off towards Lumumba Avenue. I begin to protest and to tell the guy that it's a much shorter distance if we take the main road but he mumbles something about traffic and keeps going. I tell him to suit himself and I whip out Asimov and catch a few sentences, okay, no, I didn't on this occasion seeing as it was a short distance.

On arriving at my destination, I jump off the bike, hand the guy two coins of 500/= and walk off. He revs after me, agitated, and demands another 500/=. I decline, pointing out that it is an outrageous amount of money for the distance covered and adding that the choice to take a more circuitous route had been entirely his and that I was not going to add him any amount of money. He parks his bike and runs after me, actually he takes a couple of steps to get in front of me and hinder my progress forward. I stop and stare at him, really stare at him and attempt the Jedi mind trick. He looks at me, looks away, at me again, away and refuses to budge. This is becoming a scene and I don't want to bandy words with him so I tell him as politely and firmly as I can possibly manage in broken 'kagi' that he will not be receiving any shilling more from me.

He hands back the two 500/= coins and then demands that I pay him. I've had bajaj and taxi guys try to pull that one on me, the one of trying to guilt or shame you into feeling stingy, less of a 'mugaga', broke, uncultured and many other things all in the name of milking an extra shilling from you. I always say thank you, pocket the gees and stroll off, smiling. So I am thinking this is where we're headed, a few colourful words and then the guy is going to leave me with my 'lukumi' and proclaim to the whole planet how I'm a broke ass. No such luck. He keeps demanding payment of 1500/= and I keep reiterating calmly, while holding out my hand with the two 500/= coins that I will do no such thing.

We stand there for a couple of minutes, me staring at him hoping the Jedi trick will finally kick in and him staring off into the distance saying that we should stop another bajaj guy and ask him how much the standard asking price for our journey is. I counter with a suggestion of asking a pedestrian if they think 1500/= is a fair amount for said journey and so we go silent and stare at each other for another minute, me holding out the two coins, him refusing to take them.

I decide to pocket the coins and flip open Asimov's NEMESIS, thinking to my self triumphantly that I will outlast him. I locate my point on the page; Siever and Eugenia are trying to convince Marlene to get off Erythyro and return to Rotor on account of an unknown plague that afflicts people with minds inclined in a manner such as hers. Marlene will not budge and insists on staying put. I flip the page to continue the argument and the baji guy walks to his bike, fastens his helmet to left handlebar and returns. I close the book and await the next phase of this drama, still calm, still not willing to budge. He walks back, grabs the book and yanks it out of my hands, runs back to his baji and rides off, with my engaging book and zebra bookmark. This takes about fifteen seconds and all this while I'm thinking to myself that I will not be moved to violence in the physical sense.

When he takes the book and jumps on his bike, I think to myself:

Cost of Book: 3000/=
Pages Read: About Half
Net Value of Book to me: 1500/=????
Cost of Bookmark: Priceless! Effin thug!!!

Then I hope that he finds a way to extract his 1500/= from the book or even better, read the damn thing and enjoy it rather than toss it in some bin in a fit of pique.

I stare after him for a few seconds and then continue with my plot, thinking to myself that this inflation is doing things to us, dare I say it's shredding the social fabric or am I just a stingy asshole who can't compromise? Hmmmm.

There is no moral to this story other than that you should find mealtime company, it does wonders for the digestion.

Inner Strength

If you can start the day without caffeine or pep pills, 
If you can be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains, 
If you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles, 
If you can eat the same food everyday and be grateful for it, 
If you can understand when loved ones are too busy to give you time,

If you can overlook when people take things out on you when, 
           through no fault of yours, something goes wrong, 
If you can take criticism and blame without resentment, 
If you can face the world without lies and deceit, 
If you can conquer tension without medical help, 
If you can relax without liquor, 
If you can sleep without the aid of drugs, 
If you can do all these things, 

Then you're probably the family dog. 

