Undo - stuff_i_cannot_see

Time

noreply@blogspirit.com (Undo) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:27:20 +0300

I actually was quite in a dillema before this news about the death of Michael Jackson popped the waves. I kept asking myself, for a long time now, how this man was going to re-invent himself and re establish his supremacy.

It felt quite sad, the way he was being dissed by the media, the way he was kind of lurking within his own shadows, afraid of the wild that once adored him.

On the death of MJ, there are/is no statement that can summarily act as the last word - to close this case-its much bigger than anything we can just forget.

For MJ, for Lennon, for Presley, for Marley, for B.I.G, we are going to just hold on and wait for the return of the son of man and the unveiling of Paradise, so that we can once again, get them to sing for us live.

We are going to talk about MJ for forever, at least some of us. There is nothing for me to say that can prove I am/was more of a fan than the next blog chap you will find. However, what my candid bathroom can testify to is that I have made several of those crisp MJ moves many times in my lifetime.

Many musicians will continue providing the missing link-outcrop music that reminds us of the king of pop.

And of course, In my playlist, the list of dead mens’ music has expanded. Several Kbytes added to the 6GB of music in the Dead Mens’ Section…This man will the join the likes of Hendrix, Lennon, one song by Selena, Miles, Presley, B.I.G, Tupac, Morrison, Marley, Joplin…

As a kid, my favourite scene in the videos was the when the zombies were dancing…well, Salute for the king and shout 15.

Route: At the midnight hour at Karuma

noreply@blogspirit.com (Undo) — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 13:20:00 +0300

Night bus travel is a humbling undertaking. It starts with the dark pealing away the scenery to look at, and then idleness hitting on everyone in the bus. People turn away drowsily in mid sentence and don’t turn back. Lost forever to lapses of sleep that involve jerks of remembrances.

“Where are we?” one starts

“Ah, we just moved ten kilometres”

He looks surly around and slides back to sleep. Waking after another ten minutes to ask the same question. Finally tiring and resoluting to suffer without bother.

Night time is a brisk scale into supernatural. A bright spot appears delusional, and in entwines your soul into a wave of misjudged apprehensions. The bus in the night is one place to build such apprehensions. There is a spirit that controls the vehicle. An incantation starts, as a hypnosis swaying in-there is the silent swash of the wind outside, a din building within the bus cabin when all the windows get shut. Then,

The sway, the duck and the stealth with which it overtakes, leaves one breathless. It’s like being under water. The thrill is (a mix of the hope that the water surface is just a level away waiting and knowing that you could sink further and never get to see the surface at all. It’s a choking feeling emerging, bringing – breeding unease.

It’s a shift from fear to desperation. To relief when you suddenly realise the hurdle is overcome. You come to the water surface, take a deep breath and sink right back. There is moment to count your luck…It’s a continuous relapse into fear, imagination and adventure. Sixty seven people live this maze of tactic, wit, luck, trepidation, and a stretch of accident hungry 346km road.

At the midnight hour at Karuma, the moon gleams palely onto the tarmac. The pale pasted night air is wet with mist as we thrust through it. It decorates our wind shield with a whitish sheen from the inside that the driver keeps wiping away. Our headlights beam into a turmoil of smoke that veers away to let us through to the black spot in the future of the road. The spectral black we aim at hidden in the sphere of mist eludes us, gives us an excitement that worries.

At the midnight hour at Karuma, the mist rains onto the windshield creating alternating seconds of blocked view that are wiped away; this exercise of cleaning is repeated so fast it draws us into a kind of hypnosis of taking our eyes one way then the other. The driver’s eyes droop and his grip on the leather wheel is so tight it’s doubtful, so is my grip on the music and the surroundings.

The midnight hour at Karuma is an hour of light thought, furtive grasps at reality - dead-end speeches, and wide-eyed sleep, dreams of reality. There is an outburst of sleep filled hot air, an air of decay congesting itself, permeating into other open noses and passing on the taste of sleep, drowsing others into it.

