|
|
Uganda: A Case of the Bachelor Blues
 |
 |
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
New Vision (Kampala)
COLUMN
10 May 2008
Posted to the web 12 May 2008
Ernest Bazanye
Kampala
IT was late one Wednesday night and I was staggering back from the Corporate Gulag/ Matrix/ Slow Death/ Job. It was almost 10:00pm when I landed on the shores of Kireka. My mind was beginning to make the adjustment in frequency from Work (numb) to Home (ready to consume TV).
In the transition it usually makes a quick analysis of the prospects the next day holds: Have I cleared my workload or will tomorrow be excruciating? Do I have any airtime left? Is there toothpaste at home? Etc. It was during this process that I discovered that the last shirt to be ironed in Chez Baz was at that very moment resting on my weary back.
I had no ironed shirts at home. Bachelor Blues, they call them.
Now, the more mature gentleman would hurry home urgently. He might even prompt the boda to go faster (Is it inappropriate to whip your bodaman and say "Giddy-up"?) because he is eager to redeem at least one shirt from the basket and iron it before cara fires. But I think my lethargic footdragging became even slower.
I was at the Kireka stage. There are men around the area who sell clothes. I had never noticed them before because, I don't have fashion's time, but this night, I had to regard these stalls with more than sweeping disdain. They held a solution.
I ambled over (still sluggish and tired, but less wretched) to the vendor and looked over his merchandise.
I hate to belabour a point, but I think I should reiterate at this point that it was night time. And that I was very tired. And that any fashion instincts I may have ever had were languishing in atrophy.
I asked the vendor: "Are these shirts terrible?"
He replied with much eagerness that they were far from that.
"I'll take three, then," I said, already feeling the beginings of peace settle in my heart, as the anxiety over ironing faded and the thought of going straight to sleep on the couch in front of the TV settled cosily in.
I wrapped up the shirts, summoned the boda, and, not caring whether it was appropriate or not, whipped him and said: "Giddy up".
When I got home, however, and was able to look at the shirts in the light, I began to develop some doubts. Some misgivings began to make themselves apparent. There was disquiet in the soul, there was turbulence in the spirit.
Not so much because the shirts just purchased were not the usual sort I buy, i.e. plain, but because even with my challenged sense of fashion I could sense something was wrong with them.
I suspected perhaps, they may be possibly, there was a possibility that they were that they could be ugly.
I needed to consult experts in the field. You all think phone cameras are mere toys, but they have their uses. I laid the shirts out on the couch, snapped a few pictures and MMSed them to various fashionable people, seeking opinions on their aesthetic status.
These were their responses: "Let's forget this ever happened." "You could always use it to dust the TV. What kind of TV do you have? JVC? No, don't dust a JVC with that." "Are you auditioning for the role of George Jefferson?"
"Don't you ever do that to me again!" "Fuuuuugly!" "Oh my God! WHAT IS THAT!?!" "But Ernest you like joking around. Wait, you're serious?"
|
"Get that thing out of my phone!"
Someone actually called me back to say: "I think that would pass for, like, a curtain, and I mean those curtains that are meant to be in the kitchen and not in the living room."
The moral of the story is: Work hard, get rich, and buy shirts from Garden City.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright © 2008 New Vision. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Make allAfrica.com your home page | RSS Feed | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top | Site Guide | Who We Are | Advertising | Search | Subscribe | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Questions or Comments? Contact us. Read our Privacy Statement. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
