A one minute pitch in the car park
A fateful bump!
How timely, just as I’m developing Uganda Conservation Foundation‘s Marketing Strategy, fate literally deals me a blow!
Me and my car keep running into bother recently, quite literally last Monday when I reversed into a car parked right up my **** – but it was clearly my fault, I didn’t look behind me.
Upshot of it was the lady driver asked me for 60,000 shillings [£20] to fix the dent in her bumper, which seemed reasonable. It turns out she’s Creative Director for an advertising agency. Alarm bells started ringing and – not one to miss an opportunity – there in the car park I delivered an impromptu one minute pitch on UCF’s successes, our desire to make the charity more sustainable by getting core funding from Ugandan corporate sponsors and bingo – she’s offered to email our newsletter out to all her clients.
I can see her next ad campaign now: “With a one-off investment of just 60,000 Uganda shillings, you too can target corporate Uganda.”
Looks like that’s the Marketing Strategy written then: drive into other cars while sustaining the smallest amount of damage possible. (Our Suzuki’s a wreck anyway).
Obviously the car park of one of Kampala’s private hospitals is a good place to network. Just watch out for me if you’re parked in any of Kampala’s four star hotels ;
“Next!”
Hip-hip(po)-hooray for U.W.A. (it rhymes if you say it out loud!)
Hip-hip(po)-hooray for U.W.A. the Uganda Wildlife Authority
A toad hops towards us as we sit on a stone wall at the Ndere Cultural Centre. I love the casual reminder that He Was Here First: “you can have your dancing troupe and your landscaped gardens, but I’m a toad and I’ll go where I like.”
Am I seeing things? Or did I just pass a man with bow and arrows pacing around in the dark at the side of the road?
Eleven o’clock at night along the main road from Kampala city centre to Namuwongo, where I live, I imagine the man was looking for an intruder. Our friend’s night guard Wilberforce has a bow and arrows too but it’s the first time I’ve seen someone wandering the streets of the capital city with them.
It’s usually at the point in the day where I think I’m used to the sights around me that I see the most fascinating things. But, almost a year in, and Uganda still has plenty of surprises for me.
I go to sleep to the sound of the drums coming from Soweto, the slum a few hundred metres beyond my compound wall. I dream of hippos.
We did a whistlestop tour to Queen Elizabeth Protected Area last week to sign the contract for construction of Uganda Conservation Foundation’s first building, an accommodation block for four rangers. Kasese was so hot, even the locals were complaining.
Me and my friend Neil on the Kichwamba Escarpment, just before Kyambura Gorge, overlooking Queen Elizabeth
As we drove from Bushenyi towards Kyambura Gorge (a staggeringly beautiful view down across the floor of the Rift Valley) we overtook a car full of live cow, trussed up in the boot. (I mean how the hell did they get it in there?!) My colleague Patrick and I were both really upset seeing this. We passed some police but they were looking the other way so we carried on driving.
When we told the Uganda Wildlife Authority (U.W.A.) what we’d seen (hoping they might want to intervene) the reply was: “I expect there was a cow in the back of the car too!”
The phrase “poor cow!” takes on a whole new dimension for me. Live cow in car boot. Kichwamba Uganda
The Chief Warden told us how they recently found a car stuffed full of hippo meat, and not just in the boot; the owners had ripped out the whole interior of the car, including the front passenger seat so all that remained was the driver’s seat. The empty space was then filled with several tons of (illegal) hippo meat.
When the poachers realised they’d been seen, they dumped the car in the forest. UWA decided to leave the meat in the car; two days later it was a stinking mass of maggots. The ranger laughed as he says “Needless to say, the poachers didn’t bother returning to collect their car.”
On a Mission(ary) – remembering the Muzungu’s first Christmas in Uganda
An expat Christmas in Kampala
It hardly befitted common (misconceived) notions of the starving in Africa: there was marquee after marquee of food.
I’ve never seen so much food in my life, honestly.
The buffet was immense.
