I love the rolex but….

Usually, I send the cleaning lady to pick up a snack from my rolex guy - a plain chapatti or omelet, or both, at any time of the day. However, mid-morning to lunchtime is best as later on you get served stale chapattis.
The end product is usually great, but it is a tad irritating to bite on a little, bitty eggshell or something else that feels like sand, or a small stone. Still the general enjoyment overrides the minor nuisances.

Recently, the cleaner was not around at lunchtime, so, I went across the road to get my rolex fix. I found the new rolex guy working on a customer’s order. In the brief glance he shot me, I only had time to point at the tray of eggs in front of him.

I did not think he had understood what I meant but, apparently, he had because he picked two eggs and cracked them open over a cup that, at a second glance did not look quite sanitary. I’m sure he had not washed it all morning. As he tipped the blue plastic cup to better beat the eggs, I noticed something caked right round the inner edges of the cup.

It looked like the stuff that remained after I put eggs yolks in the fridge and forget them there for days. The moisture in the egg yolk had dried up and left a semi-powdery yellow residue.

The residue in the cup was a little different though. It looked like a mix of egg and flour. I looked away quickly so I would not put off my lunch. My eyes wandered back to the cup when he picked up a little polythene bag with diced green pepper and removed about a teaspoon of the pepper with a knife. Using the same knife, he quickly chopped a piece of onion and one of tomato and added them to the eggs as well.

Voila, the Spanish omelet was ready! I watched as he poured the mix onto a black, flat frying pan positioned atop a charcoal stove, raised on three long metal legs. The bottom of the cup had little green bits that, for sanity’s sake, I can only hope were diced green pepper.

Once the egg was cooked through on the second side, he deftly lifted it off the pan with the knife. With his other hand, he reached for a polythene bag into which he stuffed the omelet. I should have been disgusted at this point, especially as I looked around his work station and confirmed that he did not have clean water.

It wasn’t until I saw the pictures, I had stealthily taken at the rolex stand that I felt my stomach move in the unmistakable preamble of a session of hurling.

Considering that I wash my hands no less than 10 times when I am cooking, especially when handling different types of food, this guy had grossly violated many kitchen rules. To make matters worse, he had no scruples about handling cash from his customers, and then handling the raw condiments and cooked food.

There was also that questionable empty pack of flour that he had folded up, and used to move the chapattis around on the flat frying pan. It moved back and forth from the chapatti to the little work station where customers dropped their money, and flies and all sorts of dust perched.
You might think this is pure imagination but last month as I read in one of the dailies, I saw a photograph of a rolex guy standing with his back to a stream of dark-coloured running water, barely two feet away! As I contemplated what to do with the omelet, I remembered all the chapattis, rolexes and omelets I have bought from the other rolex guy. Were they any “cleaner”?

iT’s so ug
The rolex is considered a ‘so Ugandan’ thing. It is enjoyed by students and members of the working class in almost equal measure judging by what I see outside my window. Perhaps, it’s time someone started a rolex franchise. At least that way we might be assured of better hygiene in the whole process of producing the delicious rolex.