I am fast becoming a hardened criminal. The other week I bribed a cop; now I am one of those people who have been trying to defraud the Electoral Commission of Uganda. My career in crime started innocently enough – all I wanted to do was make my parents think I was a responsible citizen by registering to vote.

I was successful on my first attempt about a decade ago, and although I don’t remember who I voted for, I felt a tiny bit of patriotic fervour. And then I moved out of my parents’ house, changed towns and realised I could not vote in the village any more. So when the next round of voter registration was announced, complete with the promised technology of photography, I went to my new ‘village’ to register. However, the machines at the Electoral Commission refused to recognise me. I did not appear in the new voter register and was therefore unable to vote in the last election. It was a little bit annoying because at the time I had a better idea of who I wanted to vote for and why.

Recently a new voter registration exercise was announced and I thought this time round I might get lucky. I have moved back to my village of origin, so I thought I had a better chance of getting registered. So I lined up and had my picture taken and did the responsible citizen thing once more.

Yesterday, I was informed that under Section 16 of the Electoral Commission Act, I and people such as myself will be prosecuted for registering more than once. Yes, the EC has unveiled my diabolical plan to vote once in Jinja, cut off the finger that has gone into the indelible ink, jump in the car, drive madly to Kireka and vote a second time, thereby ensuring that my candidate carries the day.

Generally speaking, a person who registers more than once with exactly the same name and exactly the same details is not a criminal mastermind – just someone who has been frustrated by the loopholes in the voter registration process. One might suggest that the logical thing to do in this case would be to delete all prior registrations and retain only the most recent. That way if I try to vote in any other place I will be frustrated, and if I genuinely have registered at the station nearest to me, my right to vote as a citizen of Uganda is defended.

However, there are many things in this country that rarely run on logic. Therefore I suppose at some point tax money will be used to prosecute me. When that time comes, I hope you will remember to bring me some cigarettes in jail. I am told that they are more valuable than dollars if you want to buy yourself some ‘votes’ from the other inmates.

Published on Sunday August 15, 2010

For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat.

2 Thessalonians 3:10 (King James version)

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I just got back form the supermarket – which seems to be every third shop in Jinja, but that is not the point of my tale.

Outside this particular supermarket I am now and then accosted by a rageddy woman with a bundle of junk on her head and tied around her back, begging for 100 shillings. I always have 100 shillings when I leave the superkarket – I am loaded like that. But I have never and will never hand it over to this woman.

If you are severely disabled, or someone who has lost their fingers to leprosy, I will hand you whatever change I have, no questions asked. But when you are an able bodied, sane and clean woman, younger than my mother, you best take your nonsense out of my face. You see, my father is 80 years old, and my mother isn’t far behind. They wake up every morning at 7am and by 9am they are at their place of work. So excuse me if I do not find your lazy ass an emergency.

Even though I have consistently refused to give the hag money, she consistently continues to accost me when I leave the supermarket. And then to insult me when I refuse to give her MY money. Which I worked hard for. I do no care how wicked I look shooing the woman away – on the principle of the matter I shall continue to refuse to give her money. So there.

Ranting over; regular programming can resume.

This is the year of our Lord two thousand and ten; a new decade in a relatively new century. Putting a man on the moon is old news. There are teenagers who have never seen a telephone which is connected to wires – let alone a telephone with an actual round dial.

The internet is out of control and amazing. I can count the trees in my compound on Google Earth. I can chat with someone 5,000 miles away. Using my mailbox I can work for clients I have never even met – and get paid with money transfers directly to my bank account, all without leaving the comfort of Sofa Inc.

Surgeons can operate without cutting you open. They just make a little hole, insert a tube thingy with a camera on one end and a light somehow inside the camera and a laser beam all rolled up into one. So they see and cut and stitch and they are in and out of your innards before you are even aware you were under anaesthetic.  You can shift fat from your rear to your lips or vice versa – it seems the only thing we cannot do is share fat with thin people who want to put on weight.

So can someone please explain to me why a trip to the dentist is still such a soul-numbing, bone chilling, pee-in-your-pants and weep experience? Did they miss the bus? I took my son and nephew to the dentist and after seeing two patients come out, my son, who had never even been to a dentist before, began to cry and ask to be taken home. The mere aura of the waiting room had frightened him.

And I must admit he is not the only one. As soon as you sit back in that dental torture contraption they call a chair, and he swings his tray of lethal and sadistic looking instruments towards you, you can’t help but panic. And it does not help that many dentists have perfected a tone of voice which is much akin to a psychiatric nurse soothing a madman before he plunges a great big injection full of sedatives into his arm.

We are centuries beyond performing amputations on the battle field with nothing but a manual saw, a bottle of whisky and several men to hold the patient down. Why does dentist still equal pain? Is it lack of PR? Do dentists take professional pride in being more frightening than undertakers? Is the amount of horror you generate one of the benchmarks of how well your dental practice is doing?

I guess this is my way of saying I have to have 3 teeth filled and I am not budging till someone gives me a guaranteed pain-free project proposal. Or a large bottle of whisky.

Published on Sunday February 21, 2010

People, I gain weight. Get over it. I am not some obese closet midnight snack binger living in chocolate-abusing denial. I’m a phenomenal woman manifested in size 16. And I am so sick and tired of people meeting me and before they even say hello, it’s “As you have put on weight!”

First off, it is the mark of people who don’t even know me, because it clearly says: “Oh look, there’s Angela. I don’t really have anything to say to her because we are not pals and have never had anything in common. But hey, she has gained a few pounds, so there is a good way to greet her. Then we can go on about her weight conversationally for a couple of minutes and that social speed bump will have been passed.”

Er, how about NOT? If you have nothing to say to me, then shut the flower up. Say hello, how are you? I know you really don’t want to know how I am, but it’s a socially acceptable question and chances are that you’ll get an answer.

Secondly, it is just not socially acceptable to go about telling people they have put on or lost weight. More so in these times of HIV and ARVs. But even generally. It is about as tactful as asking your mother-in-law when she lost her virginity. Weight is just about as personal as you can get. So unless I am stepping on your toe with said weight, I don’t see what business it is of yours whether I expand or contract. Perhaps it is your business in as much as you have to look at me to speak to me, but you could always avert your eyes if it is such a disturbing spectacle, or send me a text when you need to get some info across.

I am aware that the clothes that fit me at this time last year would now cling to my frame in a somewhat obscene manner, but that is no reason for General Public to get his knickers in a twist over. I’m not a short woman; neither am I an unhealthy one. I don’t intend to be a wisp of a thing with a super-large lollipop-like head because the skull doesn’t lose weight with the rest of you. I am especially not a clothes mannequin in a shop front. Spare me your expectations, please.

Especially spare me the semi-lewd questions about “what I have been eating”, because you will get the lewd answers you are looking for. Ditto “who is feeding you?”; “where are you taking all this weight?” and “give me some of what you’re eating.” How does a knuckle sandwich strike you?

You don’t see me commenting about how unsuccessful you still are, that horrible perfume you insist on wearing, your lack of style or your loser boyfriend. That’s more personal, you think? Well, your lack of style and horrid odour is a product of your choices and my weight is a product of mine, so I think we are even.

The one person who actually has to carry this body is me, and until I solicit your help for it, please refrain from offering me your uninformed estimations of my ideal weight. The one other person who sort of “carries” this weight is positively thrilled by it anyway.

There are close friends and family who have the right to give me a corrective mention once in a while. But even they know where to draw the line and how to say what they need to say. So unless I have excercised with you, shared my desire to be smaller with you or married you, shut up about my weight, okay?