The call was as if from the blue. Even I was surprised I still had his number saved in my phone book.
He dispensed with the greetings quickly. I was transported back almost 20 years as he spoke.
He said he had been reading what I write and then he sighed. I knew the sound. The sound of an elder who sees the young man groping in the dark. Tempted to show him the way, but wisdom dictates that he should make his way alone.
We should meet at his house – it was still the same one in a leafy Kampala surburb, Saturday for lunch at 1. It was not a request. He hadn’t changed.
I was ushered into the living room by Idah, his house keeper from 20 years ago. He will be with you shortly, she said as she directed me to the sofa and asked what I would have, while I waited.
He had lost the bounce in his step, there was sag in his shoulders and a stoop in his posture. But otherwise he seemed to have aged very well.
Let’s call him Sam. He used to be one of the richest men in this town. At least that’s what we thought.
He parlayed a Luwum street shop into a thriving Import Export business --- XXXXX Impex. Bringing everything from clothing to cars to perfumes, wines and spirits.
"He was making money hand over fist and made sure everybody knew it – flashy cars, high living and legendary nights out at Ange Noire and Club Obligato...
I got to know him, in a matter of speaking, during the spate of bank closures in the late 1990s.
It turns out he was leveraged to the hilt and the collapse of Greenland Bank all but buried him. Or not, as it turns out. He had stepped out of oblivion and was right there in front of me as if it was just yesterday, when he was the toast of the town.
Why did he want to see me? He would not be hurried.
We talked politics … he thought we were going to the dogs. We talked the economy … he was confident that the resilience of the people will pull us through in spite of ourselves. We talked society … he wondered where all these ‘fakes” (socialites) pop up from.
The indication that we were getting down to business came when he declared something to the effect that the more things change the more things remain the same.
Lunch was done, the drinks had started flowing.
“Why do you think I have gone quiet?” I couldn’t say, you run broke. He spared me the blushes by answering his own question – with a question. “Do you think I was rich?” That was an easy one, “Yes. You had money”.
“Even me I thought so.” I didn’t know what to respond.
“I was good at giving the impression I had money.”
The described to me a life of timing his shows of lavish expenditure when everyone was looking – at the night club, the cars he hired every so often to give the impression he was changing cars frequently, the beautiful women he bribed to hang on his arm...
“For what?” For that he said he had to go back to the beginning.
He was born outside Kampala. His father abandoned his mother, him and his three sisters. They scraped and scratched to make a living. He managed to do book keeping after his O-level and went into business.
Money came to him quickly and his bookkeeping skills gave him an edge over his contemporaries, especially when taxes became an issue.
By the 1990s he was flush with cash. He had plots around Kampala, about 50 rental units and millions in the bank. His business was throwing off millions of shillings a week.
"He was young. He was indestructible. It was inconceivable he would fall back into destitution...
He spoke too soon.
The collapse of the banks hurt his cashflow – a lot of money got stuck in the banks. And when the receivers started collecting on loans, it was adding salt to injury.
He laughs when remembers all the ticks they tried to save their businesses, the businessmen of that generation – loan sharks, forged checks, black dollars, the courts, but wapi!
He shakes his head.
There is nothing to show for the millions he blew on high living, with money that was not his, buying things he didn’t need, trying to impress people who didn’t care.
"He had a rural approach to urban excitement, he says. He can laugh now but then when his world came crashing down all around him, suicide crossed his mind....
If he were to do it all over again he would be more ambitious. More ambitious for his business, “why couldn’t he have had a string of shops?Or built dozensm ore rental units?” and not to show the world that the lito village boy had made it good, who cared?”.
That way he thinks he may have weathered the bank closure storm and still be in business today.
He is not destitute, he still had a taste for Black Label, but he thinks he would be richer than God by now – he made the sign of the cross after this assertion.
“So you see, the more things change the more things stay the same.”
