Today I went into Mukono about 8:30am to go to the ATM, thinking I’d be ahead of everyone else. Silly me. It’s nearly Christmas, and everyone is at the bank. It took me an hour and a half yesterday to get my ATM card from that large international bank, but that’s another post.
Mary Jane came with me, and as I was standing in the queue [line] with the other fair citizens of Mukono, and several other UCU staff, I looked around at the environment, as there’s not much else to do. People were chatting with the bank guards, taxis were honking, bodas were swerving, and it was a normal day. I looked across Jinja Road, and noticed a sign that I’ve seen before, but it’s not registered.
Yes, Caesar is misspelled. Only half of the possessives are correct. But it’s the bottom that caught my eye: “for Turkey Wears.”
I’ve become accustomed to things like the expressed imperative (“You come!” Or the one I heard almost daily from a student in the Honours College: “Rona! You come and we go!”), and other seeming malapropisms. But this sign takes the cake for me.
No, it’s not clothes for fowl, but clothes from Turkey. Mary Jane explained it to me; she met someone who was traveling to Istanbul to bring clothes to sell.
Since the shop is selling clothes for people, technically, the sign is correct. But mercy, the English.
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