Source: http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~ranga/humor/inner_strength.txt 

Use Somebody

How to make a million dollars

1. Get a piece of paper and write '1 Million Dollars' or '$1,000,000' on it
2. Sell your soul to the devil, if you can find him, he's a busy chap you know. Maybe he's on twitter.
3. Invent the best thing since sliced bread. Really? Sliced bread does it for you like that? How about inventing the next best thing? Which is what again? Telekinesis, but wait, if you know it then it means someone beat you to it, even as a theory. You could add to it, standing on giants' shoulders to reach it, which means a bit of climbing up the mountain only to find it was a tor and Kilimanjaro looms in the distance.
4. The 58th Variety: Will make Mars food edible. Your meal companion for the 21st century.
5. We must get off this rock.
   Observe planet ZXC21375MW, a blue green orb with a predominantly hydrogen atmosphere. Chemical reactions are abundant amongst all naturally occurring elements, producing complex compounds. Water. Life. Man. Stupid man. Destroying, devouring, expanding, eating man. Eating man. From inside, the smallest unit, a hunger grows, devours all in sight and path, bulging, more space, bulging to replace, leaf, feather, hide, aside snide remarks, on your marks, to go, blow, to the heavens, flow. I need to go.

Koch Lii or how I spent my Easter holidays

It was Holy Thursday night and the stars were bright, the shepherds huddled around their flocks taking sips from stone cold canteens, chatting, nodding and on occasion jumping with childlike animation to the sounds of merrymaking wafting up the hill from the city. Wait, that’s a Christmas story. Sorry, this is the day we string him up.

It was Holy Thursday night and there was not a soul in sight. Peter ducked into the garden and paused to catch his breath, leaning on a mango tree he looked up and let out a long breath. No one had followed him, he was sure of that. He had just managed to sneak away in the ensuing confusion after that stupid bird had pointed him out and started asking questions. So what if he knew the nigga, so what if he had followed him all over the township, that didn’t make him an acolyte, curious maybe, friendly yes, but martyr, no sir. Sure, there had been some good times, good food, wine, women and the occasional magic trick but nothing to warrant putting his hands and feet on the block. No, no, no, he wasn’t going to do this. Johnny would have to understand. Call him a rake, but he wasn’t about to get his head chopped off, I mean, there was no upside whatsoever. Sure, eternal life was a possibility but that could surely wait, did it have to happen now? No. So he had taken off as soon as that turban wearing, holier than thou, stick wielding false prophet had been relieved of his auditory appendage. Served him right for attempting to listen to that harlot, she had no doubt started telling him about Tuesday night in the vineyard. Silly girl. He knew it had been a mistake but he had given in, driven by the smell and taste of grapes he had cavorted with her and told her all about his time with Johnny and the others and now that Johnny was in the cooler, she figured a few sestertii could be had by giving up his accomplices.

It was holy Thursday night and I had wrapped up my work a few hours earlier. I was seated in a popular watering hole in Bugolobi waiting for Paul. Paul is the PiFF treasurer and is responsible for crunching numbers and distributing monies to the people who need them, for PiFF projects that is, it would be nice if his job was to stand by the roadside and dish out gees. I was waiting to pick some monies and other items from him. The PiFF and STAN EDUCATION FUND had agreed to join efforts to take some Easter joy to Koch Lii Primary School in Koch Lii, Nwoya district. A handful of PiFFers donated clothes, books, shoes, some dodgy tee-shirts, swimwear and a fanny pack, all that was left was the stuff Paul had at his, which was the text and reading books, some scholastic materials donated by the PiFF as a whole and of course, the gees.

I was reluctant to relax because I wanted to make sure we had everything packed and ready for an early morning set-off before I could join the rest of Kampala in celebrating an old murder mystery which despite the clear lack of a body has been considered solved by billions for a couple of millennia now.

Paul said he would be forty minutes, one Guinness I figured. Paul was two hours and more minutes, four Guinness and some kb with Brian, a few hellos and his. Paul finally arrived, we set off for El Sasi (Kisaasi) where I’m currently holed up and deposited the bags of stuff. Now I could relax and have a good night but the four Irishmen were tormenting me, I needed to eat so I stopped at Chillies and wolfed down a fillet and some rice and then figured I would run to the nook and hook up with the boys. First, I had to run to the rugby club, now known as ‘The Legends’, to meet up with me brother for a quick natter and feeling too lethargic to engage in an extended beverage escapade, I decided to swing by Bubbles, see my gardener and head home to sleep. I strolled through the establishment and caught no sight of the gardener so I settled for a drink of water and some gyration with ‘the girl in red’ and friends. She was on a higher plane than me, asked me questions, led me to the wall but I could not be pinned. I did not give in. No more ‘over-wanting’ I said. I left soon after, with Jo Anne, on the back of a ‘digi’ wondering why I had ‘felt sweet’ on ‘the girl in red’, libido was going to kill me the whole night and trust!

