Of Unstirred Martinis and Beautiful Women

I have done little else since Friday evening than try to watch all the James Bond films (the official ones anyway). I have only managed to watch 8 and a half, which leaves me 11 and a half to go.

It all started when I found out that a friend of my housemate had a collection of all 20 movies on DVD and I convinced my housemate to borrow them so that I’d finally be able to say I have watched all the Bond movies.

I have been a Bond fan since that day when my old man came home with our first VCR and with it Live and Let Die. From then on the debonair spy would become one of my favourite movie characters of all time.

I started with the 3 I hadn’t watched before Thunderball, Goldfinger and Licence to Kill and as I made my through them I started realising some things I had never taken note of before, mostly because I watched my first 13 Bond movies between 1985 and 1989. Back then I was easily impressed and things like plot, dialogue and elements of cinematography were not of much interest to me.
             
But over the weekend I kept wondering why most Bond fans think Sean Connery is the best Bond ever (I prefer Rodger Moore). I also realised that the Bond franchise needed the changes it underwent in the six year hiatus between Licence to Kill and GoldenEye. For one the portrayal of the Bond girls in the earlier movies of the 60s and 70s just wouldn’t fly today. For starters all of them fall for the guy as soon as they lay eyes on him, they might turn on him and attempt to put a steel blade through his ribcage later but he will have had his way with them by then.
                                                                   
I remembered a grimy and unshaven Pierce Brosnan leaving the North Korean Prison in Die Another Day and I compared him to the first two bonds who never had a hair out of place even at the worst of times (in Diamonds are Forever Sean Connery’s bond barely survives cremation by a matter of seconds, but gets out of the confine unfazed and with hair and crease line neatly in place.
                                                                                                          
I should be done by Friday and I want to make my own “Best of” series, while I wait for Casino Royale latter this year.
                                           
Right now though, I am trying to figure out which theme song I like more Sheena Easton’s For Your Eyes Only, Gladys Knight’s Licence to Kill

Just for Just

Being the lazy guy that I am, I never do anything unless I really have to. As such I never iron 
anything unless I am going to wear it right after.  I have now become used to  acertain pattern
 in the loadshedding schedule and I know on which days to iron an extra shirt for that morning when there will be no electricty.

Somebody somewhere turned everything on its head and yesterday morning I woke up to an electricity free flat. I mmediately knew I was in trouble because the only two clean "office" shirts were so creased they looked like they had just been spat out by a cow that had decided it didnt like how they tasted after chewing on them for a while.

I ended up going to work in a shirt with a few of those African designs on them- I had decided to bring the casual friday a day forward.  I kept getting odd looks at the office but surprisingly nobody questioned my choice of shirt. It wasn't until later while at steakout for the rock night that everyone I met was asking if I was on leave or something.

From now on its mass ironing for me. Anybody know a cheap dhobi?

I have read many technology reviews and many sites have interesting writers but nothing has amused me more than the guys at niggaknow. Its not so much for the reviews but for the language and the humour. Granted the language is rather explicit and somewhat racist if you are white or asian, but I found it funny using hardcore ghetto slang to review the tech.

Speaking of tech. Apparently Ugandans do use the WAP services on their mobile phones. I was surprised to learn that many Ugandans access the beeb on their cellphones (considering the small number of Ugandans
 with cellphones (saying nothing about those with WAP enabled sets).

Any of you believe in time travel? Is world war 3 starting in 2015? A chap called John Titor told us it will when he dropped in from 2036 looking for some 1975 IBM PC for some kind of research in his time. After acquiring what he wanted, he dicides to check out the years and landed in 2001 and started dropping all sorts of predictions on the future on many forums and chatrooms. Even had sketches of his time machine and all. Check out this site dedicated to his predictions and this wiki that puts it in perspective. I say it was a damn fine hoax.

Enough randomness for now. Gots to get back to the future work.

