They say Kampala is a city with everything, it comes down to the seeker. If you look right in Kampala, you will always find what you seek. If you look for pawpaw, you will find pawpaw.
And well, if you look for love (not in the wrong places according to B’raka), you will find it. Last night I risked and hang out with the Gen-Zs, I had a whole two weeks to pay for it. But guess everything comes down to practice. I decided to give it one more attempt. And boom, this time round, it was Quiz night. I must confess I was the weakest link on the table of four. But life comes down to certainties. If you can present certainties, people will follow you, even to the deepest pits. After a harrowing tale about movies, random stuff and fruits, I was told that the team I belonged to, the mighty Rifles, had come in at number four. Not only that, they had also upstaged the ‘Dynamites’.
The Rifles do not play to win; they play to beat ‘Dynamites’. What a craziness! Now this could also be the night that transformed Kampala. Because tell me how in one night our conversation touched everything around the things that make up a life. One moment, we were discussing the different tonalities and accents in Chinese and French. How would you explain to the world that on this table of four, you had Chinese, French and German linguists? And then the conversations kept threading to the most Romantic countries in the world. Italians? We also paused to reflect about the Japanese and how they reinvented and rebranded themselves in the world. Incredible. One moment they were the top villains of the world, next moment, they were serving us anime. And while still in Japan, we brought up Haruki Murakami. The ululations that followed.
Here I was thinking I am the only Murakami fanboy in Kampala, only to meet people perhaps more obsessed. When we turned to wines, it was another conversation about the Merlots and the Pinot Noirs. Then we travelled all the way through Southern France, spent a minute in Toulouse and were back to Kampala. “Ortega, Tu as quel age?” Huh. My French was not Frenching. But I recovered and said, “Mme, excusez moi, maintenant, Je Parle le Français comme une vache espagnol.” We cracked. My waiter came around; she asked to top something into her wine glass. And said, “merci”, to which I replied, “bien venue.” She corrected me, “Ian, de rien is better.” Meanwhile, the same night we had a go around physics, science, feminism, black rights, mental health, as I said, it was a night about everything and everything. But then I wondered, how had time rushed from 8pm to midnight? What is it about Kampala time? Somebody must be spinning our clock faster. Of course, we argued about age.
I told them, I am much older than them. They must be Genzzzs. I belong to the older folks. They pulled off technology tricks on me. Somehow, you can always get into someone’s phone and reveal their birthday. I argued that age is a construct. Did I speak about the trust system during the quiz? You exchange your script with the next table to mark you. Our neighbours were another interesting lot. There was no cheating. No use of phones. We respected the rules of the game. And that ka-place, Bush Pig, had this mad scripting on their menu; ‘In crust we trust…’ Reminds me of the Ugandan Yesu on TikTok. Anyway, as time came to closure, and we all retreated home, I realised that maybe, maybe Kampala is not something to abandon after all.
Maybe the goal is to find a thread of beauty and hang onto that thread. And maybe our role is to find these threads, one by one, and before we know it, we shall have ropes, then we can make stronger notes. And boom, we pull ourselves out of these voids. Kampala is not to be abandoned.A Kenyan associate was in Kampala weeks ago and he sent me a message; “boss you do not know what you have.” I told him all I saw were potholes, and masquerades. That there is something about Kampala. But you must look with the right intentions, Kampala reveals itself to those willing to bet on it. That Kampala is like a village belle who is one sundress away from mesmerising a brunch affair.
Good people, when new evidence hits my world, I change my opinion. We should treat ideas like clothes, we could dump them, rewash them, recombine them or get new ones altogether. My new idea is that Kampala is a city where you must wait patiently for the light, and once the light appears, hold onto it. There are poets. There are architects. There are linguists. There are hedonists. Post-script: Last Sunday, I attended the Traditional Latin Mass in Munyonyo. In this Mass, the women veil, and the entire mass (with exception) is conducted in Latin. All this happened in Kampala. We can bet on Kampala. After all, it is all we have, shall ever have. Berlin will never accept us!
Maybe the goal is to find a thread of beauty and hang onto that thread. And maybe our role is to find these threads, one by one.. . and boom, we pull ourselves out of these voids.