The bus grows quieter as it gains speed, hurtling into a darkness that unsparingly envelops the bus. Cascading into wavy circles of light and dark. The headlamps peer into the heart of the dark, penetrating into 200 metres of distance ahead, trying for a destination, poking hope. It flickers lightly to taste the length, search for obstacles, and to ascertain the security of the road ahead. Then it blasts full, hungrily, unsparingly, ferociously acknowledging its supremacy.

The monotony of the bus drone, the passing swish of night images. More and more people keep dropping off drowsily. So that when you look sideways, to the back and to the front, most of the lot has been drawn to sleep. The bus driver maintains machinery pose that shifts only to the swing of the wheel either right or left. There is nothing human about the man turning that wheel, slowly. He also isn’t aware neither of his presence nor his role here. It’s beyond him, the power in his legs propelling the massive machine. The machine droning and yanking all this weight.

Behind the bus, it’s like this a large blanket of darkness is clouding and tailing us, trying to absorb us in its evil scheme. There is a plot out there; it’s a ghost ambition that haunts all night buses, all open eyed drivers battling with sleep, the night travelers, the dogs prowling the roads, and impatience of many trying to overcome the inadequacy of time to do everything in the daylight. The silence of ways…ways stretched with uncertainty.

Its scary looking at people sleeping, it’s like they are spinning our fates in their arduous, adventurous dreams. As we hurtle on the tarmac, quickly eating up the distance that spreads ahead of us. Distant darknesses approach and get dissolved by the prongs of light that reach out, paving the way, waving away the darkness.

At the midnight hour at Karuma, when Pink Floyd sings Brain damage on my ipod, I don’t know which side of the world we are! Behold, the grey water grumbles below the Nile, fighting not to go away. We ride over the bridge, grinding our weak shock absorbers onto the thin meshed gulley at the entrance to the bridge, it scrapes right to our spines, bounces away and we settle to quite another laborious battle to keep awake. Across the Nile, leads us to another level in this puppet story, the rivets are fastened stronger as we levitate into deep unconsciousness.

Thinly strapped grisly old women idle on road corners contemplating crossing the road. The driver sits slumped in his seat, widening his drooping eyes and nodding each time he knocks down an old woman, leaving them braying behind us. The women that don’t cross the road stand grotesque. Leaning against their walking sticks, hair flailing in their own aura, they stare at us with hollowly eyes. Their trembling breath stretches across the road as a web of isolation, claustrophobia, insomnia, and dewy memories. That, sieving through it creates a disability of emotion that grips us, losing our selves to guilt, trepidation, paranoia, procrastination!

That, Alas, somewhere! Beyond this trance, beyond the night, someone else listens to Pink Floyd with yet another complete dilemma. So that when Shine on you crazy diamond plays, I am completely absorbed from this world, taken away by the magic of the electric, into the guzzle of the Nile, into the pale tarmac, into the allure of the moon, into the world of deceptive perspectives. What then, compels me to wake up when Pink Floyd stops singing?

Inside this grayscale landscape, the black box that contained us has shifted continuously past the ghost hour, before the moon turned away or before the rain cloud obstructed it. When, we examine ourselves for a feeling of having existed earlier. It turns out it’s now a trip past the madhouse blues.

There is a proclivity to forgetfulness after it sleep has gone. That the hour before, or perhaps minutes earlier, we all kind of slept. That I didn’t get to listen to the rest of the Pink Floyd album. It’s the sour taste in the mouth, the kind you get after you have slept. The patched feeling, the clear-headedness, and the cloud-headedness..

That while at sleep, we had moved several miles along the way this far

trailing the duck

noreply@blogspirit.com (Undo) — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 18:35:00 +0300

There were moments on that canoe that elapsed as reflexes of disabled time…you think a little and smile alone…listen to the silence of the wind…look over at the green water and smile more…then we landed, at an obscure point of volcanic rock stepping into the lake. The ducks lazily flew away but the kingfishers stayed on, on the shrubs.

"...my spirit moved upon the sea like wind,
which round some thymy cape will lag and hover,
though it can wake the still cloud, and
unbind the strength of the tempest; day was almost over.

