A very un-merry Christmas

Read this at your leisure for you have plenty of time on you, tomorrow is a public holiday. I hope you had a Merry Christmas. How about me? Not a chance. Blame that on Republics, those brigands that disbanded our kingdoms, now we have to toil to earn a living. Colleagues at RTV came to our offices on Friday to film a story on people who had to work on Christmas, they found us having lunch; poor fellows, why didn’t they just turn the cameras on themselves? The military, police, doctors and journalists should make a union, I mean; the nature of their work knows no holiday. As for me, my dad in Bunyoro must be thinking his son secretly formed a family here, because I have capped four years minus having Christmas at home since I was too far away from home. There is a history between Bunyoro and Rwanda. After work, I decided to go to the cinema, alone. Century Cinema is currently screening Star Wars, Disneys latest space saga episode which I found to be full of chaotic scenes and weird characters. I think its creators have the same brain as the author of the famous Harry Porter novels. But the casting was fair; I liked John Boyega’s character although I can’t say more about the movie without risking making this appear like a review, so go watch it yourself. Besides, I am not a big fan of movies. I was tricked into watching this one because of the capitalist fancy branding reviews made about it in the commercial press. One thing I will make note of though, is how people watching these 3D movies keep ducking left and right, as if avoiding being hit by an object from the movie; I noticed how female revelers watched the entire movie while tightly clinging onto their male partners. If you can’t deal with the 3D experience, just watch without the damn ‘goggles.’ But I think guys love it, when the girl comes rushing into your chest for safety from something absolutely out of reach. Those who didn’t have anyone to cling to, I noticed many walk out before the end of the movie, poor girls, Rwf6,000 gone to waste! It was about 9pm when I walked out. I was hungry. Wanted to buy yoghurt but the Nakumatt store at Kigali City Towers was closed so I took a walk to the other branch at UTC. Now, you might know the food joint called Dallas something, right next to the Nakumatt entrance, quite strategically located that I found myself deciding against the yoghurt and chose to have a meal instead. Kigali city is such a great place but not its chefs. The food at Dallas was so un-Christmas that I found paying Rwf2,500 for a plate almost illegal. After paying, through the nose, a cashier told me it was self-service…until one reached the meat saucepan, there, stood a girl whose job is to ration the meat and ensure that every diner strictly gets two sleazy pieces. She had no idea that I have a strict personal rule on meat, I only eat it at my house; so to her obvious shock, I ignored her and proceeded to the next stop, and served myself beans. I was seated on a quiet corner table, forcefully eating my unappealing meal when I noticed movement under a table two meters away from mine; it was a fat rat, either a pregnant female or a male, perhaps with a potbelly. For a high end place, the presence of rats was simply disgraceful. I immediately lost my appetite and rushed out of the ratty restaurant leaving my un-Christmas dinner half eaten. So just like the women who couldn’t complete watching Star Wars, I also found myself unable to finish my dinner. It was almost 10pm. My work mates were having a drink somewhere and they wanted me to join them. But I didn’t feel like drinking so I feigned an excuse and went to find other forms of amusement. Then I stumbled on a headline that African Union had written to Nkurunziza seeking permission to deploy a peace keeping force. Over 72,000 refugees in Rwanda, 200,000 in Tanzania and several other thousands in Uganda and DRC, hundreds murdered in cold blood and the only hope for a solution is writing letters seeking permission to intervene? Before the AU can deploy its forces, it must deploy common sense. When a neighbor next door in a gated house is beating up his wife to near death, you don’t seek the permission of the husband to save her; you break in, save a life and apologize for the break-in later.

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A very un-merry Christmas