Faecal Matter in My Eyes (Literally)

There’s nothing I find as mortifying as another person chancing upon my offspring floating in a toilet. There are times when I flush and just walk out without double checking to be sure I’ve left no remnants, only to hear moments later, the flushing sound of the same toilet after another person has just entered. “Crap!” I sigh in embarrassment, “I think I left a tad back there.” And every time that happens, I don’t look my housemate eye to eye for a minimum of two days.

This morning though. While picking my toothbrush from the cup we use for a toothbrush holder, I found the little guy I’d just flushed a minute ago still chilling nonchalantly in his little pool. With all his siblings gone, he stood strong and bold like a dry maize cob. “Oh well, just another flush and he’ll be on his way” I thought as I pulled down the handle with one hand and reaching for the toothpaste with the other.

While brushing, I looked over my shoulders to see what–if any–was left of junior, and guess what? There he was, wholesome and intact like nothing happened. “Oh crap” I exclaimed as I waited for the cistern to fill up.

It was getting late and my housemate wanted to use the bathroom, but junior was being uncooperative. Were he a real child, now would be one of those moments when an adult starts to plead with a child who seems to be enjoying a game to stop.

“Look here buddy, we can always do this another day, but daddy is late for work and he need to go, and so do you, okay?” I would probably beg, to which he would giggle and wag his little tail like a duckling in a water sink.

Hands on hips, I stood over the toilet for what I hoped would be the last time and pulled the handle. I watched junior swirl in a vortex and for a moment, he was out of sight. But like the floater that he was, the little bastard bopped back wobbling against the bowl wall.

“Ok, that’s it, you’ve brought this onto yourself” I threatened like you would to a stubborn child as you pick up a stick. Only that I didn’t pick a stick for junior, but I reached for the toilet brush and mashed the little nigger up, realizing later that I’d created a cluster bomb instead. I flushed again and they all floated like tiny toad eggs in a pond.

“Roger it’s getting late” My housemate had lost his patience, probably thinking I was busy chocking my chicken. “juth a minith” I replied with the toothbrush shoved back in my mouth trying to pretend I was still brushing my teeth, yet what I was actually brushing was in the toilet bowl. I had to be quick but the cistern was taking forever to fill up. I slid a basin under the tap and opened it, figuring that this would help a little bit with the awkward silence as well us refill the cistern faster.

I honestly considered running to the kitchen to pick a strainer and skim the bloody toilet manually. Replacing it wouldn’t be very expensive.But there was no way I could do this without my housemate bumping into my little mess before I could clear it up. After careful consideration, I decided to take my last option, mashing the fragments further into a paste; during which process of panicking, I stroked the brush with inappropriate force that splashed the glop into my face.

“F-U-C-K M-E!” I moaned, my face baubed with my own not-so-solid waste. I could feel the fragments wiggle on my eyelids, and then under the eyelids as I kept blinking.

“Oh Christ, you know you could have answered your bone-a-phone in your room? You can’t keep me here waiting this long”

“I am through, just a second”

I would rather own up to the accusation of assaulting my friendly weapon than explain my little incident. I flushed again before moving to the sink to wash off my facial, meanwhile, the basin under the tap was full and I emptied it in the bowl. With this basinful, my paste was washed down. Just one final flush and I was out. My housemate had already left for work, without showering.

Reaching office, a workmate pointed out; “Hey, you have a little something in the corner of your left eye.”

Career Vs Passion; Sometimes you Have to be realistic.

I enjoy writing, quite as much as I need my job. I don’t enjoy my job very much, but certainly need the money and I can’t glean a good sum of it if all I do when I should be hunting for deals (it’s the way lawyers make money, not through salaries) is write. This is the issue I’ve been grappling with for a while now.

Over a month ago, around the time I decided to give facebook a break. I’d decided to push the halt button on all the writing I’d been doing but for this blog. It’s a decision I made to create ample time to think through my career choices and priorities in less cluttered space as I pondered upon the future; where and how far I plan to haul along this unlikely combination of my job and the kind of writing I do.