…I stood upon a point of shattered stone
(water)...ebbing round me, and my bright abode before
me yawned-a chasm desert, and bare, and broad..."
The revolt of Islam-Shelley Percy

Leaving the boat brought a heap of silences, a blued-out Alf, a contemplative HFS, a lapping lake waiting for dusk.

DAY: whiling

noreply@blogspirit.com (Undo) — Fri, 04 May 2007 14:15:00 +0300

“…you cannot read loss only feel it…”
Memories of a Geisha

Edwin called it dry mud, I didn't see the sense of his summation until we were deep into it. (The following sets of descriptions may be inappropriate but just imagine them applied to a dry place). The road was soggy, silted, patches of it were hard to ride through, and sticky. There had to be two or three revolutions to make a forward thrust. Of course you only felt it if you thought about it.

There was the possibility of stalling or even falling over, it certainly would be a soft fall, with a soil cushion spread wide out. It wasn’t a comfortable thought either so you were lucky not to harbour it. The motorbike struggled through the heaps of congealed soil…continually the thought of falling off the bike crept. I suggested I get off the bike so Edwin pushes it alone through but he insisted he could manage to go through…so I sat hapless as he wiggled the bike about the “dry muddy patch”.

At the shops along the road, drunkards cheered us on, wavering high in their disability, they beheld us playing in the road, one even broke a piece of stick to come discipline us for being childish…I thought well…here we are…watching the roadside refusing to pass by the motorbike…its is like thinking of …the missing links in…a sequence of unexpected…interrupted…good music.

We decide to stop when we reach a clearing. There is a hot wind swirling inside our shirts, I privately keep thinking it should bring relief, but it just perpetrates a hot feeling. We stop and sit under a tree shade. I lie on my back and I am overcome with the greatest of temptations-sleep.

I rise to a sitting position knowing this is the best way to avoid sleep now. Edwin too looks drowsy. Our water has run out. We have a ten-minute ride to town left but we can’t help sitting here quite. It feels happy here. The football fields of Gulu High School are litt ered in activity, kids in different groups playing football.

A chap comes by, “God help you,” he says.
“God help you too,” we retort and continue looking and doing nothing.
“God help you,” he repeats.
We stare at him wondering what he is up to, we reply thinking perhaps that he didn’t hear our reply the first time.
“God help you,” he says giving us a stiff smile. We look left, then right, then at him and he is still smiling. Saliva slides from the corner of his mouth and hangs in a long tail that is kept flowing by the open mouth.
“What do you want,” I demand.
“God help you,” his eyes are excited. He pulls out a sachet of alcohol (Empire), which he sips from and passes towards Edwin. He refuses but the chap places it in his hand. Edwin looks nervously around and thrusts the sachet into my hand. I hand the sachet back to the guy.

He is still smiling. I whisper to Edwin that this man is not smiling and that he is paining. I give him 500 shilling to buy another sachet. He looks at me with an alternation of squint and big eyedness, and then pockets the money. After standing silent for a while. He thinks he finally recognizes me from somewhere. He pulls out 500 shilling and says he is going to buy me a whole sachet to drink alone

“God help you,” he keeps repeating and the production of hanging saliva is increasing. The kids seated nearby are laughing. They call out to him by the name “God help you”
And tell him that he is very drunk. He tells them he is going Sacred Heart church for confession and that he is the new choirmaster.

Tunes of Demure

noreply@blogspirit.com (Undo) — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 12:00:00 +0300

That's it; she sings in this tone that gives one the nostalgic creeps. When you listen to the words you can't run anymore. It’s a magician’s muse. Music meant to ache within you, especially on lonely Friday nites. Its music you turn off and it screeches within the membranes of your brain- a sinus forming below the right ear exuding your soul. You may have jumped in, hoping to say hey, nod aimlessly, shift on your feet and run out, but this is different. Its contagious, its neodeath and nerdish. There is no antidote for this kind of music-you suffer it the rest of your life, people will never understand the music pronking in your mind. It’s your disease; -

Look how hard you listened
To get in here
This is where the mist lightens
So you can peer into the vista of delusion
Where song synchs your heartbeat
This is space for regimented emotion
I talked you into,
Liberty was our king then, so was Empire
Angels of lisps
Shouldering hope
Look over your shoulder
I know you like it here
You like the wiggle chock affair
Of never understanding this music
Neither bothering to
Tunes of demure
Straying to the end

-Wf-

great year for everyone

noreply@blogspirit.com (Undo) — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 13:50:00 +0300

Press your nose against
the pane and spot life
where it once was
-Larry Jaffe

Well, I just wanna say happy new year to everyone.

