‘All roads lead to Kololo today’ – said a headline in one of the dailies.
What's Kololo? I asked someone. ‘Kororo’ they said ‘is the name of the military airbase favored by Museveni for his parades’.
In Kampala, a traffic collision was sometimes also a tlaffic corrision.

It was ‘National Resistance Movement’ day – a national holiday, and a Thursday. It was one of those days, common to many African countries, where the leaders decided that a day was needed to commemorate themselves. It was also an occasion for the president to have a military parade.  Tanks roared past, fighter bombers flew overhead, the president saluted – some people waved and stuck out their thumbs. 

The city was empty.  The main street resembled a desolate movie set.  Rain had sprinkled briefly in the area of the city center, washing its face - the pavements had a swept, forsaken look about them.  Only the territorial cripples who begged on strategic street corners seemed to be around. A few shops had stayed open – displaying mobile phones and the latest designer-wear second-hand clothes. 

Kampala seemed a city without events – this despite the delirious rush-hour traffic, the busy markets, roadside prayer meetings and the endless political debates for the elections next month.  A general world-weariness was apparent in Kampala – it was as if everything had happened here – yet, nothing at all.

So, when someone remarked upon the rampant depravity in the night clubs – I wanted to go there. 

Nile avenue along the Speke hotel usually turned busy by late evening – the prostitutes unmistakable for their tight skirts, high heels and loaded undertones (‘hi honey…wanna fuck?!?’).  They were normally in groups of twos or threes - hovering and posturing along the sidewalk, fidgeting like the marabou storks, which prowled Nile Avenue during the daytime. If you sat at a solitary table in the hotel's garden restaurant – some of the girls would unfailingly sashay past – the classier ones recognizable, not by their clothes but by their unflinching gaze.   Stylized eye contact was the key. 

Club Rouge (next to the boarded up train station) was filled with plenty of diffused red light – and was empty.

Club Al Zawadi was a disappointment – it was a hotdog restaurant selling beer.  Ugandan students danced outside to hip-hop music braying out of boom boxes. The only debauchery in sight: a television playing at full blast – a lingala music video - flapping elbows and very big bottoms rattling the 21 inch screen.  The Sports Bar next door was a tired affair with a couple of desiccated expatriates binging in the company of a football game.  A prostitute lay passed out on the table.

Club Ange Noir had a great theme and promised much: black angels, daring floor shows and naked girls. It was all a deception – the dance floor was full of formally attired men and women capering to Celine Dion and more Congolese lingala.  Customers were encouraged to buy the overpriced beer and cocktails.  The prostitutes were hard at work here – they moved quickly from man to man, sizing up prospective customers from idlers – any sort of dawdling was noticed and the women moved swiftly on. 

A young girl came and danced with me.  She must have been desperate or over enthusiastic, otherwise she might have sized me up like the other girls.  Geena lived in Kajjansi, a down-at-the-heel suburb of Kampala -- parents lived upcountry in some rural hinterland in the Kagera region along the Tanzanian border.  And whenever she could, she sent money home - for life was tough in Kagera.

Geena was a Haya, of the Wahaya tribe. Women from this tribe were reputed in Uganda for their open sexual mores. Marriage among the Wahaya also had its peculiarities:  Paternity among the Wahaya was established not by being the husband of the mother, or by siring the child – but instead by the first man who had intercourse with the mother, after she had delivered the child.
An ingenious social mechanism, for it meant everyone could have some fun, and no child was left illegitimate.  

“Do you have children?” I asked her promptly.
“No”. The husband was away in Zimbabwe, she said, flashing her wedding ring from inside a zipper handbag. 
“Why don’t you go there?” I suggested.  “He hasn’t called me”, she said and then added rather too quickly, “I like Kampala very much.” 
I asked her a few more questions, but she abruptly changed the subject.
“Shall we do something fun fun?” She demanded. No, I said, shaking my head.
“Shall we do something fun? Massage?” She repeated pleading, clutching her hand-bag with both hands. Not fun-fun? I thought. Her desperation made me depressed.

Later, I stepped out onto the street. Three in the morning, and it was full of parked cars. The only people smiling were the mumbling drunks sharing a slab of sidewalk, and the hustling taxi drivers.  Get me out of here.  I left.