Here I am ‘busy saving the world’ – apparently – spending my first Christmas in Africa and we’re all wasting platefuls of food. I was quite disgusted at how many rich Ugandans piled their plates high with food and didn’t eat more than a few spoonfuls of it.
Christmas Day buffet Speke Resort Kampala – that’s a lot of food – and this was just one of many marquees …
Speke Resort Munyonyo is where we impoverished volunteers had decided to blow our December allowance. Living on a volunteer allowance means you end up eating the same food, day in day out. This one day feasting at Speke Resort more than made up for the penny pinching! (How my belly hurts just remembering my repeat trips to the various marquees!)
Despite the country’s obsession with cows, cheese remains an imported delicacy in Uganda
There was a double marquee of Ugandan food, another of international food including various pastas.
There was a small marquee dedicated to Chinese stirfry!
Seafood – a whole table of it – never before seen in Kampala (not by a volunteer at least!)
Another marquee was full of cheese – CHEESE! in Uganda! – which was mostly plasticky and a bit foul to be honest; but of course, that didn’t stop me eating far too much.
The last marquee I visited had a massive cake. I’ve actually been inside a REAL Ugandan church the same size as this one (but the roof didn’t taste so sweet and lovely).
Christmas cake Speke Resort. Yes, I’m holding two plates… two plates x several visits to the various marquees = way, way too greedy, I confess
Christmas in Kampala was fun – apart from the bloody weather. It started drizzling the moment we arrived at Speke Resort. It didn’t stop raining until the next day as we packed our bags into the car to leave! So much for making use of the fantastic (almost Olympic) swimming pool.
“This is the last time I spend the Bank Holiday with you!” I teased Cheryl (we had previously spent a very wet week-end at Lake Bunyonyi at Easter). Is she the Wet Weather Omen?
Twenty of us VSO volunteers and families had a poolside table booked … so we could watch the rain come down… it seemed, rather than enjoy sunbathing and swimming, as planned.
Bedraggled Christmas Day staff at the fantastic Speke Resort, Munyonyo on Lake Victoria, Kampala
Christmas Eve was spent fumigating the kitchen cupboards: “Oh how festive!” you cry.
And so onto my first Kampala New Year’s celebrations…
“There’s not enough sex on your blog” was the feedback on last year’s blogging – and that was just from the family!
So, not wanting to besmirch the family reputation, out I went on New Year’s Eve … on a Mission.
The evening started with a few drinks with fellow VSO volunteers Jo and Liam and pharmacist friend Cheryl, at her accommodation in Nsambya hospital.
In the bathroom, Cheryl’s ‘new housemate’ Gerald nearly steals the show! With antennae of at least an inch long, wiggling at me from underneath the hand basin, I don’t hang about to see how long his fearful body must be. [In my first year living in Uganda. I had an obsession: with cockroaches].
En route to (miscellaneous) Kampala nightclubs, we pass the nuns as we walk down through the hospital to catch the boda bodas into town. The traffic is hell: dust, pollution, vehicles everywhere, everyone in a hurry to go to church, return to the village or simply GO PARTY.
Steamed matooke: no Ugandan meal is complete without the famous green bananaI was too busy dancing at midnight to see the fireworks.
Typical Uganda, it was several minutes after midnight that our countdown to the New Year started…
Was it the Full Moon or was it the tequilla? Long awaited moment with a Certain Someone was but a blur and I woke up the next day wondering if I’d dreamed it all…
It’s not easy being a single woman in Kampala: the social life is fantastic but where are all the single men?
The Dutchman is married, the Ugandan has a girlfriend, the Congolese guy is cute but has terrible breath … I get upset sometimes but tell myself “at least I have Baldrick.”
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Last night I decided to laugh about it.
OK so repeat after me: “I just came to Uganda to volunteer, I was not expecting you to kill me with food” – did they really think there would be room for a hefty slab of bread and butter pudding on top of several marquees of savoury dishes?
So where will you be this Christmas?
And will you save me some bread and butter pudding?