Continually it seems am being alienated from the Internet. It’s a gradual process at deinternation, an ascent from an immurement somewhat, or is it an addiction wearing off. It shouldn’t be a good sign, it should feel strange I should think, but it doesn’t, instead its piles of sorts of freedom, bits of carelessness, non-attachment, negligence of significance of being lost. It feels kind of ostentatious, one of those things happening as a mere whim yet with a deep undertone of contention. I know someone who would call this a richot moment.

Note: http://lgjaffe.com/home.htm: My Inspiration for 2006....maybe 2007

Bits of December

noreply@blogspirit.com (Undo) — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 11:15:00 +0300

KITGUM

00:40HRS: Soldiers sleep on the verandah at the Stanbic Bank ATM; most of them stood the whole day waiting to reach the ATM and now its closed. The soldier’s wives lie draped in bundles at the shop front nearby, shifting uneasily from the midnight cold. They too have had the rough end of the day or two waiting for the dough. They can’t leave because if they did their husbands would withdraw all the money and drink it all. They have to shadow the men get whatever amount they can and expect to tag along to the bars to eat the rest.

Shops are all closed. I have walked from my room near the mosque expecting to find an open shop to buy water. Water is a big issue in this town, its salty water, that’s not a big problem. The bigger problem is that there is a cholera scare and one can’t afford to drink un-boiled water. I started typing my report at 22:00HRS, I needed to do it today because the next day was going to be very hectic. We have to go to Agoro, the farthest distance on our list of destination and I wanted to reduce the workload.

I walk past the Stanbic Bank towards the bus park, my shoes make a lot of scratching noises as I pass on. There is a soft breeze that is playing with the town rubbish, swirling it here and there. Near the bus park there are open bars with rowdy crowds dancing to “Mariam Tinditiine”, the women are rowdier, the men have money, the beer is flowing and the music is blaring noisily from the twin speakers placed at the entrance. The next bar plays “Obsession’s Wekume”, there is “Ragga Dee’s letter O” somewhere. Lady Jadee too. I can’t enter these bars, there is just too much dancing for me to pass through and reach the counter. So I walk past these and go towards Gods Mercy. Here there some calm and a sense of decency. Couples seated out in the terrace setting at ease in this hour, well, I too was this easy in wandegs once. Looking at the hours drag by the bottles of beers continuously replacing each other at the table. I bought two bottles of water and walked drinking one.

01:10HRS: I meet three chaps who recognize me, they want me to go along with them to Blue Moon, the hottest nightclub. I ask them where they are going and they say they were going to Hajji’s place to change the air, pick some girls and then head back to Blue Moon. I am tempted. I tell them to go to Hajji’s and then pick me up on their way back to Blue Moon. Blue Moon is…ENIGMATIC, Programme managers, Boda Boda riders, Scoobies, market vendors, ki-commando specialists and all converge here, the dance floor administers new rules, no rules here, dance away and look not at your neighbour, If you do don’t recognize their day jobs. The music is hop, if you can, touch girls’ butts at every opportunity, and don’t hesitate to enjoy yourself, no one really cares what your social status is out of this place.

01:40HRS: I walk to my room, watch a movie. I didn’t like crash the first time I watched it yet I decided to watch it again. I beep Porklerros and surprise-a real call. What is another person in Uganda doing awake at this time. A Kampala wake is different from Kitgum wake. This friend in Kampala had just completed a supper of Pizza and a 1-litre bottle of coke .So I ask, what are going to do, sleep? “Sleep, nah! I have to watch the complete second season of Friends. I have kind of gotten tired of hearing that kind of phrase. Season of this and that…I catch hard talk a woman prison boss talking of the challenges of 21^st century jail. Fall to sleep at 02:38HRS, or around that time. Kitgum electricity is very stable.

