The audacity of a weekend thief

I have always thought that, in most cases, this country is so soft on petty crime. In fact, the majority of culprits are never prosecuted. They are arrested till someone can afford to pay the meagre bail. Without tougher penalties, these guys are only encouraged to go back and do the same thing. We don't even have the three-strikes law. My views on petty crime we hugely enhanced over the weekend. Saturday started off well. I met this very nice lady and all was good. We were having a great time (I think) with a couple of other people. We started off at Mateos and later went to the Venue. This is where things started to go bad. It got colder and windier and the sky had this menacing look. This lovely lady (she might read this so I have to bring out all the superlatives) placed her bag on one of the seats next to us. A few minutes later it started raining, heavily, so we dashed for the shade, less than 3 meter from where were seated. Less than 30 seconds later she noticed she didn't have her bag so we made for the seat where she had placed it. It wasn't there. First the rain conspired to slow my rhythm then some mongrel just sealed my fate. I never recovered from the double set back. Anyway we tried to look around but, thieves have now refined their methods it's was a futile process. That was the end of my night. Fast forward to Sunday-Monday.

I called her phone and some guy with a very strong local accent picked up. He told me this story about how he only picked her phone because it fell out of her bag. He yapped about how he was such a nice guy who worked for save the children and wasn't interested in stealing a phone. Apparently, he left it on so that he could be contacted by anyone that knew the owner. I actually bought his story. How naive of me. We made arrangements for him to bring it to my work place. My workplace is almost a fortress. There are so many armed guards from one of the country's elite forces. There is no way a thief would walk into that place to deliver a stolen phone. He had to be honest, the genuine article. Genuine? Yes he was, albeit a genuine thief. This scumbag came to my office, walked past 6 armed policemen and even more unarmed security guards (I haven't even counted the armed policemen out of sight), walked to the reception and handed over the sim card. Yes the sim card. This guy has got some cahoots. How dare he? A sim card? This is as bad as a thief breaking into your car and he later breaks into your house just to return the ID that was in the wallet he stole from your car. The nerve this guy had. If I could lay my hands on him I would rip him apart (if he's smaller than me.) No, what he did was not a favour. It was 'Kamanyiro'. This guy wouldn't have dared to do that if we had serious laws. He wouldn't have dared to steal that bag period. I think all petty thieves should be castrated and given a sexual hormone inhibitor. The thought of not enjoying life's finer things will be a deterrent to any ill-bred scumbag. Jail doesn't cut it anymore. They are too soft on these guys. They have more meals in there than they do outside of jail. I am boiling with anger. God have mercy on the one unlucky guy I'll catch attempting to 'get rich quick' from my personal property.

Pink is the colour

I have just witnessed the funniest and most baffling thing. I was too amazed that when I got back to my desk, the first thing I did was to post this blog. Most days, after lunch, a few friends and I take a walk and go for a drink at a nearby pub. No, not for alcohol but a soft drink. Today was no different. There were, carrying out our almost daily ritual, talking about whatever guys talk about (money and cars only). All of a sudden there was a deafening silence. All of us just went quiet. Walking in the opposite direction was a man. He was dressed very smartly. Too smartly actually. He was dressed in a white checked shirt and a pink tie. Nothing wrong with that except that he was wearing a pink trouser. Yes PINK!. As soon as he walked past us, we all burst out laughing and it wasn't just us but even those behind us that saw him. It was so hilarious. This guy was so confident (hats off t him). He looked so ridiculous. I'm not a snob, really , but this was just out of this world. We're still laughing at this moment. IT was that hilarious. It's one of those things you need to see to believe how bad/ridiculous it is.

Dance moves and that hand lotion

It's been a tough two weeks. Too much work and too much stress all conspired to limit my blogging to only one blog, so though that last Saturday I decided to hit town and not only celebrate their passing, but to also relieve some stress. I had almost forgotten what friends looked like and what the Kampala night life was like. I started off by attending a Rotaract dinner (I'm a Rotaractor/Rotarian-service above self). Everyone was well dressed in their evening dresses and dinner jackets. It was good. (if I said anything else, my club members would wring my neck). It was good, except for the food (I'm hard to please). The Roast goat meat was burnt, the beef was so hard that you'd struggle even with a steak knife and the roast potatoes were harder on the teeth than hard corn (deep fried corn). This supposedly brilliant meal was prepared at the luxurious (apparently) hotel opposite the Celtel Head offices. I also noticed some smell/scent (choose one). Not sure what it was at this point

I headed to garden city after the dinner. I was dying to get my groove on. I went to the venue. While there I hooked up with some pals and we started comparing notes. For all guys out there that don't yet know, this place has the best, most scantily dressed young talent available in Kampala. Most people say Uganda is a deeply conservative society. That would change with a visit to the venue on a Saturday night. Booty shorts, the skimpiest miniskirts ever made, the latest dance moves imported from Jamaica (winding). Everything you ALMOST saw in Ludacris' P-Poppin video is happens here. The funniest thing I saw was this really tall guy dancing with a girl that either had some Jamaican heritage or has spent a significant amount of time there. She was winding it down pretty good. As for the guy, I can't describe what he was doing. It wasn't dancing. It actually looked like he was gyrating around her waist. More like he wanted to get something else going. I hope for his sake he did.

One thing that seemed to come up in both places was this smell. It was so strong that I thought I was the one stinking. I was baffled. I showered before I left home but from the moment I got to the dinner venue, all I could smell was this strong odour. It seemed pleasant at first but it soon became some sort of stench. Nothing smells good for an entire night. I was so baffled that I asked a friend if i was stinking. He started laughing at me. After about a minute, he told me it was a hand lotion that all fashion crazed women are using. The latest fascination of the opposite sex. I always thought women were wary of wearing anything someone else might wear. Perhaps this is different because after he told me, I smelt it on every girl/lady that I walked past. That explained why the dinner venue smelt so feminine. What's this craze about hand lotion anyway? Our hands (male) are perfectly normal without those luxuries. If you must, does it have to be the same lotion? Imagine if all men wore the same perfume or used the same after shave. It's that bad. The hand lotion actually smells nice, but not nearly nice enough for every woman to buy the same brand. By all means buy those hand lotions (we prefer our women to have soft hands) but please don't all buy the same hand lotion. I'm sure there are others that smell equally as good.