But all that was yesterday night.  It was still National Resistance Day today.  And Kampala lay in vacuo.
I bought a bottle of water in an Indian shop.  The owner was a pensive looking man who sat atop a raised platform, on a student’s desk and chair – and on the desk, was an old-fashioned cash register.  From this vantage point, he directed his all African staff to pick items of the shelves. 
“How is business?” I asked him.
“Phipty-Phipty”, he said mumbling and dribbling through the wad of pan jammed in his mouth.  Then clammed up completely when I asked him about the elections.
“Haa-haa-haa…” , he said nervously, “…you are asking many queshchan… everything fine, hoping everything peaceful…haa-haa-haa…”

Near the parliament, there were soldiers on patrol – tall blokes, over 6 feet tall with pot bellies and guns matching their brawn. I walked to the national theatre.  The building was but a shell, peeling plaster, broken window panes and a cafeteria which sold dusty bottles of coca-cola.  As a last resort the theatre authorities had rented out their grounds to set up a large crafts market. But, even this enterprise wasn’t doing well – not many tourists came to Uganda, and all the shops sold exactly the same things. 

Few Ugandans ever shopped in the craft market – most of the local action lay outside on the streets.  Where, smooth talking street vendors with snappy footwork and twitching eyebrows peddled knock-off Ray-Ban sunglasses, ‘genuine’ Rolex watches and pressed Diesel jeans suspended stiffly on aluminum hangers – it was all about the brand.

A rambunctious transaction was on between a backpacker tourist and a stall owner selling ‘antiques’.  The tourist didn’t have enough money to buy the sculpture –but the stall owner was willing to trade the backpacker’s faded jacket and baseball cap for the item. 
“you are sure this is a genuine antique?” queried the gangling backpacker.
“yes…sah, real real…100 pa-sent…my father bought it in the boosh many-many years ago....eh...”, the story of the father indirectly lending age to the ‘antique’, “....this jacket, it is good condition…original…ya?” said the trader conducting a minute examination of the fabric of the backpacker’s jacket.
“yeah mate…that’s a genuine Columbia…”
It went back and forth for a while, and then the deal was concluded.  The tourist left with his prized sculpture – the trader looked a bit overdressed in the jacket and baseball cap.
They were both second hand dealers – each viewed the other’s item as having great value. 

The art historian, Christopher Steiner makes similar observations in his excellent book -- “African art in transit”.  In it Steiner wanders around the various craft markets in West Africa studying the dynamics of the art trade. Steiner notices that nothing in any of the craft markets is ever sold as “new” – everything was either “a little old” or at best: “It’s not ancient, but it wasn’t made today”. He makes the telling observation that:

            “…both the African trader and the Western tourist search for the genuine in each other’s culture, and both usually find only mere approximations of the ‘real thing’…”

 A stall holder who meets Steiner in the plateau market in Cote d’Voire, explains :

            “……When a European comes to Africa he buys African things –boubous, masks, textiles and so on. He likes these things because they are African, they are not from where he comes. The same holds true for us. We want what the Europeans have…If I had more money, I would collect European art, and the European would continue to collect our art. That’s just how it is….”

I walked away from the crumbling theater and its shops – and later, on the BBC, there was bad news.  More explosions in Iraq. A building had collapsed in Nairobi. The price of oil had hit a record high.  And more unusually: A tortoise had adopted a hippopotamus in Kenya.

The night before, I had dreamed a dream: I was a bird, an enormous and magnificent great blue turaco perched amid grey, dusty buildings, in a city much like Kampala. I was colorful but I couldn’t soar – for that was the domain of the kites.  I could glide, slow and weightless, from one grimy structure to another. And then they came, monstrous grasshoppers (perhaps the same ones I had eaten that morning), as big as three-storey houses – they were ravenous for they bayed low deep sounds like dogs, their serrated hind-legs ripping through the trees, their antennae sensing my presence.
I tried to fly, I could only shout, and all that came out was a  grating gonc-gonc-gonc-gonc.  

I woke up sweating, to the sounds of the night.
A clamor: cacophonic shouts, footsteps in pursuit, dogs howling in concert.   And suddenly: silence, tranquil calm, the buzz of the cicadas. It was some time before I fell asleep again.