Karooro book shatters dirty language
Oct 28, 2003
A global lawyerâs conference sits in Los Angeles. Evenings permit participants to savour its nightlife. An American and a French lawyer talk over a drink. The American suggests that French lawyers handle practically no other cases except about sex.
The Frenchman vehemently denies it; enumerating numerous fields in which French law is practiced.
âTake the case I was handling when I was invited here,â he protests. âMy playboy client picks a blonde. They drive, dance, watch films and share drinks.â Then, at about 7.00 p.m. the girl, manifestly restive, says she must be run home. Her Mum is the strict type.
âMy client suggests a little love making.â The blonde loudly wonders, why he asks so late. Perhaps they might risk the cellars. They park the car a little way away, and sneak into the cellars.
As he mounts her she warns that it is not her safe period. The playboy assures her of âwithdrawalâ at the climax.
Meantime mom, who has been rummaging the premises espies the light below, and hastens to investigate. She is irate at the spectacle before her. As the young man is about to withdraw his âpestle,â if I may borrow Mary Karooroâs own word, the angry mother gives him a purposeful arse kick, shoving the âseedâ in the process.
âAnd, now,â pronounces the Frenchman triumphantly, âmy client maintains, quite rightly, that the mother of the girl is the father of the baby. Is that sex?â To the fastidious the foregoing is a âdirtyâ joke.
Mary and I generally disagree on political issues. But we are comrades hobbywise: I call her whenever I think that she might, in handling one of President Yoweri Museveniâs Runyankore proverbs, seeking exactitude, adopted a literal rather than authentic translation. And, being over 77, I have spoken Runyankore longer than she.
I admire the likes of military intelligence chief Noble Mayombo, presidential political aide Moses Byaruhanga, army spokesman Maj. Shaban Bantariza and police spokesman Asuman Mugyenyi....and English language maestro John Mwesigwa Nagenda.
They are classical civil servants. Like diplomats, they will twist or improve upon the truth: to justify their bossesâ blunders; although the truth may stab their incorrigible consciences. And that is how it should be.
Amazingly though, Nagenda patently believes his assertions. The alternative is to resign. But resignation is foreign to our service culture.
I studied British writersâ literature; and hardly any African authors, purely because, at their rise, I was employed: too busy for the luxury of reading novels.
I have read excerpts from a few authors. Thus when Maria rang to urge me to attend the launching of her book. âTHE OFFICIAL WIFEâ last Thursday; so well played out that it appears that Mary herself had endured the traumas experienced by our heroine first and ring wife, relegated to second âwifery;â and, being familiar with her dutiful apologias, I felt it might be one of the praise-singing publications.
Indeed zealot minister Tarsis Kabwegyere sat at the high table, rather silent. I was pleasantly surprised by Maryâs candour about African political leadership, deception by donors and the untenable station of the masses.
The diction is so real that I had to consciously restrain myself from boxing my old friend Stanslaus Okurut, Maryâs husband, next to whom I sat, for âdespising, neglecting, relegating, cheating on, harassing, and persecuting,â faithful Mary.
Preceded by the guest of honour Professor George Kanyeihamba, she read some inspiring excerpts.
Decent Banyankore will not normally discuss the human âexhaust pipe;â certainly not excreta or gases. Ankole tradition harboured no euphemism about âprivate parts:â freely articulating their biological names, at which Christianity frowns.
I salute Mary for going traditional; and smashing the notion of âunreligious language,â thus vindicating the rationale of the âdirty jokeâ I made earlier.
The book is written in simple, humorous, witty and delicious prose: a paperback you do not want to put down. Mary, who has the rare gift of telling stories within stories, touches matrimony in so many of its phases that she is consultant par excellence. She has selflessly donated the entire royalties to the Association of Women writers.
This will certainly include film rights, as discerning filmmakers should rush her. It is published by Fountain Publishers and priced at Shs 10,000. I shall say no more, lest I pre-empt the fun for the keen reader!
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 2003 The Monitor Publications
