Hullo Hot Temper Golola. In fact, I am afraid of addressing you directly, knowing how you are capable of looking at someone and they lose their skin colour or even forget what they wanted to type.
I am sure that while rummaging through the pages of the Internet, that we are told you are capable of tearing, you must have come across a book by celebrated novelist V.S. Naipaul called Miguel Street.
However, in case you never saw it because you were concentrating on searching for what rocks to break as you prepare for a kickboxing match, I will help guide you through it.
In that book, there is a character called Big Foot. If you, Golola, have prided yourself in being able to look at women and they conceive immediately or possessing a PhD in pain—strange pain that comes back to haunt you—listen to Big Foot’s tale.
Big Foot flung a stone at Radio Trinidad building one day and broke a window. When the magistrate asked why he did it, Big Foot just said, “To wake them up.” A well-wisher paid his fine.
Here is the killer. There was a time when Big Foot was employed to drive one of the diesel buses. He drove the bus out of the city to Carenage, five miles away, and told passengers to get out and bathe. He stood by to see that they did!
That was Big Foot for you. He may not have been capable of hanging his clothes on an MTN like you Golola, but he had his own strange moments. Described as “really big and really black”, like you, Big Foot elicited fear wherever he went. Miguel Street, like Kampala today fears your temper, was scared of Big Foot.
And as is the calling of gifted people, Big Foot ended up in the ring. To prepare for most of his fights, Big Foot took to running on Miguel Street in strange maroon shorts. Do you remember when you took to training in Kabale, scaring tourists in the dead of the night as you opted to kick walls and trees instead of spurring partners?
Naipaul does not tell us whether Big Foot also had a craving for porridge but knowing how universal some of these things are, I would not be surprised that he took the thick liquid in 20-litre jerrycans like you.
When the fights began, it was all in Big Foot’s favour. Do you remember how you tormented your Sudanese opponent? That was what Big Foot did to his adversaries. Of course this did not include the mosquitoes that we are told catch malaria just when they look at you!
But that was until an unnamed Englishman turned up in Miguel Street. He sought for a fight and the town pushed Big Foot into it. The last we heard of Big Foot, he had been beaten flat and square. He was shedding tears in the ring like an infant denied his toy.
But we still take pride in you Golola. Of course, you could never be like Big Foot in everything. There are things Ugandan about you that you decided to keep. For example, even when you had been clearly battered, you still made off with the belt. It is only in this country that people lose by dusk and emerge winners at dawn.
As it turns out, you did not even know some of the rules of the game. But who cares about rules in this country? We change Articles in the Constitution without testing them. In Parliament we use secret voting when convenient and switch to open voting when pressed to the wall.
That up to the last minute some people were demanding their “cut” before the fight could start again shows the “Ugandanness” in us. Didn’t we do last-minute Chogm procurements even when we knew four years in advance what was coming up?
That you were able to keep these Ugandan virtues despite beatings raining on you, we say kudos Golola! You indeed are not a joking subject.
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