BUGIRI

Ariaka will want to know that the Jinja-Iganga road is still despicable. I thought I would read Nabakov’s The Gift on the journey but realized there was no way I could, this was a jumpy ride, then also there were many pictures that were bored. So I settled at Brenda face. Spent the most of two hours conversating. I like the speed, she didn’t. She likes Nigerian movies I don’t, we both like swimming and tennis, food! Bring anything fishy or meaty or chickeny-Ah well, leave out the chicken for me. The sky is blue out there-eh? I hadn’t noticed…I don’t have a boyfriend…I also don’t have a girlfriends, so why did you leave your boyfriend…do you like phone calls in the curious hours…this is my phone number, its only available when you call…I stay…BUMP. We have reached.

12:00 -16:00HRS: Dancing women, singing, they are happy to see us. My goodness, the last time I witnessed this was three weeks back when the kids sang for their parents. It had then, this is space for oxymoron, had a somber excited bored resonance, a distracted attentiveness, a naiveté or innocence perhaps, yet also a trueness to the cause. It was stimulating in an uncanny ordinary way. Something to treasure. It had a groovy undertone lost in the shy spirited singing. When they stopped we were lost for words okay I was.

The woman sat resting her chin on her palm, her pupils peering from somewhere in there, the flaps over her eyes too heavy to stay up at their assigned sides, the flaps kept challenging themselves, straining against the will of sinewy and reluctant muscles each drooping to meet. They at times did meet, to stay there for an eternity that was roused with a suspicious glint in there. She didn’t bother to keep the eyes open. No one noticed anyway. Every other eye in that enclosure was on the metallic box in the centre of the circle. The old woman’s face twitched at intervals, the burrows emerging from the different sides of her face flowing to the base of the palm, her thick eye brows standing out to empahise the frown formed the burrows emerging from her forehead. The depression of her fingers to one side of her face creating the source of the westerly burrows and the easterly burrows seemed to rise from the thin gathered lips balled in a pout. She could perhaps have had a migraine boiling within that head somewhere. A big nerve pulsated menacingly at intervals on the left end of her forehead setting her brows twitching. Her uneasy breathing could be seen to sweep through her body.

“27,350”, she shouted, shocking me from my watchfulness.

The other women sat upright, waiting for the chairman to move on, relief showing on their faces. The chairman had put them in a difficult situation. He had asked them to tell him how much money they thought they had collected a week ago. No one knew. They had forgotten. They chairman had threatened to fine them each 50 shillings if they failed to remember. Three people remembered different figures. There was some deadlock as they failed to agree on how much it was. The chairman beckoned the security officer (askari) to stand up and get ready to mete out a fine, for it seemed these people were very unserious on matters concerning their money. It was then that the old woman had saved the day by shouting out her figure. “You see these people, the chairman started, they don’t know how much money they have, this is very shameful especially today when we have visitors.”

Now before we open this box. Let’s agree on how much money is in the box. How many people support…. 26,900…27,350…. 27,500…. 27,250…? It came out the old woman was right. “So… the chairman continues, …we have 27, 350 from last week, who knows how much we collected for welfare fund? Okay, that finished. The chairman called the key keepers to come forward. Three people came forward and one by one they sat near the metallic box and opened a padlock. Three padlocks removed revealed inside the box containing the group’s books of account, and their savings over we moved to usual money collection. The secretary roll called, then started the money collection for that week. One by one they paid 200 shillings. The total figure came to 6000 shillings which was added to the figure they had been collecting for 4 months. We had to go, this is a long process. In this system, the members collect money each week, then lend out the money to whoever needs to invest, there is also a separate fund (social fund) from which members can get money to help especially in times of problems and this they pay back without interest. Well, it’s a system that has uplifted many locals.

MUGALIKE

The trip to Kibale has always been a journey I look forward to making each year. It’s the forests that have the hold on me, and the bad roads. Okay Muzizi is flooded that means I can’t continue to Fort portal, but I can’t wait to leave Kagadi for Mugalike. The electricity poles are waiting for long overdue power. Maybe till the elections next that the whims of some politicians be waked to act. Mugalike, it’s not some place you would remember if you passed through. But it’s a place you will treasure if you stopped to wander about.

