Urban Pizza Survival
The Afropolitan
story
Sam Mwaka-karama
Cyril, a
hand in pocket slowly took the stairs down, fiddling with his phone. Lunch
time. The ultra modern office blocks were emptying as staffers chattering away walked
out to various eating places, cafes and restaurants – with all these
fashionable young, where you ate mattered.
Fast
and dead slow. These young men and women were defined by dress code: Jeans or Khakis
and checkered or fine golfer polo - in black, gray or charcoal trousers, white,
blue or checkered shirts, tie or open neck were the new young office workers.
Mob on the streets mid-day.
“Cyril, where do you have lunch?”
Asked one of the more senior staff
in the organization where Cyril is a new employee. Patrick heads the ICT team
Cyril works in – Patrick and group passed by walking-on a bit faster to go secure
table before the place was cramped. Wherever they always went for lunch.
“Aha I am not sure – I will find a
place” answered Cyril a bit off guard.
The rowdy pompous group went on
talking the Kiganda dialect, this younger generation Baganda love their language.
“Hi, Cyril – you know any eating
places around, where do you have lunch?” asked one of three young women also
just out on the lunch prowl.
“Hi Jane, I am headed a bit far
out in town”
“Okay see you back in office then”
said Jane as Cyril quickly skewed across the large double avenue waved and
dashed off. He wasn’t sure of all these sudden interests in him – better get
out of the way.
As a new employee, and coming all
the way from Gulu in Northern Uganda, where he had his entire education. Cyril
naturally has a bit of a task adjusting. In the couple of months he worked, he
learnt that there is a big social divide between Northerners and the
Southerners – and in-between, a whole lot of outright foreigners. The economic
valley was also deepening and widening every day.
Today, his lunch money was short
for his usual meal, so he went and bought a chapatti and the smaller bottle of
fruit soda. Cyril normally went for his traditional Acholi dishes – lately they
have become as much expensive, there were days he wouldn’t just afford them.
Back in office after the obsession
and gig called lunch-time, he was back on the day’s website design and hosting busy
schedule when his phone rung; picking the call, he saw it was a company client
– Cyril glanced at his head of technical design and hosting as he answered and
listened.
“Hello! Yes speaking… good
afternoon” answered Cyril
After listening for a moment he,
turned again and glanced at his department head and this time he found Patrick
looking at him intently. So he said.
“Okay, I’ll get onto your website
right now and check-out what is happening – call you back, errh alternatively
let me put you through to my department head, Patrick”
And Patrick seems to have sensed
something, was already moving towards Cyril… the new employee quickly explains
the issue handing over his phone to the department head. Patrick tells the
client that they would be with them in an hour considering the driving distance
and traffic.
∞
At the client company offices,
they were complaining that their website done by the design and hosting company
had suddenly become erratic and unstable. So Patrick and Cyril went trouble
shooting. And after perhaps an hour, they had identified and rectified the
problem.
“Okay we have identified your
problem… and it is all fixed” said Patrick “you will have to guard your code
very closely – anybody might access and destabilize your site”
He then wrote out a work detail
invoice payment demand note and handed it over to the client company CEO – the
client complained immediately.
“What! This is the ransom we have
to pay… no there is a mistake – this is too much and not commensurate to the
maintenance work you have done”. Said the client CEO
“Well, this is high tech – you can
keep your money, but then your site won’t be ineffective and eventually might
collapse” Said Patrick packing his stuff in his back pack. They talked for a
while.
“Okay, Patrick between you and me
tell me one to one, how can we go it cheaper”
Patrick laughed!
“Mr. CEO our work cannot be
defined in those terms ‘Cheaper?’ ICT and high tech don’t come cheap – the
service provision is a chain from land based to the satellites, we are only a
small unit in the entire structure – let us see how do we make it affordable?
Because in a sustainable business whose services are constant, the unit price
for the service has to be affordable – that is the principle”.
The client CEO was quiet a moment…
swiveled on his seat looking out the window.
“Okay give me your new terms… otherwise
I rather close the site; because we have no income, business is on the downward
spiral – we thought the website would boost business but in over a year there
is no improvement”
Patrick, the website design and
hosting department head looked at Cyril intently for a long moment. In his mind
was a serious predicament: he was a mere employee in the web company, he
personally had jinxed the website to provoke this situation – he needed side
income. But then now evidently the client CEO has a point; business was slump,
it is all over the press and media… which would mean some smaller companies
might opt-out of being hosted. It all has to do with developed world control of
direct financial transfers, limiting lower level transactions, slowing of the oil
projects, monetary rates, trade imbalances, the anti homosexuality act. Mutual
political suspicions and ultimately extreme travel visa control. All these
conspire to make business slow. A rather dicey situation – but here and now the
cubes are in his hands and the smooth felt is waiting… he has to roll out the
dice.
“Alright, let me be fair and very
frank with you - ignore the invoice company services demand note; you pay me
personally fifty percent of that invoice value, deal? And I will be available
on call to maintain hosting services at that rate… all you do is call Cyril or
I, whenever there is a problem.”
The CEO picked the note and tore
it up… and threw it in the trash!
“Deal”
He said and, opening his drawer, counted
the money there and then.
In the car Patrick said to Cyril
that life was tough and uncompromising - he would rather do that with a
Northerner - because his own fellow Bantu would chew the money and still fart
the information to the company directors.
“Look Cyril, you need to fit in –
dress well, eat in decent places, take a nice chic out once in a while – how do
you do that on your monthly salary? There are degree guys hoofing it on the
streets with the under-dogs. Your brother or sister in Kitgum needs mobile
money once in a while – how do you meet that? What I want from you Cyril, is
dead silence in office and do exactly as I tell you – a Muganda boy will not do that for me, so I would rather cooperate
silently with you.”
They had stopped at a coffee shop
and had a long chat and, worked-out the details. They had nearly twenty good
companies on their income list and all they had to do was jinx a site once in a
while – then wait for the call.
∞
Benon, the department head for
marketing was a heavy set proud and very loud guy from Rukungiri in Kabale
western Uganda. The Kiga fellow was a good marketer and field man. He had
brought in nearly all the companies hosted by the web and hosting firm. Benon
ran into the two; Patrick and Cyril outside the lift – the former rugby player
grabbed hold of Patrick by the elbow pulling him aside.
“Patrick, been looking for you –
am on the trail of some good clients but, first I have some meatless bones to
pick with you”
Patrick laughed as he quickly
placed two notes for twenty k in Benon’s breast pocket – they scattered out of
there laughing. They belong to a soccer watching pub in Bugolobi… but Benon
only suspects that Patrick was a rat with many rat holes from where he seem to
make lots of cash.
While Patrick parts with whatever
cash he has to Benon, because he was actually the guy pulling in the client companies
who often gets jinxed by him. So whenever he made the money, he has to also try
to sometimes waylay Benon in some chance meet – like weekends. Just to pass on
the proceeds. This has made them friends. They both enjoy eating pizza and soda
and running the girls. ***
The writer is an Independent Thinker, Blogger
and Author
