The air of Nakasero hill is not the air downhill. That clean air brushes against glass office buildings, teeters the surrounding trillions of green leaves, and flushes out any stench that attempts to cross Kampala Road which separates uptown from downtown. Downtown is akatogo of a city; arcades and plazas with hundreds of shops selling Chinese exports. They cling on to each other because who holds them as they carry the majority informal sector? It is marred by a miasma of dust, old engine fumes and the smell of hustle. That blend of breath from mouths shouting prices, energy put into bargaining and sweat from carrying merchandise in buveera. At the tenth hour of any day except Sunday, Ben Kiwanuka is a breathing mural of people, cars and business. You’ll hardly see the tarmac when every car en route is sniffing the next car’s ass. Container trucks parked by the sides for offloading. No sight of the sidewalks’ concrete for where a foot was lifted, another’s foot stepped. A staccato of beep-beeps, container trucks hissing out air, sssiii sssiii by luggage carriers demanding right of way, loud speakers announcing new stock, illegal roadside vendors singing the cheapness of their goods as they look out for KCCA law enforcement officers, hairdressers shoving synthetic hair in the face of every woman passing by, promising her affordable braids, and a street preacher straining his already croaky voice begging everyone to repent and accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and savior. All this, towered by buildings whose balcony railings are decorated with posters of shops selling plastics, clothing, kitchenware and everything you need.
What is all the commotion there? Enhe? Someone better show me? What is going on there? Move so I can see. Have they brought new girls? Are you swooning over the new girls? What is wrong with these new ones and always admiring the newer ones. Temukoowa? Ah? What do you have…what do they have that you don’t? When will you accept yourselves? Kyase, and other luggage carriers emerge from the staircase carrying more girls. They place them next the girls they carried in earlier. Kyase slits the plastic ropes, freeing the girls who fall to the ground. Of course. It’s the new girls, smooth as freshly sanded wood and dressed in polythene. Wait when they’re unwrapped and they unleash the gloom on their creaseless faces. This new generation and being overly sensitive. I miss the headless girls. Those girls that come headless are the best; well mannered! They know they’re here to work and nothing more. No drama. But this new breed is so frail, and lazy. Kyase and other luggage carriers pick the girls from the floor and assemble them by the balcony. Now see. Laba! All the effort invested into getting them here; the long nights they spent in those dark containers that swayed to the rhythm of the oceans, to cruising through the highways of Tsavo National Park, then facing customs at Malaba border, and ultimately being vigorously shaken when the container truck tires kissed the potholes of Kampala’s polka dot roads. Yet they still sulk. Won’t you scare away customers?
Anyway, listen carefully. I don’t have much time for some of you have already been sold, and will be off to where my words can’t reach you. Listen before you go. I am Nabachwa, some call me Queen wa Ben Kiwanuka. I’ve been here for as far as my memory stretches. I’m not your mother but I might as well be. You’re here because of me. You’re in demand. You are created, packaged and bought because of me. I’ve posed here, on this balcony of Mini Price. From before the arcade across the street sprouted from the ground to become Grand Corner House. Many have glanced upon me and knew they needed to have one of me, many of me for their businesses to flourish. You may call me a businesswoman, like my fellow businesswomen of ekibuga Kampala; the Hajjats of Kikuubo whose successful wholesale shops turned their children into rich kids who drink money in Acacia Avenue bars, gallivanting with the stupidly rich offsprings of government embezzlers and the cool kids of the faux middle class. The widows of mu Kinamwandu whose morning sizzling spicy orange katogo ka matooke n’ebyenda (pottage of plantain and offals) accompanied by a cup of black or milk tea has fueled downtowners for years and continues to. They’ll pardon me if they aren’t widows, but why else would they call that alley blackened with soot from their charcoal stoves, why else would they call it mu Ki-widow. See me as those Aunties of Luwum Street whose boutiques are filled with my girls flaunting white gowns that have already hugged over ten brides, matched on ten aisles and are still white enough for the next mugole. So when I speak, liiisten! You’re going out there so it is on me to prepare you for the world unfamiliar to my eyes, yet is no stranger to my mind.