Karagi

19:00HRS: I need to run away from this place real fast. It’s been two days of over eating. I know they don’t mean no harm but that kind of eating is way past my style. Its Thursday, I need to go to Mugalike, work Friday and leave for Kampala Saturday. I can’t sit straight, neither can I lie, what I can do with some effort is walk. I have in me food to cover the next week and there is still more cooking. Here you don’t eat for politeness sake, you eat because there is everything to eat. There is space for everything from mangoes to jackfruit to sugarcane to bananas to heaps of potatoes and matooke and meat and beans and cassava. Whey! My rescue lies two kilometers away in Mugalike. It’s an hour to supper and I don’t feel like eating. I have to go to Mugalike. I refuse early supper and set off. It’s drizzling, its muddy and dark is coming. I think I will walk the journey in an hour.

Village paths are not meant to be scary. There is the usual drunkard with no plot going back home, there are the skirmishes among the animal world in the bushes growing noisier as the challenge grows, there are the large overflowing trees that cast monstrous shadows on the path, there is the slippery undergrowth when the path goes through some thicket, and then there is the expanse of forest brimming with wild hugging the path endlessly both sides. I think this will be adventurous. There is no Mango network here so I turn to MTN, I.Kwani’s phone is off so is HFS’s phone. I thought perhaps they could listen to some wild calling.

19:30 HRS: I am sloping down a valley, stones and undulating ground, there is no way I can walk here at a hurry. So I drag slowly. Each footfall into the soggy, murky walk, my shoes get bulkier with earth. There is an expanse of dough that I am playing with. It’s not shifting, it’s not going to be a good mix to eat, am sloppy at my kneading work. There should be some fluidity to it, but its sticky murky.

At the base of the valley a small river flows noisily. Here reeds grow healthy. The water is a black streak against the paleness of the night, trickling ominously, pure, endlessly. This is a hunting ground. There is a clearing where if you wanted a drink you could kneel and clap some water or dip your mouth into the coldness. There are marks of constant use. The earth is firm here and the water clear, a tree branch hangs over the drinking bank. A little to the left a small rise is covered in dense overgrowth, It’s a nice place to pose to spring on a meal without much fight. I could see all the action here. I am even tempted to take the position of the hunter…then the prey…this is scary. If I were with Kwani maybe we could have assumed some of the positions for best attack. The drizzle increases and the lightening keeps brightening the whole place. I think there are some eyes looking at me from the thicket. Its time I hurried away. I think it’s an image all made up in my eyes’ brain

Weapons in my pocket; a pencil, a lighter, a metallic sharpener, a pack of PK, and a notebook. Nothing that can effectively fight unless I am MacGyver. I want to be scared, I even feel it itching within me yet I am adamant, like when they asked me whether I wanted an escort and I refused. There was that moment I almost went back, when the bushes burst in a flurry of noises and a civil war in the cat family. There were three cats. They were cats, weren’t they? The future then looked bleak, the bushes closed in, the clouds darkened, and road became more slippery, no one bothered to wander around the corner, neither did any one happen to have built a hut here.

The climb was tedious, the mud was heavy on my feet and the rain now more pronounced. Mugalike is just up the climb.

20:20HRS: The solar radio tunes into Kagadi Community radio only. I have to listen inattentively for two hours before they stop talking and play music. I pull out the laptop and listen to some rock even with the battery warning. Mugalike is like Bulaga but quieter. There is no telephone network but if you wanted to access it you climbed up hill to the church. Anyone who bothers to call gets the message “the number you have called is out of range or does not exist on the network. You could sit on the main road and wait for an hour or two before a vehicle passed. It feels kind of hopeless seeing a vehicle pass and leave you, with the thought that they will be in Kampala in the next 7 hours. If there was a Shinkansen here, I could ride to Kampala and come back before I even knew it. Ah well, there is an animal that howls rather miserably in the forest it distracts one from sleep. If there was no drizzle I could have gone for a walk.

