What would Brian Boitano do?

I was chatting with my brother on MSN and he was wondering what I thought of the gay adoption debate currently raging in Britain. I told him I had no firm opinions on the matter. Worryingly this seems to apply to a lot of things these days. Those who read my rant a few posts ago concerning a few articles in the New Vision might disagree, but these days I just don't have too many strong opinions. I've got plenty of the old ones- the idealistic 'Free Aung San Suu Kyi'/ throw Mugabe to the crocodiles' type of opinions- but many of the big debates these days leave me a bit cold. I dimly recall getting pissed off during the 'Danish cartoons' saga but since then many of the big issues of the day-whether political or showbiz- just elicit a 'bleh!' reaction from me. I might be the only person in the world who doesn't care whether Hillary Clinton wins and I dont even vomit anymore when Paris Hilton comes on TV.
However there are those who still have very strong opinions as I saw in The New Vision Friday edition (if memory serves me right) the headline was WHERE DID THE MEN GO? and inside was a four page story about the complete and utter lack of 'good' men in Kampala. The inside titles in the story- MEN WHERE ARE YOU? WHERE IS THE LOVE?- sounded fairly desperate and made me imagine hordes of women clawing at the New Vision door like Zombies asking for telephone numbers. Judging by the quality of the women they used in the article- there were a lot of pictures-I can safely say that the men are currently hiding behind a rock trying to poke their eyes out with a plastic spoon.
Ok, that's a bit harsh. Let me start again. Where are the men? According to the women whose pictures and voices were used for this groundbreaking piece of investigative journalism, all the men who are actually around are crap. They are either 'players' or lousy company or just crap in that way you can't really define. Infact according to one woman, the main reason there are no good men is that they are all looking for a 'perfect woman'. I don't know a single guy who is looking for a perfect woman- they are happy enough if she just lets them watch footie on a Saturday. Where do they get this? Meanwhile a few others didn't even need a man following the lead of those great philosophers The Pussycat Dolls. Granted I don't live in Kampala anymore, but the underlying message was one that spoke to me as well: men are either useless or not needed anyway.
The New Vision gossip colummn also gave me a chuckle. There was a story about Jackie of Blu 3 who was nearly fired from her other job as a DJ. I quote: "Luckily the axe landed right behind her cracking the ground on which she was standing. Jackie was relieved all right, but visibly startled. She is still recovering"
hang on- was this even being used as a figure of speech? Was someone actually trying to kill Jackie with an axe? Anyway I like it when people run with an idea like that. I can only assume Timothy Bukumunhe had his tongue so firmly in his cheek that he required a surgical operation to get it out.

I was going to expand on something else today which I alluded to in my previous post but I don't have the energy. I don't think many people noticed that the paragraph in italics had nothing to do with my conversation with Nikki but was about something else entirely. We will come to that eventually. As Confucius said "Man needs at least a chapati at lunchtime"

More Mark Steel:
http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_m_z/mark_steel/article2180752.ece
Carl Jung, quantum physics and George Bush all in the same post? yep.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/1/30/62855/9918
The radicalisation of young British muslims
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/01/29/nmuslims29.xml
Nice and comprehensive summary about the 'madrassa' attack on Obama.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200701300007
A fairly shocking story about an attempted forced marriage and the consequences of refusal in an Indian family:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-2557613,00.html
It's not often you read the words 'multiculturally discombobulated'
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2562619,00.html
I know Big brother is finished now, but let's remind ourselves that some people were not foaming at the mouth about the scandal but actually had something reasonable and sensible to say:
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/2746/
The classified ads from The London Book Review- getting funnier every edition. Scroll down to the personals:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/classified/index.php