But while it may not be accompanied with a proportionate bearing on my bank statement, nothing I’ve done before gives me as much a sense of fulfillment and accomplishment as writing does. Alas, I not only need to survive, but I also want to buy my own car; and while it’s not easy to procure wealth through writing, it’s almost as hard to make a decent living in a profession that requires full attention when you’re bogged down with lofty writing ambitions.

This threw me in the relentless debate of “do what you love Vs do what you need to survive”. There is a popular saying that suggests that if you do what you love the money will follow you. It worked for Steve Jobs when he dropped out of collage to pursue his dream, against which background he advised graduates to follow their passion in his famous You’ve Got to Find What You Love speech. He said;

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.

Paul Graham offers an interesting perspective on the subject, he says;

There’s a sense of “not everyone can do work they love” that’s all too true, however. One has to make a living, and it’s hard to get paid for doing work you love. There are two routes to that destination:

The organic route: as you become more eminent, gradually to increase the parts of your job that you like at the expense of those you don’t.

The two-job route: to work at things you don’t like to get money to work on things you do.

The organic route is more common. It happens naturally to anyone who does good work. A young architect has to take whatever work he can get, but if he does well he’ll gradually be in a position to pick and choose among projects. The disadvantage of this route is that it’s slow and uncertain. Even tenure is not real freedom.

The two-job route has several variants depending on how long you work for money at a time. At one extreme is the “day job,” where you work regular hours at one job to make money, and work on what you love in your spare time. At the other extreme you work at something till you make enough not to have to work for money again.

I like Paul Graham’s approach because it considers the likely possibility of starvation that lurks in wait for those who are rather quick to jump ship in pursuit of their passions. While Steve Jobs’ speech was rhetoric and really inspiring, in my opinion, not everyone may be as lucky and smart. There’re lots of people writhing in misery and disappointment because they trusted that the dots would somehow connect in their future. The theory may have made all the difference in Jobs’ life, but there’s no guarantee those dots will connect for everyone.

Marty Nemko observed;

Based on the 2,700 clients I’ve worked with over the past two decades, the hundreds of callers to my career-centric radio show, and my countless other conversations with people about their careers, I’ve come to the conclusion that we’ve been sold a bill of goods when we’re told to “Follow your passion, “ or “Do what you love and the money will follow.” Fact is, if you do what you love, you’ll probably starve.

So like most writers I know who don’t want to starve, I decided to pursue Paul Graham’s lax variant of the two-job route; to keep my day job as I do the writing on the side.

However, the real problem I’ve found is learning how to balance the job that feeds me and the passion that buys my airtime. Prioritizing on what I should while creating time for the things I am passionate about.

How do the rest of you do it?

Why I Need to Make a Lot of Money and Buy a Car

On my way from court last week, just as I was about to straddle a Boda-boda, I was startled by a honk from across the road. I turned to see a rather familiar lawyer I’ll call Jack, one that I could have seen in a library at campus.

“Hey, you’re heading to town?” He called out rather smugly, his left hand on the steering wheel and the right elbow prodding through the window like there was not enough space for both hands in the car.

I rarely have a problem hitchhiking with a person I know, or should know in this case. But in the front seat of his seemingly new Toyota Progrès was a pretty young girl—an intern at Jack’s Law Firm I presume—for whom he had intentions of a boning nature. Of course you can tell when a guy is trying to impress his way up a girl’s nether regions, and you don’t want to be the ladder.

“Oh, thanks. But I am passing by the Companies Registry.” I made up a quick one, “and the traffic that side is terrible, you’re better off going without me.”

“That’s exactly where we’re passing.” He rebounded, “Weren’t you supposed to check on the forms you filed last week?” He turned to his bride as he leaned behind to open for me the door, like I was going to run away.

I wanted to blurt out another excuse, say this boda man whose hopes I’d heightened, how was I supposed to live with myself after disappointing him? But with the door flung open the way it was in the middle of the road, riding away would be really impolite, so I budged and entered the gaddamn car.

“Roger, Tish (not real name); Tish, Roger.” A quick introduction was made. “Do you know how many people are lost to boda boda accidents each week? Those bastards are very reckless. Plus it’s a little embarrassing for counsel to be seen flying around town with his tie being blown back and forth by the wind. Don’t you think?” He peered at me through the driving mirror and sniggered in an attempt to tone down his cruel remark.

