the house that we built – chapter one

It’s been about five months since I’ve been here effectively and I am happy to report that I have not killed a single artisan or manual labourer.

Yet.

Actually, it’s been more like two years that this has been going on, and in that time the only casualty that I can report has been my confidence in the Ugandan labourer. This goes for many of the fellows in between my misguided former askari-turned-handyman (mentioned in an earlier blog involving an early morn boda-boda accident) and a fellow called Ronald Kasozi who is currently holding up my usage of the spanking new dining room table.

Speaking of Kasozi, I strongly recommend the use of the furniture that this guy makes. It is fantastic! This is the humble fellow who made the tables and chairs at Endiro Coffee, so ask no questions about his proficiency.

I am sure that, like me, you also have a strong dislike for those dining room chairs that are lined up in places like Nsambya, all sticky and disgusting to the touch like they’ve been varnished with a mixture of superglue, honey and some loose strands of hair from a waitress in Kalerwe (I don’t eat there, but just imagine…!). We spent weeks upon weeks going round looking for dining room chairs to go with the beautiful table we’d bought from our Wood Guy, Alan Jamani (you will certainly hear more about him later).

It was only after I’d been to Endiro for my fiftieth time that it struck me that I should get the same damn chairs they had.

I considered it too rude to suggest to them that they sell me six of the chairs, so I asked if they’d mind sharing the carpenter’s contact with me.

“No problem,” Gloria said, scrawling the number down on a post-it.

Long story short, Ronald Kasozi readily made himself available and we made our way to the house so he could assess the task.

I’ve worked out over the years that the best way to get these artisans to meet your expectations is by showing them the standards you stick to and challenging them to measure up.

That’s the best way – but it doesn’t always work, as the story of plumber Simon Matheka will illustrate later on.

So after a tour designed to set my expectations, I pressed Ushs200,000 into Ronald Kasozi’s hands and sent him on his way, while he deposited, in return, fervent promises of delivery within seven or eight days.

Foolishly optimistic, I told the family we would be sitting down together to dinner within three weeks – building in inefficiency buffers within reasonable measure.

I can’t explain why I did that.

The last fifteen years or so of my life have been spent in learning how to manage expectations, and if I had been thinking right that evening I would have declared that we would be sitting down together to dinner within seventy to eighty days.

Ten days later, Ronald Kasozi wasn’t ready, and he politely informed me so when I called him in mild irritation since I had guests coming over for the afternoon and would have been pleased to sit down at table with them.

“Give me until Tuesday,” he said.

Naturally, that day being a Saturday, I thought he meant the Tuesday coming, and called him on the Wednesday morning only to discover that he actually had meant Saturday.

When I called him on the Sunday morning, he said again, “Early this week, sir.”

We have danced this bakisimba for two and a half months and tomorrow, the

Dancing like crazy - here, there, everywhere...

last day he promises that for sure he will have the chairs ready, I will be driving over to his workshop in Bweyogerere, somewhere opposite the Total petrol station.

I will be heading there to conduct some preventive murder measures.

My calculation is that rather than sit back and wait for him to fail to deliver on Friday evening, then thrust myself into a murderous rage, I will camp out at his workshop and supervise his completion of the six chairs so that I don’t have to kill him.

Oh, by the way, last week I bought six dining room chairs from Game.

Made in China.

planking

Been There, Done That

use a clean cloth, dammit

I have spent the last hour giving my maid instructions in the most basic of her duties – cleaning.

Yes, I agonise a lot about my househelp, but that’s because in Uganda we insist on getting people out of their muddy hovels in remote villages and bringing them to the city to help keep our tastefully appointed houses clean and orderly.

We get primary two drop-outs with no considerable history of interaction with electricity and charge them with operating flat irons, microwave ovens, electric cookers and, in extremely misguided cases, vacuum cleaners.

This is our reality.

Which is why my current maid – the first one I have found close to acceptable in decades of actively loathing domestic help – has had me frustrated for the last one hour of my life.

She is close to acceptable because unlike the numskulls I have hitherto employed in this most delicate of positions, she stands still and listens to instructions carefully. More often than not, she will say, “Uncle, I don’t understand.”

I am in no way related to her but these people have a tendency of calling you ‘Uncle’ or ‘Aunt’, which I prefer to the first-name basis some people go for with their domestics.

But today I wasn’t taking a ‘me no understand’ from anyone. I emerged from my chambers to inspect the breakfast offering and caught her wiping the fridge door with a dirty rag – to be precise, a tea towel that has probably been in residence for a year or so.

