my youth

In Chekhov’s Russia there was a tradition just before the winter of middle class families that could afford it leaving the cities for the countryside seeking warmer climate and relaxation. In fact another great Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky based one of my favourite short stories, White Nights, in St. Petersburg about this lonely time in the city based on the events of his youth probably.

I say ‘probably on his youth’ because I’m not sure, I’m just guessing. But I have good reason to guess. George Bernard Shaw said that the greatest education he ever had when he had just come to London as a poor young man from Ireland was walking for long hours in the alleys and museums of London just as Charles Dickens a hundred years before him had done too. Bernard Shaw said that walking was the great pastime of the poor. The only pleasure available to the poor the government had not figured a way of taking away from them by making them pay for it.

I have enjoyed that pastime a lot too. It’s quite possible that I have walked around the entire Kampala more times than I have lived on this earth. No, I’m not going to tell you my age. Someone like Caesar is always walking half Kampala from his office (why do they call it that?) after mutilating my articles before you read them.

The Take 2 writer was even once offered a chance to go on the Ugandan Olympic team but he turned down the chance when he was informed that the fast walking competition he would be representing Uganda in would not include any perks apart from the “honour” of serving his country. Dogs have suffered muscle strain trying to keep up with him on nights when he is returning home. Yes, he is in debt to several church mice that want to see him urgently.

So you can see why I’m quite sure that Dostoevsky’s White Nights was based on his own youthful experiences. In the true Hemingway tradition White Nights is good that if you have been young and poor and walking was all you could do, it is as if Dostoevsky was writing about you the afternoon you walked from Namuwongo to Nakulabye, walked that distance for six months and did not find anything strange about it.

Reading White Nights you’d be forgiven for thinking Dostoevsky knew why a simple, cramped taxi ride in late in the evening was such an event. You’d be quite sure that the man who wrote White Nights would understand that to this day you still buy those green ‘Sweet Pepsi’ early every morning to remember those days when those six Sweet Pepsi costing only a hundred shillings were your only lunch. Each of those six Sweet Pepsis’ melting on your tongue is you mentally trapped walking under that blazing sun in the afternoon over and over.

Six Sweet Pepsis and Dostoevsky’s White Nights are some of my favourite things. My youth was Six Sweet Pepsis and Dostoevsky’s White Nights. I’m not young anymore.

house wives tales

WHAT I HEARD IN A TAXI.

I was in the worst taxi ride of my life from Bukoto through Wandegeya until at City Square I couldn't stand it anymore and I snapped by getting out. I was getting pointers I did not appreciate, a view of domestic intimacies I have not been privy to since I last lived in a house with more than one person, with a family in fact. Since I'm a mean bastard, I want you to suffer as I did!

"I got this girl who didn't know how to cook at all. The poor girl, I have to admit, she wanted to learn. She was enthusiastic. But she was too young. I remember I went to office one day in the morning and left her in charge. My husband was at home that day. I left the girl washing clothes and told her they expected her to cook lunch. I believe the girl was washing clothes from about 10 O’clock to about 1 O’clock. That’s when she thought of starting to cook food.

My husband got tired of waiting for lunch. He was so hungry that with our son, he went to a shop, he told me, and bought some biscuits and safi. That is what they ate for lunch! After that they both went to sleep until 3 O’clock when the maid woke them up that the food was ready.

The girl couldn’t cook! Not even this very simple food we are talking about. She made for them food that day but right the next day, even if I didn’t want to do it, I had to send the girl away. My husband and son had diarrhoea for a whole week after eating that food. I tell you, she nearly killed them. But she also did something good for me. She made him appreciate me more.

But then there was this one I had. This was a girl could not clean! She was 19 years old, supposed to be getting married. How will she manage her home if she is so dirty? I couldn't understand the girl. She would not even wash her bedsheets. Bedsheets?! A 19 year old girl! How dirty can you be? I had a woman who was washing my clothes for me before this girl came to work for me, I just kept bringing my clothes to this woman because the way this woman was washing, we would all have to buy new clothes very soon.

But the one who really annoyed me was the one my boss brought to my home. You know my boss is a woman, her husband is in Algeria and she is here and they run an organization that helps the girl children. Girl child. Girls who are disadvantaged that they cannot continue with their education. They help them. This girl was a senior four leaver, okay she was going into senior four but she was discouraged.

My boss brought her to me to work for three months. They had told her clearly that those three months were for trial, to see her and how she is as a person before they recommended her onto the programme. They wanted to see if she was a hard working person. I tell you I have never met anyone who is less grateful than that girl! That girl was a menace in my house!

My boss told me later that she had brought the girl to me because she thought that she herself could not get along with the girl because of a cultural difference. My boss is not Ugandan, you know. She wanted to see how a Ugandan family would react to her before she decided whether she should go ahead and make arrangements to help her continue with her education. That girl gave us hell!

She was worse in one person than all the house girls we had ever had! Even the very bad house girls of before, at least each of them had something nice about them. But this one, she was bad bad bad all through! She had just separated from her husband and came with her son who was sick and like two years old. I was smpthasising with her until she actually came to live in my house and then I saw why men leave their homes for other women. It is because of women like her!

This woman could not look after her own son let alone ours. I used to buy milk and porridge, milk for both her child and mine but she could not make it even for her own son alone! The woman would come to me and say I don’t feel like working today. I don’t FEEL LIKE WORKING! Meaning I do the work myself! Then she would turn around in like two days and come back and say that she was sorry, she did not mean to say that she did not want to work she was sorry. Then another day, she is demanding for her salary yet she has not yet even finished a week of work. She wants to be paid.

During her time, all the time during her time, I was cooking for my children and husband because eating her food, I was always scared, I was afraid wondering but what has she put in here? I was cooking, I was washing my clothes every morning before I went to work, I had to come back at lunch to make sure my children had eaten something, that woman was ruling our lives! Could she clean?

That woman spent most of her time drinking. I’m paying her fifteen thousand she is drinking more expensive drinks than I drink. She would start drinking in the morning, she would drink and drink but I never saw the woman drunk. And then she would go out to the shops and start playing omweso with the men there all day. I don’t know how her former boss managed her. Maybe she had something on her, I don’t know. And my husband didn’t want me to let her go!! Can you imagine that?

But I had to let her go! I had to for my own sake! I asked God sincerely what is happening to me? I have become a person who quarrels. That woman was making life impossible for me. The week she went, and I only told her at 10PM at night after she had finished supper to pack her clothes she was going the next morning, early in the morning, that week after she had gone I spent the whole week day and night at home cleaning and clearing and just enjoying being in my own house. I was so relieved it was like when I convinced my husband that we rent another house for his mother and he accepted. I was free! Free!"