Once upon a time, in a foreign place called Bwaiise, in a time long before the age of swimming pools, people lived wild and free. They ate and drank what nature provided. They skipped and hopped joyfully from one day to another, without a care in the world. Their only question each day was whether to have fruits, vegetables, milk or ask their cattle to take a vote on who should be sent to meet their maker. The cattle always jostled to be eaten because from when they were little skipping calves, they’d been told that when you die, you go to a place where all the grass is green and you don’t have to give anyone your milk.
The air was always full of birds chirping; the popular artists in that day were birds actually. Each time you’d walk around, you’d hear a hit chirp from one bird or another. Goldfinch and parakeet were quite big. Even other birds stopped to listen to them belt out their chirps.
Everyone kept time to everything. All things were orderly and done at specific times. Fred’s fruits were always available at a certain time. At specific times, Vincent, the-one-who-didn’t-eat-meat, always had plenty of vegetables to go round. The word vegan didn’t exist at the time so Vincent, or Visenti, depending on how heavy your tongue was, was called the-one-who-didn’t-eat-meat to differentiate him from Vincent the butcher. The latter was the one to whom excited cattle was taken to send them to their maker.
Life was good and orderly.
One day though, all this changed. It seemed like all the other days – skipping and hopping all around. Hi-fives. You’d never suspect that something, actually someone, was going to change this dynamic. Andrew, for that’s a great name for an antagonist, seemed like the most unlikely source of the change. He seemed normal. Punctual. Orderly even. On the fateful day however, he, for no reason in particular, chose to drag his feet and get to Fred’s shop late. Fred, naturally, wasn’t giving fruits anymore. Andrew chose to make a scene. Fred paid him no mind. Hungry, he moved on to Vincent’s, to get some vegetables. Seeing as he’d lost time making a scene, he was late again. He made another scene. Vincent, the-one-who-didn’t-eat-meat, wasn’t having any of that. He promptly cursed Andrew. His children and their children and their children (he said this quite a number of times) would be at the mercy of wayward engine-propelled means of transportation for many generations. Andrew thought nothing of it. He went on to father all of us.
And that’s how Boda Bodas came to be; they are karma’s way of getting back at us for poor time-keeping.