Rally about booze, babes, food and lies

By Joshua Kato The development of rallying in Uganda can be contributed partly to the enthusiasm shown by its fans. A typical rally day is very colourful. Terms like Kulya kaasi (meaning, eating cash ) are common. Actually, rally fans are spendthrifts! A rally day begins with thousands of fans invading the circuit or route area. These are people from all walks of life, some in fancy cars. Dress code for men is mainly jeans and T-shirts. For women, it looks like a nude competition of sorts. This is because the majority of them put on skimpy wear, tight jeans. “We dress in light clothes to keep our bodies cool in the sun, not that we want to show off our bodies,” a female fan said. To many men, beautiful women are also part of the fun. The men hang out at strategic points, to feast their eyes. This, the women love. When the women want to relieve themselves, it is common to see some men on top of trees, delighting in the view. Some men take pictures! Word has it that, if many of these beautiful women are not watching over their husbands, they are actually trying to steal the eye of someone else’s man. Probably, that is why fights and verbal abuses over men among rally fans dot every other rally. There is a group of people who make real bucks out of the rally fans. These are the food vendors. Many of the fans rarely question what they are eating, so long as it tastes delicious! If you want to know more about the cars, the drivers and the likes, just walk closeby a group of the fans. As a car swerves at a bend, and you hear one of them shouting that the driver uses a pendulum to swing through a corner. “These drivers use a pendulum to swing through a corner, it is fixed somewhere in the cabin,” the talkative man tries to convince the others. Sweat dripping off his fore head, and hair covered with dust, another man tries to tell those who wish to listen that rally cars that roll, but manage to complete a rally are not reported as having rolled. He wanted his listeners to say; “The cars stumble” not roll. This was soon after Isa Numba’s car rolled at Kaazi. You should only say the car rolled if it does not complete the rally, but if it goes through, we say it stumbled,” the sweating man shouted. Not far away, another man tells his colleagues how Collin Mcraes’s car flew for over 200 meters during the recent Kenyan Safari rally! “Do you know what you are talking about?” His colleagues ask. “Of course,” he answers back in a bellow. “I went to Kenya, and I was near the scene of the crash,” he answers authoritatively. His colleagues do not answer back, all the same they know that this is a huge, fat lie. The subject changes the topic automatically, as another car zooms by. “That car was driven by Didier Auriol before it came to Uganda,” he shouts out as Moses Lumala zooms past in a Toyota Celica group A. “Auriol is a good man, he says, he sold it to Karim for peanuts,” the man adds. Everyone grins, as the topic changes suddenly. “That man does not know how to hold the engine revs,” shouts another as Kuku Ranjit zooms past. However, when asked to explain what he meant by engine revs, he could not even utter a word. When Giovanni Storchi’s car, a Lancia delta intergrale zooms by, another lie sounds out! “That car has got 40 turbos,” a man shouts out. His hands swinging in the dust. His listeners refuse to believe him. He goes on to explain how he was once the mechanic of Ian Duncan’s Lancia in Kenya. “I know what l’m talking about,” he shouts. But no one is willing to listen anymore. However, there are some well trusted fans who pull big crowds for the information. These include former rally drivers and mechanics who watch the cars among the fans. The most famous circuits for sprints are Kaazi, Garuga, Lubiri and Nabugabo. Upcountry rallys attract fans like red ants.“We actually get a real chance of picnicking, we eat rare fruits like fene and mangoes that we cannot get in Kampala,” Musa, an ardent rally fan said. ends