“Well, when time is of essence, bodas are about the most efficient means of transport in this jumbled town of ours. Oh by the way you forgot the ‘S’, it’s Rogers” I pointed out, as if that was supposed to help me change the ambiance while I fidgeted to forge a sitting posture that wouldn’t make me come off as inferior to him because I was in his bloody car.

“He is a funny one” He forced a chuckle. “My friend here was with me at Law School, but he’s also a good writer. He wrote a nice piece about things they never tell you about law school. I am sure you’ve read it.”

“Hmm…I am maybe, maybe not” Tish simpered.

“You haven’t? I’ll send you a link when we get to office. It’s really interesting. Actually, my man here writes for New Vision”.

Did he just call me his man? I wondered. I could barely remember this guy in school. He could even have been two or three classes ahead of me for all I know. But now I was “his man”, passing me off as his former classmate. With the details he knew about me you would think we were even roommates, if not best friends who haven’t met in a while but have been keeping tabs on each other. Only that he turned out to be the successful lawyer who drives a “luxury car” and I, the pitiful lawyer who goes to court astride boda bodas with files clasped in his sweaty armpits. One that needed to be rescued from the embarrassment by offering me a lift against my wish.

“No I don’t write for New Vision” I retorted.

“Yes he does, he’s just being modest”

“I may have contributed to a section in the Sunday Vision that was scrapped, but I’ve never been on the New Vision payroll”

“Oh right!” He wagged a forefinger the way you would after getting an epiphany. “That explains why you switched to Monitor, you now write for Monitor right? I remember that article on Sunday about atheism.”

“You know he’s also atheist” He now turned to Tish. “A follower of fat boy; they call themselves free thinkers.”

I felt the need to clarify that I don’t write for Daily Monitor either, that I had just been interviewed about the subject. But by now I was brimming with indignation and I wasn’t even ready to start defending myself against the preposterous allegation that I was a follower of fat boy. So I decided to sit back and painfully feign a smile as this snob flaunted me like a circus monkey he’d trained how to skip a rope. It’s what you get when take lifts from a person who has just bought a car, for some reason they feel like they’ve donated to you a kidney which guarantees them the right to treat you like their pet throughout that period of unlawful imprisonment. I shouldn’t have disappointed my boda man.

Are Latkes meant to taske like Paspalum?

Besides writing, which my girlfriend does for a living, she has a wide range of interests and dreams. Today she’ll tell you about this tailoring class she wants to take so she can add to her collection of eccentric DIY earrings and shoes, tomorrow you’ll find her in a passionate discussion with a stranger reading a book on local Ugandan herbs, going on about how herbalism has always been her long term dream vocation, alongside writing children’s books.

“I think you would be better off reading about herbs in Burkina Faso” I interject, “You’ve always talked about moving to Ouagadougou to teach English?”

“Ass wipe!” she retorts. “I said I would stay in Burkina Faso only a short while when I start travel writing, I didn’t say I wanted to move there permanently.”

Meanwhile, cooking happens to be one of her fascinations, and lucky for her, I’m not picky with what goes into my mouth so I’ll be up for whatever crazy recipe she may print out on her way to my place from work. She may come babbling about masala chips today and tomorrow she I’ll show up with a cluster of huge onions to make onion rings. Anything new she eats out or stumbles upon on the internet is a candidate in her kitchen, and the experiments are done at my place before she cooks them at her home where she stays with her family. This time round, she came up with the idea to make a Jewish dish.

“I’ve got it,” popped a gchat IM at noon “The idea for today’s meal; we’re going to prepare Latkes.”

“Yey” I squealed before I even googled the word. I later received a link that led me to photos of brown crispy looking pancakes I thought I would be

The meal I thought I was going to eat

masticating that evening. As soon as the boss stepped out of office at 4:30 pm, I wrestled my arms into my jacket and scrammed. I grabbed a boda-boda home, only to stopping over at the supermarket to buy some eggs and a new kitchen towel as requested.

Reaching home, she was already in the kitchen grating the potatoes. Freeing myself of the coat, I rolled up my sleeves and asked how I could help.