Getting wrecked in Cape Town
The South African coastline – particularly near the Cape – is littered with shipwrecks and Arniston (Waenhuiskrans) takes its name from the ship that was wrecked here in 1815.
Only six of the 378 on board survived.
Next to it is Kassiesbaai, the tiny fishing village ‘where the coloureds live’. I find the whole race / how you refer to people’s ethnicity a real struggle in South Africa. I find it hard to get my head round the ‘funny foreign sounding’ place names in South Africa too. In Uganda I’ve become used to African names; and now they’re Afrikaans and English and my brain doesn’t compute (aren’t we still in Africa?) I hadn’t realised either just how many coloureds (God this is a minefield) speak Afrikaans as their first language. I say I only speak English and the reply still comes back in Afrikaans.
While out shopping one day, I’m mistaken for the mother of Odille, the South African baby adopted by W-A (two of H’s friends have adopted orphans). It’s an interesting feeling.
Baby Odille – what a cute chick!
Agulhas, where the Indian Ocean meets the Atlantic Ocean. South Africa
Cape Agulhas, ‘the southernmost point of Africa,’ and where the Atlantic meets the Indian Ocean, was worth the trip, just for the fun we had larking about at the monument. The rockpools were teaming with life and the quaint but charming tearoom under the lighthouse was very welcoming but we were on a mission: “Alan wants chips” so we trotted off down the road for a ‘Hake and Calamari Combo’ in the sunshine outside the fish and chip shop.
Considerable energy was focused on eating and drinking during my three weeks in South Africa. Considerable time was invested in arguing over controversial topics such as “do you like grapes in salad? or scrambled eggs on Marmite on toast?” as we ate large breakfasts, discussed what we were having for lunch – and what we needed to buy for dinner.
Introducing Waterkloof Winery
So with food, wine (and little else) in mind, next stop was the Waterkloof winery, above Sir Lowry’s Pass, for a fabulous lunch and some sensational wine (I particularly liked the rosé). It was very exciting to eat there during its first week of opening.
Exterior of Waterkloof Winery, Western Cape. The winery has breathtaking views across False Bay
Waterkloof Winery, Western Cape view of the recently planted vines. December 2009
What a fantastic day: my first time with family for 9 months & a quick drive round the Waterkloof estate. (I was very envious to hear K and P had ridden the estate on horseback that morning!) Waterkloof has a breathtaking view across False Bay and Cape Town. The planting of indigenous plants along the roadside was interesting to see, as were the large artworks on display (and sale) and the combination of traditional production methods and a very modern restaurant …
Lunch at Waterkloof Winery, Western Cape. South Africa. The food was simply out of this world!
A superb lunch with my aunt and uncle and friends at Waterkloof Winery. South Africa
I have to ask myself: back in Uganda, is matooke ever going to taste the same?
Nairobi, Johannesburg, Arniston, Betty’s Bay, Cape Town, I certainly packed a lot in: new cultures, new friends, two job offers, family time, an underwater meeting with Great White Sharks, my first whale sightings, even a few more freckles.
Shark bait – I was this close to a Great White Shark!
Diving with Great White Sharks off the coast of South Africa
Awaking from a nightmare at 4.45 a.m. was not the ideal start to a day that involved leaving the house before dawn, on my own, for a drive across country to dive into cold Atlantic water with man-eating sharks ….
I was this close. Great White Shark diving, Gansbaai, South Africa. PHOTO Michael Rutzen’s www.sharkdivingunlimited.com
Photographing Great White Sharks, Gansbaai, South Africa
Six of us fitted into the cage at a time, flatteringly attired in wet suits and face masks. The cage looked sturdy enough but there were big gaps between the bars – big enough for a Great White to put his snout through! O yes. As the crewman reeled the bait towards us, one slammed right into the cage just a few inches from my right knee, I can still see it now, my knee / its snout in the same frame. In a spilt second I screamed inwardly “Get me out of here now!” willing there to be an ejector seat button under my finger.