Early Friday morning and I had to pick my camera from Jo Anne, get some gees from the machine, pack and call Alex. Alex and his brother Mbanda are the founders of the STAN FUND and were my company for the trip. Alex, who is married to a cute girl I went to primo school with had been up since 3:00 am fulfilling his marital duties. How do you know this? You ask. Well, Alex had told me the previous day that he had to take his wife to the airport early in the am or as we would say back in the villa, ‘omwitumbi’. See, that’s how I know, get your mind out of there, please. I called Alex at quarter to nine, we had agreed to leave at 9:00am, and he was only on his way back from the airport, his wife having missed her early morning flight had had to wait for another one. Shit, shower, dress up, baji to Ntinda, camera from Jo Anne and Alex was back in town, waiting for me somewhere in El Sasi.

I jumped on a bajaj from Jo Anne’s and found Alex and Mbanda in a supermarket picking a few items for our host family up in Koch Lii. We drove home, picked up my stuff and then off to apartment A9.

Apartment A9 is home to a couple of lasses and the purpose of our trip here was to drop off one car and pick up another, fully equipped with a driver to take us to the bus park. Moving things from one car to another took the sum total of five minutes and Alex walked up the stairs to drop the keys to car one and pick our driver. I followed, to say hi to the lasses in A9 and whatnot. Coffee, ‘Frank’s Furters’ and a healthy amount of ogling and we left thirty minutes later, some of us rather reluctantly. I want to put names here but I think I might just be snaking myself, so I shall stop. I mean, ‘who does that?’

We got on the bus and rolled on to oblivion.

 Several hours later and we stopped in Minakulu A, it was coming to six o’clock and the journey was pretty much uneventful but for the time some guy with ‘quiz’ draped his hand around my seat for a few minutes. I was fast asleep, dreaming of robots, flowers and scented candles, ‘the girl in red’, A9 when the world was nuked by the dung beetles of Phobos23. I woke up choking, politely nudged his arm off my seat and pretended to read a magazine.

Minakulu A is a small town on the Kampala-Gulu highway, actually it’s only a handful of general merchandise shops that sell anything from sweets to ropes. We got three bajajes, wait, is that the plural of bajaj or maybe I should say we caught three bajis and took a narrow dirt road that branched left off the highway.

The forty-five minute ride to Lii was the best part of the journey. Green fields, brown earth and blue sky was all the eye could see for miles and miles. Earth colours. Fresh air. Aaaah! Oh and there was a rainbow.

 

One quarter to 7 O’clock and we arrived in Lii. When the baji guys stopped, I thought, ‘oh, we’re probably turning left here and going further for a little while longer’, I had been expecting us to arrive a couple of hours later so I was surprised to learn that we had arrived.

See that ka building in the background? Yes, that one. That’s where the nightlife happens. The hut next to it is the pork place where you can buy hairy, roasted ‘past leaders’, delicious ones actually. The buildings across from ‘Bubbles’ are the equivalent of the malls, markets and shopping district. The school is located about 200m to the left of the ‘centre’, as it is called and opposite that is the clinic. That’s the entirety of the trading centre/town/whatever you may call it. If anything major is going down, this is where it happens. Oh, and there’s a mill across the road from the pork joint, right next to a field with a signpost about landmines and suspicious objects.

Okay, there’s too much kb. I have to tell you in person but let me leave you with a few thousand words in pictures.

The kids were happy, we had a good chat with them, gave out the books and clothes and promised to keep the connection going.

I had the best moment of the weekend on our way back, we hitched a ride from Karuma with a couple of other people in a van and I met Tyra, who is the cutest kid I’ve met in a while. We became instant gangos and shared water, juice, cake, camera and kb on the way back.

 
I want to say thanks to all of you who made this possible, particularly Eunice, Martin, Becca and Paul who found some nice clothes and books to give, the PiFF for chipping in towards transie and also donating exercise books, pens and pencils and lastly but by no means least, Alex and Mbanda Shyaka for making all of this possible. 

Rock on people.