Tea towels cost an average Ushs1,500 each (as low as Ushs500 if you are a sensible shopper but as high as Ushs6,000 if you insist on doing your shopping in high-end ‘malls’), and we have a policy of buying a couple every other week just so the crockery stays clean.

That policy is supposed to be complemented by a disposal system that should rid us of filthy rags such as was wiping the fridge door this morning, but the maids can never seem to get the point of throwing old things away.

Till today.

Taking the lesson from the very top, I explained (again) the origin of man and disease, the risks associated with the ingestion of germs, the folly of poor hygiene, and the damage to one’s face that could be caused by the rapid acceleration of my hand with the full weight of my arm pivoting outwards as would have resulted if she did not immediately dispose of all tea towels older than three months old.

Thus, she grasped the point.

the new cabinet

The excitement going round at the installation of a new cabinet is palpable (another one of those words we always like to use regardless of what they mean).

The last cabinet we had was fantastic when we first put it in, but the newspapers started messing it up within a very short time.

I have always detested newspapers for this purpose but everyone seems to think that’s what they are for, so whenever we have a new cabinet put in place newspapers go into action before anything else.

There are a number of reasons I begin to hate newspapers whenever I get a new cabinet:

1. The edge of the newspaper curls up in that funny way and gets in the way of the door closing.

I told you!

2. The newspapers turn dirty brown after some time and you just know that the cups and plates are full of germs.

3. The moment you place a cup or plate inside the cabinet without drying it thoroughly, the newspaper is gone.

4. And don’t get me started on the time you pour yourself a much needed hot cup of tea, take a sip and …ugh! Newspaper bits!

the return of the jedi

The literary Jedi, that is.

This morning I watched the most magnificent traffic jam building up in Kampala, from the Mulago roundabout all the way to the Uganda Wildlife Authority offices in Kitante.

It was so neat I suspected that Events Warehouse or Silk Events were putting it together. By the time I got to the junction at John Babiiha Avenue I was fighting the temptation to park somewhere and watch the progress.

If I were Chinese I’d probably have set up a betting table and posted odds on how far the jam would go. Then, I’d have gotten cronies to place bets on Bukoto, around Kabira Country Club.

Traffic Jam - Events Warehouse would do a better job

A little bit more entrepreneurship would have had me funding popcorn stands along the way for people to enjoy the show with snacks in hand.

Maybe tomorrow, perhaps?

Statement by the Ministry of Internal Affairs

29/4/2011

PRESS RELEASE

RIOTS WITHIN KAMPALA CITY 

On 27^th April 2011, Dr. Dr. Besigye was granted bail from Nakasongola court and one of his bail conditions clearly stated that he should not involve himself in unlawful assembly and processions as it would attract crowds within Kampala city disrupting the peace, security, and possible loss of life and  property.

Yesterday 28^th April 2011 at 6:30am, Dr. Besigye defiantly started walking from his home, Ssenide road, Kasangati accompanied by about seven foreign journalists and three local journalists.

Three senior police officers advised Dr. Besigye to follow the court directive by Her Worship the Chief Magistrate Justine Atukwasa, to avoid unlawful assembly and processions for at least seven months. He responded by challenging the police to buy him fuel for his car.

Dr. Besigye moved while the police tried keeping order on the road especially at strategic areas towards Kalerwe bearing in mind the violent and criminal nature of some of the people around the market area. He got through the roof top of his vehicle and beckoned the crowd to join him. The crowd kept building up.

Dr. Besigye reached Kalerwe-Kubbiri around 8:00am and insisted on driving towards Wandegeya Centenary Bank. The police blocked him at this point for two major reasons:

1. The route to Wandegeya has many people of different characters some of whom with potential to turn violent with intention to loot.
2. Police had heard intelligence reports that Dr. Besigye wanted to divert through Makerere University to attract university students to improve his crowd to greater chances of causing chaos.

On consultations, Dr. Besigye was advised to go through Mulago around about and get to any centenary bank branch. If all his intentions were genuine, he could not defiantly refuse police’s humble advice. He defiantly remained standing through the roof top of his car chatting with foreign journalists for about one hour.

Thereafter, he took the left turn toward Mulago around about. As he drove he kept beckoning the crowds to follow him. The mob started throwing stones at police who responded by chasing them away using batons and shield, without using tear gas at all.

