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Published: April 21st 2008
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Having put the finishing touches on a few stories and stocked up on supplies, I’m suddenly gripped by a restless urge to get this show on the road. It’s been a long slog through the start of the New Year, with my ankle hobbling me for the first two weeks and a couple of deadlines keeping me busy for the better part of the month. Now I’m hell-bent on getting out of the country before the calendar turns to March. I make plans to head west to Fort Portal, in the foothills of the Rwenzoris, before veering south to see Mai in Kabale. I’ll take a scenic detour around Lake Bunyoni and try to do a bit of hiking in the Virungas, then finally cross the border into Rwanda with just a few days on my visa to spare.
On my last full day in Kampala I head to Oweno Market, hoping to pick up a few second-hand shirts that have nothing - nothing at all - to do with any weight I may or may not have put on in the past two months. Oweno is East Africa’s largest market, and it’s stirred a vague sense of dread in me since I visited during my first week in Kampala. The place is endless, a maze of narrow lanes winding between stalls of second-hand jeans and clunky shoes and pastel pantsuits and pleather handbags and cast-off t-shirts and duffel bags with the plastic letters peeling off their logos. Shafts of sunlight punch through the tarps overhead, and there’s a muddy scum on the floor that I’ve decided - despite the interests of science - to not spend too much time dwelling on. In some stalls, where rows of jeans and shirts climb twenty feet into the air, young guys call out to the crowd and briskly change money and keep a wary eye on the dozens of hands rifling through piles of t-shirts; in others, where business is slow, guys nap on bundles of skirts and blouses, and barefoot women stretch out their legs and stare wistfully at the traffic passing by.
Oweno is the stuff of nightmares, a bazaar of dreams as worn and frayed as the seams of its knock-off soccer jerseys. Rumor has it there’s a method to the market’s madness, much like the organized chaos of the Moroccan medina or the souqs of the Middle East. But I haven’t penetrated far enough into Oweno’s dark heart to make it out of Textile World, and if this is just the outer crust of the market’s many layers, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find Brutus and Judas Iscariot sitting over a card table in the center, playing rummy and sighing at fate and welcoming you to their own private hell.
Everyone wants a piece of the action when they see me heading their way. “
Mzungu! Mzungu!” ripples through the market around me, and people push me toward their shirts and their boxer shorts, their leather belts and their pleated pants. It took no less than three cups of coffee for me to steel my nerves this morning, but I’m wilting under the barrage of calls and stares, and the day’s rising heat, and the hands reaching out to pull me every which way. I try on shirts that are too big or too small; I wrinkle my nose at styles that haven’t been in since Obote; I’m reassured that certain tears on a collar or sleeve were absolutely, positively meant to be there.
In the end I pick up three shirts that are, if not stylish, at least straining in that direction. I stop for a breather at a stall owned by a kind, smiling old couple. The wife pushes a pile of button-down shirts my way and urges me to take a seat. We start to chat, and before long a crowd has gathered to give the couple’s wares a second-look. A
mzungu, it turns out, is very good for business. Guys are holding shirts to their chests and rubbing the fabric between their fingertips. I tug on my own collar and say that a real, authentic, made-in-the-USA
mzungu can be had for just Ush50,000. “I cook, I clean, I do dishes” I offer.
One man shakes his head bitterly and says “Fifty thousand is too much.” We haggle but can’t agree on a fair price; it seems there will be no takers on this day in Oweno.
On my way out a young guy pulls at my sleeve and calls me over to his stall. He’s sitting on a tall stack of denim and holding a dozen leather belts across his lap. A pretty, plump girl stands beside him with a hip cocked his way. He wants to know where I’m from.
“How is New York?” he asks.
“Busy,” I say. “Cold.”
“Not hot like Uganda,” he says.
“No,” I say. “Except in the summer. Then it’s even hotter.”
“Do you know what I like in New York?” he says. “Sluts. I see them on TV. I want to bonk them one by one.”
I nod to show my appreciation. “Yeah,” I say with great sympathy. “Sluts are nice.”
The boy shifts in his seat and stares wistfully into the middle distance. The girl makes a sour face and turns away from him. I gesture to her and ask why he wants New York sluts when he has so many nice, pretty girls right here in Uganda. He gives me a look.
“I don’t like these Ugandan girls,” he says. “They are too arrogant and they don’t know what they’re doing in bed.”
The girl tosses her head back and snorts, at which point it’s pretty clear that whatever she does or doesn’t know in bed, she won’t be sharing it with my young friend. He takes my hand and holds it firmly, longingly, as if something great and meaningful might pass between us. Then he lies back on his pile of jeans and looks up to the chutes of light slanting through the market’s canopy, dreaming of New York, its temperate climes, and its long processional of sluts bonking their way down Broadway.
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John Nanchang China
Don’t in any way be put off by either title; the article is well worth a read.