“How are you related to Oyo?” she asked while serving me. “I am his brother” In Acholi, everyone from the same clan is a brother to the other. As it suited me, I didn’t elaborate even when I realised the beautiful receptionist had taken it literally. Instead, I went on to tell her that it was my first time in Kampala and that I didn’t know where he lived. “Really, I thought so” she said and I was about to ask her how she came to know about it when I looked at my clothes and realised I didn’t really look like a city boy! “Finish your coffee and I get someone to take you home, ok”. After talking on the phone, she told me someone was coming to pick me up. A big land rover, the kind I used to see in Amuru being driven by government officials from the Ministry of Wildlife and Tourism, turned up. In Amuru it was central to the tour de force and its presence on the other side of River Omee with its beautiful terrain of endless roiling grassland was something both human hunters and the hunted animals feared the most. Buffalos had much more to worry, having so much meat, they were the target and in a single Land Rover there would be at least two game wardens and experienced gunners. Keen to impress their unusually large bosses, the gunners would aim for one fatal shot for each buffalo. In the double standard game, the same Land Rover was used also to apprehend the villagers whose diet was mainly vegetarian and dared to cross River Omee in charge of protein rich bush meat as supplement. In the game where the powerful always won, they were labelled poachers and perceived as a threat to the wildlife despite their limited means and weaponry. Unless they got lucky and ran across some river or marshland, their malnourished figure could never outpace the Land Rover. This Land Rover was however different. Even though I had come to hunt for a job in Kampala, it had not come to apprehend me. Besides, the lady as beautiful as the receptionist, in the front seat of the vehicle next to an elderly looking driver, was actually the wife of my cousin brother. When an elephant cries coming soon
Posted on: Sat, 17 May 2014 15:02:07 +0000
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