Heart is the bridge

I was having coffee this morning with Nikki who has become my new 'coffee buddy' after the departure of Hannah and following a unanimous vote conducted by the voices in my head. I noticed something a bit odd with my environment and it took me a few seconds to realize what it was- the low wall behind us had been painted black including the famous spot I mentioned in another somewhat incoherent post a few months ago.
They have been repainting the tribunal for the last two weeks giving it a nice new coat of painfully white paint. Aside from the stench of paint and the somewhat scary sight of seeing men stand casually on the ledge of the seventh floor(right outside the window of our office) I'm all in support of this move. However here is the thing- this area with black paint was white on Friday. Yes only a few days ago the ledge behind us had a new white coat of paint. This morning they painted over that and decided they prefered black. Why didn't they just do that from the beginning?
And now it just looks weird- this island of black paint in a sea of gleaming white. Is it some kind of ebony-and-ivory thing they have going on? Perhaps the new black and white paint strategy is a kind of symbolism of racial harmony? Meanwhile the little manhole thingy I used to drink coffee on is seeing more coats of paint than a prostitute's fingernails. I don't know when it will be dry so I can finally sit on it and be the king of all I survey-albeit a king who is working for free and has the noticable handicap of having no subjects.
Anyway we were talking about post-uni life and the uncertainty that follows the bliss of graduation. Nikki's illustration was interesting "I came out of university ready to take on the world and I couldn't see it. I was like 'where is the world? where is it hiding? How exactly do I get hold of it'"
Quite.

Ok, let me try to explain. "It's like jumping off a cliff" No, wait there's a problem with that "Ok, like jumping off a cliff except that you don't die but hit the water below...erm...yeah...and assuming you can swim of course"
I could probably come up with a better definition if I had thought this through, but it will have to do. You are dealing with something that defies easy categorisation and a neat little explanation. It's poker and it's bungee jumping and it's roulette all rolled into one. It's a tidal wave. It's a sort of benevolent black hole.

F.A Cup was on this weekend- unfortunately Arsenal lived to fight another day. My friends are aware that the two teams I hate most are Arsenal and Chelsea and while the Gunners don't quite qualify as the anti-Christ- that position is taken by Chelsea- I was passionately hoping they would self-destruct. Then KoloToure grabbed an equalizer and now they have to go to the reebok where I fancy Bolton to open up a can of whupass and serve it to them. I like Bolton- there is something so old-fashioned about their direct and sometimes quite rough style of play. Meanwhile Chelsea cruised past Nottingham Forest which was not a suprise-except that Shevchenko scored a goal. That's three goals in two games! If only he faced such timid opposition every week. Meanwhile Tottenham beat Southend- a team I have a fondness for mainly because it was the hometown of a girl I had a minor crush on in my final year at uni but that's another long story and these days I like them on my own terms. It's a bit crap that the two teams I like outside the Premiership-Leeds and Southend- are second from bottom and bottom respectively.
And meanwhile Liverpool isn't even in the bloody thing. I sat there seething in my chair at the injustice of it all.

Reading: Emergency Sex and other desperate measures by three former UN peacekeepers who have been to just about all the warzones you can care to name (When my dad saw the book I told him it was about the history of the porn industry and he believed me. Parents can be so gullible) It's a fantastic book and I strongly recommend it but it is also very grim. I'm sure many people don't want to spend a weekend reading about Somalia, Haiti, Rwanda and Cambodia during their tragic periods (although with Somalia of course there is no let up) but this is still worth reading. I just finished Crow road by Iain Banks (who wrote a very disturbing book called The Wasp Factory) which was also quite interesting and had some unforgettable lines like "She put the phany in epiphany, the lectual in intellectual and the ibid in libidinous"

Watching: Figure skating. I like! I enjoy the clash between the old-fashioned aspect of it-the music and the almost ballroom-dancing elements of it- combined with the 'MTV generation' angle- the skimpy outfits and the slow motion replays. It's the old world meet the new world. It's almost romantic. It feels weird when I have to change to the animal planet right afterwards. The polar bears are also skating on ice, but not with the same grace and photogenic nature.

sex and soccer: another day with "The New vision"

