When I was directed to talk to village goats

These journeys are characteristically hectic because the boss plans them ensuring that I fit in an effective management of his department’s budget, both in terms of expenditure and time, therefore improve his productivity and integrity.

Like other excursions, this journey brought joyous surprises and shock, enabled me to make new friends, offered the opportunity to see the countryside and exposed me to new experiences. I rubbed shoulders with the soft and rough and I think I became wiser.

The sweet shock was an encounter with an Itesot who I would have sworn was a 3-1-1 Muhima because her luxurious regal demeanour sharply contrasted with the simplicity and cheek of the athletic and nimble local Katakwi women.

As a part time opportunistic anthropologist, I quickly arranged break tea for the office help where I was a guest, in exchange for intelligence on what I thought was a phenomenon. My source told me that the subject’s ancestral origins were less than 300 metres from the town; her biological father, an unadulterated Itesot, was a retired civil servant whose tour of duty had kept him in Kampala all his working life.

The subject had apparently attended school in the city, which explained her fluency in Luganda, the language she spoke with a friend, apparently by way of gauging my origins. But she was happily married! She would however travel to my field destination, but much later in the afternoon, yet I was leaving in 20 minutes. All I managed was to wave at her as my Ford 4X4 lumbered off.

Mission complete, I could not for some reason find a city bound coach. I jumped on a taxi to Mbale, then transferred to a Kampala bound one. As fate would have it, a thickset man sporting a three-inch shabby moustache joined us on the taxi in Jinja; we picked two other passengers at two different spots and sped off.

However, rather new taxis of our type were rushing in the opposite direction, upon which the mustachioed one kicked up a conversation with no one in particular about the astuteness of the investors who had bought the vehicles.

Two others soon joined in the now boisterous conversation, pretending to be so well connected with Class A citizens that they knew who had invested in what kind of business. The mustachioed one strongly argued that 30 taxi plying the Kampala-Jinja route were part of the president’s son investments and went on to calculate the implicit earnings per day.

Now irritated, I took on the braggart as we sped through Mabira Forest, arguing that if he was that close to the young man, hence privy to such information; he would have been better off keeping it to himself. The mustachioed thundered that I could not question his integrity, but I insisted that it did not make sense to boisterously discuss this subject, more so on a PSV, for the consumption of uninterested travellers. Not done, he wanted to know who I was and I shot back that going by his claims, he should identify himself lest I treat him like an imposter.

All this while, a young passenger next to me was pleading, “Mzeei!!! Let the men be… (bitunula bubi) they look like thugs; they could harm you!” I retorted that I too was not good-looking anyway. At this point, the fellow rebounded, saying he was only chatting up colleagues and suggested, “Since you look like you are coming from a village, you should know where you belong…that is, if you are so keen on talking, go back and talk to your goats and wives if you have any.”

The effrontery and identifying me with village goats and women hit me like a sack of millet. I put him on notice that I would definitely establish his identity and intentions in making the claims as soon as I stepped off the taxi.

This threat not only brought immediate calm to the Kigege, but to my immense relief and astonishment, upon approaching Lugazi town, the fellow asked the driver to stop, jumped onto a Bajaj and sped in the direction we had come from.

Relief is not descriptive enough! I did not have the slightest clue as to how to enforce my wish and threat although I strongly felt I should; least of all, I did not know how to conduct myself had the fellow with the brusque temperament stayed on to Kampala. His company kept quiet for the rest of the journey, probably wondering who of the two the serious one was.

I suspect they thought I was close to the subject of their references…kumbe wapi! My closest dealing with the young man is when I hold a copy of this newspaper with his picture on one the pages.