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kerosene lamps, and large saucepans of cow-leg soup cooking, offal, pancakes, roast meat, and fried cassava, and filled the roadside with the aroma of life. Men, labourers from the industrial area, the market, and the factories around the estates, stationed themselves on benches waiting to be served. Ma always said those men fed their families on eggplant while they fattened themselves on roadside chicken and beef.
    I waited for Ma at the window. I was anxious for her, hoping the vendors would be gone by the time she returned. But they weren’t. When Ma arrived home, there were as many as the day before.
    ‘You. You thought we would leave just because you came late? You thought we would leave?’ The vendors started even before Ma crossed Estate Close. She avoided looking at them and hurried towards the house. They were not ready to let her pass. Everyone in the market stopped to see what was going on. Ma stopped too. She turned.
    The vendors resumed the shouting, but one voice among them commanded more attention. It was the man with keloid scars all over his chin. He said no woman should talk to them like that, most especially Ma. She was unworthy. He said nothing good ever came out of her. He said even Ma’s womb carried the ugliest of children, children who came out with heads the size of water basins and nostrils that could fit a man’s fist. I didn’t move from the window for a long time.
    Later that evening, I told myself I shouldn’t be affected by the stupid things those uneducated vendors said. The vendors came and went, and the market didn’t even notice. But me, I was destined for greater things. I was going to end up in Makerere University, Kampala’s hills, and maybe even outside countries, the ones Naalu my friend always spoke of. Naalu said that in London, which was one of the cities we could easily end up in, people were rich. They left cars by the roadside if they didn’t like them. Every morning the city council worked overtime clearing the street of unwanted merchandise.
    I woke up early the next morning, hoping the previous evening would be forgotten. But bitterness and doubt stayed with me like an illness. Throughout the day at school, I found myself holding a fist to my nose to gauge its size. In class, even when the teacher said funny things about Didi Comedy on Uganda Television, I did not smile. I thought it was my fault I did not have many friends. I was not pretty – and good looks, it seemed, were a prerequisite for everything, even for being at the top of the class.
    On my way home that evening, I waited for Naalu at the end of Estate Close. She went to another school, and we always met by the cemetery before walking together. That evening, when Naalu joined me, I asked her if she thought I was ugly. Yes, she said and then, realising I was serious, she asked what was wrong with me.
    ‘OK, OK,’ I said, and I told Naalu the vendors must be evicted from our back yard. I told her I was fed up.
    ‘Eh, this is serious,’ Naalu said. But she offered to help, as long as we did whatever we were planning to do when her father was not home.
    The next afternoon, I sat in the cemetery waiting for Naalu. After an hour, I started to worry. But just when I was getting restless, Naalu burst through the cemetery, running. She reached me and did not stop. I ran after her, slowing only when Naalu herself slowed down half a kilometre later, by the city council hospital.
    ‘Is someone chasing you?’ I asked.
    ‘No,’ she said, ‘but it is better to run just in case.’ And then, ‘The bastards must pay. It is war. It is war!’
    The sun was still hot and evening seemed far away. Naalu and I reached Mama Benja’s house one block from ours to the left. From the safety of her fence, Naalu and I threw stones. There were about nine men under the umbrella tree that day, in the middle of our compound. The tree was small, but in the afternoon its shade turned generous and could accommodate several of them