Perhaps the breakfast show presenter on my favourite radio station can shed some light on why this is. His basic point, in analogy, was that two participants are required to perform a famous Argentine dance. Just as every goat must have his goatee, every corrupter must have his corruptee. When Joe Mpublic is stopped by a police officer for speeding, he may choose to admit his guilt and go through the normal procedures, which will cost him 100,000 shillings, or he may choose to fund a beer at the officer’s bar of choice, which will cost him fifty times less. But what he needs to realise is that in opting for the latter, he instantly forfeits his right to complain about the corruption in his country.
Friendometer
My workmate Martin’s fellow accountancy students had a beach party to celebrate the end of their exams a couple of weekends back, and I was given the great honour of an invitation. Needless to say I accepted – the opportunity to see how accountants go about the business of a beach party was just too good to resist. And yes – when I got there, lo and behold, they were sat in the shade playing scrabble. I haven’t even made that up.
I was supposed to be posing as an accountant, which owing to almost a year of being inflicted with Martin’s vast lexicon of accountancy jargon wasn’t actually that hard. “The amortisation of the prudency has led to the suspended liability of the compound assets of the consolidation of the income and expenditure cycle” left the real accountants lost in admiration.
The venue, at least, was spiced up by the decaying carcasses of two Idi Amin era passenger jets, which provided a great opportunity for regression to boyhood as Martin and I challenged each other to scale the dizzy heights of the fuselage, before terrifying the ladies by jumping on the wing and making the entire plane shake.
The event served as an atypical but worthy introduction to Uganda for my good friend Laura and her very kind boyfriend Ben, who had flown in on a moderately more modern jet that very afternoon. I wasn’t sure whether I was more pleased to see them or the cheese they brought for me. Hang on, what am I saying? Of course it was the cheese.
Close Encounters of the Intestinal Kind. Warning: story unsuitable for those with delicate stomachs.
I awoke at dawn the next morning with a much displeased alimentary canal, which was keen to expel its contents via all available emergency exits. As if having copious streams of effluent emerging from both orifices wasn’t unpleasant enough, the undigested remains of the previous night’s meal were perfectly unwilling to disappear down the sink, where they’d ended up owing to the toilet bowl being occupied by other things at the time of evacuation. On any other day I would have slunked off back to bed and tackled the problem once in better health, but on this particular occasion I had two esteemed guests staying in the adjacent room, and wasn’t sure that a pool of stale vomit would make a very pleasant accompaniment to their morning shower. So despite my illness, I had to get under the sink with my plumber’s wrench, wrestle off the U-bend, and fish out several satisfyingly gooey fingerfuls of someone else’s hair, which had made a highly effective net to trap the larger globules of my belly’s unwanted meal. It’s a good job I’m not squeamish. Sorry if you are.
In other medical notes, my passing reference to tuberculosis in my last entry sent my mother into a whirligig of panic, so for the sake of my father, who had to bear the brunt of this, I promised to visit one of Kampala’s quacks. I chose one of the highest repute I could find, but of course he came with the highest price tag too. As I had predicted, he told me it was just a cough (duh), and sent me away with some medicine that is ‘made from the lungs of dead birds in Thailand’ – or that was what he insisted I relate to my mother.
Competition time
It seems that the fable of the chameleon and the shoebill stork has polarised the readership, with those who ‘get it’ on one side, and those who are trying too hard to ‘get it’ on the other. So it is with all cutting-edge, avant-garde artistic movements. If you’re in the latter group and wish to move into the former, all you need to do is resign yourself to the elusive conclusion that the whole thing was nothing more than an elaborate way to ask you which photo you preferred.
The return of the scoreboard
My Dad gets a point for being the only reader to care about democracy, my cousin Eleanor gets one for getting her friend to spell-check my entire blog, and Laura and Ben (who are now one person) get two – one for the cheddar and one for the gouda. If this seems unjust, then be assured that you can also earn points handsomely by ensuring I receive further consignments of cheese by whichever means seem practicable.
Nigel’s Dad 3
Volunteer Jo 3
Ben R 2
Nigel’s Mum 2
Uncle Simon and the Family Hipps 2
Laura and Ben 1
Julia 1
Nigel’s Gran 1
Brother David 1
Phil 1
Mr Ibbs 1
Suzanna 1
Charlotte 1
Cousin Eleanor 1
