an evening with the locals…

16th November

Since it was Wednesday and cold, Anna (the marketing intern here) and I decided that going to the pub was the only right thing to do…

And there we met Oscar & Demas – two young carvers here in the village and some of the Big Beyond project partners – and what a hoot that was! Am not sure I can explain it so it’s funny for other people to read – might just be one of those ‘you had to be there moments’ but I’ll give it a go anyway…

Oscar started off by asking why British people feel like they have to thank for everything many times… “They say thaaaaaank you, thaaaaank you so much and thaaaannk yoooooou again”, he proclaimed. “It doesn’t sound honest?” Anna and I had no answer really, just the British way, right? It seemed that they preferred the German to-the-point tourist behaviour of asking “How much? 5,000? OK!” Or even the more direct (or rude) approach of the Mexicans “How much for your f*cking gorillas?

Amongst the funny tourist anecdotes we enjoyed the variety of different noises they make instead of saying a word..not unique to these guys, all the Ugandans seems to do it…for example: “Eeeeeeeeh” mainly used when agreeing with something or acknowledging something or ‘Aah’ used for when understanding something or emphasising something and ‘Iiiiiiihhhh’ for when they are surprised or amazed by something. It’s hilarious!

There were just so many other language things during the evening which really cracked me up…I haven’t laughed so much in a very long time…here are a few of my favourites.

“Oh you mean the pastor, the brown man?”
Apparently he is just not black enough to be black!

“It is dericious?”
What?? Aaaaah, delicious! They pronounce the letters r and l differently here, it causes quite the confusion.

“Now or now, now?”
Now can be anytime within the next few hours, but now now is actually now!

“I don’t mind about that!”
Means ‘I don’t believe you’ – also confusing at times!

“You cannot summarise a beer!”
To ‘summarise’ something here, means to finish something off quickly. And it seems that it is not possible to do with a beer! 😄

And finally, towards the end of the evening I learnt a new word in the local language – Dakutera! It means ‘I will beat you’ – should come in handy! Haha.

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Oh btw – really wanted to include some pics but the connection here is so bad! Apparently they tried to upgrade to 3G here but instead messed it all up so it is now even worse than before!