May & June 2009

The month of May started off with my combined Birthday & Housewarming do, ably abetted by Sandy who baked me another wheat-free birthday cake.
There were about 40 people there and we are very thankful that we have a large garden when there are many children running around!
I’ve now mastered the art of making pizzas and impressed my guests with my culinary expertise.
In 50 years I have never impressed anyone with my baking. Someone even asked me for the recipe … crikey! Unfortunately my family now has to endure pizzas on a regular basis as it’s the only thing I can bake.

We are settled in the house now. I really like it here. Hopefully Henry the electrician likes it here too as he is a regular visitor. In fact he’s been a regular visitor in all 3 houses we’ve live in in Jinja. Although this house is brand new, the electrics are in a poor state – the light switches spark; almost all of them have had to be replaced; there was an explosion at the back of the cooker; lots of electrical things are live and we get shocks when we touch them. One time the vet was here while Henry was repairing the exploding cooker. He happened to be standing by the fuse box outside the house and said “there are lots of sparks coming from that box”. Henry came out to look at it and immediately ran off to town to get circuit breakers. Added to this, our brand new tv aerial is falling apart. We keep finding bits of it in the garden.

And talking of trades people, Jordan did a mini- carpentry ‘apprenticeship’ recently. We found a carpenter, Robert, who had been recommended by a couple of people and asked if he would train Jordan. He agreed and Jordan went for two afternoons a week.
Jon designed a TV cabinet, Jordan drew it up in a 3D package called sketchup, and he worked on the cabinet over a period of several weeks.
He went to the workshop where Robert is based – an amazing place – really ‘African’ in the heart of the ‘tradespeople area’. It is a very, very busy area – lots and lots of people milling around. The workshop is outdoors, is in a small area of many workshops, is very cramped and very basic, the flooring is just bare earth, but they had the woodworking machinery and all the right tools.
I took him a couple of times in the beginning, but after a while he would jump on a boda boda himself and go off, and come back on a boda boda after he’d finished.
Jordan did a great job and we are really pleased with the outcome.

It has been the rainy season, and when it rains it really rains. There is extremely loud thunder and lightning and the rain comes down in absolute torrents. All the brown earth turns to mud. It usually rains at night time, which is very considerate of it. However one time I was in Kampala – manically busy Kampala – when the rain came down. Instantly the city was like a ghost town. I was amazed; I’ve never seen it like that before. I have no idea where everyone went to!
Anyway I needed to get somewhere and so braved the weather – I was absolutely soaking. If I’d stood under the bathroom shower in all my clothes I wouldn’t have been any wetter. The occasional car drove past me and completely showered me with water from the road. The rain was forming rivers down the roads and I had to wade through it, inches deep, to get to the other side.
Within half an hour the rain had stopped and Kampala returned to its sunny and manic state again.
Fortunately I had a spare set of clothes in the car so nipped into the Ladies and got changed into dry clothes – and shoes.

We decided to visit The Rainforest Lodge in rainforest called Mabira, about a 45 minute drive from here. It’s an impressive Lodge set in beautiful surroundings. We went to use the pool, spend an afternoon lounging around, and have lunch. Unfortunately we chose the one cold day that we’ve had in Uganda. It rained heavily and the temperature really dropped. It was such an unusual experience being cold and we weren’t prepared for it.
The lunch menu was pretty expensive so we just ordered chips – they were the most expensive chips I’ve ever had - $10 for a plate of chips!
Anyway, while we were sitting waiting the rain to stop, I was watching the ants that are ever-present, and discovered that if you blow on a group of ants, they stop moving and ‘freeze’ for a short while, then move again. Try it – fascinating!

There are always small creatures around and you get used to it.
One time I went into a toilet at the golf club and was accompanied by a hornet, a lizard and a frog!
And regarding mozzie nets over the bed, one of the things you have to be aware of is to check that there are no creatures inside the net before you get into bed. One night there was a spider at the top on the inside the net – it fell down – onto my side of the bed! It took a lot of courage to get back into bed that night.

There are a couple of dogs at Kira’s homeschool centre, they live in the compound. One of them has just had 6 puppies – really cute. The children have all ‘adopted’ one each and given them names. Unfortunately we are going to have to find homes for them. Kira will be heartbroken if someone takes hers.

