Bazanye in Kabale

Let me tell you the story of how I went to Kabale and almost burnt my underwear.

It all started one evening in Kampala Mukadde.

Now, you would assume that, in the 21st century, it would be simple for a Muganda gentleman to make the journey between Kampala and Kabale uneventfully. This is not the days of settlement and migration we were taught about in history, when, during the Bunyoro Kitara migrations, crossing from one part of Uganda to the other was extremely difficult due to factors such as lack of roads, lack of buses and, most distressingly, in the years 1540 to 1592, lack of any actual place called Kabale to get to.

My reason for going there was one of the most common reasons anyone ever has for going to Kabale: It’s freaking gorgeous out there. 

It’s the most beautiful part of a beautiful country, guys. If Uganda is the pearl of Africa, Kabale is her left boob.

At this point I am assuming that Pearl is the name of a very sexy and beautiful woman. Beyond that I know next to nothing of pearls. 

I understand that leading 18th Century coloniser Winston Churchill named Uganda the pearl of Africa because the place reminded him of something extremely beautiful, but we don’t have oceans and oysters around here. The only beautiful Pearls we know of in Uganda are Pearl Murungi, Pearl Karungi, Pearl Arach,  Pearl Kentaro, Pearl Kamuli, Pearl Kirabo.

To name but a few 

<Pix of hot babe caption: to name but a few>

Please do not try to tell to google what an aquatic pearl is. I already muted and blocked that search result because I don’t need coloniser propaganda.

If it were me colonising this nation, I would not have used obscure offshore jewellery. I would have called it The Geopolitical Destiny’s Child of Empirical Acquisitions because when Uganda’s colonisation was just getting started it showed promise, but was yet to fulfil said promise. Elsewhere there were other, more dominant colonies, like Kenya, the SWV of Africa and Ghana, the TLC of Africa, and, of course, Zambia, the Britney Spears of Africa. 

Uganda would be even more aptly the Destiny’s Child because over time it would undergo much inner turmoil and there would be a series of unprecedentedly rapid changes in key personnel positions.

But if Uganda was Destiny’s Child, Kabale would be the Kelly Rowland of Uganda.

Kampala, of course, would be the lead singer Beyonce. The Kampala/Beyonce metaphor is drawn from the fact that everyone makes a huge deal about Bey, everyone acts like she’s all that, and yes, she has all the money and all the attention, and yes, she was always, even from the very beginning the main point of the whole band and so on so forth, but being real here, being really real here? 

Kelly is the hottest. 

Kelly is the most beautiful of them all. 

So that is the reason I was going to Kabale. The excuse I was going to Kabale was to write this piece:

<<  https://www.newvision.co.ug/new_vision/news/1325939/boat-ride-school  >> I was still a journalist with the New Vision at the time and had bagged an assignment to write a piece about an island school in Lake Bunyonyi, though I bungled up the process and did not actually ride the schoolboat with the kids, which was the whole point. Maybe next time I won’t resign from the profession and become a wannabe filmmaker before I get the job properly done.

BREAK pullquote or dropcap>>>

I began my journey in Old Kampala, where there is a bus terminal that dispatches buses westawards on a daily and nightly basis. 

Due to absolute and utter, full and ultimate depletion of all desire to wake up at 6:00am mbu just so I can get there by 9:00am mbu because that is when the bus leaves nga why since when of where shyaa and mssswwwtcchh, I booked the night bus.

“Good afternoon, handsome yet rugged middle-aged bus ticket-seller,” I greeted the man in the cage. I was careful not to use the term “My nigga,” of course, because there is a time and a place and if you are woke, you know about cages and niggas. 

“Good evening famed journalist and newspaper columnist E. Bazanye,” he replied, for at the time I was indeed those things.

I asked him, “Would you be so kind, and if not so kind then at least so competent as to furnish me with a ticket to Kabale, the most beautiful part of Uganda, arguably Pearl’s left titty?”

“Well, I, myself, am from Rukungiri, and hold compelling evidence that Rukungiri is in fact more beautiful than Kabale,” he replied. “How much money do you have?”

I told him how much money my employer had given me as transport and per diem. He shook his head. “This is also enough for a ticket to Rukungiri, you know. You have options.”

Our conversation was interrupted briefly as one of his colleagues, walking past the ticket booth, stopped to inquire: “Is that the famed Bazanye of Sunday Vision? What is he doing here first of all and, secondly, wow, he is even more roguishly good-looking in person than he is in that cartoon. Awobi ma leng, itye nining?>>>”*

“He says he wants to go to the most beautiful part of Uganda,” explained Evidence, which I was to later find out was his name.

“He wants a ticket to Acholiland?” she asked. 

