Now, first of all, before you attack me for exciting you and not giving you the details about the event in the first paragraph, bear with me…
First, if we hosted a tour, some Twitter influencer, that app we now call X, with no prior knowledge of F1, would be paid a ka 300k to post, “Ekijja si muntu.” The influencer would hire other minions to like, retweet, and comment until the post is the number one trending post in Uganda.
Canary Mugume would be a catalyst. He would post a Formula 1 car as a quote to that post. This would excite the so-called elites of Uganda more. Memes would begin trending. One of the biggest memes would be Lewis Hamilton standing by a rolex stand, ordering nyaanya mbisi. The rolex stand would be by the track while the Ferrari pit crew members worked tirelessly to change the tires.
Remember, the official news has not yet come out. We are still under speculation. In fact, the real people with the news are the boda guys. You grab a jaj, and before you even settle your buttocks well and grab his waist, he asks, “Gwe okimanyi Luwis Hamildon yasuze ku State House?” As you are still trying to figure out who Hamildon is, he will go on to assure you that he even touched one of F1 cars. “Gwe, nayitiddeko awo Entebbe. Omuzungu yayiye dda emotoka! Obwedda ennyonyi zizireeta.”
You start wondering whether he is being real oba biboozi bya boda. So, you go back to check on Twitter, mpozi X, and some big bummed influencers are twerking with the F1 logo squeezed in the upper right corner and then the ka tagline “Visit Uganda” on the left side. You choose to believe because, after all, all the big news in Uganda starts with just rumors. Ask Triple A how she got to know that the hugs she previously shared with Kabanda were unreal.
On NBSSports, anchors keep saying, “Some unverified sources have confirmed that we may… hmmm, we may soon have the F1 here.” As the rumors grow and grow and excitement hits, ku ground, bilalamu.
So you recall the influencer who made the first post; the person who paid him was in the talking stages with the lower-tier management at F1. An adrenaline rush from the excitement then pushed him to the State House, but he was denied the opportunity to see Vincent Banange. He is asked to first pay some brokers some ka money so as to access Banange. In fact, they redirect him to Banange’s son even after the payment. In the first interaction, Banange’s son demands, “Only Bachwezi should be given the bids for the F1 tour,” before he goes on to ask, “Can’t we have an army truck added to the race?”
This means the track has to be built in Bachwezi land. So the person rushes to buy land. He gets a deal on a prime piece of land to build the track. But he comes back to Vincent Banange to ask for funding for the land. He inflates the price by 10 times. Pictures of the proposed track start flying all over the internet. The excitement seems to be getting real.
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Immediately, a committee is formed. Uncles and aunties who should have retired 30 years ago are appointed to the committee. They throw in a one Raymond Mujuni as a Gen Z representative. “He will bring a young mind to this,” they say. The committee comes up with a budget bigger than Uganda’s annual budget. Somehow, the Bank of Uganda governor gets involved, and he is invited to the Parliamentary chambers to discuss the matter. He has a smirk throughout the conversation. But who cares? He wasted our time discussing the Sovereignty Bill.
We wake up one day; the budget has been passed. Handshakes are flying all over NBS, and for once Bukedde teli kutuwogganira mbu “Bammuseeeeee!!!!” but this time it’s, “Emotoka ze …” We all rush to NTV, but unfortunately their journalists were not allowed at the event. Anyway, that is a problem for another day. We turn our focus back to the Chinese contractor who has been granted the bid to start the construction. Each day we see men with helmets and green reflector jackets giving tours to “dignitaries,” like Kenzo and Bebe Cool. You wonder, “Eh, my Lawdddd, I wonder, will they ever finish building this track if every day the lead engineer has to give a tour to a dignitary?”
The excitement is still there. More big-bummed women have been hired to add to the marketing team. NBSSports hosts a person from the committee each day, and they all say the same words as if they read a script before the show. Every boda guy has a different story. “Olaba, ez’essente bazigabana dda!” One claims he was part of the recipients of the money and all that is happening is a facade. Another claims, “Naye yo tracka banaatera okugimaliriza. Nayiseewo ejjo,” another claims he recently saw the track.
A year passes, two years pass, three years pass, and boom, one morning the headline in Daily Monitor reads, “F1 MONEY HEIST.” Meanwhile, New Vision the headline reads, “GOVERNMENT CONFIDENT IN F1 PROGRESS.” Who is fooling who? You ask. By afternoon that day, the news is out and about. “The Chinese contractors had built only three kilometers of the track, with each kilometer costing $9.3 million.” The contract is immediately taken away from the Chinese and thrust into the hands of the army.
The committee sits again. A new budget is passed. Omuntu wa wansi doesn’t understand why all of a sudden the transaction fee to send UGX 10,000 is now UGX 1000. Omu pakasa mu Park Enkadde just hears rumors that his national ID number is now his tax identification number. He doesn’t know what that means. URA announces new tax rates, and the mother who just signed a contract of 1 million per month now has UGX 650,000 take-home after taxes, and NSSF has been deducted. Somewhere, some motivational speaker is accusing that mother of not being financially responsible. Because why is she not saving UGX 300,000 per month in a Unit Trust?
But you know what, it’s another new day in Uganda. The speculations are still alive, but nobody knows when they will stop being speculations. One evening you are walking aimlessly in Kira, in those back roads of the reclaimed swamps, and you find a piece of land stacked with lorries branded with the F1 formula logo and the Visit Uganda tagline. They have gathered all the dust and cobwebs from our flavorful roads. You laugh it off like the day you saw the tuktuks that had been purchased at UGX 9 billion to teach Ugandans how to drink coffee. You look away for your sanity and go on with your walk. When you get home, you come online, and just like that, someone leaked the information from the Planning Committee.
Nothing new. You just wish that you were the tea boy on that committee. The person who delivered the tea during the meetings was paid over UGX 100 million. Billions of money were washed.
“Hmmm,” you sigh.
“Hafazali I should have offered printing services,” when you see that printing cost over UGX 200 million.
Anyway, you choose to move on with your life. Kasta you couldn’t even afford a ticket to the race. But as you are trying to move on with your life, a Ugandan living in London posts a public transport bus branded with Visit Uganda and once again advertising the F1 tour.
You laugh again. Just another day of being Ugandan.
Read up to the end? The writer is also an author of Once I Arrived, a work of realistic fictional that explores identity, society, relocation, and lived experiences. You can support the work she does by purchasing a copy now from +(256)759309215