Great White Shark diving Gansbaai. Each small-looking fin is attached to over two metres of Great White Shark!
Human bait. Were we mad? We took it in turns to climb into the cage and duck under the water as the Great White Sharks were lured towards us
The sharks – we were lucky enough to see two – slowly swam under or round the boat. And they weren’t small. The second measured a whopping 3.2 metres. I’ll say it again: 3.2 metres of killing machine.
But it was after the arrival of The Big One that I got back in the cage for the second time (how I’d forgotten about the ejector seat I don’t know!) The shark came steaming at us, his jaw opening and snapping shut, opening and snapping shut, chasing after the tuna head. I rammed myself to the back of the cage and in seconds he’d gone. That was scary. As we came up for air, me and the guy next to me screamed at each other “that was a bit f**king close!!”
Even when viewed from aboard the boat, I just can’t get over how big that Mother was.
The muscular flick of the shark’s tail reminds you of its strength. Great White Shark turning. diving Gansbaai
The force of the animal is something else. It swims along quite serenely but when it flicks its tail, you know about it; the cage rocked from side to side violently, even the boat did. You have to respect the power of that beast.
Senseless, ridiculously scary, these are all just words that frankly don’t mean anything at all. I leapt up out of the cage at one point screaming “F**K MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” and even then it meant nothing. I quite simply ran out of swear words and Ladies and Gentlemen, you know I know a few!
This simple silhouette measures over three metres in length. Great White Shark diving South Africa
The afternoon was bound to be an anticlimax after all that adrenalin yet there was more excitement on the way home as we passed a pod of dolphins. As the boat suddenly pitched to one side I threw myself onto the deck; there was no way I was risking being thrown into the sea – not now I knew what’s down there! I had to laugh at myself.
White sandy beach Western Cape South Africa, seen from our shark diving boat
Being in the water with the Great Whites was an amazing experience. Naomi, H’s South African nanny, was so dumbfounded that I’d been in the water with the sharks that when I told her about the crew ‘chumming’ the water to attract the sharks, she pulled a face and asked “what – with human blood?”
I mean – there are extremes and then there are extremes!
A quick limb count (two arms, two legs, a full set of fingers and toes) before driving back to Arniston with a detour via the village of De Kelders and the most breathtaking panoramic view across the enormous bay, Cape Town in the far distance. Two little Afrikaaner boys came running upto me, pointing excitedly to the coastline where a mother and calf Southern Right Whale (so named because they were the ‘right ones’ to kill back in the day) were lazily floating by on the current.
Great White Sharks, dolphins and whales – what an incredible day!
First impressions of Johannesburg – a ‘busman’s holiday’?
The summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania pokes through the thick blanket of cloud thousands of feet beneath us – an image I’ll never forget – as we fly south.
Day breaks over Kilimanjaro, en route to South Africa
The three hour journey to Johannesburg seemed to last an eternity: a week of burning the candle at both ends, a head cold, just 3½ hours sleep in Nairobi, and I’m unable to sleep bolt upright in a seat that refuses to recline.
I’m sat next to a large, thick-set man. There’s barely room for him to move in his seat but he daintily eats his lunch with the tiny plastic cutlery. I casually try to start a conversation; I mistake his shyness for arrogance and it’s only as we prepare to land that he starts chatting. He’s an ex-policeman, returning home from Sudan where he works as a security consultant for the UN. He lives on an enormous military base outside Darfur “the biggest operation the UN has ever undertaken” he says and points proudly to the UN logo on his shirt.
I can’t get used to the smooooooth Tarmac … the newly resurfaced airport road, Cape Town
Despite what I’d heard, I felt safe enough in Jozi (Johannesburg). I’d certainly forgotten about the city’s reputation as I drove my friend’s brand new car around the ‘carjacking capital of the world.’
But there are constant security reminders: high walls, electric security gates, outdoor lighting, security firm plaques, electrified fencing, security beams around the garden, the odd siren. The doors to the house are never left unlocked and we padlock a gate at the top of the stairs before retiring to bed with the dogs.
