Series link: Diary [1],[2],[3],[4],[5],[6],[7]
‘I like you’, an African babe in shorts that had NYPD written on the behind, said to me after asking for a seat next to me in a night club at about three in the night. ‘Thank you’, I told her. The night club was right next to Salama.
The above is how “Guest House Salama” looks like on a cloudy morning in August. Shanta and I stayed here last night because hotel Acacia where I had originally booked our room, didn’t keep a room for us. It had been a difficult few hours finding the hotel in the middle of the night. And once we finally did, there was no room for us. Great. Not sure what fuck up happened. The manager apologized and got us a place to crash at Salama, a 2 minute drive down the road. We were picked up from there, once we were up today morning and transferred to Acacia. Acacia looks good. And orange.
The gate-keeper guards the gate at hotel Acacia.
The babe in NYPD shorts told me she was from Tanzania. She also did tell her name but that I have forgotten already. I have been finding it hard to remember names of anyone here in Uganda for that matter. I was having ‘basic chicken’ with chips. I asked her if she wanted to have a bite. She said yes. She had few bites. She offered me her drink. But I did not feel like drinking. Shanta and I already had a pint of Guiness before the food had arrived. And enough alcohol on our Mumbai-Nairobi-Entebbe flight.
At least two more women approached me / us last night. They just asked us how were we doing. And we told them, we were doing good. We had just arrived in Kampala after about eight hours of flying and had not slept the night before. We were doing good. In any case, we didn’t feel too tired once we stepped out of Salama at around 245 AM. We were slightly hungry and wanted a quick bite before we went off to sleep. The Afro dance music from this club attracted us the moment we stepped out. A security dude frisked us and we entered the club. The club was throbbing and had quite a crowd for a Tuesday night. We saw dozens of girls swinging their bodies. And bums. Women here have amazing bums. They swung and grooved often alone. And once in a while, with men. Men would often feel up the bodies. But not in a violent forceful way. Very gently rather, almost like a lover. I wondered if these women offered sex and that if this is what this was all about after all. But it was difficult to tell. Never saw any couple walking away from the club. Dancing and gentle feeling up of bodies is all that I saw. May be this is just a part of the Kampala night club culture. I don’t know the answer but will try to find it before I leave Uganda and this diary closes.