edroom house with a big compound, and is walkable to the town centre.It’s in quite a nice location as it’s not on a street, but is in a small ‘off-street’ area of several houses, with unsealed lanes. There are goats and chickens wandering around the outside of our compound and around the lanes.
The house is single story, has a nice dining and living room, bathroom, kitchen with a separate food storage room, an integral garage, 2 normal sized bedrooms, one smaller bedroom, and a huge master bedroom with en suite. It also has a veranda out the front. The compound needs a bit of landscaping doing to it, but could be lovely if we get it done. The man who owns it is an agriculturalist and wants to plant coffee in part of the compound. There are a few matoke and paw paw trees already here.
The owner asked if we would keep on the gardener, who lives in a small building on the compound, so he is around spending most of the day working in the garden. In the mornings he cleans the car. He trimmed lots of bu
shes and trees over the weekend, put the branches in a big pile and – in true Ugandan style – set fire to them. However he did this rather too close to the hedge and set fire to it!Jon and Jordan kept running over to supply him with buckets of water, and he managed to put it out.
Before we moved in we asked if the landlord would get some work done on the house – we asked for mosquito screens on the windows, for some plumbing work to be done, and also to get a water heater in. The water heater only heats the water in one room, so we had it installed in the main bathroom which now means we can have hot showers. Woopeee!
This does mean though that there is no hot water in the kitchen or our en suite. However it’s a step up from the last house, which had no hot water at all. There are no curtains here yet, and bits and bobs still need doing to the house, but the landlord has been very accommodating and has agreed that if we get work done, he will take the money off the rent.
I was doing some unpacking the day after we moved in and was just about to put all my underwear in one of the wardrobe drawers when I thought I’d better take it out and check if there was anything in it. Good job I did as there was a rather large dead frog in there!
The house is unfurnished and as there is very little furniture available to buy in Jinja we went to Kampala the week before to see a furniture maker. We ordered two sofas (in a rust and gold coloured material), dining table & chairs (with seat covers to match the sofas) and coffee table. We said we needed them for Saturday and we needed them delivered to Jinja. He asked me to go over the day before to sort it all out, which I did (2 hour drive each way), and they weren’t ready. However he assured me they would be finished that day and that he would personally deliver them at “exactly 11 o’clock” the next day.
At 12.00 I called him – very difficult understanding many Ugandans, especially over the phone – but he seemed to be saying that the transport would arrive at theirs at 1pm and they would be at ours between 2 and 3pm. I called again at 4.30pm whereupon they started telling me it was going to cost us 100,000/- to have the furniture delivered. I said we had agreed on 50,000, at which point the price seemed to go up to 150,000/-. Anyway they said it would arrive at 7pm. At 7.10pm we gave up hope of ever seeing our furniture and went out to some friends who had kindly made us a meal. I got a phone call at 8pm (it’s dark by now) saying “I am at de gate”. Jon, Jordan, Rob and his 2 boys all went round as a bit of a heavy mob in case things didn’t go smoothly. After unloading the furniture and refusing to pay any more than 50,000/- for delivery, everything seemed to be sorted out, and we now have some furniture.
We had also ordered 3 beds the week before from a Jinja furniture maker. We said we absolutely needed them on Saturday. “They will be ready” they said. As Ugandans aren’t known for their efficiency or reliability I went in on Thursday to check. “They are not ready” they said. “We need them for Saturday, will they be ready then?” I asked. “Yes” they said. I went down on Saturday to discover they weren’t ready, and not only that but they hadn’t even got the wood to make them from. We are now sleeping on mattresses on the floor!
So, at the moment our furniture comprises 2 sofas, a coffee table and dining table and chairs. In our rather large master bedroom we have a mattress … and that’s it. It looks totally lost. For curtains we have put up a couple of sheets over the windows. Oh the joy of starting out again!
One of the things we will have to do is take down some doors in the house. There are doors everywhere! There are 18 doors altogether excluding the garage doors, and when you open some doors, you block others. I feel like I spend all my time walking round the house opening doors, so we are going to take 3
of them down. Although the house overall is nice, the quality of workmanship isn’t that wonderful. There are few things in the house that are straight – eg floors, kitchen workbenches, sockets, tap fittings, doors ….
Some of the plumbing has been a real botch job. The day we moved in, the plumber (pronounced plum-ber) who appears never to have actually done any training in plumbing, was in the kitchen with his ‘apprentice’. I wandered in there. The plumber was lying on the floor – relaxing - while his apprentice was making a complete hash of installing a mixer tap over the sink.
