Oh, man. So almost a decade ago I'm in Kampala, Uganda, staying in Muyenga, a neighborhood on the hillside above Lake Victoria. I've bought an adungu, a local i

Oh, man. So almost a decade ago I'm in Kampala, Uganda, staying in Muyenga, a neighborhood on the hillside above Lake Victoria. I've bought an adungu, a local instrument that's a sort of harp shaped like a sailboat. I bring it back to the apartment building I'm staying in and I start trying to figure out how to tune it and play it. Turns out it's generally tuned to chromatic C, so you can play anything that's in C or Am or G maybe, if it's simple. The security guard for the apartments wanders over to where I'm sitting outside. I'm kind of playing whatever easy stuff I can figure out in C, like "No Woman No Cry" or whatever. He's sort of smiling and nodding the way people do when you're playing an instrument. Then he says, out of the blue, "Do you know... Kenny Rogers?" I'll be real honest with you, this is not a thing I'm expecting from a Ugandan dude. "Yeah," I said, "sure." "Do you know... 'The Gambler'?" I allowed as how I was familiar with the composition in question. I Googled the lyrics and started playing it. I have had a lot of weird moments in my life, but sitting on an apartment stoop in Uganda, watching a big electrical storm riding in over Lake Victoria, with this antelope hide ass harp thing, singing "You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em" while this little Ugandan security guard dude in a uniform delightedly sang along, clapping to the beat, may be the weirdest and most awesome one. <3