As you may or may not know APR F.C won the CECAFA club championship by totally kicking URA's ass in the final. Yes the score was 2-1 but by all accounts we kicked ass.
But The New Vision doesn't quite see it that way. I hesistate to use the word bitter, but their coverage of APR's win has been outrageous. The headline of the story reporting APR's win was URA FAIL TO WIN CECAFA. What? "Failing to win" is called "losing" (unless its a draw of course) so needless to say I thought the headline was pretty fucked up. It was very unfair to APR to say the least, but that's not all. Another recent edition had the story UGANDA REAL WINNER OF CECAFA..Apparently they were the real winners because APR had about three Ugandans in their lineup and the other Rwandan team ATRACO (which reached the semis) had about six. Get over it! Uganda was not the 'real' winner- Rwanda was. Do you know why? Because we actually won the final and lifted the trophy. The last time I checked that was the meaning of victory. Actually maybe the words 'bitter' are appropriate. URA lost- I suggest someone contact the New Vision sports desk and inform them of this fact. No amount of linguistic acrobatics is going to change that fact. You might need a few strong beers and plenty of soul-searching, but I am sure you will eventually come around to accepting U.R.A's defeat. I love Uganda- I grew up there- but if they think they are going to take APR's title away simply by a sly use of the English language they had better think again.
More problems with The New vision- or more specifically one of the contributing writers. On Wednesday there was an opinion piece called ABC MESSAGE ON HIV CAUSES MUCH CONFUSION. The object of the article was to basically take aim at anyone who has dared to even think of having sex before marriage- shame on you people! Above the article was the astounding tagline- 'If France can exist without Napoleon then we can live without sex' This is only the tip of what eventually turns out to be a kind of bullshit iceberg (if such a thing is possible) He says the ABC strategy has caused a lot of confusion which in turn is responsible for increasing the rate of HIV. He wonders if we have stooped to the level of goats because we 'cant control our urges'. Cant everyone just wait until they get married? is his basic message. His new mantra is ABD- abstain, be faithful or die. He believes condoms are virtually useless. The article might as well have been titled 'war on safe sex'
The whole thing is utter hogwash. Comparing people to goats because they can't wait for their wedding night is just silly, and saying ABC is causing confusion is also bollocks. There is no confusion to ABC- if you cant wait, use a condom. Should I type that in a larger font? There is no need to impose his kind of sexual fascism on other people. The reason HIV rates are climbing up again is not because ABC has caused confusion, it is because people are not actually following the dammn thing! Blaming condoms for people having sex without condoms is disingenious and illogical. His reasoning appears to be that the greater availability of condoms is in turn causing fewer people to use them. You could drive a tank through the hole in that argument. If people want to have protected sex before their wedding day, that's their business and it doesn't make them 'goats' or immoral. He even blames increased marital unfaithfulness on the ABC strategy- yes, apparently there is an underlying mantra to the ABC strategy that condoms turn everyone into nymhomaniacs. He ends his clarion call with "...human beings should be able to live without sex. It is too dangerous to accommodate an enemy in the camp just because he has promised peace talks" (Hmm...apparently sex wants to talk to us now and call a ceasefire. Interesting) The only way to deal with this it seems is to fight sex! Fight it until it gives in! Why don't we go a step further and imprison those people immoral enough to have protected sex? Will that make you feel better Mr writer? Maybe we could give the law a fancy name like The Goat-instinct suppression Act. Yes, once that is in place it will all be rainbows and butterflies and a nation of winged angels.
H.L. Mencken once defined puritanism as 'The haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy" I think that says it all.

PS: I do love you New Vision but sometimes you make me mad!

Readers, she married him...

I was chatting with my cousin Tesi (an absolute legend) about two weeks ago. I was wondering idly how men propose these days- specifically Rwandan men seeing as I count myself in this category. Not that I'm going to propose anytime soon you understand, just the usual healthy curiousity as to how things work in our world.
Tesi's answer was hilarious but also fairly true "Oh, that's easy...the girl says 'honey I'm pregnant'"
Aaaaah romance- where did you go? Is it a coincidence that today people divorce when they are barely out of their wedding reception premises? Of course romance itself is such a fluid concept- how would you define it anyway? Once upon a time a guy had to put on his shinning (it HAD to be shinning) armour and ride through a thicket of thorns and ugly-ass beasts just to get to the girl. Today it's not quite romance unless she's pregnant and I can imagine one day a guy will go down on his knees and say "Look honey, I know you are not pregnant but I would like to marry you...". As things stand, the pregnancy thing still seems to be a requirement and a few days later she turns around, looks at him and realizes that Mr. Husband is actually a complete bastard. Said husband meanwhile has already enquired about the availability of cyanide pills. Not suprisingly they wind up enemies.
Speaking of enemies, here is a thing I don't understand- whats with the saying 'keep your friends close, but your enemies closer'? That's the kind of philosophy that will get you killed. I don't want my enemies- real or imagined- anywhere near me, I want them to be as far away as possible. I want my friends close and my enemies, far away.
"Ah, but you see there is some logic there" someone will say "You have to keep your enemies closer so you can keep an eye on them and know what they are trying to do" I know exactly what my enemy would be trying to do- screw me over. I don't need to keep an eye on him to know that. I know he's up to no good.

