Of all the Bars

Friday, 3rd August, Fort Portal Time: 7:47pm

The evening finds me sitting in a dark dingy bar in fort portal. The smell of alcohol wafts through the air and some very loud, very drunk fellows are having a very loud, very protracted conversation about the state of Ugandan politics. Cardinal Julius’ election defeat, subsequent trip to Kampala with “somebody’s wife” and the mystifying “cow of Kasese” have just been mentioned. I am “brother Mzungu”, it seems, and I was just asked to confirm that Kampala U was the best university in sub-saharan Africa, discounting South Africa. I was very willing to agree that it had recently been ranked the second best, after Nairobe and was one of the best. The man yelled “You mean I am right” and I just didn’t have the heart (or the balls) to answer in the negative.

Woh, woh, okay, talking about balls, the man just struck up a conversation with me. He was very keen to hear that I liked Uganda, and I told him that it was a lovely country. He was very pleased and asked me how old he was. “22”, came the reply.
“Do you have children?”
“Why, no!”
“Sir, brother Mzungu! You must promise me! You must promise me!”
“Promise you what?”
“When you are 23, you must have children”.

I was rather abashed at this, and said that I would give the matter some consideration, but that, even if my inclinations veered in that direction, my girlfriend might protest.

“Yes. Yes.”, he sighed “brother, you know castration?”
I raised my eyebrows.
“I’ve heard of it… yes.”
“My wife… my wife…” he wailed with a tone of lugubrious inebriation.
“My wife and I had a third child by accident”.
“Oh dear…” I said, wondering if I had guessed correctly what was coming next. With a few wild gesticulations he indicated that he was talking about his testicles.
“She made me have this castration, the balls, the balls which make the semen. They are gone!”.
“Oh no!”, I awkwardly sympathised!

He then started quizzing my about what I was doing on my computer. Multi-tasking, as usual and, not feeling quite brave enough to tell him that I was transcribing our conversation word for word to amuse the people back home, I told him that I was actually e-mailing the girlfriend in question. He insisted that I tell her that it was very important that I had children soon and, hoping that poor old Lana would also see the funny side, I obliged, with a brief explanation. Satisfied, he interrogated me until he got my e-mail address left me alone.

I was intending to talk about a completely different part of the day, but having been talked to at several intervals, I’ve quite lost my train of thought, and might tell you more tomorrow. Edson has arranged some species of meal – I think it’s fried chicken – and I have really no option but to go and eat it.