Would I marry a Ugandan after eating a few slices of marble cake???
As a belated birthday present my good friend Martha had insisted she wanted to take me to high tea at the Serena Hotel, the only place in Kampala, I believe, that put on the spread for guzzling mzungus like myself.
It didn’t take much convincing. I’d been to high tea in more hotels around the world than I’d had hot dinners (and just to point out, the Serena also served hot treats, too). In my original homeland, Australia, The Observatory Hotel in The Rocks, Sydney. In Hong Kong, The Empress. In my former adopted country, Britain, The Dorechester, The Ritz, The Orangery at Kensington Palace (a favourite), Bakeaboo at West Hampstead and Harrods (the latter two both plenty of times). In Canada, of which I’m a citizen, to be honest I can’t remember the name of the hotel, but I ate up. In Cape Town, The Mount Nelson Hotel (another favourite – cheap as chips). In Zimbabwe, The Vic Falls Hotel. “I love how wherever you go around the world you find high tea,” my Australian friend Tamera recently congratulated me.
Martha and I had already been to the Serena for afternoon tea on her last visit to Kampala at Easter. We’d been very excited about the occasion and booked ahead to ensure we’d get in. Yet when we arrived at the premises, dressed up, we found a slew of staff all standing around doing nothing, and not one other customer.
The Serena also did a big breakfast. In fact it was at a breakfast at the hotel that we’d had the famous OJ discussion.
Waiter: “How would you like your orange juice? Orange or green?
Martha: “The clue’s in the title.”
Besides a glass of champagne, there Serena high tea boasted everything from the mandatory scones and egg sandwiches to pizza slices, samosas and several types of cake: marble, black forest and chocolate mud. Although they didn’t have the three-tier plates, my friend and I both departed the premises saying the words that probably many other Africans have often uttered or at least thought, “I won’t eat for another week”. We’d just consumed an all-you-can-eat buffet for about 45,000 Ugandan shillings 11 GBP. I hadn’t been feeling that satisfied about getting my value for money since my days mixing things up at the Sizzler salad and dessert bar.
So after al of this, I looking forward to having afternoon tea at the Serena the second time round.
“Do you think we should book?” asked Martha, concerned we wouldn’t get in.
I told her that given the fact that the staff were seen eating the leftover chicken wings, no.
On the Friday afternoon just before we treated ourselves I was at Café Kawa, my regular haunt and nearest coffee shop, where I often went to work. It was popular with other mzungus.
After it started raining I tried to make a run for it, but it was too late. Now nearly 4am, the time we’d made our precious booking for, I decided I’d just have to brave the wild weather and started walking along potholed Tank Hill Road trying to hail a boda.
When a Ugandan woman pulled up in a Jeep and told me, “get in”, I looked in the back and spotted a baby seat before doing what she’d suggested.
Despite it being pouring, I’d just accepted a lift from a stranger. Although she was female and came with a baby car seat, I knew my parents would still have a fit.
Actually, hang on. Recalling Dad’s policy with the scones at the Harrods Georgian Restaurant - “eat as many as possible and if you can put one in your handbag” – they probably wouldn’t have a fit at all. Mum, given her reaction to my announcement that I was going to do an aid work course, would probably say, “Quick, hurry up and get there”.
“Whenever I see someone walking along the side of the road I give them a lift,” said the Ugandan lady with long plaits, driving the Jeep with the baby seat.
“It’s very nice of you,” I replied, really wondering if I’d end up in a shallow grave.
“I’m going to the Serena,” I added, not wanting to mention what I was doing there. After all this woman was skinny. Not Dadaab skinny, but possibly lighter than you’re average Ugandan.
I told her to just “drop me off anywhere”.
“Oh no,” she said. “I’m going into town to get my nails done. I’ll take you right there.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. I knew the frustration of a woman desperate for a manicure. This woman wouldn’t have time to lay a chipped fingernail on me, let alone kill me.
As we drove into town we chatted more. She told me she was a singer at a well-known hotel and that she had a mzungu boyfriend, which led us onto a controversial subject – the differences between foreign males and Africans.
“I can’t get anywhere with African men,” she sighed. “They don’t like skinny women.
“Unless you’re prepared to eat a lot and make yourself fat, you won’t get anywhere.”
There was silence. I was embarrassed to tell her I was on my way to the Serena Hotel to devour 25 mini samosas.
Would she think I was a Ugandan hunter?
