The sh100 meal at Kikumi Kikumi

Mar 23, 2009

It is exactly 12:50pm, hordes of students are rushing towards the new Makerere University Rugby ground. Joanna and her boyfriend, Moze, are heading the same direction. “I have a friend to meet before 1:00pm,” Moze tells Joanna. Suspicious of his sudd

By Wagabaza Owen

It is exactly 12:50pm, hordes of students are rushing towards the new Makerere University Rugby ground. Joanna and her boyfriend, Moze, are heading the same direction. “I have a friend to meet before 1:00pm,” Moze tells Joanna. Suspicious of his sudden plan, Joanna volunteers to escort him. It is on the way that Moze confesses. He is not going to meet a friend. He is going to lunch at Kikumi Kikumi.

He lied because he thought it would be embarrassing to take his girlfriend to these restaurants. At Auntie Dorah’s Mind Your Diet Restaurant and Takeaway, one of the many makeshift restaurants in this area, there is a long queue. Here, it is survival for the fittest. Everyone is quiet, all minds focused on getting food, eating and leaving.

“This is the problem with Kikumi Kikumi,” Moze says. “Every student is trying to make it early for lunch so as to avoid the long queues. It is like an unwritten law, before 1:00pm food is not ready and after 2:30pm the food is over.”

A tall, dark skinned man walks in and shouts his order. “Kalo (millet bread) for sh100, posho for sh100, potatoes for sh100, rice for sh100 and offals for sh100.” This is what happens in Mukunda Zone, popularly known as Kikumi Kikumi.

According to Mzee Nelson Ssekajugo, 78, a resident in this area, the zone is named after his father, Nassanaili Mayanja Nkunda.

He says the population increased of the early 1990s when business entreprenuers started constructing hostels in the area.

Kikumi Kikumi could easily be mistaken for a slum, because of the shacks. In between Paramount, Kasamba and Helican hostels are shacks with the narrow and squalid alleyways. Peering into some of these shacks, it is evident that there are as many as six people sharing a room no bigger than the average police cell.

A few children along the narrow walkways are playing cards, while a few metres away, a group of men are playing Ludo with a lot of pomp. The girls are busy washing clothes, while others are preparing food for sale in the restaurants.

The area is crowded with ramshackled houses and a concentration of tall decent hostels.

Kikumi kikumi is yet to succumb to the economic philosophy of “the higher the demand, the higher the price”.

From accommodation to food, the cost of living in Kikumi-Kikumi is low compared to other areas surrounding Makerere University.

For as little as sh200,000 a semester, one can get accommodation. One can get a meal with a meagre sh500.

Tamale Isaac, a second year student is full of praises for Kikumi-Kikumi. When he was a first year resident in Kikoni, he had to part with no less than shl,200 per meal. Fees charged at the hostels was high, so he had to share a room with another collegue at sh100,000 per month.

“A friend introduced me to Kikumi Kikumi where I find life much easier,” he says.

By 6:00pm, vendors have already occupied the pavements on both sides of Mwogezi Ayongelwa Road.

They sell anything from carpets, shoes, TV stands, to roast maize, chips, sausages and chapatti. Deep in the shacks, loud music rends the air, it is Brenda Fassie’s Vundella.

The crowd comprises campus students, many speaking Swahili. One could be led to think that the area is largely occupied by Kenyan students. However, that perception is false.

I am contemplating moving from Kamwokya to Kikumi Kikumi where the standard of living is low.

Distance to the lecture room is no more than 1km while the distance to Bwaise Road and Wandegeya is much shorter.

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