Somebody tells me it's called glitching in the cool world when your brain can't comprehend momentarily. And I'm guessing we’ve all experienced that incredibly ridiculous moment when we "glitched". Once, I read the word ‘safes’ as sa-fe-z before realizing they were talking about hidden jewels all along. Not so long ago I saw the word ekidduka on a mechanic's flyer on a taxi window and I was left mystified. Why the aggressive negativity? I wondered. Why refer to people's shops with such viciousness for someone seeking business? Then again, why did said shops need a mechanic? The word was ekidduka though, not ekiduuka.
Maybe you’ve failed to spell the word girl at one point? Or maybe you’ve just failed to fill up a sentence with that familiar term that you use on a daily basis.
It happens all the time and it is even acceptable to have those occassional glitches in brain function. But to altercate with a madman, that is a very curious form of glitching
We call them balalu in my tribe. Whenever someone yells "mulalu" in Lusoga, they do not refer to the metaphorical madman-the friend that loses their mind and wears mismatched Bata slippers. No. It is almost always a certainty that the mulalu reference is directed at the dirt coated, haggard looking mister with peeping bums and unfortunate hair.
So this man I met, he was a mulalu in every sense of the word. He had aimlessly stumbled infront of my boda boda in Iganga town. After a long day on the road from Kampala, I didn’t see the obvious mulalu-ness in him. I almost, almost wished his negligent bottoms had been knocked down as I jumped off the boda boda to save my head. Whoever it was was going to see the end of this. Somehow boda boda man brought his bike to a screeching halt and turned around. Somehow he could tell I was about to embarass myself. Nervously, he smiled and said, “mulalu". “Ofcourse mulalu”. I shrilled. It had to take a mad man to saunter through the heart of traffic at a round-about. But my reference was metaphorical. I still couldn’t register his haggard nature and stunned look. (I effected a stunned look in a madman). He was probably stunned because noone had dared to stop and directly address him. I knew being in Busoga was an advantage to drive my point across; my grievances were going to be understood at all cost. Lusoga it was then.
I’ve seen shock written on the faces of men before but nothing compares to the looks on the faces of the people that had gathered around to witness this spectacle. It was a long minute into my beautifully executed Lusoga tirade before I noticed that something wasn’t right. My boda boda man had whispered the word mulalu a few more times during the diatribe but none of it had hit home. Then a woman on my right laughed, “mwanaiwe mme oyo omulalu katyo...olowoza oti aliitegela nibyolikoba. Wejiile buje.”
And that’s when it came to me. That’s when I realised what was going on. I knew I had only a minute to retrieve my dignity from wherever it had flown to and convince this crowd that I wasn’t insane. They had to know that I was as composed as I looked. The madman blinked at me then, presumably out of his shock, and took a bite of the mango I had arrested at his lips when I launched my speech. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered to him for lack of a better way to rectify the judgement on my sanity. He blinked once more, murmured a few desultory words and ambled right across the round-about. The crowd had quickly dispersed. I never got a chance to redeem myself with them so I merely smiled and bounded onto the boda boda again.
1 comment:
Hahaha...beautiful
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