YOU DON'T BAN KAVERA

No, it began actually yesterday at around 8 am. After breakfast I began having a shadowy feeling in my stomach. That cassava woman did not handle the sticks with enough protection; she didn’t use a kavera like she normally does. She instead used some had paper, the sort that cement comes in, you know. I didn’t want to comment because that woman can really blast you. Even when you are right. So she must have infected me with some bacteria of sorts. But I took it easy and took some antibacterials, and felt better.

Yah, I went to work but my stomach kept reminding me of the damn cassava woman. I was pissed. I reached Arua Park and waited for the lorry. I was supposed to be the major man in the loading of this lorry. This was timely because Mama Nakintu is on my neck for her rent. As I waited, I kept feeling like I was not going to handle the hard job of loading. Then I ran to the toilet. When I came out I went to the drug shop, bought some tabs to that effect. The problem was gone; I even began forgetting the cassava woman.

I was a little surprised when at lunch Faridah brought my ‘kikomando’ in a paper bag, like the ones those take away restaurants use. Bean soup and sliced chapatti in a paper bag? I almost refused it but I didn’t. She is the only one who can give me food on credit. I took it after she told me that the government had banned ‘kavera’ from the market. Now I knew what the problem was with my cassava woman.

When I reached home in the evening, I found Ken waiting for me. He had just got his money from the other job he told you about. He was going to that Malaya of his again. Can you believe that! Well that’s Ken. He took me to the rolex guy down the road. I was already planning to go to Nalongo’s but I said you never let a rolex pass. Now see what it has done to me. And you see he didn’t take one himself for some weird reason. Maybe because the guy was touching the thing with his bare hands. Funny but the ‘kavera’ is banned and we have to eat the rolex.

I tell you as soon as I finished it, I ran to the toilet. I did more runs to and from the toilet than probably all the times I have gone to the toilet in my life. I said to myself no this can’t be just diarrhea. I wanted to go back to the clinic in town and pick some other tablets from the same guy that gave me some in during the day but I wasn’t allowed time by the damn disease. Then a man saw me, a neighbor saw me and said that can’t be normal. I ran with shame to my room. He ran to the LC chairman and soon they came with a car. I was coming from the toilet when they told me to enter the car. I said I was going to be fine but they told me they would make sure the doctors said so. I almost exploded in their car. I think I won’t forget that day. I had to summon all the breaking powers in my body to stop the stool from spilling into my new 50 cent jean man.

Now am here on a hospital bed feeling like am going to catch another disease. This place smells like sewerage that has been let loose from right under my nose. Man this place by the way is full of cholera patients I hear that out side there they are erecting a tent for the guys that can’t come in here. I understand people are coming in like rain.

Hold my hand. Take me to the toilet out there. Ahaa! Now that we are out here, we can escape and see where these guys will ever find me to ask me for their hospital fees. Those guys who brought me in this damn hospital can pay for me now.

Where did you park the boda boda?

The Beggar and Security

Ah! Today I saw a very clever mad man. I was seated at my pole when he came along carrying his dirty luggage and smoking. I could swear he had not picked that cigarette. Ah! When I saw him smoking I wished he could drop it but he smoked it until it burned out. He ate the butt too. I badly needed a smoke. I last smoked when we were behind the restaurant. Ah! That was very good food there.

The mad man. He was a tall man with clean mad hair, but a dirty cap covered it. Both his big shirt and his trousers had many big pockets on them and all of them were filled with his dirty things. However as I looked at them, my trained eye saw that one of them had a lot of money in it. More money than I have ever seen. It was both paper and coins.

Then he put his luggage on a boot of a car. He then carefully got a phone that he must have picked from a gutter and began pressing the buttons. He pressed them carefully I began thinking the phone was functional. Of course it was not. It was open from down and the window where the owner sees the words was dirty and hanging out. But he kept pressing the buttons and smiling as if he was reading something from it.

I saw people of homes look at him and walk far away from him because they thought he smelled. People of the homes are very proud. Ah! Then they would turn and look at me. I kept looking at the mad man and then I saw something.

I saw the dirty screen of his phone; yes I remember it is called a screen. I saw the screen of his phone glow. It went black. He turned and looked at it and abruptly he stopped eating a rotten mango and looked deep inside his luggage. He then held his phone in a way that the screen faced me. He used his other arm to do something inside the luggage for over a minute.

As he looked in the dirty luggage, the screen glowed again. Ah! I wish one day I would pick a phone like that too. When it lighted, he slowly looked out of the luggage and turned the screen to him.

Soon there was a group of policemen coming down the street with batons and guns. I began feeling that they had come to arrest me because I had come after they warned us not to come to the street today. Streets are for people of the homes especially on special days like today.

Didn’t you know that today was a government day? Many presidents had come to visit Museveni. Didn’t you see the cars that passed us when we were coming from Cambodia? Yes those were the ones. I think one of them was coming from some country called Tanzania.

Ah! I wish I had a home to come from also. Wait! Ah! They were surely coming for me, but they weren’t looking at me, I wondered. I hid behind Isma’s concrete. They did not come for me. They turned at the junction and went up another street. Patrolling the city.

I came from behind the concrete and the mad man was gone. They had taken him away. But I didn’t see them take him with them, I wondered. Ah! He had sat down behind the car to eat his very dirty food. If you ate that food you would die. When he got up, the cloth that contained his money was almost falling out of the pocket. He looked at it and took a step. Ah! It almost came out of his pocket, but when he took another one, the bag dropped back in place. If he had dropped it I would be a proud owner of a home right now.

So all the same I walked toward him. It can’t be any hard to pickpocket a mad man. I stopped a while in the middle of the road to let a boda boda to pass. Then I looked and in place of the mad man was a lady speaking on phone.

As I was still looking around for the mad man, the most amazing thing happened. The loudest blast I have ever seen happened. The whole plaza was in flames. People were falling from the higher floors to the ground and smashing to pieces. I could not as yet find the guts to run but smoke that came after threw me back to my senses and I ran away from the scene. I didn’t see the mad man again.

So do you think those police men who move around the city with guns and batons on government days and when Besigye comes to the court can stop an insurgency?