ALL MOD-CONS

NO CHAW IS ONE-ONE

English is the best language when it comes to variety; the French impose strict burdens on its speakers to restrict pigeonisation or the general bastardisation or their delicate tongue. English is like linux or some program that you adapt for yourself, hence when I was in Uganda as a kid I had the following conversation when I was headboy at school, the scene was the lunch canteen and I was dishing out the lunch.

“It is one-one. So everyone can get some.” I said
“Eeeh Whati? Si you more it?”

Moring; that was a legitimate word, the act of giving more, after moring you had mored. I forgot my Ugandan English when I was in England, I gravitated towards the local dialect “broad bucks” spoken by all the old boys in the area, this lingo was slowly giving way to “mockney” or the mock cockney accent. Mockney was spoken by kids ashamed of their middle-class roots so they imitated the language of the street which is the cockney rhyming slang. This has its roots in East London when the dirty industries were located down river and out of sight; tanning of leather, fishmongers and processors, generally anything which stank. Hence undesirables found themselves in the East, they then developed their own code in order to talk freely among themselves. This code was ever-changing such as battle-cruiser for boozer or skin and blister for sister, it is kinda like sheng in Nairobi, I was fluent in 85 but when I came back in 91, all the codes had changed.


One of the easiest ice-breakers is the opposite sex, when high-level delegates meet for a tense session of negotiation they can break the ice by conversating about the days when they were young and had loads of hair and chutzpah. When sheer audacity and naivety would get them through; you know you are of a certain age when you are reminiscing about some girl several years ago and not some girl last night. There I was trying to fit in with the boys; men can go from astro-physics to talking about “chow” in seconds and when they do then you better be ready. One of the greatest obstacles to women’s advancement is the unspoken alliance among men to keep them down. Even though I consider myself a supporter of women’s right, at least for pragmatic reasons, but I can easily slip into a tirade about their faults and I would have an instant audience that agreed with me.


So as I said I was trying to fit in with the boys and the conversation wound its way inevitably to “chow” which is slang for food but a euphemism for ….. yes sex. All the boys were regaling us with their stories and the story turned to me and I had to oblige. “There was this time in Uni when I had this one-one chow.” I ventured.
“Rama, now you’re talking bullshit, you are misusing grammar. No chow is one-one, chow is by its very nature: mob, unless that is some fake chow, you Guy.” They put me in my place and I decided to stick to my regular English as spoken by Englishmen. To explain the conversation would need a blackboard and a full period.


So the language changes but the topics are the same as are the people, I had intensely deep conversations with my houseboy in Kinyarwanda; about inflation and growth, about free-trade and protectionism, about love and life. We all need a common language that will bring us together as humans but in so doing we would lose our cultures that make us unique. Even if we all spoke the same language it wouldn’t end conflict, so many warring factions speak the same tongue and have the same culture and yet they still fight. So common language and culture can tear as apart, Joy Division had a seminal hit with “Love will tear us apart” and all over the world there are examples of this in action.

ALL MOD-CONS

For all our differences, we ultimately have more in common than what sets us apart, I was moving house this week into my perfect little bachelor pad. It was really hard to find, it took some wrangling, wheeling and dealing but I got there. Estate agents are rightly despised all over the world because they are the same all over the world. They always give the impression that the houses are mansions when they are dumps, two weeks ago I was informed of this plush four-bedroom house that was worthy of an emperor, I was told the standard line “if you don’t take it then you will lose because 500 people all want it.” I asked to for an inspection but they said I had to rent it without viewing.


I took the word of an estate agent and gave up my house search, and then I went and saw it, to call it a dump would be a compliment. It had no endearing qualities, rusty iron sheets; raw untreated logs holding up the said iron sheets, luminous green wall paint, and the walls were as crooked as if a drunkard bricklayer had smoked some crack as he built it. Then the icing on the cake, no toilet just a latrine outside, and no bathroom, one just waited till it was dark and stood on the cement and hoped that peeping toms were otherwise occupied. My jaw dropped, it was all mine for $250 a month, which is a lot in Rwanda where most live on a dollar a day. The estate agent was still audacious enough to keep the pressure up to get me to secure it with 6 months rent upfront and a deposit of $1,000.


That is the problem with Rwanda, the cheek of people is amazing; they are all looking for a free lunch. Another house I saw was half built and they wanted 8 months rent to complete the structure, all I had to do was pay up and wait 4-5 months for the walls and roof to be put up and then another 4 months for the interior to be finished, in other words “build my house for me and I’ll let you live there for free.” I soon found out about a small but tidy 2-bedroom flat so I raced to secure it, as ever it had just been taken but minutes ago but the landlord asked me to leave my number, “Why leave me number if it is taken?” I took it as a sign that it was still there.


So I moved in on Monday, ending months of misery as I was nomad in various houses of those obliged to house me. I went out to buy my utensils at the cheapest Chinese shop in town and now I proudly own the finest Chinese kitsch, making my house a fire hazard to boot. It is overall a good neighbourhood but in Rwanda there is feast and famine together; I had no curtains so my living room was light up like a TV and I was entertaining gossiping passers-by. A clutch of kids stood sentry outside my door, I tactfully ignored them but soon I had to ask what they wanted. “A blessing” they said, so I asked them to come close as I would pray for them, “No! We want money or at least sweets.” I warned them that I would take them home to report them to their parents, but their parents would be even bigger beggars than their kids.

Blessing? How could kids who could barely talk be so cheeky? Now these kids are asking kindly but soon they won’t be so polite, they will be armed and dangerous with anger and guns.