Nalongo
Moses Abukutsa
Moses Abukutsa
Sofia is an octopus. Restless tentacles of dark streets stretch into intersections from its body. On the street of pubs and brothels into which the sound of laughter clogs into my breathing, the air smells of transgression. Two staggering men stumble into a ditch, huff from the dust onto their wobbly feet, hesitate, growl after a girl minding her night business and walk into Kyambogola 1986.
I park my Yamaha motorcycle on pillars outside the entrance and go in after the two staggering men. The place is cloyed with the smell of sweat, shouts of feisty drunkards and the seductive giggling of girls. There are more girls than women and some are waitresses who cruise from one table to another scribbling bills and taking orders. Kenyan accents dominate genteel Ugandan courtesies. They are mostly truck drivers on transit to South Sudan, DRC, Rwanda, and beyond. The two staggering men settle for a table near the door, forming the first one of a chain of close-knit tables that constricts movement only enabled through slits that the waitresses have to navigate as they attend to patrons.
From behind a congested counter, there is a smile. The smile uneasily sits on the bleached face of a patroness Sheba in her throne room. She is wearing a luminous green gomesi dress. The smile is a crammed greeting: a charm for new captives. It disarms me. I do her a good turn and return the smile. Then chancing a glance away from that smile, I see a door beside her forest of beers and waragi that leads into an inner yard. From the yard, girls, beautiful girls that kneel before men in strange genuflection, keep trafficking into darkness, my unquenchable curiosity.
I sit, uncertain, below the iridescence of light which pours on the graffiti beside a mural of a bare breasted woman. Girls in wigs, short tight skirts, some in shades of red, pink, blue and green hair braids and plain hair escort men to tables, and candles burn beneath the tables to repel mosquitoes. Jose Chameleon music is ravaging speakers. I have nothing to worry, it is a fine night, and the keys to my Yamaha motorcycle are safe in my trouser pockets. Nobody will find me.
After midnight, Kyambogo 1986 begins to vomit staggering men. The patroness is closing her congested counter when I walk to her. She looks at me and I think I see the fruit of salvation in her eyes. It is a Saturday. Koyogela Street is filling and I fear for my motorcycle. This is another country mark you. I have abandoned my country for reasons known only to me for now. Two men I have jumped over snore in their vomit on the floor. There is this other man who has been sitting, smoking and surveying the room all the time. He wears a t-shirt with security emblazoned in gold. He heaves a fallen man back to his feet. The man groans and pees in his trousers. The security man pushes him out of the door.
“We are closing Ssebo.”
The patroness’ voice jolts my head from the things my eyes have followed.
“I will stay here.”
“Pay for a room.”
“Can I find safe parking for my motorcycle?”
“Pay for a room Ssebo and Konyi will show you for me.”
“Ssebo, you know the night is cold.”
I chuckle at Konyi’s clandestine suggestion.
“I’ll be fine.”
“Nalongo can do something for you. Ssebo let me—”
“Let me get my motorcycle.”
Konyi resigns to my firmness and helps me with the motorcycle. We secure it in the backyard of Kyambogola 1986 in a corridor lined with rooms. These rooms have been named after cities of the world. I see a man and a giggling woman come out of one called London. There is Lusaka, Windhoek, New york, Moscow then opposite there is Amsterdam, Nairobi, Lagos, Johannesburg (which is misspelled) and Cairo. They are ten rooms in my quick count. Nalongo has opened a beer for herself when I return. She pulls a chair for me. The music is playing softly. She opens a beer for me. There is something in her. She reminds me of my lonely mother after my father died when I was one year in the barracks, training.
“Konyi, is there a free one?”
“I think Lagos.”
“You will take Lagos.”
“Actually I want you to help me. I have come all the way from Nakuru, Kenya, riding through bush roads avoiding the main road.”
“Ssebo, are you running from your government,” she shifts in her chair and takes a swig from her bottle.
“It is the government running after me.”
“But you killed someone banange!”
I am stupefied. I have heard of these mystical types of Ugandan women who read your life on your face. I did not expect one before me in such a place.
“Don’t be uncomfortable, Ssebo. Everyone who walks in here brings their problems and they betray them to me. But do not care. You are in the right hands. Nalongo fixes things. Things happen. Ssebo, I know you want to go underground for a while. I will make you invisible. You are safe.”
She has called me Ssebo. We drink more beer together. I am her dead brother reincarnated. She tells me he died in the bush. She says he was my height. And the round face I have with my bald head makes the resemblance prominent, even the way I walk and talk. She tells me the brother badly beat a boy who called her elephant ears when they were in school before the resistance of 1986. They had a bond— forged on a moment of mischief when they were children and smoked dry silks of maize—which was only broken when he went to the bush and she came to Sofia. Government soldiers had raped her and her mother and killed their father. These are stories she tells me, a total stranger late into the night. I realize she is tipsy. We have drunk late into the hours after midnight.
In the morning, I take stock of the patroness. She is hefty. Her face bears traces of heavy makeup. She lights a cigarette as she sits up on the bed which has creaked all night. Her smoking turns me off more than the reek of her sweat and the stretch marks around her armpits, her thin breasts and the flabby skin hanging on her arms and above her waistline like overused towels. She dresses up. There is the new body that takes over her when she finishes dressing up in her yellow gomesi; the body that announces its presence and its place; the great body of women with many children and husbands in the shadows. She is Nalongo.