Hallo!? Yes! Call me back in five minutes I am playing football at my son’s parents day

noreply@blogspirit.com (Undo) — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 12:50:00 +0300

Parent’s day at the kindergarten was precious. Abasiga mukama kindergarten had its parent’s day on Sunday. We, the parents were not quite ourselves in several ways, we were thrown into the fray, this was the space for redeeming our iterations of what exactly we have preached was best to get this result and that. We failed miserably, the rules were different, the temperament distorted and the guile abstracted by inadequate shortcuts. There was no basis for applying our dexterity to anything here, it was all a matter for our fates. That was very worrying especially.

So it went that, first the tug of war. We pulled at a rope from either side, grinning foolishly as it was apparent neither side was hoping to win, running in sacks half worried of the agreeable look the kids were giving us, knowing they wanted very much for us to tumble and then finally playing an exhausting round of twenty minute football without any scores-just a host of breathless, panting, and physically degraded men and women holding to the fence to catch breath. The problem was that we were so many players in the field, I don’t remember when I last played football in a field with over 20 aside. It must have been S1 when we played makola (the ball specially made by wrapping a condom with polythene).

This match was merged with a lot of confusion; you couldn’t remember the people on your side.

OR whether the people rushing to attack you were really intent on only getting the ball from you or out to really lash at you a top range exhibition tackle. The match was a drag, there was no progress, just a mass of heavy figures jostling amongst themselves. Mass after mass convened around a ball, in the aftermath lay several, others trudged on to merge again like rugby players hot on a scrum. So when 15 minutes came none of the parents regretted leaving the football pitch.

All in all the children had a great time, only disappointed in their parents lack of any skill in play. We sat in the tent to drink soft drinks and let the experts a go at the real thing. I, well, can’t say it was disappointing, it was meaningful once again. The parents were better coaches it appeared, they anticipated the opponents tactics, threw in cursory slots of commentary to the players, distracting them for a while and even recommended a change in some of field players, and its an understatement to say the kids were really disgusted with our presence, we were interfering in the good game. The kids had their rules; a ball that rose so far out of reach of the goalkeeper’s stretch was not counted. Tackling wasn’t exactly a crime and scoring in the wrong goal only made things more interesting. For once that Sunday 15 minutes was spent well watching touché football.

The kids were surprise singers too. I have always hummed the lyrics of the song “tumu tendereze yesu” but never come around to learning the words, the kids didn’t bother to learn the words either, they replaced them with their own words no one could decipher. They sang good, If I hummed along it sounded right though they made it hard for me to remember the exact words this time for a sing along.

After that they ate food, then speeches…. phew! Are they that long also in Kindergarten? And home we went.

3¼

noreply@blogspirit.com (Undo) — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 14:55:00 +0300

A
F! That is Alfonse in a nutshell. He says he can’t accept money less than 1000 shillings because it relegates his hard earned image. Alfonse, his picture is used on the legal tender 1000-shilling note. He is the man you see digging. “No way!” He says, “1000 shillings or no work, Eh! Of course, you can pay more if you are convinced the work is strenuous. You may wonder why Undo needs a digger. There is a moment when sitting by the verandah needs an extension to the hand resembling maize to escort relaxation. Alfonse walks with the conservative air of a Santana vehic, stable yet slow. But he works just fine…

¤ Feel Good inc. - Gorillaz

R
Raphael called me on Sunday. He was stuck in the swamp, it was raining hard, it was damn cold, and it was very dark. What the hell was this chap doing getting stuck in a swamp. So I get to the road, ride to the place and find him sitting atop his vehicle looking at the continually rising level of the river. He was wet, he was cool, and was just waiting to be rescued. So when I joined him on top of the vehicle, we started laughing at the whole affair. We had watched ‘wolf creek’ just two days ago and he was going on about how he couldn’t sit in the vehicle for fear. He is claustrophobic like me, and he claimed that being out meant he could shout out for help. Who can come to rescue in a swamp, I asked him. More laughing… wild things emerging from the swamp to attack him… Crazy thought! Why the car decided to die right where the river crosses was perplexing. In two days the river had risen right to road level, vehicles that passed splashed cold water at us. With both of us having no particular knowledge of mechanics, one of us had to go look for a chap at the garage. Its not comfortable sitting in the middle of a swamp waiting for help, especially a swamp you are accustomed to zooming past all of your life, I offered to sit and wait for Raphael to bring the mechanic. I at times like spooki

¤ 9th Symphony- Beethoven
¤ Living on the Edge- Aerosmith

S (méagol’s loot)
We sprang out of bed coz there was some crawling something in there. It turned out to be a lizard. We were so appalled by what just projected us out of bed, and were not so into lying down again. We therefore sat on the verandah for a while looking at nothing in particular. I looked over at her and she was smiling, I knew! It had been a good night.

