DIASPOMAN : Attempts at Benchmarking turn sour in Zanzibar

Last week, I told you how Aggrey and I invested in a bar way back in the mid 90s. And I told you how we had to source for appropriate barmaids in order to lure the emerging market during those days. The NGO personnel flooded the land in their huge imposing jeeps, swaying around decorated by all kinds of walkie-talkies. Apart from their normal daily activities, these expatriates spent the rest of the evenings sampling those frothy products from Bralirwa. Wherever you found such frothy drinks, there would always be a tendency of chicks infiltrating the area. This was the same at Isange joint. Ladies of all shapes and sizes visited our joint in the evening hours in search for green pastures. They came in dressed to kill. They would ensure that their shapely legs were displayed in their fullness. This meant that mini skirts at Nyabugogo were really on high demand. Once these ladies swarmed our joint, they would sit out in small groups hoping that our rich patrons would notice them. By the time our rich clients expressed interest in these ladies, the cold breeze would have taken its toll on those long shapely legs. The girls would be shivering in the cold and usually, they would be sipping a glass of Fanta ikonje. They always ordered for a Fanta because it was the cheapest product around. They would sip that Fanta for hours on end and if they were lucky, they would migrate from Fantas to Amstels; courtesy of our NGO clients. One such NGO boss was none other than Mr. Kanzu. This guy was an African Casanova. He was a regular client, who never hesitated to offer rounds to everybody around. He was always in high spirits, whenever he was surrounded by those Kigali chicks, cajoling and caressing him as if he was a King. One day Kanzu got embarrassed when his new catch was mistaken for an Isange maid. This occurred when Kanzu’s girl was swaying her hips on her way to the Isange toilets. As she swung past, some greedy men in the house thought that she was our maid and that is why they stretched their naughty fingers to touch and scratch her legs and bums. This did not go down well with Bwana Kanzu. He sprung to his feet and swore never to return to Isange joint unless we gave him a public apology. He also forced us to swear an affidavit to the effect that we were going to import special Isange uniforms for our barmaids. Naturally we had to give in. And that is how we ended up paying a small visit to the already well established bar in town. Its name was Zanzibar Pub. It was situated at the heart of Kiyovu of the rich. Aggrey and I instructed our Isange cashier to release some per diem for the two of us as we were going on “ Mission ”. We were on a mission to identify suitable uniforms for a top class bar such as ours. In order to set our standards at very high levels, we decided to “Mission” ourselves to Zanzibar Bar for the feasibility study. At Zanzibar joint, it was sheer merry making. The music was booming as revellers danced and drank away through the night. For a moment, we had forgotten what our mission really was. Instead of checking out what the barmaids were dressed in, we were busy guzzling all kinds of beers at Zanzibar. In fact, we had also forgotten about a certain bar in Kicukiro named Isange Joint. We had forgotten that we were the true shareholders of Isange, and that we had come to Zanzibar on a real business trip. Anyways, we now embarked on serious matters and started to check out the Zanzibar uniforms. We were interested in the sizes, colours, shapes as well as the texture of the material. We immediately liked the Zanzibar uniforms. They were yellow blouses and black mini skirts. The barmaids also spotted some reddish scarves to keep them warm. The next task for Aggrey and I, was to check out the material of the cloth. Was it Nylon? Was it Cotton or was it Jinja from Uganda? With such questions transcending through our minds, we found our hands touching and grappling the Zanzibar maids in a bid to feel the texture of the uniforms. In a flash, security personnel pounced on us citing sexual harassment. We were herded down the basement for grilling… diaspoman@yahoo.com