“Come, finish up with the grating as I mince the parsley.” The recipe placed atop the fridge did not have parsley among the ingredients, but she doesn’t cook food without parsley. We’ll run out of salt and make do without but she won’t fry anything without parsley.

I finished the grating, soaked the potato strips in water for a minute, drained and then wrung them in the kitchen towel I came with, just as instructed. I normally play a passive rule in the kitchen; most of my work revolves around slicing the onions, passing the salt and repeatedly tasting if the pork is ready.

At first I used to rebuff this whole kitchen business, feeling it made me more whipped than I already am, or ‘domesticated’, as a friend of mine likes to put it; but I would be a blithering liar if I said I don’t enjoy it. Cooking is now more of a love affair than an activity we perform when we’re hungry. We do have our relentless squabbles, but when it comes to cooking, fights over our personality differences can always take a back seat.

After performing my role, I leaned against the kitchen sink and waited to pass the frying spatula or whatever may be required. But five minutes after she threw the first of four molds she’d made so far into the frying pan, I started losing hope that our latkes would look anything like the pancakes on the recipe I was now holding in my hands.

“Baby is it just me or we’re reinventing a variant of this Yiddish dush?” I croaked.

“Give it some time, I’ve got this” She replied.

“But babe,” I insisted. “You’ve been frying that one lump over five minutes now and it has not only refused to clump together but still looks like steamed cabbage strips”

The mean joke we ended up with after hours of preparation

After flogging the dead horse for another minute, she swallowed her pride and got the latkes (or a sorry attempt at that) onto the plate. It was a disaster, and I felt her pain, not after all the announcements she had made on all social media. And here she was, melancholically staring at the plate like a mother who has just had a stillbirth.

“It’s ok love” I hugged her, “We’ve experimented with many exotic dishes and they’ve come out fine, we’ll download another recipe and try this again.”

However, a part of me was convinced that if we’d put a little less parsley and thrown in an extra egg our latkes would have tasted a little more like fried cabbage than paspalum.”

Stuck with over a kilogram of the raw mixture and wondering what to do with it. She suggested we make masala chips of it. Conversely, I was thinking frying it like nsenene would be a better idea.

We later zeroed down to a mashed potatoes paste, which proved to be a worse disaster than the latkes, even the dog snubbed that shit.

Related piece.  Honey I Denounce That New Hairstyle.

Anything but Weed (Part I)

I try to look at myself as tolerant and accommodative of different views and standards of behavior in people. “What is it to you?” Is usually my response to homophobes pointing accusatory fingers at the gay people, accusing them of eroding our cultural norms. “Who sets the norms anyway? It’s their bodies not yours”.

It only gets dicey when the issue is made a little bit more personal. Like when people probe for my reaction if it’s my own brother who came home from southern Sudan with a Dinka boyfriend. What’s weird is how they always ask along the lines of my brother, or future son but never my sister or future daughter, in which case the imagination wouldn’t be as disturbing.

When I stopped believing in the existence of a supernatural being and his list of ten dos and don’ts, almost everything became permissible and I would defend just about everything I used to find shocking before. “So what if the girl he’s been banging has turned out to be his second cousin” You would find me in a heated argument, “They are two consenting adults for Pete’s sake, let them be.” It was my twisted idea of being a free thinker.

I wanted to break all the rules and try everything I never did while I was a Born Again Christian. But a part of me I am sure simply wanted to satisfy my curiosity. You know, like reaching a place where I can smugly say I’ve been there, done that. Only that these are things that everyone had done much earlier in life, the time when I was busy seeking the elusive face of God. But besides rimming and other sexual activities that may require the involvement of my poohole; for some obscure reason, a strict policy against narcotic drugs seems to be one of the few surviving remnants of my Christian moral fiber.

About three years after I’d stopped believing, I started going through the common beer brands available on the Ugandan market looking for one I would call “my beer”, a phrase my dad uses in reference to Bell Lager. Unfortunately every new brand I tried was as tasteless as the former, some only more bitter than the others. Because most of my friends drank Club, I decided to force that for a while; but being used to 300 ml of soda, a 500 ml bottle of beer was so freakin’ huge, “how do these guys down ten of these?” I used to wonder, “Jeez! That’s like 5 litters of alcohol in one night.” I could barely finish a litter myself in 4 hours.

