Waragi Laughing

Waragi Laughing

I have now completed the round trip journey from Kampala to Jinja and back. I am relieved and pleased to announce that I did not hit any children darting across the road; that is my biggest fear when passing through the trading centers along the highway. It happens sometimes (I've never had a personal experience, nor do I want to), and it's tragic.

Thanks to Stacy's continued birthday celebrations, I was motivated to:

1. finally buy new tires for my car;
2. get out of Kampala for a weekend.

When I was in South Africa last month, I commented on how picturesque it was. Sometimes it is easy to forget how beautiful it is in our own back yards. Uganda is an amazingly beautiful country. With all that's been going on lately, it has been so easy to get distracted and focus on the negative characteristics of the country. But I have to be careful and remember that I am very lucky to live where I do and make an effort to also enjoy simple and complex pleasures and natural wonders that abound.

So the reality check that Stacy's continued birthday celebrations provided allowed me to enjoy:

1. the pleasures of the amazing views from the bank of the Nile River;


2. being a wordsmith during an intellectually stimulating game of Scrabble with worthy, genius opponents;


3. developing new massage techniques during impromptu twilight therapy sessions.

All views were not pleasant. The hooks along the wall of the shower room were eerily similar to hooks I once saw along the wall of another type of "shower room".

An uncomfortable film could be filmed in this room.

I arrived home early enough today to enjoy a lazy Sunday in my Flat. I popped in a DVD of No Strings Attached. Peter Travers, whose opinion I usually trust and agree with, wrote that the plot of this Ivan Reitman film starring Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher "has been recycled since cave dwellers first drew pictures on walls." I agree. However, the script left me hysterically laughing out loud frequently for an hour and forty-five minutes. I cannot guarantee that the ease at which I was induced to laugh was not facilitated by a few ounces of waragi. All the same, I give value to this "generic piece of plastic."

Samples of my favourite lines from No Strings Attached:

• It seems kind of like carefree.
• It's like a peanut allergy, like an emotional peanut allergy.
• Don't dress up your penis, ever.
• I can't focus on my porn with all this real sex going on around me.
• Did you make me a period mix?
• We're sluts, Emma, we're dirty, dirty sluts.
• No, we don't need her; make her leave.
• You look like a pumpkin, bitch!...
• Ring! Ring! It's the pumpkin patch; they want their pumpkins back.

We're not pumpkins!

We're ladies!

Well you're so orange!

Hey, someone call Charlie Brown! We found the great pumpkin!

• That hole is my bitch.
• That's why they call him Bones.
• Because he loves Lil' Wayne, ok? You don't know everything about your dad.
• I think I'm gonna do it all the time. It's gonna get weird.

I know, the lines are out of context, so they may not immediately spark laughter. Just watch the film. You'll see what I mean. It won't be wasted time. Oh, and a few ounces of waragi might help.