Its an anniversary

I have just realised that it is exactly one year since I stumbled upon blogger, opened an account and made my first post on this third rate blog. Why I chose Inzikuru as the subject of my first post and not some “hi I’m Jay and welcome to my new blog” kind of post, I can’t recall.

Blogging has since become a major part of my life and checking out my blogroll everyday has become a near addiction. It’s amazing how something that I knew nothing about before 10/8/2005 has quickly become a part of regular activities.

At first I thought I was a lone Ugandan sailing the vast sea that is the blogosphere until another sail picked up my message in a bottle and responded with urls of other blogs that had been around longer. Thanks Ivan.

Now I have a whole lot of blog friends and acquaintances, many of whom I probably pass on the streets many times without knowing (probably just as well for them). Some of the bloggers I have met have been philosophical, poetic, analytic, lyrical, angry, soulful, scandalous, odd, clinically insane etc.

I now have my on nook of the net to put down whatever is on my mind and it is great. I get to write stuff in a way a like at my leisure while enjoying the experience before I sit back and wait to see how people respond.

Heck, this blogging business has even got me on the BBC site (looking around smugly).

Next stop: My Own Website. Though I don’t think my lazy ass can keep one going.

Any Stasibasiphobes in the house?

While trying to get some light to the dark and murky place that is my mind by way of my trusty friend google it dawned on me that I am not as messed up as I had earlier imagined. There are a some really troubled souls out there judging from some of the disorders and phobias I have come across.

Think of any irrational fear of anything and somebody somewhere probably has it and it will have a medical name. This guy has a list of all manner of phobias.

While reading throughthe list, I wonder why anybody would be dendrophobic (afraid of trees) -except for hobbit lost in the Fangorn Forest. But then, phobias are not logical.

I would think being afraid of being buried alive (taphophobia) is normal and those 
who are not should be the troubled ones. 

If any of you answered yes to the title of this post I suggest you jump of a not-too-high building and land strategically as to carefully break you spine that way you will become paraplegic and you wont have to be afraid of walking or standing up anymore.

Getting the movie. Then and Now

  The proliferation of bootleg DVDs of very new movies (many of which are still showing in the cinemas) got me thinking of how far Uganda has come in terms of accessing the latest entertainment. My mind went back over the years, thinking over how things have really changed.

I can’t say I remember when I watched my first movie, although the earliest clear memory I have of a movie is of Clint Eastwood’s A Fist full of Dollars which I must have watched around 1983/4 at an aunties place. Back then I wasn’t sure whether it was TV or not.

We got our first VCR (along with the first colour TV) in 1985 and with it came 3 movies Live and Let Die, Assault on Precinct 13 and All Quiet on the Western Front. Owning a VCR meant having a constant supply of tapes to feed it. This is where the problems begun. The likes of Darlyne and Inktus might not believe that there was a time when there was no real Movie Library in Kampala (and Uganda for that matter).

I remember my old man used to bring home tapes with the words Whittaker’s (or some such name) video library written on them. Now before you start saying “but I thought there were no video Libraries” let me explain.

Mr. Whittaker (if there was ever any such person) had come up with the ingenious idea of having his friends in the UK record stuff for him off the telly, which they could send over to be lent out to the likes of Jay’s dad. But because the recording was off TV and the people doing the recording probably just set the timer and headed on down to the pub, the tapes would come with commercial breaks, public service announcements, breaking news etc. We would go some minutes into a movie like the Far Pavilions and have a ketchup ad thrown in before reverting to the “regularly scheduled programming”. Something like that would probably piss me off now but I was six at the time and even the ads were fun.

The other good thing about these tapes was that Mr. Whittaker felt that the entire 180 minutes of the tape had to be filled. Along with every movie came a few episodes of some sitcom or series. These were mostly british programmes like Fawlty Towers, Not the 9:00 o’clock news, Top of the Pops etc. and sometimes the American series like Miami Vice (somehow I do not see Collin Farrel and Jamie Foxx, in the soon-to-be-released movie, having the kind of chemistry Don Johnson and Phillip Michael Thomas had in the TV series)

Thanks to Mr. Whittaker I developed a love for British TV, which has remained to this day.