Random bits:
-Liverpool beating Chelsea at the weekend- the footballing equivalent of an orgasm. It is a well known fact that Satan himself (or 'Lucifer' as he prefers to be known these days) has shares in the club and it's entirely possible that large portions of the book of revelations are infact about Chelsea. The devil seems to be branching out quite a bit these days. As recently as ten years ago, people in Kampala stopped dancing the Macarena because apparently it was a form of devil worship-I still chuckle when I remember that. It seems he is getting a bit more subtle these days.
-Been watching Knowing me, knowing you...with Alan Patridge. Great stuff - Steve Coogan is a comic genius -and I laughed quite a lot. My dad didn't really get it. About halfway through, he turns to me and says "Oh, so he's not a REAL chatshow host then?" Highly recommend 24 hour party people with Coogan in the starring role about the Manchester music scene in the 70's.
-Watched King Kong on Friday. I'm a Peter Jackson fan, but I thought it was just an Okay film.If I want to see an ugly gorilla leering at a pretty lady I'll just watch the latest 50 cent video.

One step closer to nowhere

I turned on the TV yesterday and would you believe it, people were burning effigies in the streets! It seems half the developing world spends a sizeable amount of its time setting fire to inanimate objects and screaming their lungs off in the street. This particular demonstration was in India and it was over the Big brother row where an Indian contestant is either being bullied or racially abused depending on who you talk to. It is quite possible they don't know how ridiculous they look marching in the streets about a stupid TV show.

Meanwhile not too far away from India is my friend Nash who is going on a madcap trip through much of Asia. He sent a group email which gave me possibly the biggest laugh of the week and deserves to be quoted here:
I made it into Nepal from Tibet and spent most of December there. Did some awsome Himalyas trekking, made use of the lax drug laws (fantastic pharmacies) and met some Maoist paramilitaries. Same old. Had to stay with a Hindu family in the jungle one week after shafting myself (I got on a wrongbus going to nowhere for 11 hours). Their whole village treated me like a white God. I was even offered an arranged marriage. The guy I stayed with had a mum just 13 years older than him, and the grandad (legend) had 3 wives there. Good food, but fitting 11 into 4 beds was a squeeze. I woke up at 5AM xmas day to search for rhino on an elephant. I saw 3.
I decided to go to Thailand for new years. I had orgianlly planned to go toIndia next but felt more in the mood for sand, sun and sophisticated conversation with ladies (in Hindu Nepal I learnt I would have to marry Igirl before i kissed her, or her brother would shoot me).
Only Nash.

Anyway as I mentioned in my previous blog, I'm back to Arusha which means TV and detox....oh yes, and some work too. It's funny to think that about ten days ago I was sitting under a tree with a beer in my hand next to a shack that looked barely big enough to house an anorexic cockroach. Yes, last Monday I found myself in a place that was officially the dodgiest bar in Kigali- a title I do not hand out lightly.
We did not seek the place out of course. We went to M's, but apparently the owner had taken off on some urgent business and would be back in about an hour (was it one of those dash-to-the airport-to-stop-her-leaving things we see in films all the time? I hope he got the girl) So as we stood there wondering whether we should abort mission (it was our goodbye drink since I was about to leave and everyone was going back to school) Louis admitted that he knew another place.
"But it's too shady, I'm not sure I want to take you guys there" He said. If Louis thinks a place is shady, you had best believe it meets the definition. It was very near M's and suprisingly near the President's house. What kind of brave man sets up the dodgiest joint in Kigali within shouting distance of his excellency?
We strolled in and eventually saw what he meant- there was no bar in the conventional sense of the word except a tiny shack and a small bench outside it. Sunny seemed suprisingly at ease in this environment- more so when he discovered the beer was only 550 francs. He acted as if he had just received a free lap dance from Jessica Alba. We ordered our beers and sat outside under the stars, Sunny having located a crate to sit on. When the rest joined us- Oscar and Barnes- more crates were needed. It was as if we needed enough witnesses to confirm what was before our eyes.
I bring this story up partly because I have time to kill on a Friday morning but partly also to share with you what turned out to be my most dangerous peeing expedition. Not suprisingly it turned out that there was no toilet and I was going to have to make my way towards the bushes at the back. It was fairly dark there and the spectacle represented a potential kick in the balls for my dignity and let's be frank- it has suffered over the Christmas season. Kigali became a kind of Guantanamo Bay for my dignity. What else do you call gleefully hopping onto a motorbike infront of the Planet Club in full view of everyone and even sticking around long enough to shout out plans for the next day as the guy starts his bike? It is not going to win you any cool points.
Anyway I'm wandering away. As I got there I realized two things. One- the path was very slippery and narrow. Two- on the right was a steep drop- maybe twenty feet- right into someone's compound. There was no fence mind you, just two or three wooden poles a few feet apart. I pondered this as I momentarily slipped and balanced myself. On the left was the chance of instant relief and on the right was instant death. Did I want to pee badly enough that I was prepared to risk my life to do it? The answer turned out to be yes. I made it back in one piece and my friends were still chuckling that I had nearly fallen. You don't normally contemplate your own mortality when you go to the toilet, but as you can see this was a special case. I had stared death in the face, turned away cooly and done exactly what I came to do.