Anyway it was really nice to see our neighbours from NZ, Claire and Dave, who came to Jinja for a few days in February as part of some mission work they were doing in Africa with Living Hope Ministries. Not many friends tend to ‘happen to’ come to Jinja, and it was nice to see someone we actually know!
I spoke at a conference in a hotel located between Kampala and Entebbe recently for the Uganda Feminist Forum. They w
ere a good group of people and the venue was wonderful, ranking as one of the best rooms I’ve stayed in, in any country.The hotel is called Ranch on the Lake and (not surprisingly) has lovely views over Lake Victoria.
It’s interesting to see that even though there is wide scale poverty here, there is still a lot of money around. There are many beautiful hotels and houses here.
The Ranch on the Lake is doing some major building work and will more than double in size, covering a substantial area of land with high quality buildings, golf course, swimming pool etc.
I was reading in the newspaper today that one of the areas in Uganda is so poor – despite the land being rich in gold, marble, uranium etc – that some people walk around naked, and depend on primitive nomadic cattle herding for a livelihood.
There are some very sad newspaper articles here. There was a story about an 8 year old girl who was knocked over by a vehicle while walking on the road. They took her to hospital where she said that her mother had died and she didn’t know her father. The girl also died, and despite officials going to her village, no one turned up to claim her. They assumed she must have lived on her own.
Another story told of how the refrigerator in the mortuary has not worked for 2 years; another of a school with 800 pupils and only 4 teachers; and of a University class of 1000 students, a class number so large that many students don’t fit in the lecture room and have to stand outside.
One article told of a man who committed suicide. He was trying to sell his underage daughter to the 68 year old neighbour as a bride for 1m shillings (approx NZ$1000, 400 pounds) and his wife and children wouldn’t allow it.
There are regular stories about witchdoctors. A young boy was kidnapped and found dead with body parts missing; there are human sacrifices where people kill children or bury them alive, as witchcraft says it will bring money. They claim that Jesus was human sacrifice, which in some way they see as justification for their actions.
Jon has started back at the organisation he was with last year and has a 6 month part time contract with them. When he got a boda home from work last week, there was a herd of cows on the road. The boda driver decided to drive through them rather than round them, and ended up hitting one of the cows. The motorbike turned over and both Jon and the driver fell off. Fortunately they were both OK. Jon had a few cuts and scrapes, but he’s fine, as is the laptop he was carrying! He always wears a jacket and helmet when he’s on a boda, unlike the vast majority of people who use them, and they proved to be very useful.
I’ve had a couple of magazine articles published this month, both of them on public speaking. One in a Ugandan women’s glossy called ‘Flair for Her’, and another in an East African women’s glossy called ‘African Woman’.
I’m aiming to get some children’s books published too.
A couple of days ago I went to a dukka (a tiny little wooden shed-like structure that acts as a corner shop). A man was sitting on a bench near the dukka and said “Muzungu how are you?” “I’m fine” I replied. “I want to ask you a question” he said. “Yes?” I asked. “You come here” he replied. Hmmm, I thought, but had to walk that way anyway. “Yes?” I asked as I went over. “I want soda, you buy me a soda” he said...
The houseboy we had in Kampala, John Bosco, had asked if he could come and work for us. We were very happy with him as a worker and so agreed. He arrived yesterday via a 9 hour bus trip from the border of Uganda and Rwanda where he has recently been living with his family. His English is hard to understand, and we thought he said he had some accommodation to come to, but when he arrived he said he didn’t. I had to rush around taking him to various places to see if we could find something – and at the right price.
It’s hard seeing the kind of accommodation he will be living in – very basic. Usually just a bare, not very clean room, probably without electricity as that would cost more, maybe with a long drop toilet, and perhaps with a water tap outside or an allowance of several jerry cans of water a day. However, many Ugandans live in that kind of accommodation and to them it is normal.
Another woman has been asking us if she can work for us. Her father died and left the family with little money. She started crying when she told me her mother had recently died. She has no real work and very little income. She is very pleasant and helpful, but we had already promised John Bosco he could work with us. She sent me a couple of phone texts pleading with me to take her on as she is an orphan, and she also turned up with her HIV test results to show me that she tested negative.
Today a woman and small child turned up at our gate. The woman was in tears, as was her little son. She apologised for intruding and told me that she, and one of her two children, has HIV, that she is very sick and unable to work. She has no husband and needs money for the medication. She showed me her HIV test results and the prescription from the hospital.
There are so many needy people here. It’s easy to put the phone down when charities phone you up asking for money for a worthy cause. It’s not at all easy dealing with the issue when it stares you in the face, when people are standing in front of you crying, and pleading for help…
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