We moved to Jinja in January of 1987 by which time VCRs had spread all over the land and the movie rental business had started developing. We soon became members of Bashir's Video Library, which was next to Town Talkies video hall.

Bashir did have the movies (the proper ones without commercial breaks) but the problem was the variety wasn’t that great. The movies were generally categorised thus;

-“You kill my father now I kill you too” old style Kung Fu flicks with titles like Snake in the Monkey’s Shadow. Closely related were the latter day versions of previously mentioned flicks. High-octane Hong Kong martial arts kickfests all based on the same cop drama/revenge script Police Story.

-Vietnam flicks. You remember the type where some badass GI would mow down a whole battalion of Gooks (their words) and not somehow not get hit by a single bullet shot at him. Case in point, Leathernecks.

-Those good old shoot ‘em up plotless B-Movies with titles like Exterminator.

On top of that the newest movie was two years old.

Did we mind? Heck no. That is until we were watching the movies faster than Bashir could stock them up. One thing I remember that stood out of place at Bashir’s was 30 something tapes of Dallas (they just didn’t fit in with the rest). We watched them all and this was the interesting Dallas (up to the point Jr Ewing dies). It’s funny when you consider that all that can now fit on one DVD.

By now the eighties were ending and we were back in Kampala. The good news was that real video libraries were opening up like Bimbo and Ripples (which was the video library to be a member of), but the bad news was that the membership and borrowing fees were way to high. This led to the emergence of a coordinated network of lending and borrowing movies among friends.

If person x had that movie you had to watch like Terminator 2, Rambo 3 or Die Hard you had to find him an equally interesting movie or trade him something just as cool (like an Asterix/Tintin comic book, The Newest Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew novel). Lunchtime at the Rocks in Kitante was the time most of these exchanges could go down. It had the feel of some kind of stock exchange with young boys haggling over what movie was worthy to be exchanged for another or one guy promising to lend movie to another for an extra day on condition that a certain comic book was thrown into the bargain.

It wasn’t long before the Ugandans hooked up with bootleggers from around the world and swamped the market with the latest VHS movies there were to offer. Soon the bootlegged copies started getting bootlegged and every other neighbourhood had a video lib stacked with 5th and 6th generation bootlegged VHS tapes.

Then there came the shortlived VCDs followed by the DVDs. Since these days everybody and their uncle has a DVD player, VHS has all but disappeared. The DVDs are ubiquitous on the streets of Kampala and boy are they cheap. For the price of an “original” tape of back in the day you can have yourself 5 full-length movies on one DVD. Nowadays the only movies you cannot get in Kampala are those you have a hard time finding in regular outlets anywhere in the world.

Kitante Petition

Some of the almuni (like yours truly), friends, parents and wellwishers of Kitante Primary School are seeking signitures for a petition preventing the the illegal apportioning of the School's land. If you feel the cause follow this link and add your signiture to the petition.

For those of you who might have gone through Kitante Primary School try and imagine no cops and robbers "in the rocks" and all the other games that could only be enjoyed because there was enough space to run around. Those of us who went through the school when corporal punishment was the norm might have also wished that that bamboo grove by the Museum fence had never existed but this wouldn't have been the way to get rid of it.

Car trouble: Two words you won't hear from Jay in a long time

 The gods have conspired yet again to prevent me from ever owning an automobile. Just when I was putting together the last bits of the ingenious scheme that would somehow get me to purchase a car out of the loose change that is inappropriately called my salary, cars are about to get really expensive (the used ones anyway).

Actually, between you and me, I am smiling inside. Now I have another excuse to give those who keep asking me why I do not have a car. That’s not cause enough for a smile, I hear some of you say. Just hang on a second.

