The Thirsty Zebra: 11:15 p.m.
In a dusty bar on the edge of Kampala, bartender Musa serves a unique clientele: ghosts awaiting their final journey at midnight. Experience a haunting Ugandan folktale, 11:15 at The Thirsty Zebra.
The Bartender of the Muzimu: A Tale from a Kampala Night
The clock on the wall, a sun-bleached thing with a lazy tick, shuddered and clicked over to 11:15 PM. For Musa, the bartender of The Thirsty Zebra, this was the time of ekiro. The night that belongs to others.
The living customers were gone, had been for near an hour. They left with the sunset, back to their warm homes in Najjera and Bwaise, leaving behind the smell of spilled Uganda Waragi and groundnuts. Musa preferred it this way. The silence. Silence ya mukwano, my friend. Mostly.
He wiped a glass with a cloth that had seen better centuries. The bar was a shack of corrugated iron and stubbornness, perched on a red-dirt road in a place that was neither here nor there. A waiting room.
The first one arrived on a breath of cold air that smelled of dust and old rain. He didn’t use the door. One moment the space at the end of bar was empty, the next… araaba!… he was just there. A man in a tattered suit that might have been fine before Amin’s time. His face was a map of sorrows Musa had long since stopped trying to read.
“Evening, Colonel,” Musa said, his voice a low rumble like a matatu engine on a cold morning. He didn’t look up from his glass.
The Colonel nodded, a stiff, jerky motion. He never spoke. He never ordered. Musa poured two fingers of amber liquid—whiskey that never seemed to deplete the bottle—and slid it across the polished wood. The Colonel’s hand, translucent as a senene wing, passed through the glass. He shuddered, a sigh of pure relief, and for a moment, his form solidified. That was the job. That was the kavuyo. The frustration.
Another five, Musa thought, not with malice, but with a deep, weary familiarity. Five more before the maddimu hour.
They came trickling in. Mama Nalwanga, her spectral form still wearing the nurse’s uniform from Mulago Hospital, humming a lullaby that sounded like a cry. A young boda-boda driver with a tire mark etched like a phantom tattoo across his chest, forever nervous, forever checking a watch that wasn’t there. A little girl, katono, clutching the faded shape of a cloth doll. They were his bannaffe. His regulars. The choir of the almost-gone.
This was Musa’s happiness. Not a joyful thing, no. It was a deep, solemn satisfaction, like a well-fitting stone in a foundation. He was a keeper of the threshold. A shepherd for lost sheep who didn’t know the way to the final fold. His bar was their last taste of earth, their final memory of substance before they genda at the stroke of midnight.
His frustration was the sameness. The endless, looping tragedy of it.
“You know he cannot pay you, Musa,” a new voice whispered, dry as papyrus. It was Kalema, the mukadde, the ancient one, who always sat in the darkest corner. He was older than the others, his spirit so thin he was barely more than a heat shimmer and the glint of knowing eyes. “He has no shilling. He has no body to earn one.”
Musa sighed, pouring a tiny Fanta for the little girl. Her eyes, wide and empty, lit up for a fleeting second.
“And what would I buy with his ghost money, jjajja?” Musa grumbled, the Luganda rhythm softening his English. "A new yet? A mansion in Kololo? Eh, nyabo! This is not for payment. This is for… ekitiibwa. For respect. A man should have one last drink before a long journey. Even a muzimu."
Kalema chuckled, a sound like stones falling down a deep well. “You are a sentimental fool. A good man, but a fool.”
11:45 PM. The air grew thick and heavy, humming with a silent energy. The ghosts became more solid, their whispers more frantic. They were drinking in the memory of taste, the feeling of cold glass, the warmth of alcohol they could no longer process.
Musa watched them. His heart ached for them, these souls caught between our world and the next. This was his omusango, his burden, cursed and blessed upon him by his jajja who’d seen things in the fire. He couldn’t quit. He couldn’t close early. Webale? Where would they go?
He was frustrated by the weight of it, the loneliness of a secret he could never share. But he was happy, truly happy, in the profound silence of his duty. He gave them a moment of peace. A moment of almost real.
At 11:58, the Colonel finished his silent drink. He stood, straightened his jacket, and for the first time all night, he looked directly at Musa. He gave a slow, respectful nod. A webale. A thank you. Then he turned and walked through the wall, not as a ghost, but as a man finally stepping onto his path.
One by one, they followed. Mama Nalwanga faded like mist. The boda driver simply blinked out. The little girl was the last, offering a shy, spectral smile before she vanished, leaving only the faint smell of mandazi and dust.
The clock struck midnight. Ddimu!
The hum vanished. The cold lifted. The bar was just a bar again—empty, quiet, smelling of soap and stale beer.
Musa let out a long, slow breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. He picked up the Colonel’s glass. It was clean. It was always clean. As if nothing had ever been there at all.
He turned off the lights, ready to lock up and face the few hours of silence before the sun and the living returned.
“Yes, tomorrow night, then,” he whispered to the empty room.
It wasn’t a question. It was a promise.
