Crashing Kyalo Christmas Lunch

Christmas Day in kyalo? Hmm. While there, I guess there is no harm in going to that great institution of worship – church, to listen to Pastor frothing words of wisdom about Christ and also, trying to figure out what scam Pervy Pastor is going to pull. Will he usher the ladies into a backroom like Pervy Pastor in Zimbabwe recently did when he told Female Congregant to buy anointed cucumbers equivalent to how big she wants her husbands penis to be?

My attendance record at church this year has not been the best, so I’m going – not because I really want to go or I think I ought to go, but as everybody will be parading new clothes and I have a new pair of shoes, I think its an apt time to break them in – don’t you think?

In the kyalo church, peeps from Kampala obviously get the preferential front-of-house seating because they are - err, from Kampala. If not, Pastor would have cleared space at the front by the choir because Kampala peeps like to bring their own seats – which is understandable, because the bench in a kyalo church – or ‘foam’ as they call it, is not easy at all on the buttocks that I strongly advise you go with a cushion for the laboriously long three-hour service.

What I don’t grasp about kyalo, are the lunch arrangements. Every household I guess, has its own plans on how to spend the day. After church as we walk back to our cribs, along the way, I expect families to tail off to their homesteads and feast. Some kyalo peeps are thoughtful enough to give out invitations - that once you are done with your own feasting, pop over to theirs for drinks or something like that.

But a kyalo brain thinks and works differently – especially the male brain. Kyalo Man will confidently walk with you from church and pass his own home without a fleeting glance at it, that you think he’s going to the trading centre for some emergency shopping - or a pre-lunch game of ludo or snakes and ladders. However, as you get to your home and you turn to him to say: “Have a good lunch”, he always interprets it as: “Are you coming in for Christmas lunch?”

Jeez, he has unashamedly invited himself and will sit with you and your family all afternoon - eating and drinking the finer things in life that came off the shelves of Kampala’s supermarkets and were transported across the districts in air-conditioned 4x4s. Dare you ask him after the first course, if he harbours any intentions of going to his home to join his family for lunch, his answer is always embarrassingly (not to him, but to you) bland – “They will be okay without me. I even don't know what she cooked.”

Pause a minute. What does his wife make of the stunt? I mean, they left home together for church with the kids. They walked back in a group, but when they got their home, he didn’t stop. He carried on walking. He didn’t even look back or call one of the kids over and whisper: “Tell mum I am going to pull a fast one and crash TBs lunch. If there is anything worth spiriting away, I will certainly do so.”

I mean, she must vex, mustn’t she? You see when we were still kids, for five consecutive years, Kyalo Neighbour always strode past his house like he didn’t see it or like he didn't live there and around the corner to ours for his lunch and then, staggered back to his - way past the kyalo bedtime hour of 8:00pm. But get this. The following day on Boxing Day, he always turned up early and presented himself in time for breakfast.

Today, it’s not going to happen for I have a plan. When we get to his home, I am going to branch off with his family. Hopefully, I will be offered a seat and I will lunch with them. That will sort him – I think?

But Kyalo Man and Musoga Man at that, just like Bushenyi Man or Lira Man, I know he won’t be perturbed. He will snigger and say to himself: “If TB wants to lunch with my family, then so be it because the freebie meat I got the other day is long gone.”  With that, he will purposely march on to my home to eat my share of the meal and with my family.

But what the heck, its Christmas. Let’s leave him be to slaver on that turkey leg which hopefully, he will choke on. Otherwise folks, wherever you are, have a great lunch! 

Pictures:  Zimbabwe Herald, New Vision, The Daily Monitor