You’re not here to fall in love. This is the first wisdom I gift all my girls; the tale of Kwagala. Kwagala like you was new, skin glowing enough to be mistaken for porcelain. So fragile, I feared this Kampala sun would melt her and if she survived, the heat would blister her. Kwagala was shipped with the boys. You probably came with some, though I see none. If you didn’t, you’ve arrived in a male world. They have infiltrated our business like we women were not the first. They’re on every shop entrance all over my street. They probably outnumber us on Mukwano Arcade. Their biceps bulged like these basituzi b’emigugu (luggage carriers). They have eight packs as if the average Kampala man doesn’t go about with his protruding abdomen leading the way, then their enormous groins. Oh oh oh. Heh! God forgive me! I was saying, Kwagala came with a boy, Ssendikwanawa. They were Rose and Jack, stuffed in cargo containers as opposed to standing at the ship’s bow taking in the ocean breeze. They had promised themselves forever even before they reached Mombasa. That wherever they landed, they would be by one another. When they reached here, they planned to stun in Mukwano Arcade shops, wearing GUCHI, PRADO and BALINCIAGO, which clothes would be bought by young couples inspired by their true love. Or they’d settle in the bridal parlors of Luwum Street spending every day of forever as newlyweds. Only for the Kampala-Man-Nomadic-Penis Syndrome to catch Ssendi. You’d expect someone stupefied by the ecstasy of first love to be immune to the syndrome, but wah! My nalulungi Kwagala was not enough. How could she be when many of you are clones of the other. You wear the same clothes, have the same hair and jump on every trend. Ssendi juggling her with other girls wasn’t even it. Once upon a time, these boys that do our job, balimu engeri. They’re a certain way. They tend to like each other. Oba it’s because some get lost in our work and think they’re women like us. Oba it’s a flaw in our maker’s process? Nange simanyi. I’d have answers if the Man upstairs didn’t serially leave people on read. Just know, my beautiful Kwagala was cooking with co-husbands as well. Don’t let a man stain you. Byebyo!
Kyase brings, and drops more girls. Hhmm! I see they’ve also brought the big girls. They haven’t been making them for long. Back then, they’d get girls like me, use folded leftover fabric and yellow masking tape to give them bums and hips. We called them Birabwa. They did well on the market. The funny thing was, some of the women buying the dresses the Birabwas wore, were also wearing fabric hips. Aha! We are trendsetters my girls, never forget. Nowadays they bring these disproportionately curvy girls. I’ve heard women from America pay to look like that. Mbu it’s done by surgery. It’s called BBL oba BLL, actually I think it’s LLB. My ladies who’re like me, empty your hearts of envy. That one on the balcony across the street is Nagwano. The brownness eating her black dress is not a fashion. Those are years of dust and the walloping from this unrelenting sun. When Nagwano first arrived, she floated in the air. Ate ba’ curvy mama, manya thick girls, mbu full figure. Heeeh! *clicks tongue* She thought she’d sell dresses like crazy, but I tell you what? Even here, where women are naturally curved, where they don’t need LLBs to be shaped like a wasp, she’s there forgotten, gliding into retirement. This may be the thickness era but remember, where is Nagwano and her bums?
Speaking of black sheep, there are these bu-girls and boys that come striking different poses. Some are sitting, others be as if running. The running ones are for sportswear shops. Did I add they come in different colors; some are as silver as mirror, others golden like a new five hundred shillings coin. Then there are the charcoal black ones. Ho! You can imagine. They pose in LC Waikiki, they’re all you see in the Adidas shop at Acacia Mall. What happened to nondiscrimination? Employment that doesn’t see color? All of a sudden everything black is beautiful. Black panther movie, Black is King album, charcoal Colgate, Geisha black soap– All lives matter! The spices end up in high-end boutiques. They’re some sort of ornaments, flashing around. They’re used in photo shoots and videos. They must think they’re black panthers. They ooze of attitude while they’re still here. They think they’re better than us. Swaggering behind the large glass windows of Kampala Boulevard along Kampala Road. As if we don’t know that they don’t sell because the price tags on their clothes is the monthly salary of lawyers, accountants, bank tellers and most formal sector people. Why would anyone spend their rent, yaka, water bill and drinking money to buy Adidas when we, here show them how good they can look in Abibas? All those girls get is window shopping. I don’t blame customers for ogling at them like they’re frozen monkeys in the museum. My new girls, why covet those statues? Look at me. What don’t you see? No one on Ben Kiwanuka or anywhere is buying a dress until they see it on a woman like me. Everyone in the fashion business knows. You’ll see the girl who brings our boss lunch. Her