I am the only guy my age I know who has almost no interest in owning a car. The only times I get to wishing I had a ride are:

a) When there is that ballistic date looming and I know I have well nigh to no future with said date if I do not pull up to her crib behind the wheel of a car (preferably a fancy one).
b) When I have over indulged in the pleasures that are only to be found in Club Pilsner and a quick account balance inquiry (hand in pocket) reveals I have only 5,000 and the cheapest taxi cab to Bugolobi is 10,000 and everyone I know who owns a car seems to have vanished.

However these two scenarios are not that common because, being somewhat socially dysfunctional (if this phrase means something other than what I think it means, don’t tell me), I do not date that often and when I do my dates do not mind sharing the comfort of the 100s of “specials” I part own (by virtue of regular use). I have also developed a nearly superhuman ability to keep tabs on my dimes even at my most inebriated (granted sometimes barmaids ‘forget’ to give me my change or threaten to call Mukiibi, the barrel-chested bouncer, if I don’t stop accusing them of cheating me of change).

I have no problem using the blue-striped taxis and I do not go through the agony of my housemate when cash is tight and he has to part with 20k for 3 days worth (curtailed movements and all) of premium petrol.

Besides having read the, ridiculously few, minimum number of Club Pilsners that can set off a breathalyser, I do not think I would be using my car on weekend evenings when I need it the most.

Museveni has done it again

Museveni has just offered another investor prime property in the city without the courtesy of consulting or informing the major stakeholders. Is it just me or is our President's dishing out of public land getting out of hand.

For all the reasons I had for wanting Kaguta's son out of State House in February, my major peeve with him is how he micromanages everything and the way he is running the country like a personal homestead. He is convinced(actually tries to convince everyone) that nobody else has the the good of the country at heart and therefore he has to perform the thankless task of being in charge of everything-setting university tuition fees, deciding who builds where, offering land to investors (99 year leases and all) et cetera. What hubris!!

The thing that ticks me off most is not so much that the land was offered to an investor (to build an IVF clinic) but the fact that everything was done as a personal directive from the president.The Uganda Investment was directed to facilitate the process. Kitante Primary School, The Ministry of Education (Kitante is a public school) and other actors like the land board were not consulted.

And some people wonder why some of us never believe in his "one more term to consolidate achievements and strengthen institutions" speeches.

Its bad enough that all the wetlands around the city are being gobbled up by bigshots in connivance with corrupt City officials, but having a President who seems intent on ridding Kampala of any open spaces is a bit scary.

Land belonging to, a national broadcaster, two of the biggest free primary schools in the city, a public park and God knows what else, all given away just like that. Its just not right.

Where is this? K'la back in the day

These are pictures of K'la back in the day. I'd like you guys to tell me from which parts of town they are and what is there now (if anything has been changed).

Uganda Oyee. 2 out of 3 aint bad

It has been a weekend of mixed results sportswise for yours truly.

On the world cup front England was sent packing after a penalty shootout with Portugal. This was bad news for me because as I have indicated somewhere in these pages I have been a supporter of the English team for years now.

In an attempt to get away from the England-haters that were making my life miserable at the Kampala rugby club I decided to relocate to quieter environs to watch the France-Brazil match hoping that the samba boys would be sent packing (I am one of a minority of people who do not feel Brazil, but its for reasons outside their football prowess). Les Bleus did not disappoint and they beat Brazil. I was one of the few very happy people at the end of the match, which "cost" me some friends (people do get overly emotional about football).

The win brought back memories of the 1998 World Cup final where I was one of a handful of France supporters in my local pub. I got into an altercation with a (very drunk) Rwandese patron, who had spent the whole match calling the French "genocidaires", when I told him to lose gracefully and leave irrelevant politics out of football.

HOWEVER, the highlight was being present to watch the grand mauling the Cote d'ivoire rugby team suffered at the hands of the Rugby Cranes (Uganda's national rugby team) at Kyadondo Rugby Football Club on saturday. The scoreline stood at 30-7 by the time the final whistle was blown. This brings Uganda a small step closer to qualifying for the rugby world cup in France next year.

