A Sunday Moonlit Stroll Through Kampala (standard:drama, 1439 words)
Author: DAVID TUMUSIIME	Added: Aug 13 2005	Views/Reads: 3331/2176	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Strange things can happen once you decide to walk unguided in Kampala. What happened.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

a weekend, a Sunday evening especially. There is nobody about, no 
policemen in sight, no publicom vendors, the sky is clear of any 
Marabou stocks and you can walk in the middle of the road if you wish. 
I did. 

I did not think about where I was going. I merely walked. Drawn on it
seemed to me by a whisper in the silence under those sad trees towards 
the National Theatre to see what I know not. There were no cars on the 
road, Dewinton road bars were open with sombre patrons and no special 
hire taxis had come to work it seemed because there were none. 

In the National Theatre was a play. I could hear the distant laughter so
strange sounding in the parking lot with silent unoccupied cars and no 
one about. The play was South Pacific. Somehow South Pacific here right 
now playing to a scattered audience, I suspected, of mostly white 
European expatriates seemed to stand as the last bastion against 
something I was not sure of what as I hurried away. There was something 
frightening here. 

In the 1970s and in the 1980s I have heard my elders tell how Nile
Avenue was the last road many people travelled in the boot of a car on 
their way to Conference Centre then Nile Mansions and to death. Day or 
night. The hush of silence on Nile Avenue was deathly. In my own early 
youth it was the street of hope and each pavement on Nile Avenue is 
fraught with meaning for me and I can still tell you on which pavement 
and which day what marvellous thing happened to me. What heights of 
ecstasy I was lifted to, what depths of despair I was plunged all in a 
single hour. Nile Avenue does not scare me and there are no ghosts for 
me here. 

The luminous combs of light on Nile Avenue are full of promise for me. I
walk Nile Avenue and I'm young again. I have walked on Nile Avenue long 
past midnight on a Friday from Crested Towers with a lovely woman 
searching for more excitement. There is excitement to be had and it 
begins at Rock Gardens. Sheraton hotel is opposite and her dimly lit 
expansive gardens stroll silent waist holding couples. Paradise. And 
outside Sheraton's fences, harlots. And across Rock Gardens. 

In Rock Gardens on a lucky Sunday night there is a deejay, a
spin-maestro, the best in Kampala. Kampala can't dance? Come here and 
be amazed! A few streets down, creaky empty taxis cruise silent Kampala 
road with the most forlorn look, conductor and driver worn and tired 
and without hope. In the doorway of a closed bank, a sleeping security 
guard shifts in his blue plastic chair to his left murmuring and 
fighting through a frightening dream. On Entebbe road a deserted mother 
of four hopefully makes her way into an ATM booth to check their joint 
account for the 1000th time in hours though she knows there is nothing 
there. 

There is poverty and suffering everywhere around but not in Rock
Gardens. Perhaps it's because they know what's waiting outside that 
these young patrons dance so frenziedly. 100% effort. Her eyes squeezed 
shut, the buttons of her white shirt open to the v- of her breasts, 
gyrating, her fingers snapping, her mouth open wordlessly mouthing Can 
you feel the music? He bobs protectively around her, his date, in 
amazement, laughing, he has never seen her like this. He is feeling a 
lot of things. 

Time stands still. You can walk through a time warp on Luwum Street
going down to the Old Taxi Park. Nakasero Market has disappeared. There 
is a new K.C.C garbage skip that doesn't stink. The streets are new 
swept and wet. In these buildings along Luwum Street the old planned 
Kampala is here. It's only a little after midnight, Sax Pub is busy, 
but down Luwum Street to the echo of footsteps Monday is already here. 


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