I had even experimented with cigarettes, Dunhill being my preferred brand over Sportsman and other local brands meant for gate keepers and prisoners. Not that I could point out one distinction between the brands besides the price difference though; to be quite honest, you could hand me a Supermatch stick from a Dunhill pack and I wouldn’t notice that I just smoked a cigarette for askaris. I guess it had something to do with the fact that I never inhaled the smoke after all; just a matter of drawing it in my mouth for a couple of seconds before making what I hoped was a cool, smooth exhalation from the side of my mouth.

The act of smoking started striking me as really cool, the sight of girl on a bar stool, vertigo inducing heels strapped on her crossed legs and her short sequins strapless dress sliding up her glowing chubby thighs. Embellish that with a cigarette suspended between her fingers and you’ll leave me drooling like a retard. That is a sight I would kill for, much like a Bond girl, only with a little more flesh on her, then watching her throw her head back and curling her glossy lips to jet a steady stream of haze in the air.

If only I had the balls to walk up to these girls, other than just siting in a dark corner of Steakout during a Rock Night and nourish my eyes as I sipped on a glass of concealed Smirnoff Black Ice—the alcoholic beverage I settled for because it comes in manageable quantities and tastes like punched Crest soda—, wasting away half a pack of Dunhill in showy puffs in hope that one of these girls would notice me and mistake my creepiness for sophistication.

I was game for anything until you drew out a joint, the point at which I would flinch and beg to excuse myself like anyone was going to shove it in my mouth. My curiosity just never stretched quite as far. In my fourth year at Law School, a very close friend of mine shared with me her resolutions for the year 2010. Among which were; “have my cherry popped” and “taste weed”. While I hoped against hope—being in the friend zone and all—that I would receive an SOS for the former activity, I had no interest in participating in the latter, not even if it would lead to the former.

I bet my fears stemmed the strange belief I had that weed stays in your blood for a whooping seven years. I have no idea where I picked that from; I don’t even know why I never considered doing research about it. I am only sure of one thing; I wasn’t ready to hold seven years of my future hostage on a whim of momentary coolness. No amount of peer pressure would push me this far.

“What if two years from now an opportunity comes up for me to fly to the USA” I would think, “I’m not ready to fail to get a VISA just because I flunked a doping test.”

Not that I knew of any prerequisite tests for a VISA application, nor did I have any plans of leaving the country in the pipeline. But these fears were always lingering in my head and I respected them so much so that I never dared to question their source or authenticity. But on the night of 31st Dec 2012,  everything was going to change.

Of Unhealthy Relationships

Today I finally gathered the courage to do something I should have done much earlier. It may not be the ultimate break up, but this month long break I called in today should, in the least, rectify the flaws in my unhealthy relationship. See, I’m in (if not was) in a nasty relationship with this sweet-evil girl, the kind you wouldn’t take home to your parents. ”She’ll ruin you, that girl.” Your mother may say, echoing the exact words your friends have said to you over and over again.

But they don’t know how strongly you’re attached to her, how she makes you feel good about yourself. Of course you know the dangers involved in this relationship; she doesn’t build you or add any value to your life, but you would rather spend time with her than get things done, how you can’t concentrate on anything for more than an hour without battling the temptation to text her, how you want to leave work early to run into her snaring arms.

But today I decided to do the right thing and take charge of my life. I’ll not be enslaved to the disastrous relationship with Facebook that repeatedly gets in the way of my productivity. At least not for the next 30 days for which my account is going to stay inactivated. I needed to do this to reassure myself that I call the shots in this relations.

Stuck in a Wrong Career

It is generally believed that the magic for success lies in doing what you love. While the contention against this theory has mostly been ‘what if the relished dream can’t pay the bills?’ I’ve personally been asking myself a different question lately; what if one fails to identify that one thing they want to do for the rest of their life?

