Bazaar Blues

“Yo yo yo yo…its deejay… (Why I’m I forgetting his name?). Allow me to christen him, DJ Loudmouth, to spruce your understanding of this post. He’s not your average deejay who talks over the music he is playing. Even DJ Crim would file a lawsuit against this fellow for infringing on his trademark –talking more than spinning discs, if he had him play. Back to DJ Loudmouth on the decks, “yo yo yo, it’s me DJ Loudmouth on the 1s and 2s. Yo don’t forget to turn up for the best of Bebe Cool on Furayide.”

He takes a commercial break, plays Remove and I Put aka Gyayo Ntekeyo by Ziza Bafana. 

 “And, don’t forget, don’t forget. I said don’t forget, temwelabila, your chilling with me your one and only, the bestest Deejayyyyy!!!!” The reminder hits me hard I nearly fall to the ground. Of course, in empathy for DJs like DJ Crim who have always called themselves the best. Yet here I was, listening to the ‘bestest’ that they too didn’t know about.

He goes for a lengthy commercial break in which he repeatedly samples the stalker anthem, Gyobera gyembera of Irene Ntale in a bid to remind us that when you leave, his deejaying antics haunt you to death. At that point, I decide to excuse myself before DJ Loudmouth returns from the commercial. I walk off, further away into the stalls away from the set of speakers at one corner of the compound. There, I find Edwin (real name), a soon to be counsel, clinging onto one of those bottles labeled “kindly, please, drink responsibly.” I presume he is only being responsible and that is why he is holding onto the bottle as though his life depends on it until he asks whether I too, was asked to leave Ushs 1000 deposit so that I could wander off with the bottle around the Mitchell Hall compound. I simply nod my head in affirmative and send the last contents of the bottle in my hand down my throat.

I handover the bottle to the enterprising chap behind the counter at the Nile Breweries stall and applause him for being so shrewd he opted that he chose to make an extra buck by deliberately not stocking any plastic cups hoping that people like me will walk off with his bottles and thus leave him with a whopping Ushs 1000.

Sensing that there is a looming bumper harvest for fodder to write about, I return to a distraught Edwin to listen to his legal critique of the whole Mitchell bazaar. (You know how soon to be lawyers apply their uncertified knowledge everywhere.) With me in sync mode, Edwin takes me through the ABCDs of bazaars and pinpoints me towards at the entire riff raff at the bazaar. That’s when I notice; the bazaar is largely graced non-students but the populace around Makerere University, the bazaar is a massive eating and drinking festival which is explained by the number of eateries and bars at the bazaar, and, there’s an epidemic with Ugandan deejays. They just cannot shut up and let us enjoy the music.

With that discovery, I left the bazaar hailing Counsel Edwin for his keen eye with a promise that I would dedicate my ride home to writing this post but the moment I set foot in a taxi I had bigger problems to deal with which put the post on hold. I now suffered from acoustic trauma courtesy of DJ Loudmouth’s mixes and the taxi driver had also tuned in to one of those local football punditries where international footballers’ names are localized to the benefit of Luganda speaking audiences. Edwin later on sent me a text informing me of how he had lost the bottle that he had successfully guarded to a ‘sharp’ Golola Moses lookalike.

 PS: That was my first time at a bazaar and if you have better tales about university bazaars kindly, read this post again, responsibly, starting with the disclaimer at the top.