Life in Uganda has got me used to the security guards in car parks and shopping malls. What surprised me in Johannesburg were the ‘rear view mirrors’ at eyeline on the cashpoint machines / ATMs. You can’t ignore the sign at the airport that says “Any person making inappropriate comments about hijackings, bomb warnings, carriage of firearms or weapons will be prosecuted.”
H has a small army of paid workers and I’m soon part of the support team. H and I were flatmates in London many years ago and we joke about how “VSO really doesn’t prepare you for how to manage domestic staff.”
Busman’s holiday? **
First day of my ‘holiday’ and I’m supervising the four gardeners landscaping her garden. They all wear blue overalls, not a gum boot in sight (unlike Uganda where it’s not a surprise if workers are barefooted – even on a construction site). Next day I’m reading a poem to fifty people at Baby Lizzie’s naming ceremony (thanks for the half hour notice H!) By the end of the week I’ve cooked dinner, started redecorating the baby’s bedroom and become an au pair!
Arniston Bay, Western Cape, South Africa
At the airport, the baby entourage includes Naomi the nanny and we all get fast-tracked onto the plane. We all chorus ‘cluck-cluck-cluck’ chicken noises to distract the baby all the way to Cape Town. H jokes is breast-feeding and nicknames herself Express Dairies.
We’re quickly processed at the newly refurbished airport then it’s a two hour drive east to Arniston, mountains to our left, the sea to our right. Perfectly round rockpools, jellyfish washed up on the shore, African Black Oystercatchers and a dazzling turquoise sea. We head towards Overberg bypassing the Winelands (temporarily!)
“You’ll notice your eggs boil a lot quicker here than in Johannesburg,” H says and I click: being at sea level, I’m 1000 metres lower than the usual altitude of Kampala. This doesn’t make me feel good as I recall how difficult my early morning run had been (it should’ve been easier)…
What is a busman’s holiday?
“A holiday in which you spend most of your time doing the same or something very similar to your normal work. It comes from the late 1800’s, where a man who drives a bus for a living goes on a long bus journey on their holiday.” Johannesburg was a change of scene for me but H had me working as hard as if I was back in Kampala!
A quick glimpse of Nairobi nightlife
Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, Nairobi
“Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats as we approach Nairobi, Jomo Kenyatta Airport.”
I’m slightly apprehensive leaving Uganda as I leave behind the familiarity of the Luganda greetings that I’ve been having such fun with over the last nine months. I feel like an outsider again. Will everyone speak English in Kenya?
I’m excited to visit my third African country. The Customs Officer is apologetic that the much-lauded East African Tourist Visa only exists in theory [this was 2009]. My Ugandan work permit should allow me to travel freely throughout East Africa but I still get charged $10 for my transit visa. “Would you like to pay in dollars, pounds or Euros?” he asks me. I get a blank look when I ask to pay in Ugandan Shillings.
Travelling from Uganda to South Africa via Nairobi gently eases me back into the developed world. Smooth roads! Streetlights! Motorbike riders wearing helmets! People wearing jackets and coats! People even wearing shoes! As I watch Nairobi’s pedestrians on their way home from work, I’m struck by how affluent the average Kenyan looks in comparison to the vast majority of Ugandans.
I’m conscious of the world having shifted as Nairobi’s international airport tannoy broadcasts details for flights east to Mumbai and Dubai and onwards into Africa: Lagos, Khartoum and Lusaka. Nairobi is a major transport hub (I’m only stopping here on my way to South Africa) and I’ve never seen such an array of beautiful traditional clothes: African, Islamic and even Latin American.
I’m delighted to be staying with Faith, a Kenyan lady I met at ‘Africa Hash’ in Kampala back in May. ‘Hashing’ as we call it – for ‘drinkers with a running problem’ – is one of the best things I’ve ever done. I’ll be staying with another Hasher in Cape Town too.
