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By WAHOME MUTAHI, April 3, 1994
I am still in the land of bananas, that very, place where there is a man who answers to the name husband of husbands and elder of elders.
If you were not with me last Sunday, then know that I am in a town that was once called Kasozi Ka Impala or the Hill of the Antelopes.
The town later thought that being called Kasozi ka Impala was as old fashioned as a young warrior wearing a box hair style calling himself Alphaxad or Albequeque, so it manyanganised its name and became Kampala.
Very soon, it might actually change its name to Kasozi Ka Kaloli. It might later manyanganise its name to Kaloli. Kaloli happens to be a tribe of birds that likes city life.
So many clans of Kaloli have visited the former hill of antelopes and decided to stay because they are assured of getting three square meals a day from the garbage dumps.
I did not come to have a look at the Kaloli. They are nothing to look at since at best they remind me of someone I know when he is naked. That person happens to be Whispers Son of the Soil, meaning they cannot win a beauty contest.
Elder of elders
I came here to do other things, one of which was to get some wisdom from the husband of husbands, alias the elder of elders, alias the Kabaka, on how to be an elder and a proper husband. I have not moved an inch towards being an elder or a proper husband. However, I have done other things.
One of them is to discover whether the local Jeremiah has enough talents in brewing liquids capable of making a man sing about his banana plantation when he does not own a single banana stem.
I have discovered that the local Jeremiah inherited proper kanywaji skills from his ancestors and his Ruaraka are the banks of Jinja river. There, he brews Jinja waters that go by names that tell you what they are trying to do to you.
From the banks of the Nile, the hands of the local Jeremiah produces a froth that the people of Kasozi ka Kaloli call Kabaka wa Beer. This Kabaka of beers goes by its original name Nile Special.
Since the people of the land of bananas have a habit of speaking as if they are trying to swallow bananas at the same time, they call it “Nailo”.
The thing about this Kabaka wa Beer, this Nailo, is that after the first two, and particularly if you did not line up your stomach with enough bananas at lunch, you start imagining that you are indeed, the Kabaka and the husband of husbands.
Finally, after five Nailo, the temptation is to throw yourself into the Nile in an attempt to show the world that you can do battle with crocodiles.
The local Jeremiah does not stop at brewing Kabaka wa Beer. His able hands also brew something called Bell. Once again the people of the land of bananas speak as if they are trying to swallow bananas when ordering for it, so they end up asking for “Beelo”.
Beelo has a habit of living to its name particularly if your stomach has not been visited by such solids as matoke. The result is that the following morning after encountering Beelo, you feel as if a thousand lunatics are ringing a thousand lunatic bells in your head.
You feel as if the St Peter Basilica bell has been transferred from Rome into your head and being rung by a priest who has just won a wrestling cup at the Olympics.
Even after leading you to the Nile and visiting you with bells, the local Jeremiah is not satisfied. His hands also brew something called Club. The people of the land of bananas (with bananas in their mouths) are enemies with anything that answers to letter “C” and “K” so they have never heard of Club.
Instead, they have heard of “Chilab”. Having failed to meet the husband of husbands but having met what the local Jeremiah brews down the Nile, I have of course met the local Rhodas.
Unlike the Rhodas that I know where I go for my kanywaji at the right temperature, the ones here in the Kasozi ka Impala do not go to judo and karate schools to qualify to serve you with your liquids.
In other words they don’t first threaten to throw you out if you fail to pay the bill and then later actually do so. Instead, they kneel before you and after reminding you that you have the capacity of being a major man in your clan and that in any case you look like the real Kabaka in your house, ask you to pay.
After you pay, they kneel again and thank you for understanding that they too have stomachs. They remind you that no one has ever developed scabies from being the owner of the Kaguta shilling.
The last time that a skirt wearer knelt before me was when my Thatcher fell on the floor as she tripped when trying to dance at her age and so I am liking the idea of Rhodas kneeling before me here in the land of bananas.
The only thing I am not liking about them is that their idea of a swallow at the right temperature is rather cold.
They think that a kanywaji at the right temperature should taste like something that has been brought down from the top of Mount Kenya and that is not very good for my throat.
I don’t know how long I’ll be here in the land of bananas where if anything is not cooked in banana leaves then it cannot qualify to be food. I will have to run away either because of being driven bananas by the Kaguta shilling or Luwambo, meaning things cooked in banana leaves.
The Kaguta shilling likes playing deaf and you have to persuade it to behave like money. That is why before the local Rhoda can part with a Beelo or Nailo she first kneels down and then tells me that it is only “one sausand and six hundred shi1lings only”.
Then unless I persuade that one “sausand” to leave my pocket, my throat cannot encounter Beelo at ice temperature.
Right temperature
The Son of the Soil and “sausands” are not very friendly and he cannot continue forever being capable of telling the local Rhodas, “Mwana, mpereza Beelo erikifuuka”, which is another way of saying, “Rhoda, hand me a Beelo at the right temperature.” So he will either give in to thirst or return to the original Rhoda.
If he does not return because of thirst, he will return because of encountering things cooked in banana leaves or Luwambo. A man who was brought up on arrow roots has a throat that finds it difficult to understand things like matoke muwambo.
He cannot understand chicken luwambo. He certainly cannot understand goat luwambo. A man from the Slopes understands that a goat, and particularly its ribs, are supposed to taste charcoal fire and not to be wrapped like a baby in banana leaves. That is mistreating a goat and I am not going to sit around watching it happen.
You never know next time, they might decide to serve something called Bell Luwambo or Whispers Luwambo.
Considering that the Kaguta “sausands” are about to desert me, I have been looking around and thinking quite hard where to get a fresh supply.
Certainly, the first idea that has come to my head is to announce that I have an Investment, alias a Pajero, to marry off to the first man who can prove that he knows the language of “sausands.”
I had planned to head for a place called Mbarara where I had heard that fathers of young warriors wanting wives part with those long horned cows that look fit for the Slopes of Mount Kenya where I was born and brought up.
My only and big trouble is that there is another fellow here in Kasozi ka Kaloli who has been calling himself Baba Pajero. The fellow shall remain nameless but let it be known that he is also a third rate scribe like I am and therefore a wage earner.
He has been going round here telling everybody that he is the true Baba Pajero and that he has an Investment ready to go to an ambitious young man for quite some “sausands.”
He is saying that his Investment has features that say that she is a Nyankole and a Muganda, that is a hybrid of two sources of beauty.
A Nyankole skirt wearer normally borrows something from the cows in her country.
The horns are very long and so not to be beaten to it, they have long necks on which sit heads that are shaped like oranges. Their legs suggest that they are wearing two pairs of gumboots.
The skirt wearers from Buganda like wearing some long dress called busuti and when they do s0, they look as if they are carrying a whole bunch of bananas on their bottoms.
The whispers around here say that an Investment having a Mnyankole neck and a banana bunch load behind will get a young warrior before one that has Slopes of Mount Kenya blood, so I am being told that I have no chance of leaving this place with any dowry.
I therefore don’t think that I will leave here with any Ankole cows in the form of a dowry.
I have to do something though to get some “sausands” if I have to stay on in this country of everything Luwamho. Perhaps by next Sunday, I will have found something. Let us meet then in this third rate page and find out.