A lot of work still has to be done considering we have a very poor away record (the cranes had lost to Morroco 36-3 a few weeks earlier). But considering the Ivorians held Morroco to a 9-9 draw in Abidjan recently, we stand a chance of putting on a better show against the Morrocans when they visit this sunny city in September.

Uganda wins, France wins and England loses.

Like they say 2 out of three aint bad.

Its official, Kony is nuts

Joseph Kony has just granted an interview to a British journalist in which he claims that everything he does, he does on behalf of the spirits. The spirits guide him and give him instructions.

Its at time like this that I wish I had the powers to order an all out carpet bombing of his hideouts (which are known) and have this holy spirit rebellion business done with.

If the spirits give orders that lead to the suffering of thousands then I say we silence the medium.

For their sake, at least.

Better Luck Next time

The Black Stars have proved they can tussle it out with the best. See you in SA in 2010.

Does anybody else feel that the refereeing could have been better?

Finally

Finally the template change is done. Still a few things to sort out though.

What do you guys think.

More blog problems and other World Cup issues

 I am still trying to change my template and I thought , what the heck, while I am at it let style the whole thing up. unfortunately my knowledge of HTML is only as old as my knowledge of blogger (very limited). Therefore I do not want to run the risk of screwing stuff up.

Hopefully by tomorrow everything will be all right.

P.S. I am in a bit of a quandary here. Ecuador and England are going to meet in the second round. Ecuador, I want to proceed for reasons I have already expressed. England has been a team I have supported consinstently for as long as I can remember (except for a while after the 1990 world cup, when they "stole" the semi-final from Cameroon- I still curse Gary Lineker to this day).

I guess it will be like whenever I try to play chess or cards alone. I always end up playing for one of the "two" sides against the other.

Disclaimer: This was not posted with the intention of having Savage slit his wrists. It is the World Cup season and inevitably these things occupy most people's (scratch that) men's minds.

Blog Problems?

I inserted a background picture sometime back but it only appears in the preview and not on the blog page. I was surprised therefore when LA said that it was killing his eyes. Carlo also mentioned that she cannot read complete posts on my blog because they cut off before the end.

Since I do not notice any of these maybe something is weird with my blog when viewed from other computers. If there is anyone who has any problem viewing this blog let me know so that I can make whatever changes that are neccesary.

Football Racism?

This is not about Samuel Eto’o being insulted by hooligan fans or about black players having bananas hurled at them while they are on the pitch. It is about me and what role race plays in my making a decision to support a team. I will almost always support a team that is fully or majority black against a team that is not. Does that make me racist? I guess it does in a way.

International tournaments like the world cup are the ones that always bring this out in me the most. I have done little else over the past few days but watch the world cup and except for England (which I have a particular soft spot for) all the other teams I have supported vigorously have been dominated by black players.

My Ivorian chaps went and put up a great fight but fell to the Argentines after playing the better game and being victims of a dodgy offside goal. Earlier on the Andean brothers from Equador had humbled Poland. Then came the soccer warriors from Trinidad and Tobago who held Sweden to a goalless draw when everybody thought that they were going to get thrashed thoroughly. The Angolans also lost gallantly against their former colonial masters Portugal, who were expected to use Angola as a practise session for their meeting with Mexico. I can barely wait for the Ghanaians to take on the Azzuris tonight.

Like I was saying, all the teams I have supported above are made up mostly of black players and that is essentially why I supported them. The fact that they were playing teams I can find no reason for supporting may also be part of the reason. That I automatically decide I am going to support Ecuador, yet I have never seen them play outside the world cup beats me.

Every time I am pondering these issues I come across information that just makes me understand why. Take the Ecuadorians for example. Black Ecuadorians have for years lived on the fringes of society and are by far the poorest of the various groups in that country. They have been kept in that state by a kind of institutionalised racism that favours the white and Mestizo (mixed white and Indian) population. However, in 2002 when the predominantly black national team qualified for the world cup, everybody was falling over themselves to identify with the team. This publicity has in a small way made the previously “invisible” minority visible and slowly a few doors are being opened for them.