Dr. Dr. Besigye drove to Mulago round about and parked his car in the middle of the road after police blocked him from driving towards Wandegeya and was being directed to drive through Yusuf Lule road up to his office in Najjanankumbi.  He defiantly stayed in the middle of the road for another three hours from 9.30am to midday disrupting traffic flow, despite repeated advise from senior police officers.

All this time, police acted with extreme restraint, keeping at bay the crowds from Katanga and Wandegeya who were being called in by Dr. Besigye. The crowd began showering stones at the police, one stone hit the right eye of a police constable. At this time, the crowd surged and wanted to grab the policeman’s gun from him. Other police officer saved his gun and the injured constable was rushed to hospital.

At this time, a senior police officer approached the left window of Dr. Besigye’s car urging him to drive off. The officer was sprayed with a can of pepper spray by one of the associates of Dr. Besigye who was seated with him in the car. While this was going on, Dr. Besigye was giving press interviews that included foreign journalists.

By this time it had been evidently clear that:

• Dr. Besigye was disrupting traffic intentionally
• He had defied police advise for 3 hours
• He and his group in the car had clear intentions to do harm to the police. This was exemplified by the equipment of the pepper spray used by one of his aides to spray the eyes of the police officer while he, himself was handling a hammer threatening police with words, “I will hammer you…”
• The crowd following him had become more militant and violent to other road users by throwing stones.
• Dr. Besigye was blatantly disobeying one of the conditions given to him while being granted bail at Nakasongola court the previous day.

Basing on the circumstances of the time and keeping in mind the degeneration of the situation it became irreversibly justified to use appropriate force and pepper spray to effect arrest of the defiant Dr. Besigye and his accomplices who were driven back to Kasangati police station en-route to the court of law.

While at Kasangati police station, Dr. Besigye was offered the services of the police surgeon which he refused, preferring to his sister Dr.Kobusingye who came and gave him first aid. His lawyers and Hournable Alaso had access to him.

Late afternoon, Dr. Besigye, his driver Kato Fred, Kavuma Robert, Mugumya Sam, Kalanzi Geofrey, Mwijukye Francis and Byomuhangi Martin were charged with taking part in an unlawful assembly C/S 65, sub section 66 of the Penal Code Act and assaulting a police officer C/S 238 (d) of the Penal Code Act.

Dr. Besigye was bailed out while his accomplices were remanded to Luzira prison.

Today 29/4/2011 beginning around 9:30am, some rowdy groups crowded and began forming up at different places trying to block access roads to the City Centre.

The police, therefore, within its constitutional mandate restored law and order and removed the blocks from the roads, opened the roads, disengaged the crowds to ensure that those with criminal intentions, DO NOT reach the City Centre to disturb the normal business life of the city.

The police, other security agencies call upon the public to work hand in hand with it to ensure that law and order are maintained. Government assures the country that the situation is under control and every citizen should go about his/her way and anyone who disturbs the peace should be reported to the authorities for prompt action.

A.M. Kirunda Kivejinja

Third Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Internal Affairs 

paying attention to detail in Kampala

Following Instructions on Makerere Hill

the fastest sandwich ever

At the Crocodile in Kisementi.

four minutes flat!

Kudos!

