Julie is mum about her love for Simba
By Wamuyanza
She looks as smart as they come, seated as she is at the counter, chatting with a guy while imbibing her drink from a glass, a drink she pours from a cute grayish bottle.
Actually, it’s not the bottle that’s gray. It’s the drink that has a gray colour, influencing one to perceive that’s the colour of the bottle. The drink is Desperado, an imported brand that costs more than twice what some of us pay for the regular homemade brews like Sere Laiti, but so what? A lady must show class, more so when it’s someone else (I don’t want to say some sucker!) who is paying the bill.
On reaching the counter where I take a seat, I realise that the smart looking girl is Julie, a lady whose workplace is a drinking joint I visit often.
I say hello and Julie says hello back. Seated at the stool next to hers is a guy unfamiliar to me, but who, however, greets me like he has known me from the day the earth was created! Well, when you’ve reached my kind of age, more and more people—especially the young—tend to know you more than you know them.
Now my assumption is that the guy is on a date with Julie, even though her easy going attitude gives the impression she and him are not, as they say, “an item”. But that, of course, is none of my business.
We are in a football season and much as there’s no match taking place today, or even tomorrow, soccer is still the hottest topic in most social gatherings, groceries included, of course. It’s no wonder that a conversation emerges from nowhere about the fortunes of Simba SC and Young Africans SC (Yanga), Bongo’s topmost soccer outfits.
As I write this “report”, Yanga are leading with 45 points in the NBC Premier League scoreboard with 45 points as Simba pants from behind with only 37 points. It looks like this season, Yanga will clinch the Premier League Cup that eluded them for four consecutive seasons while Simba shone throughout that period and seemed unstoppable!
But then, even as Yanga boasts it will be Bongo’s 2021/22 Premier League champs, the Simba camp is saying, so what? Why, they’re heading to the quarter finals of the CAF—Confederation of African Football, the only East African team that’s featuring in this prestigious continental tourney.
But strangely, Simba’s campaign for the continental trophy is seen as nothing compared to the local rivalry pitting them against Yanga. So the dominant conversation in our local pubs and elsewhere remains Simba vs Yanga in the NBC Premier League war. Trust our parochialism!
It’s no wonder, therefore, that I, being a typical M’bongo, ask Julie whether she’s “a Simba” or “a Yanga”. In response, she leans towards my ear and whispers: “I’ve a team, but I don’t want to endanger my chances of enjoying more beers from this person of mine—he’s a Yanga to the core and I’m a Simba damu!”
