Would these three land me in the Ugandan slammer?
I had nearly reached my local boda stage. There was just over 100 meters to go but as I walked past the local swimming pool – the same one where I’d been called a mermaid a few months ago, where rumour had it you could become pregnant just by doing breaststroke and where there was “guns and knives are not allowed inside” painted on the concrete near the entrance – a voice called out.
“Madam, Madam, the bottles!” shouted a Ugandan man, stopping me in my tracks.
I realised he was referring to the three drinks I’d bought at the pool’s bar one night about a week ago before leaving Kampala on my Hoima trip. There was bitter Krest (my favourite drink in Africa), Alvaro (second fave – a non-alcoholic fizzy beverage that came in pear or pineapple flavours) and Tusker (beer) that all came in glass bottles. The Krest was to consume with a bottle or two of Waragi (aka “wargin”), the local gin.
To be honest, I would have preferred to drink Diet Coke or orange juice, but they both seemed to be pretty rare in Uganda, especially old OJ unless you frequented places like the Serena Hotel. On one occasion that I did track down OJ, I was asked “Would you like it orange or green?”
I didn’t know what to say. To be honest, I felt that the clue was in the title.
Ugandans loved nothing more than an empty glass bottle though, as I’d discovered soon after landing in the country, mainly because they apparently received a deposit for every glass bottle that they returned.
Apparently if one went to Owino market in Old Kampala (one was dying to go as she’d heard a lot about the clothes), you could see workers melting down the aluminum to craft jewellery and any other item they could think of to hawk at the market stalls.
But constantly being followed down the road in the ‘Pearl of Africa’ and harassed for my empty glass bottles was starting to slightly exasperate me – as much as the constant stapling of the daily newspapers.
In Uganda, the pages of most newspapers it seemed were stapled together everyday, preventing one from opening them up to feast one’s eyes on page three headlines such as TEEN SEX EXPLOSION. SHOCKING! Tragic youngsters smoke, guzzle bottles of beer, openly having lewd sex.
Hang on. Was I in the UK or was I in Uganda? Was I reading the Blighty version of the Sun, or Kampala’s? The Red Pepper, Uganda’s version of the Screws (News of the World), was full of even more tawdry events.
By the time I normally got to headlines like TEEN SEX EXPLOSION, I’d probably broken about three nails, causing myself to ask again, was it really necessary to staple the newspapers together?
“It helps you get to the best pages, though, that is the sport,” someone (not living in Uganda) said when I expressed my incessant frustration with it.
The constant stapling of the newspapers felt a bit rich.
I wondered which lucky people had the job of doing this every day? Would Murdoch steal their idea in the future?
As much as this annoyed me however, Uganda’s preoccupation with empty glass bottles infuriated me even more.
I’d once been having brunch in Dorman’s at Garden City when the waiter had tried to snatch away a Fanta bottle that was completely full.
I’d in fact only been allowed to leave the pool with the receptacles after promising at the time of purchase that I’d return to the premises with them the next morning.
Epic fail. They were now empty and standing on our kitchen cabinet at home.
As I stared the man in the eye I knew that he knew this, and a pang of guilt washed over me, just like a wave of water had the last time a Ugandan had dive-bombed directly on top of me in the pool.
“Madam, the bottles,” he pleaded.
“You bring me my bottles.
“I need the bottles. I want the bottles.”
I felt a sense of deja vu.
Today wasn’t the first time I’d been chased in Uganda for returning something.
The video shop in Garden City had chased me about a DVD only two days after I’d excitedly become a member, bombarding me with texts warning me to return it ASAP.
Now that I was Kampala’s number one bottle bandit, I wondered if I would face a fate hairier than Julian Assange.
Would the pool sic Interpol, the Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF) or the Black Mamba on me?
I also felt terribly selfish as I now wondered whether some Ugandans’ next meal depended on me swallowing my pride and just giving my bottles up?
These feelings though weren’t strong enough to make me return home and get the items that the pool manager so desperately wanted.
Instead I “vowed” to “Sebo” (Sir) to finally return my bottles the next morning, hailed William and drove off into town on a boda.
When I reached Garden City I bought the papers, unstapled them (only breaking two nails, which I’d had painted at Sparkles salon a couple of weeks earlier), sat down and read them. There were some good stories around.
A “deadly terrorist” had snuck into “K’la” from Kenya (I thought terrorists were deadly enough without the use of the word deadly, but perhaps they weren’t.)
Meanwhile the Ghostbusters squad was needed in central Uganda.
“The Ministry of Finance is investigating 300 teachers in Kayunga District suspected to be ghosts,” another story read.
Another article was headlined “When weddings turn into marriages…”. Fancy that.
There were some strange occurrences taking place in Uganda.
The “deadly terrorists”, “ghosts” and weddings turning into marriages took my mind completely off the empty glass bottles, until I was making my way home that afternoon and saw a bus parked in a service station.
On the front was the word HONEST.
HONEST.
The bus was called HONEST.
It was an HONEST bus.
I realised that if even buses in Uganda could be honest, then I had a duty to be honest in return, starting with the small act of returning my three empty glass bottles.
The next morning, bright-eyed and bushy tailed, I turned up at the pool with the Krest, Alvaro and the Tusker.
I’d never seen anyone beam more than the pool staff on that morning. I felt like I was Bill Gates handing over funding for the rotavirus vaccine.
For pics of the HONEST bus and more see my Daily Life in Uganda pinterest board