Village Branding

When I retired a couple of years back, I glanced over this Mahatma Ghandi quote that said “Be the change that you want the world to be”!

At first glance, NEVA to click that ballistic kazungu, so always to read it 3 times over, then went “aaaahhhhhh, kumbe that’s what it is!”

The world I want is for the villages of Africa to develop, at least to a level where urbanites and villagers can have a sensible conversation, before the villager can reach his favourite part of meeting any urbanite, the part where he goes “Boss, help me wiz 10 souzand, to pay the school fees”, and u be like “why the hell did u get 15 kids, in 4 years? who exactly did u have in mind to pay the bills, PUNK!!”

So to avoid the above scenario, I retreated to my village in Serere, and set up a container to sell funny little bu things, like soap, salt and toothpaste. Now villagers are really behind on this English thing, especially the stuff called branding, they still think it’s a singer, who did “I wanna be down”, in 1994! This is where I have problems with these corporate pumpkins known as brand managers! They just be here in Kampala driving around new company cars, probably a pickup, painted all with the company logos, they wear their identity cards around their necks, some even add on a flash disk and a phone to their neck attire, walk around with blackberries, and have bullshit kabozi like “Yo, can u imagine these idiots put me in red pepper, page 4 on the bottom left side, mbu I have a new beemer, sijui mbu I bought it direct from Germany, these bu chaps are idiots!! Someone should give them real work to do, just buy the paper and see for yo self!!”

(After calling the red pepper to confirm this outburst, the reporters showed them an email from Mr Corporate above sending a picture of the car and the amount!)

Anyway, let me first leave these guys and take u back to Serere. Now here I am in my ka container and in comes customer numero une! (The following has been translated to English, due to the fact that the pronunciations of the words have an alphabet not yet devised on a keyboard, but I will try to put as they said)

“Goodmorningy boss, I wanty the cologate!”

I hand over a tube of colgate

“No no no no no, I wanty the ada one which is red!!”

“Close-up?”

“Yes, that colgate which is close up, even give me that pepsi brrrrr!”

“Lady, cocacola is brrrrr, not pepsi”

“U Kampala people, u think we are stupid! I know the pepsi I want, the Coke pepsi!

If u meet the brand manager of Close up or Coca cola, tell him to drag his ass upcountry and stop wasting time here swinging Ids and flash disks, things are tight down there! I have since returned!!!