In my head:
Mojo pin- Jeff Buckley
Bad Dream-Keane

What I've been reading lately:
Is Mohammed Ali's legacy being rewritten?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,28910-2547613,00.html
The tragic tale of an ignored genocide in Burma
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article2157351.ece
Zadie Smith always has something interesting to say
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1988887,00.html
I know there must be many Dave Barry fans out there. Here is the 2006 year in review from the funniest man in America:
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/16345989.htm
The scary implications of the sad Jose Padilla case in the United States. Another reason to hate Bush-yipee!
http://www.slate.com/id/2157493/
If you haven't been reading the very witty Mark Steel, now is the time to start:
http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_m_z/mark_steel/article2160060.ece
Another very funny writer- Caitlin Moran on 'pimped up' crisps:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,10655-2545200,00.html
Richard Dowden on Amin and Britain's role-or rather lack of it- in bringing him to power
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article2157346.ece

Saddam and sugar mummies: back to Arusha

So I'm back in Arusha. This time we drove through Kampala and Kenya WHERE THERE WERE ACTUALLY ROADS as opposed to our ill-advised trip through Tanzania on the way to Rwanda. I've got a two month extension, but just about everyone I knew has left. Allinder the comically good-looking Dutch intern is still around as is Cedric the jolly French guy and Nikki who I've talked about before in glowing terms. Everyone else has left the Tribunal running without a backwards glance.

A quick and overdue word on Saddam. Many people say that it is wrong to feel good about the death of another human being but I disagree- I was quite glad to see Saddam gone. Hanging him was a bit harsh, but he won't get any sympathy from me (and even if he did, it wouldn't be exactly relevant to him seeing as the maggots are already all up in his business) It's been creepy and almost amusing to see that some people not only sympathize with him but are calling him a matyr as one Ugandan blogger did recently. According to my blogger friend, God would welcome Saddam with open arms. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't believe there is a passage in the bible where God professes his admiration for psychopathic and unrepentant mass murderers. My advice to everyone is to save your tears for people who deserve them more.
While we are on the subject of death, a recent story in Rwanda's leading paper The New Times (If I had known that they were paying 7,500 an article I would have written a lot more) intrigued me. Well not the story itself, but the title which was WHY MURDER YOURSELF? Now I may be wrong but I believe that in the history of mankind, not a single person has successfully murdered themselves. People have killed themselves, yes but the idea of someone murdering themselves raises all kinds of surreal possibliities. One of the first things that came to mind was someone hiding behind a door waiting for themselves to come in so they could do the deed. Can you lie in wait for you to kill yourself? Or will you just suprise yourself and spring onto your own back reaching for your own neck? All these kinds of possibilities arose in my mind from that headline. I know I'm beginning to sound a bit like J.D from Scrubs (more on that some other time) but that tickled me.

