Types of people you are bound to find in your ‘local’

Last Monday night, just after the presidential debate (that turned out to be NASA leader Raila giving a presentation to some television questions, now that the president had gone MIA on the media), I decided to pop down and out of my apartment to buy a takeaway bottle of something to quietly celebrate the salvation of the Press, which had been much maligned the week before when almost all the would-be running mates RAN away from the TV debates.

So it is about half past ten at night as I cross the road to the large local, the night chilly and as quiet as a cemetery. Monday night on the July 24, (when the month is at 'kona mbaya') is not exactly an occasion of revelry. Luckily, last call at our local is at 11 pm, any given time of the month (and on a Saturday like today, there will be folks departing the premises at four am 'in the cockerels' hour).

The first person I meet just past the gate is a washed-out hack of a business journalist we'll call Baron.

Baron was one of those boastful know-it-alls who had never seen a 'brown envelope' that he did not take, but as it turned out, his unethical 'business' practices caught up with him and he was 'Magufulid.' Now he spends his nights in jeans and sandals at the local, 'borrowing' beer, telling tall tales and playing pool like his life depends on it – as if the year is 1997 when pool was really a frenzied craze, General Defao was still brown (instead of a disturbing yellow) and 'ndombolo' ruled the country (even as Barclays put up the first ATM at that 'Qatar' building in town, and advertised that with a dancing robot).

His pool partner tonight is a woman we've nicknamed 'Ghost' because of her propensity for putting on sooo much face powder she looks like an advertisement for a geisha (not the soap, but Japanese kabuki theater). Ghost has slit-eyes, narrow cheek bones and a slash of full lips that always glow with lipstick.

Or maybe it is the dark red colour from the Kingfishers she is always serially drinking, I don't know. All I know is that 'Ghost' does look like a corpse of sorts, with all that make-up. Then she wears sequin dresses! I mean, those things were last in fashion during the disco era of the 1980s – so where does 'Ghost' get an actual sequin dress from in the year 2017?

That's like walking the streets, as a man, with curly-kit, a head band, a 'Walk Man', one white glove and three/quarter pants in this day and age.

Deeper inside this eleven pm local, I discover a pilot, aged about 30, who just got in at JKIA and is enjoying his Jameson with abandon because he's young, carefree, single and happy-go-lucky as he is off the following day (Tuesday). He tells me he is a 'Men Only' fan, then adds: 'Girls ain't a thing. You know what I mean?' I have no idea what he means. He offers to pay for my small bottle of takeaway vodka. There is the troubled looking older engineer.

He looks close to 50, is drinking Guinness Kubwa like a fish, and advices the pilot to enjoy his youth because 'miaka ikipita, bibi atasumbuwa.' But he will not elaborate.

Then there's the lawyer at the counter, a twice divorcee of about forty (I know the dude) with his Sprite and brandy. Perched on the bar stool, staring with lustful intensity at a naïve-looking new waitress, the lawyer resembles a vulture.

Which he is! His area of 'spex-cilisation' is bar maids and waitresses. And he's ready to wait till the last call with his alcohol.

Then there is the true alcoholic, this gentleman who lives off two lorries that ply the Mombasa port to Kampala, and so spends his days in the pub calling his drivers/loaders/turn boys on the phone, as he basically drowns his organs in Captain Morgan's rum.

'Wilson*,' I ask him, 'why do you drink so much, yet you have a wife and three kids at home?'

He looks at me blearily. ' Be-cosh Esh Chee Are ish gonna f'nish mice bish-ness!'

'But you've been drinking like this long before SGR, when rais mstaafu Daniel arap Moi was president.'

'Go away!' he says.

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