It was sometime in mid-2022 and I was having dinner at Nawaab, on top of Acacia Mall, with some friends who had come over from Bangladesh.
As the banter flowed, my friend Braxton Okot leaned over and whispered something in my ear. He was pointing out a hot babe sitting a couple of tables behind us.
She looked completely absorbed in whatever she was doing on her phone. Then we noticed this lanky guy standing beside her. Naturally, we started wondering whether he was the boyfriend.
But something didn’t quite add up. He wasn’t sitting with her. He just stood there, towering over her, looking more like an errand man than a boyfriend.
Anyway, we ignored them and went on with our own shenanigans.
A few minutes later, I casually peeked back and noticed the hot chick now had company. I looked a little more closely.
Wait a minute.
That was a familiar face.
It was King Oyo.
Damn.
The King of Tooro was on a date in the same restaurant as us.
We decided to mind our own business and carried on with dinner.
After dinner, I went down to the parking area to clear the parking ticket. As I approached the payment machine, the lanky gentleman I’d seen earlier suddenly tried to stop me from getting to the till.
I wasn’t amused.
I loudly asked him why he was stopping me, and we started exchanging words.
Then the gentleman who was clearing his own parking ticket turned around and calmly told the guy:
“Abantu bareke.”
Let people be.
He then turned to me and said, “Hi. Do you have change for 2K? This machine only accepts 2Ks and I have 50K.”
Guess who was asking me for 2,000 shillings?
King Oyo.
I was completely star-struck.
But being the genius businessman that I am, I told him I had one 2K note, but I would only give it to him on one condition: he gives me his 50K.
He looked at me and said, “Okay.”
And just like that, the deal was done.
I had basically banged the King of Tooro a luseke.
I gave the King 2,000 shillings and walked away with 50,000.
That is a 25-times return on investment. In percentage terms, that’s a 2,400% return.
Still the best business transaction I have ever made.
It later turned out that the black G-Wagon parked outside was his, and he had actually been driving himself. There was no big convoy or royal spectacle. It was just the King, his date and the one bodyguard who had nearly prevented me from paying my parking ticket.
Even the number plates and royal emblem on the car had been covered.
But strangely, what stayed with me wasn’t the G-Wagon, the royal security or even the fact that I had somehow traded 2K for 50K with a king.
It was how ordinary the whole encounter felt.
One minute I was arguing with his bodyguard. The next, the King himself was telling him, “Abantu bareke,” and asking me for change so he could pay for parking.
No airs. No drama. Just a young man trying to get his parking ticket paid.
I decided I would never spend that 50K.
Not because 50,000 shillings is a fortune, but because it had suddenly become a souvenir of one of those completely random moments in life that you could never have planned.
I had gone to Nawaab for dinner with friends from Bangladesh.
I left having given the King of Tooro 2,000 shillings and somehow walking away with his 50K.
If nothing else, that is one hell of a business transaction to remember.
May King Oyo rest in peace.
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