A leg is a leg, just eat the chicken
What you need to know:
- The eater in Owino wanted a bigger leg or thigh for that matter, but later realised that he had to balance not only his plate but also the weight of his wallet.
There is this special childhood friend who likes surprising me with offers of ‘organic’ food. Jamal would ‘discover’ a new eatery and invite me at his wallet’s creed. And so it was this week when he said he had some good place to savour.
Off we went. Deep inside Owino market or whatever that place where a man named Harm (never mind the emphasis) has been planting storey lockups. There, we found the place teeming with men in all shapes of life. The place was so full; an overloaded cruise boat would look like a joke.
The only difference was that, unlike in a boat, here one could wait for a client to clear their plate and exit the eatery before taking their place. We sat just as a man with beards like for BoU governor Tumusiime-Mutebile was being served.
“Eh, I asked for a thigh but you have given me some tiny leg, how can I pay 8K for this?” the customer belted to the waitress who was by this time near to the huge saucepans of food than to the table.
“I hear it is the fad,” said a man near him. “It’s the legs of rich people.”
The joke didn’t register on the bearded eater and I guess he understood anything to the allusion in any case. What was not in doubt was that the joke was typical of boda boda operators and this man could have passed for one except that he didn’t have some heavy duty jacket and dirty helmet with him.
But they say that sometimes the best place to find sense is in the rants of a mad man. Reflecting on the boda joke, I asked myself, what is in a leg? A lot, probably. Forget the chicken that the bearded eater was frowning upon, but look at the way Ugandans took to focusing on the legs of another bigger chicken they had spent weeks lamenting over.
They said this chicken was very arrogant, had rudely decided to fly out of the country without notifying the people that were grilling her. Well, if you want to grill the chicken and the chicken returns from a day’s feeding to face your grill, the leg should be the last thing to discuss.
The eater in Owino wanted a bigger leg or thigh for that matter, but later realised that he had to balance not only his plate but also the weight of his wallet. If he had more than 8k, he could have asked for a full grilled chicken to himself, but he was broker than legs walking someone to face MPs’ grill.
Why would anyone want to have Zari’s legs while living like Mukwasi, the kamalewa vendor, instead of the legendary pair that trended on Facebook whilst living like that very beholder? As long as the legs can balance your life’s boat, all else is irrelevant. Just focus on how to use the legs to effectively run errands and sneak out documents without being caught.
Back to the chicken on the grill…