Faith gives me a great big hug. She offers to share her bed with me which I’m fine with until I meet the Dutch couple also staying with her. The lady is scary. She is of Amazonian build and was a national shotput champion in the 1970s. She doesn’t seem to have changed her hairstyle since then; lank grey plaits hang either side of her face and she looks through me as if I’m not there. I hesitate for one moment: have I unwittingly signed up to a foursome? Will the video be going on sale shortly in downtown Amsterdam?
In Faith’s Nairobi apartment, we sit around and watch TV. It’s strange to be sat on a three-piece sofa; the room has thick curtains and carpets. How positively English it all feels! It’s a far cry from my volunteer accommodation in Kampala.
Early evening we pile into the car and my new friends give me a guided tour of Nairobi. I feel quite safe. The traffic is ridiculous but it’s a nice-looking city, very north European in feel. We drive through Nairobi West, a more Kenyan part of town, where men sit outside one of dozens of small bars selling Guinness. “This is where I want to come next time!” I tell Faith.
We stop ‘for a quick drink’ but Hashers don’t stop at one and, before we know, it’s one o’clock in the morning and we’re at the club next door.
The Congolese band have gone home for the night but “Creamed Rice” (a well-respected Kenyan lawyer) and I chase each other round the dancefloor. I can’t stop giggling as I plan my return trip to Nairobi. Next stop Johannesburg.
Prizes for my “indigenous mix” and my first 10k race
Baldrick, star of the USPCA Dog Show in Kampala!
From the gutter to the Kabira Country Club, what a true star my mutt Baldrick is – and what a fantastic advert for the work of the USPCA, the Uganda Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Found as a pup drowning in a ditch, Baldrick Superdog came First in the Dog with the Waggiest Tail competition at this year’s USPCA Dog Show and third overall on the day! Check out the photos here.
Baldrick Superdog came First in the Dog with the Waggiest Tail competition at the USPCA dog show
Hilarious.
The Dog Show was a fundraising day for the USPCA, held at the Kabira Country Club, a very smart hotel in Kampala and not somewhere this volunteer can normally afford to go. So, not only does this dog have his heights set high, he’s opening doors for me too!
He’s a proper mongrel or “indigenous mix” in vet-speak.
Update on dog poisoning
It turns out that the five dogs who died last month were poisoned by posho (maize) porridge that they’d been eating every day. Tests reveal the posho had a fungus in it, fatal to dogs. Posho is a staple for many Ugandans; it’s a cheap bland stodge. The infected posho gave the dogs liver damage. Apparently it doesn’t affect humans, not that I’m ever likely to get a liking for posho. Ugh.
Promoting the Uganda Conservation Foundation
This week my UCF colleague Patrick and I drove round Kampala to ‘reinvigorate the membership’ (visiting our corporate supporters), now we have our newsletter to hand out and bundles of Xmas cards to sell. I’m in my comfort zone now and have sold 600 Xmas cards this week. It feels great to bring some cash into the organisation. There’ll be more challenges ahead in the office in the New Year but I’m happy to near the end of the year on a positive note.
If you’d like to help me support UCF please click on the Justgiving link. It’s why I’m in Uganda after all. I’m incredibly lucky to have this experience, although it’s not always easy.
Driving round Kampala
On our Kampala errands, there was a scary moment when I entered the British High Commission on Kira Road. Like a spaceship that’s landed on a foreign planet, this building – the security in particular – seem so terribly incongruous here in Kampala.
High point of the day was bumping into a handsome Ugandan friend of mine. He’s bending over backwards to do me all kinds of favours. Swoon. What else can a girl ask for?
Now I’m getting excited about my trip to see a great friend of mine Holly in South Africa, the Rainbow Nation. This time next week, touch down Johannesburg! Three weeks of sun, wine and the sea. Bliss!
It’s the rainy season here in Uganda (the radio forecast “a cold 23 degrees in Kampala”), wine is very expensive (but I’m getting used to the Tetrapak of Spanish plonk!) and the only seafood is frozen (and way out of the price range of a VSO volunteer’s allowance)… so those are all reasons why I can’t wait to go to South Africa and blowing most of my savings to get there.
