Naked in the Rain

Mood: Rainy
[Toot!] Index: 0.2
Communism Bit: On
Location: Job, of course

This is what she looks like when I wake up before her. Because she never ever sleeps indoors, she got pummelled by the rain. And she crawled as far as my door, and collapsed there. So, when I woke up, I found her there. And the night had been a tad rough on her, you could see. Her body would recount the dark things it had seen, if you let it speak. But I didn't let it speak, me. I just hopped over her, and turned around to take her picture. Four of them here.

She's not as pretty as Entebbe, but don't they all look alluring when they are nude under a steady drizzle? Happy voyeur that I is, I got you pictures of Kampala nude and sleepy under the early morning rain.
I'm no Tumwijuke, and my hand could do with some steadiness training, but still.

Whenever I take pictures, I feel like I'm stealing people, like I'm robbing them and putting them on this camera's card. Always without their permission. A kind of fierce, Konyist kind of abduction. Hence why I just rush past my victims. If the steadiness fails, the hazy lack of focus shall become part of my style. ;o) (I know the trick works: I pretend my failures are features, that I like things that way, that it is better that way, and I preach it almost offensively, and the whole world will believe. After a while, I believe it, myself, and it is no longer a lie, even.)

Then the Capitalist. When it rains, he goes to where people jump off the taxis and stuff. These are people who came from where it wasn't raining. Or who boarded before it was raining. So they don't have umbrellas, you see. Smart idiot, yes. Ambuleela, ambuleela wano! I'm certain he makes money.
But he is, at the same time, a nice example of why I'm frustrated with Uganda's business model. I don't know if I have enough space for a rant of this nature. I'll try to compress it.
Thing is, we are yet to recover from that survivalist mode our business environment entered between the rise of Amin and the boom of this here Revolution. We mainly produce and sell for poor people. That is not just wrong; it is evil. (I know they are the wrong words for a Maoist blog, but work with me here.)
So this guy sells umbrellas. He will live to tomorrow, but he'll never get wealthy. Same for these other people who pretend (even believe) they are employed while they hawk little snacks (divine little groundnuts!) and sit at pay-phones and in prison-cell shops that don't see more than ten customers a day. Or in the slum bars that sell very cheap hard liquor that is mostly drunk on credit.
Imagine, for example, if that liquor was packed in weighty bottles, given a nice logo, given a sufficiently-distant year (1759, 1420, et cetera; heck, even the more-honest 52BC), and given an insane price tag (70 euros; no charging in shillings) and limited to thirty bottles a month. And maybe laced with an aphrodisiac. And, for snobbery's sake, a rule is written, in Amharic script, on the label, that a glass of this drink SHALL NOT be held in the left hand or placed on the floor, EVER, as a pact between the drinker and the `ancient practitioners of this old, old distilling secret'. And no cameras allowed onto the streets where it is made. You know what would happen? The same poison would have become for the wealthy only. In other words, for a little effort, it becomes a luxury product. And luxury products fetch more bang for the shilling. It's the only way poverty can go, because to rise from the bottom when everybody else is also rising you've got to use more speed: luxury products (or sheer volume, like the Chinamen, which we can't do because we don't have one billion people, you see). People pay a lot for exclusive shit, where exclusiveness is the only real value there, where exclusiveness is bought (logically) by the heavy price tag and scarcity and mystery. Not that Johnny Walker is that much better than Uganda Waragi or anything. Oh, well.
Whatever. I know that guy would make more money than he does, if he ran an expensive service like Rainfall Surprise Insurance. (You pay [much] money every year, I'll have people show up with a free umbrella wherever the rain may surprise you. 600 euros per year, only. 800 euros, and it is a car, instead of an umbrella.) Next!

I wake up before the Sun is up, but she is usually done brushing and freshening (and, sometimes, even doing the light breakfast) by the time I get to that spot. Then she roasts our little Equatorial place all day long, before she gets sleepy and falls into the Occident. And, tomorrow, same thing over again.
(You can tell from this paragraph that, before I was banished from Ggulu and stripped of my god status, I had a thing for Musana, and she said No. And it hurt. Now, as a mere mortal, I'm not even allowed to look at her at all! But hey, the mortal women, I'll confess, are quite fun.)

The sombre, dark insides of the Big Fish that swallows fourteen people at a go! :-o I swear, I saw it in the big city! Then it groans and chugs until one of its evil devotees (you can see him standing guard in there) lets you out after you've paid the required ransom. I swear, I saw it. Many such fish in the big city. They'll tell you, if you ask, about the Big Fish (Kigege).
The funny thing about these morning taxis: I sit with the same people many times. The school kids, the old men working over-time (in terms of years), the taxi crews. There is a kid in there with a Boy Scouts' uniform—kid made me proud. He had a stately little march of an over-confident, idealistic boy scout. :o) I find all these kids in clean little uniforms with little, smudgy exercise books that have pudgy, uncertain handwritings and funny spelling, and think Well, nice. Now she can't spell; I just corrected her `shcool' to `school', but she won't remember me when she's President, and I won't remember either, but I'll have sat next to the President at some point, and corrected a President's spelling.

That's it. I'm playing Jammin' from the Babylone By Bus compilation, and, Lord, no better music to write this to. It won't happen again, but I lived to catch the moment. A lot like a photograph.

[Also, the Dear Leader's Country is Our Dear Friend. Shine on, Fire of Juche! Blaze on, Utamed Flame of Songun! :o) Ah, to God that I rest these eyes upon the Glory of Pyongyang before my days are through!]