It was in 2013, in graduate school, when the course, “African Popular Arts and Cultures” prompted us into fieldwork on the night life in Kampala.
During these nightly sojourns, with my worthy cousin, Dr Laury Ocen, we listened to some really curious pieces of folklore, that to this day, are appreciable as insightful representations of our blighted lives at the national scale. Night life, or sometimes captured in the cliché “night economies,” signals to, among other things, immense artistic and cultural production. It is also time for immense political social negotiation — inside bars, bedrooms and “elite” brothels (also known as guesthouses).
And of course, crime and copulation. Kampala’s often dimly lit streets are busy factories. For about three weeks, we discussed texts and topics relating to fashion (the mini skirt, high heels, foot infibulation, hijab, sexual freedom); music (especially those often-tantalising videos) to gendered bodies.
We touched the dating lives of Nairobi career women — whose careers and schedules prompt them to seek marriage to already married men. We touched the lives of maidens and prostitutes in colonial Pumwani! Texts such as Tejumola Olaniyan’s Arrest the Music especially Fela’s wonderous escapades with the womenfolk; Katherine Hakim’s Erotic Capital, and Noam Wolf’s The Beauty Myth were animating readings. They sparked furious debate and subsequent research projects.
Yes, there was an obsession with the woman’s body as it formed a major talking point. Ocen and I embraced the position that the woman’s body was a special body, which thus needed special treatment and care, from clothing to protection.
(Not that men should determine fashion, but by whatever logics fashion is determined, we urged special care and caution because the female body was special. Unlike a male body, we argued, there was flair to a woman’s body making it a revered centre of attraction, commercially viable for simply its shape and texture, and by extension, a centre of competing interests, and thus open to crude exploitation.
We cited Euripides eroticist peacemaker, Lysistrata, Katherine Hakim’s liberating term ‘erotic capital’, and Wolf’s analysis of the endless chains of capitalist exploitation of the female body through claims of fashion. It was in this context that we actually started going downtown, into the trenches. We visited strip clubs; watched the rains, and bargained with the “ladies of the night.” Yes, we will tell these stories another day.
BEAUTIFUL VILLAGERS
On one beautiful night, we encountered a more mature, analytical, but disgruntled girl of the night. Her analyses of her street were deep theoretical treatises and reflections. Mulungi was her name, and started by telling us about a group of newer girls, who “recently arrived from the villages” had so “badly lowered their collective value, their prices, and thereby the quality of their lives.”
At first, we didn’t know where Mulungi was going with these lofty political economic arguments. Was she trying to diss the other girls as ugly and have made them all look ugly together!
We listened on. We would learn that the girls Mulungi was complaining about were not ugly at all! Contrary to that, they were fresh and succulent. They were curvy – she pointed to some of them – with pretty faces, and V-shaped chins. They were tall and elegant. Even after an estimated three years on these streets, they didn’t look pale or over-used, yet their clientele was humongous.
The story goes, that men from far and wide – including foreigners – came to their leg stalls. As you would have guessed, they had Tanzanian coastal genes, renowned for their ‘erotic capital’ to use Katherine Hakim’s language. Indeed, Mulungi went ahead and told us much more about their erotic endowments.
“You have been to the strip show, have you not seen their rains! Hehehe! They are super!” Mulungi said in barely veiled jealousy. “They are the definition of the pearl of Africa,” she concluded with a smug on her face.
On the other hand, the complainers, Mulungi herself, looked okay but not as gorgeous as her competition. She was from Busoga, and despite being blessed with an eye-catching bottom, she lacked the fine graces of the body that the other girls had. But she was a decent citizen, and could end the night with some clientele.
But she would not rule the streets. Despite being older and more experienced around the male gender, in a feat akin to a coup, her and her contemporaries had been dislodged from running those streets.
VILLAGERS FOR LIFE
At first, we thought Mulungi — and the other girls listening in on us — were complaining because of the competition for clients. But it quickly became clear that both the complainers (Mulungi and co.) and the other beautiful girls with Tanzanian-coastal genes were all poor together.
Mulungi explained that that they thought the new arrivals would raise the quality of the street — attracting more clientele and leveraging their endowments — and them, the lesser beautiful girls, would earn from this influx of business. But to their surprise, these new girls appeared content by being just on the streets.
They had no dreams of fancy hotels dinners, but enjoyed the dingy eateries in the nearby slums. They didn’t insist that their wealthy clients take them to 5-star hotels, but in bed-bugged lodges. And they would even give free leg for just a ride in a BMW!
Mulungi told one story to make her point more succinct: “One time, a big Mzungu client, a renowned millionaire, had abused this girl, Spice — not the artiste — and when I learned of it, I confronted him in the bar where he was drinking. I knew him. I threatened him with exposure and he started begging that we let him compensate the girl. When I asked the girl to name her compensation, akasiru, asked for a 50k and some painkillers,” Mulungi smirked as she narrated.
“But while I wondered how much this new girl sold her leg, kali ka laisi nnyo, it struck me that despite being beautiful, this bitch girl didn’t know her worth.
For beautiful, yet stupid and cheap, she had cheapened us all!” Mulungi angrily stressed throwing us in hearty laughter. When the laughter died down, she added, “please take your children to school, even those who will do our work.”
yusufkajura@gmail.com
The author is a political theorist based at Makerere University.
Source: The Observer
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