hajji nasser ntege ssimwaggala

I pray that the Good Lord and all the powers that be out there where the universe is financed reach an agreement regarding the punishment that is the Mayor of Kampala.
This gentleman, father of at least one pal of mine, is the human equivalent of that rat that you spot one night scuttling for cover behind the cooker.
From the moment you see the damn rodent your life becomes physically and emotionally uncomfortable.
You begin to suspect that all the cutlery needs constant washing because the dirty rat might have been rummaging through the drawers at some point in the night. Food starts going bad because you can’t bear to touch it, what with all those images of the filthy thing with its paws on the potatoes and its teeth gnawing at the bananas. At night, every sound you hear seems to be the rat smashing things to bits in the dark.
Seriously, I can’t eat in some restaurants any more because I have no idea where the water they use to wash the plates comes from. I won’t go down certain roads for fear of getting lost in a pot hole. And no, I will certainly not go into the heart of the city unless I have four hours to spare for the parking, negotiating safety bribes to multiplex and other chaps so car parts stay intact, and motion progress at the rate of three metres per twenty minutes.
Use a boda-boda?
Yeah – that’s about the only way to get around in the city.
It’s actually a well-designed plan worthy of a mafioso master planner: kill all the roads to such an extent that using cars to get around is unviable, then introduce boda-boda.
This guy is a businessman, baasi!
He has actually created road sections that are so pot-holed that they are basically boda-boda tracks.
It’s not an accident, this deterioration of Kampala.
Just the same way that rat in your house creates holes in corners of cabinets that you could never find without re-modeling the entire kitchen. The blasted animal knows how to carefully bite a hole through the bottom of the sack but not in the corner where your audits might find it, but in the middle of the seam.
Then, it eats all the way up to the middle of the sack in such a way that you’re sharing the food in almost equal measure (yet YOU paid for it!)
Sometimes the rat becomes so entrenched that you draw a line in the sand and agree with yourself that so long as it doesn’t cross that line, it can eat some of your food and you’ll both live peacefully.
Simple rules: 1. Don’t make noise when I’m in the kitchen. 2. Don’t come to the sitting room when I have visitors. 3. NEVER walk around with wet feet, especially on the kitchen counter top. 4. NO DROPPINGS IN THE PANTRY 5. NO CHEWING CABLES ANYWHERE.
His Loathe-ship the Mayor, Ssimwaggala, has broken all the rules. He simply can’t shut up when it’s necessary, which to be fair is all the time; he not only shows up in public, but even has personalized car license plates; and his garbage trucks leave droppings everywhere.
Speaking of garbage trucks, I reckon the mayor’s official car is the cleanest and most expensive garbage transportation vehicle in Kampala. I wish it were being used for disposal rather than transportation…
My experience with rats has been rather extensive, since I lived in both the Buganda Road and the Bugolobi Flats at different points.
These annoying animals have a tendency to overflow their territories, which is why you make accommodation for one rat and three weeks later find that you have twenty running amok. Go to Nakasero Market and see what has become of that road connecting Luwum and Market Streets. Or swing by Kalerwe market and get dismayed.

Well, this election season I will be singing off one of my favorite bands: “There’s a rat in my kitchen, what I’m not gonna do…!”

And I hope everyone else takes up the anthem as well, because you know what happens after rats have taken over any part of your house: next come cockroaches, then lizards, snakes, God know what else! That’s why the Mayor being thick-skulled, greedy and inept will almost certainly lead to urban planners and city engineers who seem to have no clue how to compose a mathematical equation or a statement of logic…thus the roads.

I can see them in a council meeting right now:

Agenda Item Numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 - Let's Eat!

It’s Na-gundi…accept friend request?

You need to know me to understand why this can be an issue in my life.

I am rarely to be found on my Facebook page, even though I have more than 1,400 friends overall. I pop into Facebook for not more than ten minutes at a time, about three or four times a week. Not because I don’t like it – that would be hypocritical and would reek of a certain type of arrogance one can only exhibit when one is being chauffer-driven in one’s Rolls Royce en route from the daily breakfast at the Serena to a magnificently furnished personal office in Kololo to oversee a few million dollars’ worth of business arrangements that one owns personally. But of course, if one had that million dollars’ worth of business then perhaps one would hire the Serena chef to make the same breakfast in one’s palatial kitchen…

…I digress easily into such nonsensical thoughts because someone yesterday emailed me photos of the new Rolls Royce Ghost.

Appropriately named because the only way it can be in my garage is if it is a ghost. Dammit.

Ghost

Anyway, so my apparent nonchalance towards Facebook is not to be misconstrued as arrogance. I just feel uneasy appearing to have so much time on my hands that I can be there banging kaboozi with the general public.

But here I was, on the last legs of my two-day prescription bed-rest, and something made me log on to Facebook for a bit. I do this in my study, which is situated just off the beginning of the corridor leading to the master chamber (sounds like a mansion, eh? Glance at the ghost above and then return to reality.)

I was saying, situated where it is along the corridor, the study room allows for the desk to be positioned only one way unless one removes the door altogether. The position forces one to place one’s computer screen at an angle that allows anyone entering into the corridor to glance at what one is doing.

And so it happened this evening that, just after I had logged onto Facebook, one of the maids (okay, let’s not do this. We really call them housegirls, so I will stay normal and stick to the usual for the rest of this) walked into the corridor.

