Tugende, or not tugende

I'm designing a shirt.

Or rather, I'm designing the design that will go on a shirt that is already designed. It will be a reactionary shirt, reacting to the inevitable consequences of being a white person in an African country in which there are few white people. Those consequences? People want your money.

White people who come here are usually dogooders who can spare a couple thousand bucks - a relatively rare breed, but this place selects for them like Darwin himself, choosing the bleedingest hearts and the thickest wallets. So if your skin is lighter than, say, sienna, you hear this a lot:

"Mzungu, we go?" You hear it a lot. "Mzungu, we go? Mzungu, we go? Mzungu, we go?" From all sides, usually by drivers of the infamous bodabodas, the motorcycle taxis that will take you anywhere for a price, a price that is not adjusted for the risk to your life and well-being that riding a motorcycle in Kampala involves.

"Mzungu, we go?" Rough translation: "Hey you pallid sack of cash, you want to ride on the back of my rickety skooter and pay me three times what you should?"

I do appreciate the convenience of the bodaboda, but sometimes I just want to walk. The funniest propositions are those made by bodaboda drivers sitting in a long line of bodaboda drivers listening as they ask me if "we go." I say No thanks, and the next driver in line, with a confidence that is endearing in its utterly futile optimism looks at me with a gleam in his eye and says loudly, "Mzungu!" Yes, I answer. "We go?"

The shirt is a tank top. It says in letters so big that they are unavoidable, even annoying: WE DON'T GO.

explanatory note relating to the title of this post: tugende means we go, and is a very fun word to say with vigor when you hop on the back of a boda and point into the cloudy distance