I park my Yamaha motorcycle on pillars outside the entrance and go in after the two staggering men. The place is cloyed with the smell of sweat, shouts of feisty drunkards and the seductive giggling of girls. There are more girls than women and some are waitresses who cruise from one table to another scribbling bills and taking orders. Kenyan accents dominate genteel Ugandan courtesies. They are mostly truck drivers on transit to South Sudan, DRC, Rwanda, and beyond. The two staggering men settle for a table near the door, forming the first one of a chain of close-knit tables that constricts movement only enabled through slits that the waitresses have to navigate as they attend to patrons.
From behind a congested counter, there is a smile. The smile uneasily sits on the bleached face of a patroness Sheba in her throne room. She is wearing a luminous green gomesi dress. The smile is a crammed greeting: a charm for new captives. It disarms me. I do her a good turn and return the smile. Then chancing a glance away from that smile, I see a door beside her forest of beers and waragi that leads into an inner yard. From the yard, girls, beautiful girls that kneel before men in strange genuflection, keep trafficking into darkness, my unquenchable curiosity.
I sit, uncertain, below the iridescence of light which pours on the graffiti beside a mural of a bare breasted woman. Girls in wigs, short tight skirts, some in shades of red, pink, blue and green hair braids and plain hair escort men to tables, and candles burn beneath the tables to repel mosquitoes. Jose Chameleon music is ravaging speakers. I have nothing to worry, it is a fine night, and the keys to my Yamaha motorcycle are safe in my trouser pockets. Nobody will find me.
After midnight, Kyambogo 1986 begins to vomit staggering men. The patroness is closing her congested counter when I walk to her. She looks at me and I think I see the fruit of salvation in her eyes. It is a Saturday. Koyogela Street is filling and I fear for my motorcycle. This is another country mark you. I have abandoned my country for reasons known only to me for now. Two men I have jumped over snore in their vomit on the floor. There is this other man who has been sitting, smoking and surveying the room all the time. He wears a t-shirt with security emblazoned in gold. He heaves a fallen man back to his feet. The man groans and pees in his trousers. The security man pushes him out of the door.
“We are closing Ssebo.”
The patroness’ voice jolts my head from the things my eyes have followed.
“I will stay here.”
“Pay for a room.”
“Can I find safe parking for my motorcycle?”
“Pay for a room Ssebo and Konyi will show you for me.”
“Ssebo, you know the night is cold.”
I chuckle at Konyi’s clandestine suggestion.
“I’ll be fine.”
“Nalongo can do something for you. Ssebo let me—”
“Let me get my motorcycle.”
Konyi resigns to my firmness and helps me with the motorcycle. We secure it in the backyard of Kyambogola 1986 in a corridor lined with rooms. These rooms have been named after cities of the world. I see a man and a giggling woman come out of one called London. There is Lusaka, Windhoek, New york, Moscow then opposite there is Amsterdam, Nairobi, Lagos, Johannesburg (which is misspelled) and Cairo. They are ten rooms in my quick count. Nalongo has opened a beer for herself when I return. She pulls a chair for me. The music is playing softly. She opens a beer for me. There is something in her. She reminds me of my lonely mother after my father died when I was one year in the barracks, training.
“Konyi, is there a free one?”
“I think Lagos.”
“You will take Lagos.”
“Actually I want you to help me. I have come all the way from Nakuru, Kenya, riding through bush roads avoiding the main road.”
“Ssebo, are you running from your government,” she shifts in her chair and takes a swig from her bottle.
“It is the government running after me.”
“But you killed someone banange!”
I am stupefied. I have heard of these mystical types of Ugandan women who read your life on your face. I did not expect one before me in such a place.
“Don’t be uncomfortable, Ssebo. Everyone who walks in here brings their problems and they betray them to me. But do not care. You are in the right hands. Nalongo fixes things. Things happen. Ssebo, I know you want to go underground for a while. I will make you invisible. You are safe.”
She has called me Ssebo. We drink more beer together. I am her dead brother reincarnated. She tells me he died in the bush. She says he was my height. And the round face I have with my bald head makes the resemblance prominent, even the way I walk and talk. She tells me the brother badly beat a boy who called her elephant ears when they were in school before the resistance of 1986. They had a bond— forged on a moment of mischief when they were children and smoked dry silks of maize—which was only broken when he went to the bush and she came to Sofia. Government soldiers had raped her and her mother and killed their father. These are stories she tells me, a total stranger late into the night. I realize she is tipsy. We have drunk late into the hours after midnight.
In the morning, I take stock of the patroness. She is hefty. Her face bears traces of heavy makeup. She lights a cigarette as she sits up on the bed which has creaked all night. Her smoking turns me off more than the reek of her sweat and the stretch marks around her armpits, her thin breasts and the flabby skin hanging on her arms and above her waistline like overused towels. She dresses up. There is the new body that takes over her when she finishes dressing up in her yellow gomesi; the body that announces its presence and its place; the great body of women with many children and husbands in the shadows. She is Nalongo.
Moses Abukutsa is 38 years old. He writes poetry and fiction. He was shortlisted for the 2017 NALIF (Nyanza Literary Festival) literary prize for his short story "Abraham’s Cremation" and recently long listed for the 2022 Afritondo short story prize. He is also a member of WSA (Writers Space Africa)—Kenya chapter. He has published short stories and poetry online with Kalahari Review, Praxis, African Writer, Kikwetu, Afritondo, Storymoja and khusoko.com: an East African Online Business platform. Abukutsa is a high school teacher of English and Literature. He lives in Western Kenya.