Nairobi — The worst time to go out for a drink in Nairobi is during the weekend, especially in the afternoon, when all the restaurants are packed with raucous local fans of English Premier League football clubs. Never mind that half of them cannot tell the difference between Arsenal and the Gunners, or Manchester United and the Red Devils. Being a supporter of an English Premier league side is a fad and if you do not support any team, then you should be, to use a football term, relegated to the bench.

Many times people ask me which football team I support and I name several from Europe - Wigan, Bayern Munich and Barcelona. I am not a fan of Chelsea and Arsenal because I can't be in the same league with their local fans.

I am a great fan of Manchester United and, like all Man U fans, I do not get excited unnecessarily and I do not shout myself hoarse even when Sir Alex Ferguson's men deflate the bloated ego of some Portuguese who could have died unknown were it not for some equally unknown Russian.

Anyway, football is not my first love, and I do not lose sleep when Wigan, Bayern Munich or Barcelona loses. I love cricket and, after Kenya, I support Pakistan. England, India, New Zealand and Sri Lanka can remain in the pavilion forever.

But even when Pakistan loses - which is rare - I never hold India responsible, and even Inzamam "Sultan of Multan" Ul Haq, the Pakistani skipper, does engage in such a blame game, like Moody Awori, our vice- president does when his campaign rally is disrupted in his own backyard.

Two weeks ago, the avuncular VP, who will go down in history as the person who made going to jail desirable, cried wolf when he went to address a political rally in Busia and found the stadium almost empty.

The octogenarian, who prances and dances with prisoners, did the most dishonourable thing and heaped the blame on his neighbours in general, and Langata MP Raila Odinga in particular, for the poor turnout. And when his rally was disrupted, he singled out Odinga for having ferried hooligans from Kisumu to disrupt his rally.

According to Press reports, a seemingly bitter Awori took to the podium and, rather uncharacteristically, said in reference to Raila that he would not allow a person from Nyanza to take over Busia. He added that the indigenous people had allowed people from outside the district to invest in the area but maintained that the peaceful lifestyle of the indigenous people should not be abused.

He expressed dismay at some politicians, who he said had perfected the art of inciting hooligans to throw stones and heckle those opposed to their political views, terming it as not only undemocratic, but also shameful.

Despite Awori's protestations, three people who were arrested during the fracas were released from police custody with the Busia police boss saying, "We could not take them to court due to lack of evidence linking them with inciting the public to cause chaos or scaring the public away from the rally".

If Raila was the cause of the chaos, then he must have heeded the VP, for wherever the latter went thereafter, no untoward incidents were reported, until last Monday, the day of the referendum, and the vice-president failed miserably to deliver even his own constituency. What a shame!

Mr Awori, so were those who voted against the referendum in your constituency also transported or were your supporters scared away from the polling stations? And if they were, who was the villain of the piece this time? You would do yourself a lot of good if you would learn to carry your own cross - even if the President decides to crack his whip at poor performers.

Gifted by nature

Last weekend, I went home to Uganda and carried my business cards, something I do not do in Nairobi due to security reasons. When my greatgreat grandparents emigrated to Kenya from Uganda, the locals, in keeping with the Kenyan tradition of referring to people by their nationality instead of their names, called my great-great-grandfather Muganda, as in Ugandan, and my grandfather called their bluff and took it up as a name - and later became a senior chief! That is how Ugandan I am.

I did not go to Uganda to find my roots or at the invitation of any of my relatives who could have remained there, but at the behest of three Kenyans who figured that I should take a break from the lodges in Kenya's game reserves and national parks and sample the hospitality of Kampala's Sheraton Hotel.

Even though I had heard many stories about Uganda from my parents who once worked and lived there, I went to Uganda with an open mind and only wanted to eat matoke and peanuts, which Tez, my food technologist friend whose mother is Ugandan, recommends for everybody.

After checking in at Kampala Sheraton Hotel, in an air-conditioned room from where I had a panoramic view of the beautiful the city, I decided to discover the city of seven hills - as Kampala is called - by night, and started out with the hotel's Rhino Pub.

As in Nairobi, women out-numbered men at Rhino, but unlike in Nairobi, they were buying their own drinks and were not harassing unaccompanied men. I went out to numerous other nightspots in Kampala and realised this was the order of the night.

In all my travels that night, I was not harassed by gun-toting police officers, or muggers as could have been the case in Nairobi, despite the fact that mine was an after-dinner stroll and I was walking from one night spot to the other.

But that is not all Uganda has to offer. While Kenya is busy selling its wild animals to Thailand and trading insults, Uganda is telling the world that it is more than the Pearl of Africa and is Gifted by Nature instead.

Thus, it is reminding us it has the source of the Nile, 10 national parks, 150,000 species of birds, half of the world's surviving mountain gorillas, chimpanzees in a park less than five kilometres from the Kampala Airport, white water rafting facilities, the safest streets in the region, not to mention free-flowing Baganda derrieres, according to John Nagenda, the chair of the Uganda Wildlife Authority. While we are sitting on our laurels, Uganda is going out of its way to redeem its image as a war-ravaged country that will definitely bite into our tourism industry.