I lost the closest thing to a dream I’d ever had back in 2004 when I had to select the subjects I would take at my A’ Level. Having been thrown into the arts class, the director of studies swore to my mom that her son was never going to be moved to the science class. Up until then, I was convinced, contrary to my grades, that I was more of Physics, Chemistry and Biology kind of person; a fantasy that could possibly have been drummed into my head from an impressionable age.

Even with all distinctions in the Arts and a wash of credits in sciences, my dream was to become a doctor; and like anyone who suckled the same breasts that I did, the rule was you either take sciences, or you risked a lifetime of destitution. But because the teachers prioritized academic excellence over parents’ arts-phobia, my mom was remorselessly advised to either accept the arts combination I’d been given, or consider finding another school for her little Einstein.

Because of the friends I had in my school and the attachment I had to the scripture union, I would never consider changing schools, not even for an inviting science combination; but then the moment I lost my mother’s dream of becoming a doctor, my life went on auto pilot.

By the time I left high school, the idea of becoming a lawyer had never crossed my mind. But because I couldn’t think of a more alluring course for an arts student, I casually embraced the idea of staking 5 years of my life pursuing a profession for which I honestly didn’t feel a glint of interest but for its prospect of amassing wealth. I was lucky to finish the degree and the grueling Bar course successfully and even got a job, but if there’s anything the last 1 year I’ve worked as an advocate has revealed to me, it’s the fact that I’ll walk away from this profession as soon as I can afford to.

I look around office and everyone seems to be happy with what they do. But at my desk, I sit pensively wondering why I’m the only one who feels like they’re trapped 200 feet down in a coal mine shaft. I hate my job, right from the smothering dress code to the pretentious archaic jargon. But the one thing I hate more than my life snuffing job is the fact that I still haven’t figured out exactly what I would rather do.

For the past 10 months, since I discovered this new hobby, writing has been my sanctum, the crack through which I slip away from this tacky legal plane for a momentary nirvana. On many occasions, I’ve flirted with the elating idea that perhaps this is it, the answer to my life long quest. But how can I be sure? I’ve only done this for a couple of months.

As exciting as it all feels right now, I have bills to pay and writing is such a lazy concubine when it comes to that, at least with my little experience. Though this lackluster job helps me meet them, I ache for every minute of my time that I dedicate to its insatiable demands. I barely have time left to taste any other waters.

Just the other day I stumbled onto ‘ You’ve got to find what you love,’ a speech that Steve Jobs gave at Stanford University back in 2005. This guy was speaking to me; he said

“You’ve got to find what you love…Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.”

That’s where I pause and ask myself, how much longer do I have to look? How will I even identify what I’m looking for having run through a list of infatuations already? Perhaps I need to give my job a little more time and work harder at my attitude towards it. But how much harder do I have to try if the last year of trying has only yielded this much misery?

Posted on Reader’s Cafe Africa

The Road to Impiety Pt 2; The Assholic Atheist I Never Planned to Become.

When I made the decision to ditch my faith in 2005, it wasn’t a decision I made to become atheist, I didn’t even know about atheism. The slow and grueling decision to sever my 5 year long relationship with God—as a born again Christian—was solely driven by the fact that the things I believed then had stopped to make sense. It was a decision I made to better myself by concentrating no the things that mattered and forfeit the wild-goose chase.

My life, though, was to remain pretty much the same as it was during the subsistence of my faith. I even wrote down a not-to-do-list should my impending fate finally catch up with me. It was a simple one; 1 Thessalonians 4:11 being my moral compass, minding my own business and living a quiet life were to be maintained as my guiding principles. “Evil music” was also not to be any more welcome than alcohol consumption. But because cursing had never been my thing, I didn’t find it imperative to make a resolution to this effect.

A year later, when I joined university; my life was going according to plan. I had lost the faith but still lived my life like a believer. Secular music hadn’t crept its way into my life and I kept my beliefs—or lack thereof—mostly to myself. It was disheartening enough that my mom was already looking at me like I was the reincarnation of the devil himself, I didn’t want to attract anymore unnecessary attention. It was my ideal life, keeping things on the down low.

