Uganda: A splendid country for disclaimers
The first thing I do before I check into a public place is look for my Ugandan disclaimers. I call them Ugandan because the official word for disclaimer is not the same as the one that is applied here:
“Please enjoy our goods and services. If we annoy you or disrespect you or if anything bad happens to you here, that’s your business. But please. Enjoy our goods and services”.
In a restaurant
Order and eat and take your behind off their chairs. If you hang around after they may consider you a vagrant. Disclaimer? “No idlers allowed”. This happened to me in a popular restaurant in Kampala and I could hardly believe my ears. So before you give some places your money, make sure they won’t chase you away once they have gotten what they wanted out of you.
In a club
I love club disclaimers. You never know what they are going to allow you to wear from one day to the next. One evening some girlfriends and I visited a club and part of her outfit was her hat. The disclaimer? “No caps allowed”. This was a problem. If she took off the hat, all the style and pizzazz was gone from her outfit. We didn’t bribe the security guards but we did come close to getting down own our knees to allow her to enter looking the bomb-diggity.
In a shopping mall baggage centre
What is funny is that all the major shopping malls with the capacity to look after your property have a disclaimer saying they are not obligated to.
The same disclaimer refuses you to enter the mall with your precious property. So you see, you are stuck between a rock and a hard place. One day just for fun, I told the baggage handler I did not want to hand over my yoga mat because what if she decided to steal it? She was not happy.
In a hotel
These ones have lawyers write their disclaimers. It does not matter if you are robbed, beaten, raped, poisoned, the disclaimer covers it all. And knowing three people who have been robbed blind in hotels in Kampala (one of them very prestigious), you should take these disclaimers as a sign that your safety is a matter of luck.
Even in the hotel safe
Yes. You will find a disclaimer waiting for you inside there as well. I once opened it to deposit my precious items and noticed a piece of paper inside. Right away I knew my old friend, the disclaimer. The hotel was not responsible for anything I put in the safe!
I suspect these disclaimers have an element of illegality to them but I will leave that to the experts.