Delighted to say I’m hoping to earn next year’s travel expenses via Lonely Planet now I’ve been accepted as one of their regular bloggers. Rock on!
But before that – tomorrow – I have to run my first 10 km race.
Running, Hashing and the World Cup in Africa
The main event is the Kampala Marathon and we’re all sponsored by MTN, the main mobile phone provider, also sponsor of the 2010 World Cup to be held in South Africa. The World Cup is going to be HUGE for Africa. Ugandans are crazy about football, Premier League in particular. Men line the streets of Namuwongo outside bars and restaurants, 10 people deep when a game is on, glued to the TV screen. (No question of anyone buying a drink though!)
Everyone has a favourite team and Ugandans know the players as intimately as we do in the UK. Ugandans actually talk about the football though, not the WAGs, the haircuts and the sponsorship deals …
I’m in Uganda courtesy of VSO who recruit, train and support 1500 volunteers a year in developing countries. We are teachers, doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, speech therapists, marketing and business development professionals, IT trainers and a whole lot more. Our remit is to ‘share skills,’ building an organisation’s capacity to develop and be sustainable when we return home.
How do you catch a house gecko?
The house gecko living in my bathroom is getting fatter and fatter by the day.
One of the house geckos on the skirting board in my bedroom
My nice white walls are peppered with little black droppings. There’s no way Mr Gecko will fit back through the thin gap by the window frame. His greed for mosquito breakfast, mosquito lunch and ‘guess what?’ for dinner has led to a self-imposed life of confinement.
I rarely see more than a flash of his growing gecko body as he darts behind the toilet cistern as soon as I approach – but the evidence of his presence is there, everywhere.
I’m happy to accommodate anyone who likes eating mosquitoes, but am getting a bit tired of his idea of ‘home decoration.’
Enough already!
But how do you catch a gecko?
Well, let’s say: don’t try it after half a bottle of Waragi (local gin)…
House gecko hiding in the corner of my windowframe
Aware that this little house gecko will rapidly grow thanks to our proximity to Namuwongo’s swamp, and its mosquito residents, I decide to try and catch the small gecko in the sitting-room and ‘release it back into the wild’.
“Now Keith, if you had helped me catch the gecko, this would not have happened!” (The gecko would not have run away from us in a panic, leaving his tail stuck to the wall… wiggling at me reproachfully, I might imagine).
It’s just a few hundred Uganda shillings (a few cents or pence) for a sachet of Waragi – making strong liquor very accessible
So there it is I’m afraid: Uganda Waragi ‘UG’ and conservation do not mix.
Uganda Waragi has had a makeover: new label being advertised on a billboard at Kibuye roundabout, Entebbe Road, Kampala
Note to reader: Uganda Waragi and tonic however do mix rather well!
It’s all relative
Another Ugandan blog about power disconnection – but this time a solution!
Umeme – our electricity suppler – have arrived to cut us off, which means both my home and my office are without power.
We rang the office to see what the problem is but were told we’d have to go in person to sort the matter out. Great. All other work has to be put on hold for the day.
‘Come now’ the guy said.
Electricity disconnection again (thanks to a previous tenant!) More previous wasted days…
Patrick and I jumped straight into the car, he to do the smooth talking, me to be the ‘mzungu back-up’ if that’s going to help move things along (unfortunately it often does).
Half an hour drive to the office. By the time we arrive, our contact has gone to the hospital!
We sit in one office for a while. Then we’re told to go and sit in another office. People are sitting around reading the paper and chatting but this turns out to be just a queue waiting to join the queue in the next office.
So we wait our turn. We’ve rushed to get here and there’s no sign of any drinking water available. It’s hot. We dutifully wait and shuffle into the next room.
We’re seen by someone who then tells us we were actually supposed to have been seen by the young lady in the previous office. We file out again, bored and frustrated.