Away from all that, I only recently discovered that The New Vision has a 'looking for love' segment (titled 'intimate') which somehow I have missed all this time. I once talked about the laughs I got from the Sunday Times classified ads, but this one also has its moments and promises quite a few chuckles in the months ahead. I was amazed by how many men wrote in seeking 'submissive women'. Evidently only advanced physics can explain how some people appear to live in the 21st century but are equally also stuck in pre-colonial times. An entry that tickled me is the guy who wrote in asking for a Muganda woman. "She should be fat with a wide bum" He wrote. The thought of him writing this with a straight face is amusing. Another wanted a woman who should be "Ready to bear a child immediately" steady now- you actually have to have sex with her first! She's not going to walk in with a do-it-yourself kit and assemble a baby in five minutes. Also very intriguing was the university graduate who is looking for a 'sweet financially stable woman to hug'. Is 'hug' a new euphemism for you-know-what? or is he seriously in such dire need of a hug that he has advertised in the papers? Also quite interesting is the sheer number of guys looking for a 'sugar mummy' most of whom in return can apparently expect 'intimate and mindlowing encounters'. I'm going to keep an eye out on this section

Near-life/ love is not a victory march

Language here has evolved in an interesting way. It was only the other day that I heard one of my friends say "Man, that's a hard paper" After some initial confusion I realized what he was trying to say and now it has caught on. Anything particularily difficult or tricky becomes "a hard paper" I've been told this was being used in Kampala ages ago, but who cares I think it's funny. Another somewhat recent expression is "That's for world cup" which is applied very liberally and seems to have no clear rules. Anything from a strong drink to an expensive cab can be described in this way. Our circle has also managed to turn the word 'melee' into a verb so you hear Sunny for example threatening to melee someone. People have become a lot more ambitious, and you hear sentences like "I jazzed the chickie D for a zale at the other jwa where we had the hare but she hash-hashed me" Are we dumbing down the English language or merely giving it a twirl around the ballroom?

At a party the other night.
The birthday girl is seeing someone in our circle but tonight her boyfriend has come down from Uganda. We sense fireworks to come, but things take a somewhat more soap-operaish twist. As we stand at the gate about to leave her house, we spot the girl and her boyfriend talking at the back of the house. The boyfriend suddenly drops to his knees and the girl starts to walk away but he gets up and pleads for her to come back. This is all for a girl who has been cheating on him mind you.
Love is not a victory march.

The Daily show likes to do a segment it calls 'slow news day' in which it shows how desperate TV stations fill up the time with total non-stories but we should not forget that newspapers do this too. One good example is The Daily nation story a few days ago. The story was on page 2 and the title was FARMER REGRETS DEATH OF DONKEY. The story delivered even more nonsensical charm than I had anticipated. Apparently the donkey in question was owned by the farmer and one day-possibly in an existential rage at the fact that it had been born a donkey- it just bit him. The farmer was hospitalised and from his hospital bed he vowed vengeance (cue a Godfather-style speech a la Michael Corleone "I loved you donkey, but you broke my heart...")he ordered his neighbours to kill the donkey and they did so but once the guy got out of hospital, he regretted his decision and felt like quite an ass about the whole thing. This was the sensational story Kenya's leading paper decided to cover on page 2. Whats the moral of the story? Think twice before you kill your donkey?

A few days ago I actually drank about a third of a Mutzing bottle that contained Mutzig, J&B AND Uganda waragi.
I didn't do this by choice, mind you. Sunny and Louis both added their poisons to my drink and before I had got very far I heard the dreaded drink up song starting.
"If you think I'm going to drink this entire thing in one gulp, you are going to need your heads checked" I told them both.
"Are you a Ninja?" Louis asked. That familiar question which frequently precedes a drunken stupour.
"Well.."
"Are you a Ninja?" Now Sunny is asking. My fate is being sealed.
"Guys listen.."
"Are you a bitch?"
These questions have been roped together and are now like Starsky and Hutch. The answer to one is yes and the answer to the other is no. The inevitable result is that you have to down your drink. Having accepted that yes you are a Ninja and no you are not a bitch, the other people around you begin the song (with the name in the first line of course varying depending on the victim in question)

Here is to Minega he's true blue
He's a piss-pot through and through
He's a bastard so they say
He tried to go to heaven but he went the other way
he went down, down, down down

So I had to drink it up. It tasted suprisingly good actually. At the place we were drinking we had earlier spotted a guy dancing vigorously for at least half an hour with a half-full bottle of mutzig perched on his head so he became my role-model as I stepped into the unknown.

Away from donkeys, alcohol and jilted boyfriends, I was thinking the other day about something Will Self wrote in one of his typically brilliant essays. Self said that for him to be creative and actually write he had to be in a certain town because he felt that his writing was in a way intertwined with the geography of his surroundings. I wonder what other bloggers think of this- do you find more inspiration in the places you know well or do you find it when disconnected from your home enviroment? Unlike Self, I found myself writing a lot more when I was in England. The very fact that I was disconnected geographically from my local environment somehow seemed to spur me on to write more. Sometimes I would be feverish with ideas as if the dam had burst now that I was away from home. I still get plenty of inspiration from the absurdities and comedy of African life, but somehow I find that unlike Self I am more inspired when away from home. The culture clash angle was one obvious reason why, but maybe at the end of the day it does not really matter where you write.

