As we hustle to get seats on taxis eager to beat the Clock Tower jam, my attention is drawn to a stout woman of about thirty. She is provocatively dressed in tight jeans and an ill-fitting camisole leaving very little to the imagination.  She is so close to me that I can see the crisscross stretchmark scars on her butt crack because her flowered nickers just like her jeans and top do not go far enough.

She is accompanied by an eight year old girl who you would call cute if it wasn’t for the white fungi platelets on her clean shaven head and her ill-fitting pinafore gap dress. This dress would really be smart if it was worn with a t-shirt.  But instead the cutout sleeves of the pinafore reveal the girl’s red nickers. So through omission and commission both the mother and daughter’s nickers are on display in the old taxi park at 5:00pm.

Miss tight jeans takes a seat directly behind the driver and promptly tells the small girl to sit in front of her on the kameme and locks her frail frame with her sharp knees. The girl can hardly move and I can tell that she is holding back tears from the burning on her behind from the heat of the engine. At one poing the heat becomes too much and she begins to squirm around looking for a cooler place but her mother shouts at her in that gruff, hoarse voice caused by smoking  “terera” settle down.

Before long she unwraps a “kidawalime” cake and a bottle of Novida which she quaffs down shamelessly while letting cake crumbs fall liberally on the little girl. When she is done she belches loudly and hands Cinderella an empty bottle girls with a few suds and some crumbs from the cake. The girl tries to reject this but Miss tight jeans tells her “tewokaza” as in stop pretending drink up. And so the girl takes the empty bottle of soda and licks the crumbs.

Soon miss tight jeans is on the phone she calls some unfortunate man and when she is asked who she is she says “Nze baby wo” it’s me your baby.  And so begins a conversation so private, so obscene that I am shocked at her how she can do that in front of her own child and later on force strangers to listen to her bedroom shenanigans.

By the time I get out of the taxi I am so mad I could wring this woman’s neck and put her out of her misery with my bare hands. I wish that she lives long enough to experience the wrath of the mother she is creating right in front of her.

Hey, I am a Ugandan woman who spends a minimum of four hours daily travelling in taxis. Like you, I used to dread the taxi rides until I realized that it is a source of a variety of free entertainment and an interesting study into human nature.