Robert Kanuma, the public relations officer of Uganda's Immigration Department, says Uganda received 193,000 visitors in 2000, which increased by 350 per cent to 512,000 in 2004. The earnings from tourism-related activities increased from $113 million in 2000 to $321 million in 2004, and the numbers are still growing.

As long as tourists to Kenya are taken for a ride by taxi operators, bilked by curio sellers, harried by sundry touts for whom any obvious foreigner is fair game, and generally made as miserable as possible, we will have no one to blame when they move to Uganda, where I can safely carry my golden cardholder - which I got from Tez, whose mother, as I said earlier, is Ugandan.

Kenya Only

If you want to know that silence is golden, try asking a Nairobi blonde out. She will promise to call you but rarely ever will, when you call her, you will wish you never placed that call, because, as usual, what will come out of her mouth will never cease to amaze you. "I do not like that place you want to take me to," she will invariably say. "The red wine there is not even chilled."

But such statements are not confined to the "ladies", and there are numerous things that, like our "peculiar calling habits", can only be found within our borders.

According to an electronic mail I got from a reader last week and whose original author I do not know, transverse the whole wide world and you will rarely find a country where people can be engaged for five years or more, never bother to divorce (they just separate;) are late to church, work, and everything else EXCEPT when the disco is free before 9pm.

In Kenya, people refer to diabetes as SUGAR; show up at weddings, showers, graduation and birthday parties with a new outfit with nails and hair done but no gift, then eat like scavengers and take a plate home; consider clubbing or "henging" a monthly expense and leave bills (instead of insurance money) behind for surviving relatives.

According to the article, it is Kenyans who borrow money for a wedding; have mothers who can use curse words and religion ALL IN ONE SENTENCE, for instance, "Lord, give me strength because I am about to knock the hell out of this child"; spend the car insurance money on everything EXCEPT getting the dent fixed and invite co-workers and all of their friends to their child's first birthday party, which happens to have a professional DJ with only about three children (including the child) in attendance. And then expect the guests to "changa" for the bash.

The mail is a damning verdict on Kenyan behaviour and contends that it is only Kenyans who start every sentence with "Me I..." for instance "ME, I don't know why you are saying that I always say "Me I"; say "spend" when they are spending the night away from home; put in iron rods on all windows and main doors...referring to them as "burglar"; use Ngai as an exclamation and believe Ati is an English word for "What?" To add mine, it is also here where even the educated think "avail" means to make available or a computer can be "spoilt".

It is only Kenyans who think it is cool to drink and drive and get away with it then later brag how they do not know how they got home "the way I was soo drunk!"; pack up all their earthly goods to go upcountry for a week in December, only to pack them all back again and return to the city and call travelling flying out.

Do not send me hate mail if some of these things remind you of you, but it is only Kenyans who think that taking a clerical job in a company is "cooler" than toiling in their parents' family business; prefer washing cars and dishes in the United States to toiling in their 20-acre tea farms in Kenya; call their homes "at ours", "stay" (not live) in one housing estate for a decade and always think all their economic and social problems are caused by (former President) Moi when, in fact, some have never been to school.

Poor memory

If ignorance is bliss, then our Members of Parliament are an ecstatic lot. Kenyans have always known that our lawmakers are not to be trusted and will bend rules at the slightest opportunity to suit their interests.

During the referendum, our fears that the lawmakers are the biggest lawbreakers were confirmed when some of them went to polling stations without the documents necessary for the exercise.

In Makueni District, assistant minister Kivutha Kibwana, who is a law scholar, was turned away from Mulala polling station in his constituency when he failed to produce his national identity card. He told the presiding officer that he lost the card recently. He had arrived at the station at 6.30am and despite his pleas, the presiding officer was adamant and referred him to the law -which he should know only too well because of his profession - which states that only a registered voter with valid voter and identity cards could cast a ballot.

Prof Kibwana left the station and promised to return after sorting out the problem at a higher level, but he had not returned by 4pm.

In Shinyalu, MP Daniel Khamasi was turned away at a polling station after he failed to produce his identity card. He told polling clerks at Shamirori polling station that he had lost the card but the officials stood their ground, citing the rules. He later went to Kakamega Police Station where he got an abstract after reporting the loss of the ID card. "I have actually managed to sort out the hitch and voted," the legislator told journalists later.

But the person who takes the cake for this ignorance is Likoni MP Suleiman Shakombo, who was captured on national television pleading that he be allowed to vote without these two vital documents.

The Shakombo case bordered on the bizarre because he was leading the Yes campaign in Coast Province. He admitted that he had forgotten his documents in Nairobi. It was not clear why he had not made arrangements to have the documents brought to him earlier.

Despite his pleas that he was the area MP and knew his ID number off head, the polling officer stood her ground. To prove that he has a good memory, he blurted out 0282001, which must have been his ID number.

He insisted on being allowed to vote because he could remember his identity card number but the presiding officer, a dutiful, cool, calm and collected Millicent Achieng', asked him to make way so she could serve Kenyans who were keen to cast their votes and had carried their documents.

How do we end up with the kind of lawmakers we have.