However, while cutting church service didn’t guilt me anymore, giving in to the temptation to watch anything that I previously considered as pornographic would haunt me with so much dejection you’d think I’d just drowned a bunch of puppies in a swamp. It would also take me another three years before I could brave an alcoholic beverage that wasn’t given in church wine measures; just around the same time when I first set foot in a night club—a place I once believed demons of whatever odors, hues and sizes congregated.

I was starting to lose my way, straying from the plan. It wasn’t long before I started trying on impious labels. Starting with agnosticism, which I took on for a couple of reasons that included the intricate allure that people tended to associate with me every time I said it—at least in my imaginations. A friend would ask disconcertedly,

“So if you don’t believe in God anymore, does that make you one of these so called atheists?”

And feigning an inexpressive face, I would reply “Well, technically speaking, the right word for it is agnostic.” And then pause in preparation for the next question that invariably required me to recite my rehearsed definition of the tongue twister.

But the more I shared the reasons for my disbelief with friends, the more I opened myself up to the confrontations I wanted to avoid in the first place. The thing about being a non believer in a predominantly religious community is that people will always pelt you with complicated questions. Questions they’ve failed to answer themselves but settled for a completely irrational but much simpler and well-worn response; God did it!

In one of such arguments with a friend in class, I was rudely interrupted by what turned out to be a “smarterass.”

            “But there’s something that you atheist don’t get.” She shot from behind me.

            “Excuse me, agnostic! Not atheists, the two are different” I corrected as I turned around.

“Whatever, but without God in the equation, how could you possibly explain irreducibly complex biological mechanisms like bacterial flagellum, the blood clotting cascade, cilia, and the adaptive immune system getting so perfectly aligned to contribute to one basic function?”

Of course I didn’t know how to respond to this affectedly technical question, neither did I know much about intelligent design at the time. But this bitch was demanding a chronological and perfectly logical account of a phenomenon that not even scientists have put to rest, one for which I figured she had a presumptuously precise but pitifully ignorant answer; “God did it!”

It is encounters like these that push non-believers to research relatively more than an average believer. To be better prepared to defend themselves against the inevitable recurrence of confrontations that will always characterize their lives.

It was on this course that I discovered the Ugandan atheist community, which came as a welcome surprise. I’d lived close to four years as a non-believer but had no idea there were so many people here like me.

Through a facebook group, and the friends I made there; I was opened to a whole new arsenal. With so many links to atheist texts, audio books and videos shared, I equipped myself with counteractive arguments in response to the trite questions that typify the existence of God debates. I even learnt a rebuttal to the intelligent design’s irreducible complexity concept that left me dazed a couple of years ago.

Before I realized, I had been completely sucked into the frenzy. Being a “free thinker”—an honor I was quick to bestow onto myself—I assumed stewardship of all the logic, reason and empiricism that eludes all believers. My personal opinions on matters of faith became facts that I obliged myself to shove down every Christian’s throat with utmost condescension.

How gullible are these people? I would wonder. How do you live your whole life thinking you have an invisible daddy who lives in the sky? It completely skipped my mind that I believed in this sky daddy for almost 20 years and I had reasons for it; that I didn’t just wake up one day and said fuck this shit.

Later, I dropped the agnostic tag and went past atheist to antitheist. I didn’t even wait for my religious views to be challenged anymore, but I jumped at every opportunity—however remote—to flaunt my newly crammed atheist quotes. There were times I could have come across a facebook status update where an individual was going through a hard time and praying for a miracle, and then, touched by their agony, I would drop a few words of encouragement, it would always be a quote like;

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

Patiently wait for a response in reproach, I would start browsing for my punch line, my favorite used to be;

“If there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence.”

I became a complete nuisance but didn’t even realize it. Hating God became my new calling, It’s like I’d dropped the bible for an antitheist machine gun, of course I was aware of the fact that attacking a camp I once called home threw me off as a jerk of sorts, but I always trumped the thought with a ridiculous consolation. Thinking, If Paul could preach to those he used to persecute, I could as well do it the other way round.

I now ask myself, what the heck? Was this all necessary? Can’t I just live my life and let other people be? Do I have to become as irritating as preachers who hold all passengers on a bus hostage in the name of fulfilling their heavenly duty of spreading the word? Fortunately, I’ve grown to a position where I can see all these things. I may not have completely drifted back on course, but I’m making a conscious decision to do so. I may not stop listening to secular music, but I want to mind my business more and leave the business of purging this world of religion to the Richard Dawnkins’ already at it.

