To Pee Against The Wall or Not

It’s been a tad since I last called on Friend in his Wandegeya office. But then again, why would I when there is no longer an incentive? That incentive if you may recall, lay in a column I wrote a while back about Neighbours Teen Daughters.

From Friends third floor office, we could peer into Neighbours compound and see all that goes on. Better still, Friend’s office has tinted windows so Neighbour and Teen Daughters were unaware that we would spy on them as they had their showers on the veranda before heading off to school.

One Monday morning, they were no longer there. They had moved. In fact they had moved with not so much as a goodbye – something that I thought was rather rude of them.

Last week Friend called up to announce the arrival of a new lady tenant. “And you don’t have to be here early. Get here for 2:50pm because it all happens at 3:00pm” he added. Sure enough at 3:00pm, out walked Lady Tenant for her shower. But she is smart. She figures the best place to have it, is as close to the perimeter wall that divides her property and Friends office so people from the office block can’t see her. It does work because we really have to crane our necks to get a good look, but so far all we have managed to see is the back of her head, neck and shoulders. However, what we don’t get is that she never faces the perimeter wall while she showers. She faces a small unlocked gate which is not a private gate but a communal gate. Perhaps she is an exhibitionist?

Apart from Lady Tenant, there is another new neighbour. He is an elderly gentleman who must be a civil servant because he wears the vests our grand dad’s used to wear – you know the ones with the small holes in them? Well Civil Servant has a House-ee who must be a Kiboga village import because when she has to go for a pee, it’s not to the toilet. She pee’s by the boundary wall. Like Lady Tennant, she tries to pee as close to the boundary wall as possible, so we don’t see her from our 3^rd floor office. But we do see her. We have seen her.

That got me thinking. Men and women are very different when it comes to having a pee. When men are caught short and have to have an emergency pee out in the open, we simply don’t pull down our zips and start peeing anywhere. We pee with a plan. We have to find something to pee against – an Umeme power pole, a car tire, a wall, an anthill or a tree stump. Even man’s best friend - his male dogs that is, always find something to pee against – often a car tire, but in the absence of one, a wall, tree or an Umeme power pole will suffice.

Delving deeper into thought, when women have an emergency pee out in the open, it is done with no plan. They don’t face away from people in an attempt to preserve their modesty like we men do.  

OPP can testify about Lady Mercedes Benz driver we gave a lift to Entebbe airport and who needed an emergency pee after drinking one beer too many before we set off. Just past Bwebajja, OPP stopped the Range Rover and out she bolted. What did she do? She hiked up her skirt and peed while facing the heavy Entebbe road traffic (eek!) - unlike OPP and I who foraged tooth-and-nail into the shrubbery to find an anthill to pee against and with our backs to the road.