A quick update on my life – I worked through my fourth book of Haruki Murakami – the book is Norwegian Wood – of everything our age, Murakami gave us a style, a force, an expression. And on more serious things, I suspect I must be out and done with my ‘hot chocolate’ obsession.
Life is endless transitions – one moment your palette cannot do without something – another moment the palette desires nothing of that thing. Is this how marriage is? That the angel you saw on the wedding day gets reborn as a demon? Tell me people, does this explain the ’worse’ clause? Because what is worse people? The wrinkles? The cheating? Finding out that your partner is an armed robber? Or that she had a past? Or gorging out one of his eyes? Is that the worst? Tell me, can’t you still have space in this worst to grab a beer?
Part 1: Love is of many types
I must be the most clueless about love – but that should not stop me theorising about it. Perhaps my admission of cluelessness is an honesty, a realisation that love has no experts. Love is a grace, a miracle, something that hits you when you are busy pursuing other things. And who knows? For some of you reading this, your love has overstayed its visit and is on the way out. And for the single ones, your love could meet you somewhere in Kibuye or Katwe, in the places you are most afraid to step.
Again, my admission of cluelessness is because I have been to the love supermarket. And in there, you find all types of love for the different categories of customers. There is the Celine Dion love, it is gripping, it will wreck your nervous system. But everyone that has experienced this love wishes for just a moment to relive it.
Or you could find a Sade kind of love, or a Spice Diana kind of love, a love that is all and about, a love that is for the crowd, in Luganda, we say, ‘love yye jenjero…’ There is also an Iryn Namubiru love, of a heart that longs, that yearns, a love that is earnest. One has to know what they are searching for. But I do not want the Chameleone love. It is about a man who thinks love is nothing but financial provision. I want a love that gets lost in the rain, all drenched, chasing each other, a love that will have a conversation about Jean-Paul-Satre’s works, or better, his relationship with Simone. In a worse world, there is even a Kampala love, this one is for survival. It is the love you fall in when ‘you are passing something’ – nga olina kyoyisaawo. There is a Bulindo love, a Naalya love, a Namasuba love. But please Lord, give me nothing of a Najjera and Kyanja love. Cast me into a monastery somewhere in Moroto than punish me with a Kyanja love. A horror!
Part 2: Hating and loving TikTok
Life is an absurdity, a glaring one. And TikTok is a streaming of the absurd. I have a hate and love affair with TikTok. One moment I am on, another moment, I delete it. My heuristic is that for sanity, one ought not to belong to more than three social media platforms at a time. It has served me well.
The thing about TikTok is that it is Uganda in its raw and undeceiving form. It breaks all the X illusions, the Instagram hypes, the Snapchat marketing, and presents Uganda as it is, not as we dream it to be. All the good and bad business advice, all the dancers, the motivational speakers, the hustlers, all marriage forms, and the lives of the ‘celebrities. Basically, Uganda TikTok is akin to entering a schizophrenic mind. Boldy stated, Uganda is schizophrenic. Too many contradictions, too many layering, too many webs, too many threads and knots. These contradictions I see in my friends, family, accomplices and all the strangers I meet. The ability to play not just double lives, but multiples of lives. Stop Ortega. Stop!
Part 3: Ortega is a Mucwezi, or so he thinks
I recently stumbled upon my Mucwezi name – Muhanze so the gods told me. You know life is more myth than reality. And the unconscious drives us more than we notice. That is why I avoid bad books and bad music like a plague. Because who knows? That could be the confusion that plays out in my life down the road. Let me seek a Schubert. Let me bet on the beauties of life, if nothing comes out of it – at least a beautiful soul will result. I can’t lose twice, listen to bad music, and then a bad soul and then I encounter schizophrenic Uganda.
But that song, Che Che by Fyno UG, it is delicious. It is the lyrics, it has been long since a Ugandan man yearned with a gladness (read simped) in a song. Love is the greatest revolution and only the lovers can resist. Only love could bring the Berlin Wall down, only love knows about country roads. But still Kampala love complained – the man forgot about the financially part – mbu he sang kankukwasaganye emotionally, mentally, physically – but his crime is forgetting the financially in his love kit.
If by other powers, we could as well have titled this piece ‘Muhanuuzi meets Muhanze just again’, but you cannot give lawyers too many wins. Should I say, love defies mercantile standards?
Post-Script: I remembered Maurice Kirya and wondered, what would my campus life have been without that dude? He fuelled the idealism, together with the Passengers and Simis of this world. But now, what would my current life be without Henry Mancini? Claude Debussy? And Sheebah (although she broke my heart…)
X: @OrtegaTalks