When I explained that I could only take in Kigezi out of all the nation’s beauty, due to this being a work assignment, they gave me a ticket for a nine pm departure ride and sent me back on my way to my home in Najjera. I did the whole journey to Najjie without my glasses on because all the talk of beautiful parts of Uganda had dampened my spirit and I did not want to see Kampala roads.

Compatriots banange, (and also, any Kenyans reading this: Niaje jo. Any Rwandans in the house? Muraho neza! We love and miss you guys so much!) okay, Africans banange, I am not going to sit here and pretend that just because of all this talk about the various beauties of Ankole, Kigezi and Acholi that Kampala is not hideous. I was going to trudge through the tangled chaos of Namirembe Road and into the miasma of the taxi park and then eventually find myself embroiled in the morass of Nakawa... Kwegamba  Kampala can be ugly. Kampala is unkempt, dishevelled, chaotic and dirty. Kampala is a mess of a mess. I know I said Kampala is Beyonce earlier but Nakivubo, Nakawa, Nasser Road, Ntida junction? Those are the enkyakya hairs on Beyonce’s feet.

I regret that I didn’t pick an bus that was early enough to take me through Masaka and Lyantonde at around 6:00pm because the sight of Masaka and Lyantonde around sunset is such an enchantment, it is worth having to go through the kaloli’s cloaca of the Northern Bypass roundabouts to get there.

But that was not to be my only regret.

You see, I did not look at my ticket properly and therefore did not see, properly or otherwise, that it was actually a ticket to Kisoro.

And I did not realise the mistake I had made until 3:00am when the bus -- what do you call them? Bouncer? Maitre’d? Flight attendant? Sorry, I have not used public transport in so long that I have forgotten-- the bus MC announced, “Those getting off at Kabale, disembark now. Gerrout quick so the rest of us can proceed to Kisoro where we are going.”

This was the most 3:00am I had ever seen in my life. It was so dark and empty that I had not even realised that the bus had stopped. I hear that the cochlea, in conjunction with the stirrup, anvil and other bits inside can sense movement but it was so dark that I didn’t believe them when they told me that the bus had stopped.

But that was not even the problematic part.

I was wearing jeans, a T-shirt and sandals. I had a jacket in my bag, and back then I always wore a hat. This ensemble is usually enough to protect me from cold in the sense my geography teacher Mrs Kigozi had told me the word applies in temperate tropical zones like Uganda.

But I stepped out of the bus onto the tarmac of 3:00am Kabale town and felt something had never felt before.

I felt cold so cold that the cold itself was cold. My eyeballs felt cold. I felt it in my hair follicles. Vasoconstriction set in and, not only set in, but set in within my nostril hairs. It was so cold that I remembered what vasoconstriction is. You be there googling it, but meanwhile, even my fingernails felt cold. This cold reached my soul. There was so much cold that I think I could feel its weight and sense its smell. 

My brain said, “Baz, it’s cold.”

I replied, “Th-th-th-thank you for the met-tt-tt-er-olog-g-g-gi-cal ana-l-l-ysis C-c-c-aptain Obv-v-ious.”

“Shut your sarcasm, dude. Let’s go back to Kampala.”

I am not going to type out the stuttering again, but I declined. I was not going to follow that impulse when a) Kampala was 400kms away and b) I had come all the way to see beauty and I had not seen any yet. Due to the inky blackness that surrounded me. I think it was so dark because even photons could not work in that tempreture.

Delerium is the state when a clever man starts getting stupid ideas and thinking they are intelligent. This is what set in. I dropped my bag, opened my luggage, took out every item of clothing I had packed and put it on. Two pairs of jeans, three t-shirts, a jacket and two hats. 

It did not work. I was still freezing. 

So I thought of fire: If I burned the outer layer of clothing… but no, not these jeans. I like these jeans. Maybe if I put the vest and boxers on the outside, and set them alight... 

Luckily a roving boda smoking a filterless cigarette (That is what I am going to call it, cos I ain’t no snitch) rolled up just in time to save me from setting myself alight and was able to convey me to a woteli, where I spent what was left of the night.

I was able to finish my assignment the next day, even swim in Lake Bunyonyi.

You guys Uganda is such a beautiful place. It is full of areas, sections, parts and regions that look so nice.

I know you are cramped up and claustrophobic and tired but you need to make plans. When this is over, let’s go out and see Ug. North, south, east, west, middle, over, under, left and right.

My next plot is to get to Kalangala Islands on a moonless week where there is no light pollution. Because this is what the night sky looks like there.

Today’s post is not sponsored because that would mean I was given money to say this. Let us say, today’s post endorses the following indegenous tour organisations.