Picture:
Mother and Son (Donny had just finished this quite un-African signpost - with
roof and light!)
For the launching
of the guest house, a party was prepared, with lavish buffet, a broad spectrum
of beverages in all Alc. Vol. % and the best band of Uganda: they wanted the
Kampala all Stars, the band that as a saxophone player I am regularly playing with in Kampala. I was in Mwanza
at that moment, struggling to get the wood for my dhow and by email I helped them to
find the band.
With food, drinks, dance and music the mood kept going up continuously during the
party evening.
By the end of the evening, the band started to play a gentle tune, Summertime by George
Gershwin. At the last tones of the tune I saw the son marching angrily over the
yard in my direction. This was the next situation:
You are annoying my guests!
DO YOU WANT THEM TO SLEEP??!!!!!
Then, not waiting for any reaction, he turned his back to
me and marched back as he came.
To digest the blow, I sat down during the next tune. I was not the band leader.
That is Godfrey, the keyboard player. He had not even noticed the incident, a
lucky thing, because that might have made the band to stop immediately, since
contract time, I later heard, was over. I
was neither involved in the contract nor in the choice of tunes. I was playing
for free.
I was not any more in the mood to play, anyway, we were well into the
encore's, and I decided to go for a beer. While passing
them to the beer tap, many people told me they had enjoyed the band. On my way
back to the band stand I passed Donny and said: this was the last time I have been helping you
with your music.
Since alcohol use had gone high I decided to carry my saxophone into the safety
of my house before joining in the final phase of the party.
On my way back to the party I found the dark head of the moaning husband of the Ugandan
restaurant manager in the white heavily muscular arms of a friend of mine, a
sturdy
security man of almost my size, former rugby player, not known for losing his head. The moaning head was
told to cool down if he wished to be released. An attack with glass bottles turned out
to have been prevented. A regular guest had slapped the wife (she is the restaurant's
deputy manager) of this strangled man in such a way that both had gone to the ground, where, quite
understandably, the said guest caught some good blows by the lady, about which
he now was complaining loudly.
From out of his voluminous white muscular ring, talking as if with only his head out of the hatch
of a ship-deck, the man, whom I knew, started to state his case to me, while the security man
anxiously looked around to the many emotional encounters elsewhere on the grass. In such cases, I can be
a devout listener. That cooled the head owner down,
so I could agree with the security man to leave him to me. I could handle this
one and there was enough to
do on the compound which could turn into a complete battle field any moment.
Though making some weak attempts to pull away and go to his adversary, my man now
was mainly sobbing. As was his wife, under a tree some meters away. I kept
calmly listening and, at moments of eruptions, telling him his case was best
served by restraint.
Then son and mother arrived on the scene. Not in the least interested, not
even seeing what was going on, the mother pointed her stretched arm with pointed
index finger up to me and
said:
"YOU! Go out of the boys quarters. In ONE week!".
The most amusing thing was that this event in turn seemed to pass by completely unnoticed
the sobbing husband I was still keeping in check. Fully caught up in their own emotions, nobody, son, mother, the
sobbing husband, nor the slapping guest,
seemed to be able to relate to the environment, such was the level of alcohol. I
decided to let mother and son pass by without any reaction from my side, and
concentrate on cooling the other row.
Picture: The Author with
Donny's mother Diana in Happier Times
Before the party, the mother had told me that some
guest house rooms would be on display for the party guests, and that those rooms
would
host the band for the night. After I had told the band I was banned from my house they defended me. I heard
the son threatening to throw them out of the
guest house. Clearly that implies that till that very moment the idea had been
to host the band in the guest house. I
left there, which I thought was the best I could do. The next day the band turned out
nevertheless to have been thrown out in the middle of the night and even was refused
its contract payment. Friend 2 of the 2 Friends, President of our
Zero Point One Ton Club Jouko
TAHVANAINEN (picture)
was told by mother and son that the band was never supposed to stay in the
rooms and simply had sneaked in. Jouko believed it, calmly brought the band and its equipment to
another hotel, and paid.
After six days mother and son came back from a short holiday. The son told
me that for him the whole incident was not very important. After all, they had all
been very drunk. If I wanted to make a big thing out of it, that would be my
choice...
The mother tried to reassume towards me her role of restaurant hostess
by friendly asking me how was my day and introducing me to people.
I failed to make it in one week, but 12 days
later I left the boys quarters of Restaurant, Bar and Guest House 2 Friends,
one of my most remarkable and
interesting dwelling places ever.
|
2 Friends Restaurant, Bar and Guest House
by far the most interesting attraction of Jinja
Don't miss it!
(How
to reach).
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