Patrick gets chatting to the young lady – and lo and behold she is one of Patrick’s relatives – I should have known! A quick catch-up on family news and our electricity is reconnected.
That’s the funny thing about Uganda: an event happens out of the blue that lays waste to your whole day’s plans. You run around in a frustration trying to rectify it, usually to no avail. And then, when you’ve given up trying, out of nowhere a solution suddenly appears! And it’s usually in the form of a relative!
Count yourself lucky
This week we’ve been busy: straining to glimpse African Presidents flying overhead in their Chinooks and swerving off the road as the Presidential motorcades plough past, to and from the African Union meetings being held in Kampala. It makes me sick to think I might be breathing the same air as Robert Mugabe.
A girls’ best friend. Having my first dog Baldrick has made adjusting to my new life easier
I feel like chicken tonight. boda chickens Kampala
BUT IT’S NOT ALL BAD NEWS
Dung beetles rock. Lake Mburo Uganda
Cholera outbreak in Namuwongo
It’s been raining heavily all day.
The gutter is falling off the front of the house (not that the landlord cares) and Eva has a polo neck jumper on “It’s so COLD!” she says, while I sit here in the same light clothes and sandals I always wear.
Rain here is both a blessing and a curse.
Uganda is a fantastically green and lush country. The two rainy seasons mean that many people (98% of the country are subsistence farmers) can plant and harvest twice a year.
The rain often follows an intensely hot day and is the perfect antidote for the very fine red dust which inevitably gets into everything. People somehow arrive at work spotless, years of practice tiptoeing round puddles.
The roads below Mount Elgon were so muddy, we almost had to abort the hike! Even the 4×4 needed a push!
But the downside to the heavy rain is the havoc so much water can play: soil erosion leading to poor crop yields / increase pressure on forested areas, destruction of roads (few have tarmac), dangerous driving conditions, inability to travel and therefore the knock-on effect on education and successful running of businesses. If it rains, everyone’s very late for work, you can depend on it.
The biggest infrastructure investment this country appears to boast of is the drainage channels than border the country’s roads. Some of them are quite posh! But many of them are de facto garbage tips (no such thing as Municipal Garbage collection here). People wee in them: men stand up and aim from up high, women climb in and crouch. Recently I saw the legs of a dead dog sticking out of a Post Office sack in a channel near my house (well I smelled it before I saw it). The funniest thing was seeing a brand new car tipped at a precarious angle, nose first into the ditch on a narrow (but fast) road.
But today’s worry is the spread of disease: Eva reports that most of Namuwongo is closed. The Council have been ordering food vendors off the streets in an effort to crack down on a Cholera outbreak in the slum / shanty town just below my house on the marshes. Eight people have died from Cholera this week.
The heavy rain has poured down the hill into the shanty town, washing rubbish and sewage with it, no doubt flooding some houses. This area is prone to flooding, having no drainage channels or anywhere for the water to run off. Mosquitoes quickly breed in the stagnant water ready to pass on Malaria the very next day; Cholera thrives in these kinds of conditions.
Entering the slum is like going into a different world, it’s like being on a post-apocalyptic film set, a maze of narrow pathways just feet from the railway track, between houses made of strips of battered wood and rusty old corrugated iron. But it’s full of life, the kids are incredibly curious and fun. They haven’t been exposed to tourists so they’re delighted with a “Bye!” (said at a very high pitch) and a wave; they rarely ask for money (yet – give it a few years …)
Child next to open sewer of Kampala slum
It’s alarming to read that the Council now plans to demolish houses in the slum without pit latrines. As it’s a shanty town I imagine everyone’s there illegally, so what comeback will they have? This could create quite a stir. Read more here about work to improve infrastructure in Namuwongo’s shanty towns.
I forgot to buy our usual bananas for breakfast so gave Simpson money to get himself some chapatis – just hope he didn’t buy them in Nam’ this morning…
Note to mother:
Cholera is passed through water and human contact. I don’t eat street food and we boil and filter all our water (and frankly we don’t s**t in the street either!)
You still on for January visit?!
