But, what other way to let it out?
In case I SHOUT, might 
lose you quick.


Everyone's busy already;
Packing up their businesses;
Shifting to the next..
Can't tell. Ours used to be a village,
became a town, now it's upgraded
To ghost-town status!


You know the smiles impossible to find at home; the often dirty girl helping her fat mother transmute  tomatoes into sweaty legal tender as fast as we can arrive at their stall. They often can't fit inside the larger, more elegant Kitoro-kind market stalls uptown; not because the obese mothers hardly can move once they settle into their workplace, but because the landlords in such spaces steal any smiles the girl might dish-out soon as tomatoes seem to have vanished from the stall. Lately though, a stern devil's come riding throughout our simple towns, stealing away every last one of those genuine smiles from all such innocent boys and girls. Tis gross! 


Went looking for a haircut..
My hair's been cut! 
Not by dexterous hands of 
Jim O' Tim the dude that plays
Countryside hymns on Touch FM
while machines hum. No!


I turned three or four corners on streets previously as familiar to me as the back of my hand, and hardly could recognize what it is my eyes reported to my medulla! I had to actually touch and smell the rubble of two of the demolished barber shops I used to frequent, just so I can firmly believe mine eyes weren't plagued by some obstinate mirage! That means..
The music has finally left our streets!


"Sausage biri enkumi satu,
 Chapati n'amagi abiri enkumi nnya."
I almost hurled a curse at her.. 
But she was quick to retort; 
"Museveni afude.
Tunonya z'amafutta kugenda kuzika!"


These are the bunch that used to fill the air with umami scents everywhere there's a crossroads in the town, but also often right next to video shacks, snackless bars and some pharmacies.


When she explained, 
In sharp, hurried and humourless talk 
Exactly why she was 
Revising the standard price 
Of salted meat 
Being sold from underneath a pawpaw tree 
of all places!
I had no options left but to 
Order for a quarter 
of my originally planned 
Sausage quarternion; 
the ancient African wisdom
Compels us to at least ensure to taste 
the scent of meat
 Even at the most sterile of funerals.


The supermarkets have stayed. The same for most pharmacies and hardware shops. I often hardly visit any of those though. Last few years, almost failed to notice we even had a few more introduced in the immediate community! This time though, I needed to both sharpen my slasher's blade from an unusual Jack, but also found it necessary to stock up on a sachet of Panadol that might help me effect timely placebo remedies to fictitious headaches likely to manifest while I go about recalculating, reconfiguring my entire new economics.


We buried two more neighbours. One died while returning from a shopping trip to Kampala.. on a boda-boda. Most likely, the untimely exit of Salongo Magita, a jihadist-turned-spice-pacifist is to blame. Magita's popular wholesale shop; two reddish metallic containers with a shiny steel roof and lots of assorted merchandise that used to decorate the shade have all since been replaced by cracked floor foundations, several piles of charred debris intermixed with crashed mortar, and gaping open graves in the earth at the spots where his mobile money signposts used to stand. The little rich men have quit!


I often 
   hea---a-ar gun-shots
 Ri-n-gin---g in the air
Close to midnight 
but also in the late afternoon...


"Abavubuka tebakyakuta!"
Meaning; the cowboy ghostriders that often feign gunshots using their motorbikes as they wheez about in the lately mostly deserted roads, are signaling the fact they are hardly earning anything and that they often are returning home on empty stomachs! Typically, these are the guys that would stop for multiple pedestrians willing to ride-share when returning home from the marketplaces on Wednesday and especially over the weekends.

But who knows.. 
Feigning gunshots 
Using motorbikes and remodeled sports cars 
Might be upgraded to actual bullets
and runaway snipers 
In times to come! 


The air is 
generally filled with tension
And an acute thirst for attention!


They just might get it, eventually...


I don't read newspapers anymore. Can't find any anywhere.. not even at the LC 1 offices last time I tried checking. So, our news mostly comes via the Google homepage and our community ICs. But, lately, several homes decided to blare and broadcast-share either televised news or some talkshows on radio stations that hardly play agreeable music. Very likely, some mothers are smoking while at home, or that the kids in holidays have no better alternatives since so-called Strait of Homuz  cascading effects likely moved the TV subscription figures slightly higher than those of kerosene and LP gas.


In my community though, we are lucky.. some beneficent teachers, perhaps foreseeing the need to help educate the masses from anywhere, keep some roadside blackboards well maintained with suggestions and exercise hints that might help quell the hunger of our kids unable to return to school, but also keep those lately skipping meals at home with varied reasons to constructively venture about beyond homeworks;
With home walks and discussing about necessary physical exercise while actually doing it. We surely need or shall need it!


The times..
They aren't any ordinary, no.


"But should they be intentionally made any worse than they naturally would be?"


I hope you all realize and acknowledged that.


Wait..
Did I justly write all that?