A friend sent me an email wondering whether I don’t miss Uganda. What she really meant, I am sure, was whether I don’t miss her. That’s the kind of question I don’t enjoy answering; so I pretended I was too dumb to click her.

Still, her email got me thinking. Is there anything I really miss about home? I am the kind of fellow you could banish to mars and I wouldn’t miss any of you guys. But surprise, surprise; there are a few things I actually miss about that pot-holed country:

1. Kabalagala: This tops the list, absolutely. I have been eating the small round things since my (then) little stomach could handle them, but I just can’t have enough of them! Give me kabalagala and black coffee, and I won’t demand breakfast, or even lunch and dinner, of you. The Batooro don’t call them “obugaati” (bread) for nothing.

2. Roasted maize: This follows kabalagala very closely. But unlike kabalagala, you can buy maize in the supermarket and roast it (rather grill it) in your oven. It doesn’t, of course, taste like the real thing from deep in Kyadondo. For one, the Americans like their maize “young” and soft. Not good for roasting. Second, maize grilled or baked in the oven is nothing like the sigiri stuff. I guess all the smoke from the charcoal enhances the taste.

3. By now you must be thinking that I live for food since it is the only thing I seem to miss about Uganda. Let me confirm your fears by adding matooke, sweet potatoes, muwogo (cassava) and kalo (millet bread) to the list. Even things like beans, peas and groundnut sauce are difficult to come by in New York. Don’t think of trying the restaurants. Unless you can go and do your shopping in all sorts of obscure places and prepare the dishes yourself at home, you are out of luck.

4. Talking of restaurants, this is the one thing New York has in abundance. There are the expensive ones, of course, but you can almost certainly find a restaurant to fit the size of your wallet. The thing I don’t like about New York restaurants, however, is that they are places for eating, not socialising. You are practically booted out of the door as soon as you finish your meal, which you are encouraged to eat very fast. How I miss those Kampala restaurants (and coffee shops) where you can spend the entire evening with friends – or flirting with the waitresses.

5. Kadongokamu: I have never been a fan of Ugandan (Luganda) “country music”. The only kandongokamu song I remember is something that was called Kayanda. I don’t even know who the singer was, but the lyrics were about a Murundi farm boy who takes over the boss’ wife. But once you have been away from Kampala for awhile, you start yearning for than unique sound. Thanks to the Internet, most modern Ugandan music is easily available. But kadongokamu is such a rarity. Hopefully, the genre is not dying out.

6. Comedy: And I am not taking about Amarula Family. Ugandans, generally, are a whole bunch of clowns, ranging from the Vice President who apes the main man, the First Lady who has a direct line to God and the MP who drags his kids to Parliament to prove that he is a man, to the mysteriously rich man who dishes out blank cheques.

7. The cacophony: I, of course, don’t like noise and disorder. But the Americans (Europeans more so) are sometimes too orderly and quiet for my liking. Even when they are jostling for space during the rush hours, they do it quietly; nothing like the humdrum of the taxi parks and Owino market, or even Nandos restaurant. Someone opined that it is because they don’t have enough sun, and I am inclined to agree with her.

That said, there are a few thing I don’t miss at all about Uganda. Top of the list are those annoying people who call into radio stations deep in the night to send “greetings” to their lovers. If I were Nsaba Buturo, that is the one thing I would ban, instead of wasting time running after homosexuals and sex workers.

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