The same can be said about other black minorities. The fact that their brothers are doing well on the sports scene gives them a reason to be proud (think of the French world cup winning team of 1998). Something positive to claim as theirs after suffering daily racism and being painted as lazy, criminally-minded types that are a strain to other harder working members of society (think of the French world cup winning team of 1998). This applies almost everywhere from Brazil to England to Holland. The Black guys on the pitch are the heroes of their people.

Therefore, if sometimes I tend to support all the African teams regardless maybe its because I want them to go out there and win one for the continent. Let the headlines be positive for Africa for a few days at least.

So am I racist or is there a better term for my “condition”?

Friday night with Richard Pryor

For once in a very long time I was at home on a Friday evening and the odd thing was that I was comfortable and I didn't feel like I was missing out on the usual Friday "fun".

The reason for this unlikely state of affiars was a chance meeting with a DVD hawker, which resulted in me purchasing Richard Pryor's (RIP) "Live from the sunset strip" video concert. The hawker couldn't imagine why somebody would be interested in something he had been carrying around for ages and he practically gave it to me for free, considering it was original (I kept wondering who he might have pilfered it from and I felt a bit guilty). Those of you who live in Kampala might understand how hard it is to get such "non-mainstream" DVDs (without parting with 10% of your salary that is).

I first encountered Richard Pryor in Brewster's Millions when I was about 10 and for years his movies with Gene Wilder were some of my favourite. Later, when I discovered stand up comedy, I discovered that many of the famous stand up comedians of today and the past (Eddie Murphy, Whoopi Goldberg, Dave Chappelle etc) were inspired by Pryor.

Pryor pioneered the in-your-face, honestly vulgar brand of stand up that has become the norm for many Africa-American standup comics. Stand up that is replete with the F-word and has a no-holds-barred take on subject matter. He was the first comedian to openly use the word nigger in his routine and he got a lot of flak for that.

While watching his 1982 concert on DVD I understood why he was at one point considered the funniest man in America. His honest self denigrating style is endearing. His routine on how he set himself on fire while freebasing is so funny yet it should be a sad testament to a life of excesses and self destructive addictions.

Pryor uses the search for his roots and identity to great comic effect. He describes his trip to Africa and how it opened up his eyes. After seeing black people going about their lives as bankers, diplomats, polticians (and drunks too) in their own countries, he vowed never to call any other black person nigger.

I will be watching the DVD many times again and I plan to start scouring all the bootlegging joints for any other such gems that they might ignorantly be too eager to dispose of.

I can see where you live

I dowloaded google earth a while back but I had not really checked it out until just now and I think I have found me another reason not to leave this laptop. Google earth lets you zoom in on virtually any location on earth and for the most part the pictures are of good resolution.

I have just taken a virtual tour of Kampala and its been quite interesting.

Check out Nakivubo/Newpark Area and Queens clock tower.

I just might be getting the layout of where one of you guys lives.

Mombao snaps

Mes amis
On a chiller atop das boot
Little fishies as seen through the glass floor of the boat. That trip kinda freaked me out coz i seen all them shark movies and the black guy never makes it.

Got to busy pinting and nearly got swallowed up by the tide covering the sand bar in the ocean

ooops

Arrival in Nairobi


I am somewhere in the snaps. Lets see who will point me out (under no obligation to deny or confirm).

Might put up more if i can get my formerly trusty dell to stop acting up. This internet cafe business is taking to long.

Living it up in Mombasa 2

Mombasa’s south coast is a truly magnificent place to get away to and unwind. The fact that it is mostly rural means it is very peaceful, idyllic and beautiful.

On the way to the hotel we passed a few small hamlets and sleepy towns where nobody seemed to be in a hurry. These people must be used to shuttle buses filled with tourists, otherwise I do not see how, considering the near absence of vehicular traffic, a bus full of rowdy singing young fellows could be treated with such indifference.