I thought back to the way a Ugandan friend, Mamerito, had greeted me several months earlier. Yes, even though vegetable quiche and pizza still hadn’t been sighted at the Mengo backpackers, he’d congratulated me on my recent weight gain.
“Wow, you are growing fat,” he exclaimed excitedly, as if I’d just won Euromillions, plainly impressed with the small amount of weight I’d put on in the months he’d last seen me.
To be fair, I’d been wearing a low-cut halterneck dress at the time, so it could have been my cleavage, now on show, that led to his reaction.
I’d been told several times – I should stress only by mzungus however – that Africans viewed a bit of flab as a sign of wealth (I had to laugh, as I had only about 25,000 Ugandan shillings to my name) – and that I should take this as a compliment.
After all, President Museveni certainly liked his food. At a breakfast for Uganda’s new golden boy, athlete Stephen Kiprotich, who clinched the first Olympic Gold medal for the country in 40 years, he was seen first in line for the toast, in a photo published in the Daily Monitor. Obviously bringing in gold for your country would bring in the bacon, so to speak (along with promises of a million shillings and a home for your family), but it wouldn’t bump you up in the line for the pancakes.
My apparent and newfound battle with the bulge was mentioned when another Ugandan, this time a woman who I’d supposedly met a year ago on my first trip here (I couldn’t remember her from a bar of soap) also informed me, very matter-of-factly, that I was “growing nice and fat”, despite being three times the size of me.
It’d tried not to be too offended as I hadn’t wanted to let them know they’d hurt my feelings, but both times my self-esteem had been almost irretrievably damaged and I had to be talked out of eating only matoke by my friends for a month.
But now I was sitting in a car with a Ugandan woman telling me that the country’s men wouldn’t actually like me even if I did look like Courtney Cox while she was, unbeknown to her, driving me off to afternoon tea.
As I looked out the window I wondered was this ironic? But there was a more important question in my head now: would I be in with a chance?
Because I was still ashamed of why she was actually taking me to the Serena, I changed the subject back to nails – again I didn’t want to end up in that shallow grave, but as she herself had pointed out she was quite skinny so she probably wouldn’t be able to hold me down for too long. I wondered if she was going to Sparkles and if she’d have the same beautician who tended to me, the one who felt like a terrorist.
My new friend told me no, she was going to our manicure man on the street. I wondered if this was the same man who I’d met lurking outside our house - I can’t imagine why he’d wait outside my joint - on a Friday afternoon recently?
She told me there were several nail men roaming the streets of Kampala, looking for clients, much to my delight.
I kept the dialogue flowing. What colour nail polish was she going to get? Red, she thought.
Was she going to get a topcoat? Probably? Pedicure, too? Not sure, if the nail man had time.
I made it to the gates of the Serena safely, although by that time the heavens had opened up even more. There was no way I was going to get across the road without getting drenched.
After giving her my card and telling her to call me, I wanted to return the favour for dropping me off by taking her out to lunch, I attempted to cross the road faster than Kiprotich.
Epic fail. By the time I reached the security guards and the watchman on the other side I looked like I’d just come from Wet ‘N’ Wild. My new blue leopard print top – I always tried not to be too much of a try-hard mzungu in Africa – was sopping wet.
A kind security guard escorted me to the main entrance of the Serena. When I finally reached Martha, sitting on a lounge chair in the tea section of the hotel desperately waiting for a glass of bubbly, and the slew of staff standing around doing nothing, they all gasped. My friend immediately rushed me into the ladies’ and pushed my chest underneath the hand dryer, to no avail.
“You won’t believe how I got here,” I told her, recalling my new acquaintance and the conversation we’d had about African men.
We decided to eat up, given the verdict this woman had just handed down to me on Ugandan men, and also because we were starving. First we tried the sandwiches, pizza slices and samosas, washed down with a glass of champagne, then some more of the same and then the cakes, as if we’d never seen food before, as the amazed staff watched on.
We resisted all temptation to break through the doors of the Pearl of Africa, opposite the high tea buffet, whatever it was. With silver doors resembling a disco, I’d always wondered whether it was actually a nightclub or a restaurant? Uganda always had a way of surprising you. Martha and I decided to save it for next time.
“I think I’ll be in with a good chance now,” I said referring to my conversation with my new friend on the way out of the hotel to hail a boda, my stomach hanging over my trousers.
I thought of my new Ugandan friend on the way home. I was curious as to whether I would be in with a good chance after my buffet. But I was worried that my already fragile self-esteem wouldn’t be able to take another African congratulating me for “growing nice and fat”.