The question came before most people had even found a seat. “Where are you watching the World Cup opening from?” Ronnie McVex, the evening’s host, called out to the gathering crowd at Old Tymerz, the cosy kafunda in Ntinda that has quietly become one of Kampala’s most interesting Friday night destinations.
The answers flew back immediately. From living rooms packed with friends, to neighbourhood kafundas, to those resigned to sneaking a stream on their work laptops on a Thursday, because yes, the opening match falls on a workday. It was the kind of exchange that felt less like an event opener and more like the start of a conversation that had been waiting all week to happen.
With the FIFA World Cup 2026 kicking off in just six days, football dominated much of the early conversation. Shadrach Mutebi, one of the guests, offered a nugget that stopped the room. “Curaçao is the smallest country by both land area and population to qualify for this year’s World Cup. Most people in the room had never heard of Curaçao, let alone imagined it on a World Cup stage alongside Brazil, France, and Argentina.
The freshly sworn-in Members of Parliament and Cabinet Ministers are the talk of the town. A fresh wave of X, formerly Twitter episodes of keeping up with Hon Justine Nameere, have been simmering all week. The controversy between Honourable and Dr Spire Sentongo over satirical cartoons depicting her behaviour has been the talk of the week.
And above it all, Ebola. The disease has crept back into public consciousness, and the anxiety is real. People are watching the news carefully, checking on family in affected areas, sanitising their hands each chance they get, and quietly recalibrating their sense of normalcy.
“It’s so hard to stay sane in this motherland with all this drama!” one guest declared, half laughing, half not, and the room knew exactly what she meant.
Since April, Gilbey’s Hangouts has positioned itself as a no-judge zone and a space where you can show up after a long, chaotic week, sit next to a stranger, and leave feeling like you understand the world and the people in it a little better.
“Every week, we see people walk in carrying the weight of the news cycle, the politics, the health scares, the online noise, and what Gilbey’s Hangouts does is give them a safe, welcoming space to unpack all of that with like-minded people,” said Raymond Karama, Gilbey’s Brand Manager in Uganda.