The concubine of a government official

I had decided to write a novel out of this entire story, but I realised the novel might take too long to come out, and yet there is urgency to tell this story.

Especially now that Minister Balaam Barugahara has these corruption festivals around the country, there came even more urgency. How I wish Balaam had a chance to encounter the naughty side-chics of male officials – in a proverbial lifestyle audit.

The camera would not stop rolling. About five years ago, I landed on one naughty side chic, with an equally naughty sense of humour. I need to start from the beginning. I was at a café in Kololo when a petite but quite curvy woman walked in and spotted a familiar face.

She must have been in her late 20s or early 30s. She looked well taken care of, and quite stylish in her dress. Since men tend to date down, I quickly counted myself out of her habitus.

Unless of course, she chose to date down herself. Leaning in on my table, she asked through smiles: “Are you the guy who does that show, the Fourth Estate?”

By then, alongside journalists Agather Atuhaire and Dicta Asiimwe, I had become a regular panellist on NTV’s Sunday late-night political talk show, The Fourth Estate. (Maybe NTV will return it someday).

“Yes, it is me,” I said. “Oh, I like that show very much. I love that girl, Agatha, she is bold!” she said.

Agatha has this traditional baby face that looking at her from a distance, one might think she is a teen. We laughed as I told her this was a grown woman and many years in the industry.

“You guys are brave,” she continued, “openly talking about Uganda’s thieves is not easy. Don’t you ever fear them? I saw you going after those banks? Eh, those banks are even bigger thieves. By this time, she had already pulled herself a chair and was sitting right in front of me. I was impressed by her sense of things especially agreeing with me that banks were indeed bigger thieves.

“But Uganda has thieves!” she exclaimed. “I don’t know where this country is heading!” “They seem so entitled … except of course, tebalina waaka,” she said and laughed sheepishly.

I laughed, too. Before I could ask how she knew they were clumsy lovemakers, she quickly added.

“I have one… he is a married man, and I’m just happy to be his side chic. But he is a thief…,” A waiter interrupted us by asking if she would order for anything. I was already enjoying my coffee, and in that moment, I realised I had entered some really interesting territory.

I folded my laptop and leaned in. She asked for a hot chocolate.

“The other day, this man asked me if he could have my 75-year-old mother in the village added on the government payroll in his ministry! Mbu instead of asking me for money, she simply walks to a nearby ATM or bank building!” she said shaking her head in disbelief, then cheekily added, “… I must have been so sweet that night. But can you imagine the offer!”

I gave her a blank look; almost congratulated her for her golden coochie! But controlled myself. “Look, I must be his second or third chic. But I guess his wife, children, and friends… or even the families of his other chics are on the payroll already.”

We both stared in disbelief at the possibility. “I refused…” she quickly added. “This dude has forgotten that tables might turn. I don’t want my mother to be part of this craziness!”

“Every time this man buys me a gift, I’m sure we have robbed someone or something. You see that car I drive?” she said pointing at the car outside, “it is a gift from him.” “You mean the Range Rover?” I asked. “No. Well, I’m sure he would buy it if I asked for one. But the black Mercedez next to the Range Rover.”

It was a beautiful shiny machine. She was such a beautiful interlocutor that often moved between narrative and philosophical reflection – the Spire Ssentongo type. “I wonder how this man finds sleep knowing that he has looted an entire country. I’m lucky I don’t get to deal with him. His wife does,” she said more reflectively, more sombrely.

“I guess he goes to church and sows a big seed, and finds comfort in the fact that he cleaned his loot. “Seeding? He has failed to seed with me, hahaha …” she came back with another erotic quip, then added, sombrely, “yet I think he really wants a boy! I tell you, what, Yusuf, This man enjoys nothing,” she started whispering.

“He does not even enjoy me.” She then told me of a nickname she had given him. “I call him, “my two-minute-ten-million man.” “Every time he visits the apartment he put me in, he goes for two minutes… but has never left less than a million behind. One time, he left ten!”

“Huh, have I not said so much already to a journalist!” she seemed to catch herself off-guard. “But I have not told you his name nor his department.” I assured her that in true journalistic spirit, I can never disclose the personal details, even if she had told me.

“Good. But Yusuf, every time you see people going without medicines in hospitals or you see those ramshackle schools on TV, just know there is a sweet girl somewhere driving medicine on Kampala’s streets,” she joked and then guffawed.

“Or driving a school block,” I quipped in to complete the joke.

yusufkajura@gmail.com

The author is a political theorist based at Makerere University