Random quotes from my friends:
"I'm going to marry that girl...'the Mule'"
"After that katogo, I woke up at midday and my stomach was like 'hell no!'"
"Man, given half a chance I would have jumped those bones"
"We don't call her Titty Mctitts because she is Irish..."

2007: early reflections

2007 is here. Like most of the years before it, it did not so much stagger ungracefully into the room as materialize almost magically. It is here now so we might as well go into the kitchen and make for it some coffee while acting as good hosts. In reality we will probably be bitching about it behind its back. Anyway a very happy new year to my friends and the bloggers who stop by here.

Random thoughts:
-I spotted some guy standing infront of the old taxi park in town. It was around 7.00 so it was already fairly dark. However our friend was holding a pair of white jeans stiffly infront of him waiting for someone perhaps to squint at the strange figure there and decide on the spur of the moment to buy a pair of white jeans in the dark.
-Although it is often said that alcohol impairs movement and reflexes, I saw a convincing argument to the contrary. About a week ago while drinking with Sunny at Virunga, some rowdy guys participated in possibly the most enthusiastic bear hug I have seen in a while. Unfortunately they knocked the table next to us in their excitement. In a blink of an eye- before I could even move a muscle or even detect any danger- Sunny had snatched his glass of beer, his bottle and the empty bottle he had finished earlier and leaped to his feet. You had to be there, but it was quite an achievement.
-Witnessed an interesting fight at Virunga. I was sitting down drinking my beer in peace when I looked up and saw a furious girl charging in my general direction. I would be exaggerating if I said that my life flashed before my eyes, but I did get a kind of abridged version in the second I saw her bearing down on me. It turned out that she was heading for the girl who was standing near me and she was determined to kick her ass. Thankfully people managed to intervene before shit hit the fan. Cue a lot of hysterical shouting and several attempts to break free from her captors and carry on the fight. The girl who was being targeted in this love-triangle gone bad (then again, have we ever had a love triangle that turned out well?) also managed to throw a ferocious punch that could have proved fatal had it connected. She later insisted to us that she had connected with the punch, but Sunny claims she missed. The drama ended with the screaming girl being carried out by her boyfriend. Later I wondered if we should have stood back and let the fight go on in a winner-takes-it-all scenario. We couldn't do this of course because the attacked girl was in our circle, but still....
-TV Rwanda's Christmas eve coverage was entertaining although not necessarily in the ways they would have wanted. One highlight was when a group of motorcyclists were interviewed about what Christmas meant to them. As one of them was droning on, someone right behind him lifted a live chicken and held it up for quite a while. What this was expected to accomplish I don't know but I half-expected our feathered friend to give its own shout-outs to its equally doomed buddies.
-Chelsea dropping four points from their last two games- you had best believe I am gloating. However before their last two draws, they had a very lucky escape. I was at the Virunga bar (God I spend a lot of time in that place) to watch the Chelsea-Wigan game about ten days ago. The game was tied at 2-2 with a few minutes of injury time to go when Arjen Robben (you bastard!) popped up to grab a late winner. One loud Chelsea fan-who thought that chanting 'Jose! Jose! every ten seconds was either enlightening or witty- immediately dashed outside to the balcony, knelt down and spread his arms dramatically while opening his mouth. His friend grabbed his beer glass, dashed outside and poured its contents down his throat. Then they continuted screaming. It makes me wonder whether a teams' fans do indeed reflect the team itself.
-When you are the MC at someone's wedding, isnt it the ultimate faux pas to spend a few minutes talking about the groom's dead wife and how much his new wife looks like her? This is what I witnessed at the intercontinental on Saturday. I also thought I've got to do something to make my wedding a bit different- weddings these days are so similar that they all kind of blend into each other. Mind you I might not even show up for my wedding- it might be fun for the spectators but the bride and groom often look bored stiff.
-Apparently polar bears can beat a lion in a fight. Fact.
-Funny headline I saw recently over at The onion- "Kevin Federline, wife divorce"