Letter to Obote's driver as Uganda celebrates 57 years of independence

Jambo, 

Iko Mzuri boss? 

Last week was Independence and boy, did we drink!

Not the swabs of grain millet malwa you feasted on in the parking lot at Kololo then. 

Ours!

Ebyaffe? 

We had huge bottles of South African, Portuguese, French wines and whiskies. All the tribes of alcohol were there. I overheard Opio, the garbage collector saying only the Ugandan Romi's wines were left unattended to! 

We danced and danced and danced!

The tunes kept coming; parte after parte, ‘Bakuzala mu bbaala', and even one uncanny song that asks, sikyo? 

Wabula, ekyaffe kyekyo! 

You see, we have long dispensed of the long and boring music you people had. The lyrics, those we have tilted a bit – nobody wants to hear long poetic descriptions like those of Simon Kaate Nsubuga. 

The ones where he describes Joy, those, we are not ready for. 

What 57 years deserves, what it truly needs, is to ridicule Obangaina and ask, whether there's any other song Rachael Magoola can be credited for, sikyo?  

One drunkard sauntered to the DJ clearly doused in some unholy drinks and asked for a song, I hear it was banned, that song, the one that says something about wearing a crown. 

The DJ told him off! 

And boy were we happy!

He even sampled us ‘wire wire' because, honestly, at 57, why wear a crown when you can just ‘wire-wire' everywhere?  

I had the drunkard's bones break as they threw him out of the bar. His red thing on the head fell somewhere in the mud and nobody picked it up because we thought it was for the military escort of the minister who was dancing with some young girls at the stage. We knew he would come and find it. 

But Kafeero, the meat roasting guy said he knew that it wasn't for the escort. He kept blabbering about how, when they caught him ‘idle' the people who beat him had a metallic thing on theirs that looked like the national coat of arms but you see, he wasn't sure! I mean, we've seen him sing the national anthem as ‘we yanga we are…" 

Who can trust that man anymore? 

We have always known him to be a confused man, that Kafeero! 

The minister asked for his guard though. We told him he was taking care of ‘some ka small business'. We offered to help. He wanted to pick another glass of whisky. One for him and another for his Chinese friend. 

We brought him the drinks but his hands were full so I offered to help with an envelope he was holding but he told me those were matters of the state. 

So we sat there and helped him with his drink. 

Ours was a party! 

The guard of the Zimbabwean president joined us. His boss had gone to Statehouse. We shared with him our drinks. He looked traumatized. And excited too. He kept asking about our party. How could we have this much fun? 

 "You let your good president go! For us, we can't" 

Every day is a party! 

"So what did he say in his speech" The guard, who spent hours watching over his boss asked us. 

"He said some things about independence, sikyo?" We responded throwing glances at each other. 

Me to the Minister's driver, the minister's driver to the Chinese friend's driver and that one to the escort who had now returned from the ‘ka small business'.   

My friend, I must return now to the duties of state. The minister asked me to pick a package for him from Nakawa. I don’t know whether to use the three car convoy or the five-car one.