Now, I like housegirls a lot less than I do Facebook. There are some similarities between the two: 1. You can’t do without Facebook the same way you can’t do without housegirls. Think how hard it is to mop the floor of your house all by yourself. Or how complicated it is to announce to the world that you’ve got a newborn baby and ensure everybody gets to know without clamouring for a party? 2. Facebook fills in certain gaps in one’s day the same way the housegirl does if your wife is a certain way (mine isn’t, so I never enjoy personal free time while she is off holding those gossipy chats with the housegirl in the kitchen). 3. Anything you put on Facebook or tell your housegirl will be known by the world in superspeed time.

There are more similarities if one thinks about it just a little bit.

So anyway, one of the housegirls walked into the corridor. And you know how housegirls walk: shufffffle…slap, shuuuffffle…slap. Even if you’ve got a carpet on the floor end to end, they will achieve the shuffle of their slippers and conclude each shuffle step with a slap of hard rubber. The only good that comes from this is if she is a smelly creature such as one of the recently departed a couple of months ago, you can tell when to start holding in your breath.

So back to this evening, I only heard the shuffling when she was upon me. Not standing right behind me in the study, because that would have been a death request that I would have immediately granted.

But for about four seconds, as she walked past the study room door, I KNOW that she looked into the room. And for damn sure, she saw my laptop screen.

Now, normally I would be unbothered about such a thing. So what if the housegirl sees anything on my computer for four seconds, right? It’s not like she is about to hack into the damn thing while I am at work…or even if I left it at home with the charger plugged in, I am dead certain she will be more interested in cracking open the DSTV for some ki-Nigeria.

But here is another problem I have with Facebook: EVERYBODY IS ON IT!

My nieces and nephews, my father was on it for a short while, my aunts and uncles are forever sending me requests, my workmates and employees…everyone!

It’s ridiculous! And I can’t understand why, for example, one of my employees feels comfortable enough to be my pal on Facebook, then take a day off pleading serious illness on the morning after she kept all and sundry updated about the number of tequilas that “went down all over town” till three in the morning. Okay, I guess twelve tequilas will make you sick, so she wasn’t necessarily lying about failing to come to work but…

Then there was the one who helped introduce a No Facebook During Working Hours policy because she religiously kept the world updated about her status yet never seemed to make it for client meetings because she was “busy”. The most worrying part of this episode was her supervisor saying, “She is ALWAYS on Facebook! She updates us almost every thirty minutes…”

“So you check Facebook every thirty minutes…?”

By the way, where are the people who post things like http://failbook.failblog.org/ and  http://www.lamebook.com/?

I digress, yet again. I believe this is a habit one picks up after driving around Kampala city for a while and getting accustomed to meandering round pot-holes (aren’t they supposed to be called port-holes? Eh? I check Wikipedia? That’s lugezi-gezi).

BACK TO THE POINT: My housegirl might be on Facebook!

Have you ever considered this? My last two housegirls were certainly not candidates for Facebook, but these ones I have right now…one of them did her interview over the phone because she was in Mbale, and asked for her transport money to be sent to her via MTN Mobile Money. The second one exhibits mannerisms that one normally sees in campus girls, and speaks only English. She is also a bit disdainful, as if this stint of being a housegirl is only a stepping stone to her true vocation of being, perhaps, the next Ugandan entrant into the Big Brother house.

They both SMS a lot using their personal mobile phones, and none of them is on Warid – which I found worrying. All other staff of their cadre maintain Warid lines with more seriousness than they do their school certificates. Their dedication to pakalast goes deeper than religion in some cases, probably because their Christmas comes every time a new 24-hour period begins.

It’s so bad that my cleaner at the office is campaigning for some position in his village in Soroti over the mobile phone. He calls somebody up in the morning and then sustains conversations for the rest of the day without hanging up the phone even once. The fellow on the other end of the phone, presumably his campaign manager, simply walks from door to door, provides salutations, then hands over the phone for my chap this end to do politics.

On this end of the line, I have observed, my chap will talk ceaselessly until you need him to do something, at which time he says (in Atesot), “Hold on.”, places the phone under his armpit or on a neat surface somewhere, then finishes the allocated task before returning to his conversation with (in Atesot), “Allo, I was saying…”

My housegirls are not like this. They are both on MTN – and they came with their damn phones and phone lines, so they aren’t begging. And now, with all this MTN 3G+ hullabaloo, I’m wondering if these women are not on Facebook already.

Which means that there is a chance…a miniscule chance, but a chance nevertheless, that in those four or so seconds during which the wretched housegirl glimpsed evidence that I am on Facebook, the idea could have occurred to her to…

…God forbid: Invite me to be her Facebook friend.

DAMN THIS.

Her Profile Pic