Like the postal service. My Mum sent me a couple of letters in July when we were staying n Kampala. One of them arrived a week ago. It had gone via Vanuatu in the Pacific Islands. The other one is yet to arrive. We have had similar experiences with other items of mail. In NZ I loved going to the Post Shop and went most days as it had a great energy to it. It was busy, interesting, bright and cheery.
The Post Office in Jinja was built, by all appearances, in the 1920’s, and hasn’t had any work at all done to it since. There is rarely anyone there and the woman working there eats her lunch while sitting at the counter. I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised if one day a man arrived at the Post Office on a donkey bringing the mail from the next village in a brown sack. And Jinja is one of the biggest places in Uganda.
I also wonder how - or even if - people get mail. Mail is only delivered to PO Boxes not houses, and given there are around 250,000 people in the Jinja district, there are less than 3000 PO Boxes. Perhaps several thousand people club together to rent a PO Box…?
Sometimes we forget how complex the Ugandans like to make procedures, and go about life as if it were ‘normal’. We got a slip in our PO Box saying there was a parcel for us. I took it to the counter and handed it in, expecting the woman to go and get the parcel and give it to me. How silly of me. That is way too simple. “You have to take the slip to the counter in the room next door” she said. My heart sank. I knew it was going to take a looong time.
In all the times I have been to the Post Office, the counter in the room next door has been completely devoid of anyone, either staff or customers. In fact the room itself is always completely devoid of any life form at all. Kira and I went to the room. There is a little bicycle bell on the counter. I rang it… Nothing. Kira rang it… Nothing. I rang it again and eventually a man who looked to be about 150 years old staggered to the counter and asked us to come in. We went into the mail sorting room. I was aghast. There were bags of mail strewn all over the floor, letters and parcels were in piles all over the place. We could see the backs of the PO Boxes and some of them looked like they were full of years’ worth of unclaimed mail. I can’t imagine how any letter ever reaches its destination.
The 150 year old man disappeared. There was another man in the sorting room, working through a pile of yellow slips, I told him we’d come to collect a parcel. He pointed to a desk which had 2 chairs by it and told us to wait there. Kira and I sat and waited. And waited. And waited. I wondered where the person whose desk it was had gone to and when they would be back. We waited. Eventually the man finished with the pile of yellow slips and came over to us. Apparently it was his desk. And apparently he felt it was OK to keep us waiting – and waiting - while he sorted through his yellow slips. He finally got us the parcel. We have to pay to get parcels released, so we were charged 2000 shillings. Maybe the money goes towards refurbishing the seats we sat on.They must get worn out pretty quickly….
Jon has similar frustrations with boda boda drivers. He uses one to get to and from work. There are many, many, many, many boda boda drivers around. Mostly they sit together in groups waiting for customers. Most of the time they don’t seem to have any customers. You can’t walk more than a few yards before they will approach you and ask “We go?”. It’s a 10-15 minute walk into the town centre from where we live and it’s not unusual to be asked 5 times on the way if you want a ride. Jon has tried to get a driver who will take him on a regular basis to work, but even though they are always looking for custom, no one seems to be able to offer a regular service. The first time he asked a driver to come and pick him up in the morning, the driver said “I pick you up at 8.30?” “Yes” “I good at telling time. I know when 8.30 is. I be here exactly at 8.30. I pick you up in morning.” He didn’t arrive. So Jon tried someone else. He didn’t arrive either. After a while Jon gave up. So what he does now is walk to the end of the road. There is a group of them about 20 yards away and he flags them down. About 3 drivers then all race to him to see if they can get the ride.
However it’s not all bad. Jinja is a lovely place with some really beautiful scenery. We know a number of people who have houses overlooking the Nile. The views are stunning. There is also a good community here as the ex-pats feel the need to stick together. There are more white people around than I thought and they all seem to turn up when something happens. When you hold a child’s birthday party here, then you would invite a lot of the community as well as it’s a good excuse for people to get together.
People here are generally different to those in Kampala. As a big generalisation, the ex-pats in Kampala are there for jobs, eg their company has transferred them or they are working for a NGO (aid agency), whereas the people in Jinja have specifically chosen to be here and often decide to set up a business. As Jinja is known as a tourist centre, lots of ex-pats have set up businesses aimed at tourists, eg kayaking, horse riding, cafes, restaurants.
It’s interesting to see some of the businesses Ugandans set up. They may for example have a little BBQ-type grill at the side of the road and they sell grilled corn on the cob. Or they may have a ‘toenail’ business. Some of them have a bowl of water where they wash people’s feet and then cut their toenails. Or they have a basket of nail polishes and paint women’s toenails while they sit on a little stool on the pavement. This even happens in Kampala city centre.
It’s a regular occurrence that children in the town centre crowd around you and ask for money. It’s also a regular occurrence that people turn up at the house either asking for a job or asking for money. We usually talk to them at the gate.