¤ Electrical storm- U2
¤ Good for you-Third Eye Blind
¤

E (leanor)

three

noreply@blogspirit.com (Undo) — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 12:24:02 +0300

Haven’t posted in a long coz;

“…My walks, it gradually seemed to me, were in themselves indicative of some personality failure. I loved the city, was feverishly curious about it all, the lives lived in it, but moved through it alone unconnected -Time Bends, A. Miller

But, you realize-que sera, sera! You gotta stand up and make that post. So, I come back to muse about some of my fav. things.

Three barbers, two up class barbers and an economy class barber. Spread out in relation to the different activities I get up to. One is in the proximity of Office, so that in the lunch hour I can strut out for a 20minute refresher.

The other is in the proximity of home. That means that when the weekend bushy feeling gets so overwhelming, I can prop my frame there and get an overhaul. That leaves the economy class barber.

He gets to see me when the accounts are really low. He is the relief man, the man that pulls off a good job at the bidding of a few coins. The reason I get to see the economy barber least of the three is that he doesn’t have some of the extraordinary touch up accessories the up class barbers have. Who can blame me for wanting the good stuff.

First, there is the cool shaving machines. They give you the soft soothing graze. One almost aimed at making you doze off in reverie. And part of the comfort comes in you not having to stretch your neck in such awkward positions, which would otherwise leave you choking on your own saliva. If the barber wants to shave you from a particular perpendicular view, the chair rotates, and you are angled in, that easy.

Another manoeuvre comes in the form of fumes and sprays. After washing the clipped hair bits off your head, Sweet smelling oils are rubbed onto it. When they spray disinfectant, it’s not the insecticide smelling type but a rousing aura of jasmine hangs around you. You feel the stings of heaven assailing you, beckoning, enfolding, engulfing one, you would be forgiven for drifting away. The cloud of fume actually makes the mirror view of oneself seem like a materialization of paradise. Cloudy touches around the edges of the head. An airbrushed appearance to brilliance. The perfect scent to walk with to a first date. All part of the glamour of an up class lifestyle.

Getting a good barber is a life long search. It’s a process that comes after several walks into places that leave you surly and slain, with a raped head, with parallel ruts of gnawed shapes, prongs of pain marking out the points of err, eyes bulging out of their holes to create a naked countenance, and a good case of laughing commentary for your acquaintances.

In this search, getting the beard cut is disorienting, your head is held out in the angle of a chicken readying for slaughter, eyes fixedly dilating from the bright light bulb to the glossy poster showing Shabba Ranks looking “bad attitude”. Your breath comes in starts and you have to avoid swallowing saliva since the movement of the larynx could mean the blade slicing into your throat. It’s a whole length of time, spent contemplating the gliding movements of the blade grazing along your throat in deep scratchy scrapes to wondering when it could all end so that you could swallow that blob of saliva tickling the edges of your throat.

Disinfecting the grazed area is an awakening act. The mentholated spirit used is piercing. You jump from the shock of having your skin erupting with expletives. The skin goes taut, eases a little, and goes into shock to collapse useless in a heap of folds that only get relief when the air sifts through it. Tears stream down the face, while the nose brandishes a temperament close to fury/pepper combined. And when you walk out onto the street, the sun casts suspicious shots to dig right at the heart of your boiling head. You have to go back home and wash the head, spray lots of fume to wade off the mentholated spirit that has embedded itself into the skin pores. And wear a cap till your hair grows reasonable.

That’s why I can’t afford to leave my three barbers. And this will be a very long while