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Za Twita posted on September 15, 2011 - 11:49am

I tried, God knows, I tried. I made a pact to come back and blog. Because for me, blogging is not really about the ‘now.’ In fact, it has never really been about the ‘now’ since there’s been a niggling feeling in the background telling me, beyond the deals when the blog goes bigger than Ariana Huffington’s or when the talking heads on Ugandan TV start quoting it, it will always be about something else.
Along the way, it became clear this was really about the future. I have been running around with the happy thought in my head that when my progeny is old enough, along with the coming-of-age cash, I shall also turn the password over and let them decide what to make of me and what I really thought of my world in these years.

Rudely awakened posted on August 31, 2011 - 4:28pm

Here obsessing about the big lie. For a half-year period, I have been listening more to international news and liking it more and more. It is not full of new music from tin pot masqueraders, as we have in Uganda and I don’t get to laugh at the one-liners from my favourite presenters, but I have been loving the liberated feeling of knowing what’s going on in the wider world.
Till the Libya conflict.

I guess it has always been there; the cover-ups and the agenda journalism that drives CNN, the Beeb, Sky, Fox and Al-Jazeera. These organisations can pontificate about the standards of journalism and even turn their noses in the air when a local news agency tries to point out something.

Sound of little feet, tinkling laughter posted on August 22, 2011 - 9:44am

Stepping through the door, when I get back from work, is characterized by a funny ritual; hide-and-seek that is not really hide-and-seek. The Little Woman is conspicuously absent from the welcoming committee and I think I know where she’s hiding. So I search.
The search itself is a charade because it is a small living room. There are only so many places a three-year-old can hide. But as I ‘search,’ asking pointlessly, “Where are you?” even as she giggles, unable to hold down the laughter welling in her chest, I can feel the stress of the day lifting.
I take long to get to the place she so poorly hidden herself, as little people are wont to do, thinking they are well out of sight, while the whole time, something about them; a small foot sticking out from under the bed or the mop of unruly hair distinctly holding them up like a beacon, is providing that come-on to the It (me) that’s doing the search.

Cissy Muwanga logs out posted on August 16, 2011 - 4:04pm

Cissy Muwanga has gone to be with her maker. She had an illustrious career entertaining the people of Uganda and being involved in the reinvention of contemporary TV. I count myself lucky for having gone out, at least once, to pick her brains. Here’s a piece I did for African Woman in 2009.
Cissy Muwanga showing them how it’s done
Sometime in the early 1990s, there was a strange apparition on a drama stage somewhere in Kampala. The dramatists and their trustees who were in a rehearsal for an upcoming production were momentarily thrown out of character when a traditional healer stormed the stage and scared them all witless.

Lord of this ring no more posted on August 11, 2011 - 5:47pm

Not Sauron's, dammit!
Four years going on five. That’s how long it’s been. Four years, almost five, of wearing a ring. Not any old ring, mind, but a wedding band. I need applause.
I was never one for jewelry. I have hated the feel of foreign things on my skin since I can remember. In another life, I believe I was a nudist.
So when the prospect of marriage dawned on me, I didn’t get the attendant shakes that come with being scared of the great unknown. No, it was because of the thought of wearing a ring.

Chasing our tail posted on August 10, 2011 - 1:26pm

The president of Uganda has for ages cultivated an image as a wise economist who has more than just a few tricks up his sleeve on how to fix broken Uganda. True, he has allegedly served as an economics teacher in some long-gone era, as we have been told ad nauseum.
So one wonders why, after all these years at the helm, an office that is the personification of the person of the president, the country is still in a shambles.
The central bank governor, brought in in 2001 to provide some sanity and austerity, was recently in the news for grumbling that the president does not know jack about the state of the economy. Well, not those words exactly but what he said was not any more flattering; the situation was best depicted in a Daily Monitor cartoon.

Fish outta da water posted on August 4, 2011 - 7:28pm

I wonder what it must feel like to be away from home for the very first time in one’s life. What does it feel like to wake up from that first nap, after a tiring matatu ride from Entebbe to Kampala, then another one from the taxi park to Kamwokya, to find that the only person you know, the one person who can provide some sort of explanation for this sudden back flip the world just did has disappeared.
What is it like to wake up in the middle of the night as a 20-month-old little girl to ask for chai, like you have been doing for the last one year, to realise the people responding to your cry are strangers with anger in their movements for having been woken up?
What’s it like when one learns, rudely, that not every one thinks one is all that; that babies do not have special status here and “if you think you are special, go on back home to your mama”?

The higher they soar posted on August 3, 2011 - 4:56pm

Most of us have gone through the pain anguish of being blindsided. Not literally. Blindsided as in being given a good report about somebody only to find out, on meeting them, that they are just ijots.
Kind of like meeting your favourite blogger in person and realising you don’t know the last time you felt such an anticlimax.
So there I was, receiving this dude’s work and nodding, sometimes shaking my head in wonderment. Wonderment about his style, his style so cool.
Then the crash. He goes and copy-and-pastes a story from a local daily. And since I am keen on having him stay there at the top of the list titled ‘Celebrities,’ I don’t want to listen to the niggling voice in my head telling me, “Houston, we have a problem!”

Jezebel posted on June 23, 2011 - 1:20pm

She’s Jezebel, Delilah and Aphrodite rolled into one. She is surely dangerous, yet she’s got such a powerful allure.
Her kisses are fervent, like she’s not kissed another like this before. She twists and moans, reaching into the depths of your sorrow and touching that which was discarded ages ago.
You should not be here, you know. You are way out of line and you have everything to lose.
Jezebel, or is it Angella…(Sue? Robinah? Charity?). Whoever it is, whatever name she’s going by today, she knows just what to say and with deadly timing.
“It’s not really serious,” you tell yourself, as you tuck in your shirt hurriedly. The quick trysts she gives you access to are just that: trysts. They are not meant to be remembered.

Rubber stamped posted on June 16, 2011 - 9:29am

The condoms are back. Now and then, the management at my place of work deems it important to protect the randy workers of the company, high on the adrenalin of chasing the truth, from themselves.
It happens stealthily, as these things usually happen in Africa. One morning you get to work and on your usual visit to the gents, you are accosted by new boxes of condoms.
But this does not continue forever. After a week, a month or so, the condoms suddenly disappear. They come unannounced and they leave unannounced.
The hilarity is in the guessing game. Who comes up with these decisions? One wonders how the meetings go where they decide, “these people are doing each other too much this month. Eh, gundi, what’s our budget for the month, can we afford to buy condoms?”