face is yellow from mercury creams but the hands that carry the food are her true color. She always gawks at me like looking like me is the elixir to all her problems. Even the boss’ malaya glances at me whenever she comes around. Though not with an open mouth. Boss tells his madam that she’s one of the blockers who find him customers to buy us. If madam boss believed him, she wouldn’t be locking herself with Kyase in the store room every Thursday morning when boss has not yet come in. What do I know. At least boss’ money can afford the malaya expensive creams that have turned her uniformly yellow. What these women won’t do to look like me is what I can’t name. No one burns their skin to look like those colored dummies. They’re uptown posturing. Most of their professed designer clothes are bought here, taken up there and their prices are quadrupled. They’re fleecing their customers for being too snobbish to come down this side. Sometimes I sympathize with those snobs. Besides the heat, noise and miasma, our buildings look like children’s drawings. Who cares about architectures anyway? We’re here on business. All our Masaka tycoon landlords need is a concrete box divided into plenty of cubicles to make them billions. Do you know the actual rent is double what they put on the rent receipts they send to URA so that they can pay less taxes? And why should URA care when it can squeeze all the taxes out of us for the embezzlers to increase their salaries, and siphon our hard-earned cash to build their baby upcoming thieves generational wealth. Import duty, excise duty, VAT, small business tax and others whose names I don’t remember. After we’ve sweated and milked ourselves to pay whatever tax they’ve invented, KCCA locks our shops to demand its trading licence taxes. Naye we have suffered. Either way, like a lone pimple gently pressed on to disappear but never burst due to fear, we persist. Kampala ya kuyiriba. Expect men groping you. That’s the one thing the uptown girls have on us. They pose behind large glass windows; condomed from men’s filthy hands. Here, every dog will quench its thirst with you. Their grabby eyes will undress you. Flinch not my girls. You are strong African women. Such shouldn’t faze you. You’ll need a steady supply of tears to endure business in Kampala. Your mental health matters. But selling clothes is paramount. Though it’s getting hard in this economy. Illegal roadside vendors are stealing our customers. They prefer scouring cheap mivumba (second hand clothes) by the roadside instead of entering plazas to buy from us. Those customer snatchers don’t know they’re on borrowed time. My daily prayers will soon be answered. Since they’re so audacious and can sell from anywhere, they won’t mind selling their cheapies from prison.
Before I let you go with those small words, a crucial point heaves in my mind. These are the times. It is better unuttered so I’ll whisper it. To not caution you against this, is to hate you. It is to abandon your young impressionable minds to the itching clutches of the devil. Even our dear government is fighting it. Remember Ssendi and his ways? Kati there are girls like Ssendi who like their fellow… Ho! I weep for where our country is heading. I said avoid boys, not emulate them. We’re sisters. Let’s be there for one another and not see each other through male eyes. Lest we ruin the sisterhood, crumble and grow bitter like Kwagala ne Nagwano, and every girl who didn’t heed to my words, missed my blessings, and is suffering wherever they are. They’re out there hating on men because they want to be equal to men. Why can’t women stay women and men men? Suddenly, everyone thinks they can choose to be anything they feel like. Stay away from those…what is the word? Hhmmm. How should I say this? These things are so despicable, I’d rather bite off my tongue and spit it there. But duty before self demands I set aside my prejudice. For you young bloods, the future of our country, and for our morals. Stay away from those imitators. They do our work but aren’t us, some of them come when they’re half; from the waist downwards, they sell skirts and jeans. Some are modified or transformed, whichever. Others are just the bust, those ones sell bras. My darling headless girls are not in that group. Not them, only the other ones I’ve mentioned. They think…no, in fact they call themselves women. They’ve convinced some of us into calling them women. My girls, don’t be cooked, only we are women! Our togetherness and struggles are for women! They’re others who are like us, full from head to toes. I’ve heard they call them sex dolls. Men buy them. Those malayas are not part of us. I repeat, the halves and holes are not part of us! If this heat can almost melt you, do you doubt what Gehenna will do to you? Byebyo ebyange! What have I denied you? Saagala saawulidde mbu saategedde. That means I don’t want to hear anyone say they didn’t hear or that they didn’t know. Don’t worry, you’ll learn Luganda in no time. It’s the easiest language. Mukulike amakubo, welcome to Ben Kiwanuka Street.
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Image: MS Co-Pilot AI remixed