|
|
Uganda: Taking Ugandans for Granted
 |
|
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
The Weekly Observer (Kampala)
2 July 2008
Posted to the web 3 July 2008
Wang W'angamba
IN THE FAST LANE
I really don't know what some people take Ugandans for. Last Thursday, we went to watch the Euro semi-finals from Good Fellas at Grand Imperial Hotel. I had never been to Good Fellas but from the layout, furnishing and decoration, I concluded it was a genuine sports bar.
It has multiple TV screens, some pool tables and huge posters of the top English Premiership clubs pasted all over the walls. The perfect place to watch Russia take on Spain.
So will someone tell me why, moments before kickoff, some wannabe singers cum dancers cum actors were still miming and wiggling to Juliana Kanyomozi's music blaring from the speakers?
They would be irritating enough miming songs at the Constitution Square! But in a sports bar, moments before a major football game, they were downright infuriating! At that time, I expect to be listening to the build up commentary, not watching some pretenders living out their fantasies of being super stars.
At least someone had the sense to turn on the commentary once the game started. But during the half-time break, we were back to the "singers" or whatever they define themselves as. This time, it was some chap jumping up and down and waving handkerchiefs to Chameleone's music, pretending to be the man himself. We never got to hear a single word of the half-time match analysis. Have the Good Fellas people ever wondered why SuperSport pays certain people perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars to comment about matches?
I was happy to see the back of "Chameleone" only for a group of about six girls, who at that time of the night should have been at home doing their homework, to invade the stage with their kimansulo-ish dances. To be honest, if there was no serious football to watch, I wouldn't have complained about the girls. When there is no live sports on TV, live young girls athletically shaking their booty are a perfectly acceptable substitute to the sports fans, who happen to be overwhelmingly male.
The only person I can't complain about is the cute birthday girl who, though most of us didn't know her, chose not only to share with us, but to personally serve us with a piece of her cake. Now, there is a Ugandan who knows how things should be done.
At the end of the game, when some of us were not happy that Russia had been hammered, some two blokes took over, dancing to traditional Kiganda music. At some point, they came to shake their waists from our tables.
Disgusting!
That was our cue to leave. And that's where Mr. Karim Hirji gets it wrong. If he had dispatched the booty-shaking girls to our tables, I bet you we would have spent the entire night drinking and generally having a fantastic time at his pub.
|
And we would be heading there this evening too. As things stand, we might try out the rival Rock Garden Café.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright © 2008 The Weekly Observer. 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. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