Read Part 1 here.

To Hell with Cafe Javas. I’ll stick to the places I’m used to.

Cast down in the dumps by the fact that the long holiday is finally over, you pick what’s left of the festive season stash to treat yourself to what you hope to be a really good meal. Remembering that this Cafe Javas restaurant you always walk past on your way home finally opened, you decide to check it out and perhaps take a few photos of yourself at the scene before the buzz becomes stale. However, to make every second of the last day of holiday count, you think it best to take the meal home.

As you enter, this pretty waitress welcomes you with a lovely but feigned smile. You know it can’t be real because you’ve never met her before so there’s absolutely no reason why she should be as jolly as a returning soldier’s wife.

After you’ve made yourself comfortable in the beautiful couch at the balcony that overlooks the road, she follows you to hand you the menu and kindly offers to help you choose a dish. But because you know exactly what you came for, you smile and ask for a second to make up your mind.

Flipping straight to burgers section, you peruse it back and forth in a vain search for your traditional burger; at which point you beckon the young lady.

“Excuse me, are bacon cheese burgers on a different menu?”

“No, sorry; we don’t have bacon dished” she simpers.

“But if I may recommend, you should try our vegetarian burger.” She offers, “It’s made of crumb fried vegetable pattie with tomatoes, lettuce, onions and chili mayo. I’m sure you’ll love it” and then she wears her phony smile again.

Da fuck! Where is the bacon in that? You explode silently. Me I came here for a bacon cheese burger, the one I eat every time I get paid, who spends 17,000 on tomatoes and onions anyway? I should have known better than to come to a Muslim owned restaurant. But thinking that walking out at this point would be kind of rude; you decide to go for the next best alternative.

“This barbeque burger, how good is it?”

“Oh, that’s another nice one; you can choose either the grilled beef or chicken pattie, finished in a tangy barbeque sauce”

“I think I’ll have chicken, double.” You order. “It’s to go, please”

“Would you like anything to drink in the meantime?”

“Hmm…” You pretend to be thinking about it, as if you didn’t know that you only came with 20,000 and the meal you’ve just ordered is 19,500. “…I’m fine, just get me that”

Ten minutes later, after you’ve taken photos of yourself and updated your location on facebook; you get notified that your order is ready for pickup at the counter. But when you look at the receipt you’ve been issued, it’s indicating 17,500 and the lady behind the counter actually hands you back change for 2,500.

You’re tempted to pick all the money, grab your pack and go celebrate your blessing in disguise. But the seasonal puritan in you gets the best of you and you take the opportunity to learn how to tip instead. Picking the 1,000 note off the counter, you slide the coins in the directions of the kind young lady who has mastered the skill of faking a smile in a way that it seems perfectly natural. And then use the 1 bob note to take a boda home where you plan to enjoy your meal lounging on your bed as you watch the new season of Big Bang Theory you just got.

The horror!

You get to the kitchen, serve the food that has cost you your average weekly expenditure on lunch, and this is what what you get.

I mean, seriously? I could have got this anywhere at half the price!

Ok, at least now you realize that what you thought was a blessing in disguise was nothing like it, the smiley bitch messed up your order to give you a single not the double bugger you ordered for, which worked to her advantage. But then you think to yourself;

Javas, what the fuck sincerely? for 17,500 I don’t deserve any salads? Does my food have to look like I just grabbed it off a roadside burger stand? I’m not even worthy of  ketchup but the lousiest quality of tomato sauce on the Ugandan market? 

If only I’d walked a few meters across, i would be enjoying my traditional bacon cheese burger (with ketchup even and salads) at Endiro Coffee for only 18,000. And now I have to wait for the next salary before I can eat a real burger.

A not-so-clear picture of the mighty bacon cheese burger from Endiro. To hell with Javas!

My first year in blogging; 2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 5,300 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 9 years to get that many views.

The busiest day of the year was December 9th with628 views. The most popular post that day wasThings They Haven’t Told You About Studying Law..

Click here to see the complete report.