We were booked into the Alliance hotel. Actually it is three hotels that share the same strip of coastline and are under the same management. The Alliance Jardini hotel and the Alliance Safari hotel are you typical modern hotels, but our hotel the Alliance Africana Sea Lodge was somewhat different. It was made up of (Bandas) Cottages that had a bit of a homely feel to them.

To say that the days went by to fast would be a bit of an understatement because either I was living it up ‘til the wee hours or I was dozing off during the plenary sessions. The activities organised ensured that there was no time to get bored.

The thing about such conferences is that you can be sure that the current host wants to outdo the previous one, and the Mombasans went all out. I had never had of an all night open bar for close to 1,000 people but that is exactly what I experienced on the welcoming night at the Neptune Paradise Hotel.

The taps flowed all night and the guests’ attempts to dry them were all but futile. Throw into the mix a Barcelona Vs Arsenal champions league final and you know that things were bound to get heated. This was the second time that I was watching a champion’s league final this far from home. Like the last time I wasn’t really bothered who would win, which is not what I can say about all the people around me. As it turned down the majority of chaps were on the losing side and the poor beer kegs had to pay for their foul moods. Suffice it to say that when the bus came to pick up those of us who were not staying at the Neptune, quite a number had lost all sense of coherence and balance.

There is something about people that makes them undergo major transformations when they are away from home. This I bring up for a number of reasons, the main one being that I noticed that a number of fellows who are ordinarily calm and reserved whilst in our sunny town had metamorphosed into drinking (admittedly only soft drinks like Smirnoff ice, tusker malt lager and white cap) skirt-chasing fellows. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that girlfriends and nosy prying workmates were not around. Or maybe it was all the nubile young females that took the proximity to the beach as an excuse to dress as skimpily as is legally allowed.

I wouldn’t go as far as saying that there was an atmosphere of reckless abandon but I wouldn’t be far from the truth. It seems some chaps were on a mission to get laid as many times and with as many different people as possible. Soon some of us, whose ambitions did not go further than making lasting acquaintances with the barmen and the occasional late night skinny-dipping in the pool start to look out of place.

A word of advise my young unworldly friends (yeah right I hear you say). If ever in a situation where everything around you is appealing and you feel you want it all, calm the hell down and strategise properly. This one chap was laying on the lyrics to a girl one minute and talking to another girl the next. This left a number of less than amused lasses who fell for the charms of the more attentive hyenas lurking in the shadows. At the end of the evening Sir Wanderalot was left to nurse a pint while cursing his buddies for daring to busu (his words) him.

I did manage to make an interesting observation, a few of the Kampala ladies who ordinarily tend to treat me only slightly better than they would treat what the proverbial cat tends to drag around started saying hi more often and asking why I wasn’t playing water polo with them. Trust competition to bring on such a change. With all the hot-blooded young lads running after the equally hot-blooded Kenyan University students and trying to woo the hot Ethiopians, albeit with little success (Ethiopian guys can tight mark like a problem), some people were feeling decidedly ignored. Being the magnanimous chap, I decided to make their Mombasa sojourn more interesting (things are a bit awkward now that we are back home).

So it was always the same around the pool and the beach during the afternoon and around the pool and the hotel discothèque every evening. Friendships being made and strengthened, international goodwill and understanding being promoted and general merrymaking all over.

I know the “major” reason for attending was to conference, but a quick perusal of the programme told me that the beach was going to win out on the conference hall most of the time. The talk on stock options as a means of saving was immediately thrown out because I have nothing to save. I felt I could probably give a better talk on youth and sexuality so I passed. Public speaking I attended just to give time to housekeeping to do their job. I only attended the technical rotary stuff because somebody felt that as an incoming director I had to prepare some kind of report.

It’s a pity I never got to go back to the north coast to visit the town properly, but I cannot say I really regret it. There was more than enough to keep a brother busy in our little nook of paradise. There will always be next time and the having been bitten by the Mombasa bug. It won’t be long before I am back.