One day a man called Apollo turned up. I didn’t know him but apparently he had met Jon in the street one day, had told him his story and Jon had given him some money. So he came to me, telling me he knew Jon. He had his younger brother with him who has syphilis. The boy was covered in sores. He shook my hand. I tried to avoid the bit with the open sore on it. Apollo told me his employer had died, so he had not only lost his job but also his home as he couldn’t afford the rent. He had been in hospital and showed me the bandage on his side along with the prescription for the medicine he needed to buy. He then said it was his sister’s funeral the next day and he needed to be able to pay for transport to get back to the village. And he needed to get the bus at 5pm that day. All of this was going to cost him 40,000 shillings (a lot for a Ugandan to ask for) and could I give it to him. When we give the children pocket money we ask them to tithe, so they had saved 10% of their money for a worthy cause. I went into the house and told them Apollo’s story and they were both happy to give him their money, so all three of us went out to see him. I explained that the children had saved some of their pocket money and were happy to give it to him. It was about 6000 shillings. Kira gave it to him. He looked at it and said “It’s not enough.”
He told me he was going to wait till Jon got back and would ask him for more. He waited till 6.30pm (presumably had missed his bus) but Jon said we’d given him all we were going to give.
Then he came to see me again a couple of weeks later. This time he had several packets of seeds with him. He said that he needed money to get transport to the village so he could plant the seeds, grow vegetables and earn a livelihood. He also told me he had no family (not sure what had happened to his ‘brother’ then), and still needed medicine. He showed me the prescription again. I said I wasn’t going to give him any more money. At this point Jordan had come out of the house to see I was OK and stayed with me. Apollo asked if I could give him some food as he hadn’t eaten all day. Jordan and I went to get some bread for him and gave him about half a loaf. He wasn’t impressed.
We used to give money freely in the beginning, but there are so many people needing and looking for money that it’s a mammoth task and one that is never, never ending.
A few days later a man came to the house asking to speak to Moses or Wakoli George or Bonnie (the people who work here). I asked him in and he spoke to Bonnie, one of the house girls. She ushered me into the bedroom and whispered to me that he used to work here, then went to work at the school, but was a convicted rapist and wasn’t allowed into the compound, so she escorted him out. He was followed an hour later by someone asking for work. I told him there were no jobs available here. He went away then came back a few seconds later and asked if he could live here for 3 days while he looked for work. I said no. Bonnie said he looked too well dressed to be looking for work and would have just wanted to case the joint.
Good grief, as if snakes, earthquakes, bribes and electrocution weren’t bad enough!
And then there is Moses, one of the gardeners here, who is always entertaining and a bit of a wide boy. He asked Jon if we want to buy a cow. He said it would only cost us 200,000 shillings, then all we needed to do is pay someone 30,000 to look after it till Xmas, then we could have it slaughtered and we would make 150,000. “Thanks for the offer” said Jon “but perhaps not.”
And then there are the ants! Uganda must have half of the world’s population of ants. If you look around they are all over the place. We have to go around the house and spray it with insecticide otherwise you would share your house with millions of unwanted little pets. I think the country should be called Ug-ant-a. We have a couple of washing lines here and the ants use one of them as a major thoroughfare to get from the wall of the house to the tree. You have to take the clothes off the line and then shake them to get the insects off or else you really would have ants in your pants.
Anyway the children are both happy. Kira has a number of friends and spends a lot of time with them. We hardly see her! She loves school and likes being with her friends. She does drama once a week after school and is involved in the panto. She still misses NZ and her friends, and even though she has a lovely time here, still wants to go back.
Jordan is more settled. He gets on really well with the 2 boys he’s homeschooled with (which is just as well as there are very few other muzungus his age around!). He started African drum lessons recently. He did ‘normal’ drum lessons in NZ. Here they use 3 drums, one of which has a skin made from monitor lizard skin, while the others are made of cow hide.
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Recently the 2 boys organised an American Football ‘exhibition match’ for parents to watch– they got 2 teams together The Wildcats and The Warriors, got the uniforms, bought lime and made up the pitch at their home, got the refreshments and got 3 girls (including Kira) to be the cheerleaders. It went really well. 
Over the weekend we went to a children’s birthday party. It was an army party and the children had to get dressed up in army clothes and paint their faces with camouflage paint. They had ‘basic training’ by one of the adults, then had to do an assault course – including being doused with flour and crawling through a very muddy pit – then stopped for rations, and then rescued one of the adults who had been captured and tied up by the enemies. They loved it!
On Friday Jordan and I went on a homeschool field trip. We went with Sandy who homeschools him, her husband Rob, the 2 boys Ethan and Seth plus another couple of children. We went to a place called Mabira Forest about 30 minutes from here, and did a 3 hour walk. We managed to see some monkeys, lots of safari ants (to be avoided!) and some beautiful butterflies. The photo shows butterflies at rest. When Jordan walked through them they flew into the air and he was surrounded by a multi-coloured cloud of butterflies. It looked amazing.
We came out on the main Jinja-to-Kampala road at a place that is the Ugandan equivalent of a motorway service station. When cars and matatus (ie minibus taxis driven by lunatic 'who-cares-about-safety-let’s-go-as-fast-as-we-can' drivers) pull over, people selling food and drink rush over to them and thrust their wares in through the window in a desperate attempt to sell whatever they can.
Sandy and Rob bought some ‘chicken on a stick’, but I decided to give it a miss. If you look at the photo, it shows the chicken before it’s cooked. It was out in the full force of the sun and covered in flies….Anyway, more to come in the next blog!
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