And so we are never short of interesting examples of the Ugandan approach to things.
I went to get some documents bound. You can’t assume anything here, so I asked if the binding included a front and back cover as well as the spiral binding.
“Yes” replied the woman “what colour do you want?”
“What colours do you have?” I asked.
“Blue.”

Last year Jon was offered a part-time lecturing position to degree level students on an IT course at the Jinja campus of Kampala University. The money was low, the hours were unsocial, and when he looked through the syllabus, the amount of time the students would spend at a computer was … 0%. He declined the offer. Jordan and I used to drive past the campus on the way to his carpentry sessions. We had to laugh when we the new sign they have had made. I wonder why they struggle for excellence!

Jordan and I managed to find the Jinja library, a now run-down old building housing half a dozen books or so. It would have been very nice when it was first built, and there is a plaque inside it to commemorate its opening. It says “This magnificent building…”
Anyway we very cleverly managed to find a very small number of books that had been published more recently than the 1950’s, one of which was a Star Trek book, filed on a shelf labelled ‘Personal development (Do It Yourself)’.
We ‘joined’ the library – I had to fill in a form. I needed someone to sign it to vouch that I was a citizen of good repute. The woman asked Jordan to sign it.
“I haven’t got a signature” he whispered.
“Yes you have” I whispered back “just write your name”.
Anyway she wrote down the books I was taking out on a torn piece of paper and asked me how long I wanted them for.

One of the books I had decided to get out was on Sikhism. There is a big Indian community here and I felt I should find out about the various religions. The book talks about one of the Sikh gurus who was incredibly generous, and spent his life giving to others. At this point the woman who had been to our house before, crying and asking for money (see end of February blog), turned up again saying she needed money to get back to her village, where her family would look after her. I gave her 20,000/= and immediately regretted it. My gut feeling said she had been lying to me, and when I thought about it afterwards, I had noticed that she was well dressed, didn’t look ill (she is supposed to have HIV), and this time had said she had 3 children instead of the two she told me about last time. When I gave her the money she didn’t look grateful, she just beat a hasty retreat.

We are always being asked for money – constantly. Constantly. Every time we go into town there are street children who beg, there is a woman who comes and stands by the car and just holds her hand out, John Bosco cut his leg and needed money for a tetanus injection, he got malaria and needed money for medication and a stay in hospital. He told us about a woman living nearby who had a baby, she didn’t get transport in time, the baby died, and would we give money to help her.
I have got to the stage where I see a Ugandan approaching me in the street or at our compound gates and I think “No, I don’t want to give money, just leave me alone.”

Anyway John Bosco and Geoffrey have done some good work on the vegetable garden – it’s quite large and they are growing maize, watermelon, onions and cabbages.

John Bosco usually comes into our house about 8.30am, and as we leave after this, we just leave him in the house, doing the housework.
One morning we got a text from him saying “I am in Kampala. Rock the house when you rive.”
We puzzled over this one for a while, and then I realised that in his language the sounds R and L are interchangeable, so he was saying ‘Lock the house when you leave’.
Similarly, Geoffrey usually calls Lotte ‘Rotte'.

I’m still spending quite a bit of time organising things for Kira’s homeschool centre, and am fortunate that the teacher, Vicky, is a Ugandan and can explain various things to me.
It’s also quite an education talking to her as I learn a lot about Ugandan customs.
It’s very normal, for example, for people to have a housemaid, and the one she had did a runner recently, so she asked her extended family if someone could find another for her. One of her relatives in the villages brought a 13 year old girl to be her new housemaid. Apparently by age 13 girls know how to run a house, so her job is to do all the housework and look after the 4 children, the oldest of whom is a 12 year old boy.
At the moment Vicky has no electricity in her house, so they use candles or kerosene lamps; they cook on a charcoal burner and even use a charcoal-filled iron.
Some tribes in the north and west of the country still pay dowries when their daughter gets married. The dowry ‘currency’ is cows, and the more educated you are the more cows you are worth.
Vicky’s housemaid will be worth 3 cows as she hasn’t completed her education. Those who do complete it are worth 5 cows. As Vicky is a qualified teacher she is worth 30 cows. She was a big expense to her family!

My business colleague Aziz got married fairly recently. One of the customs is to have an ‘Introduction’ ceremony before the wedding which is quite an event in itself and very costly. Then the wedding is even more costly as many people are invited, food is provided and it’s usually quite an elaborate do.
He was quite pleased because he managed to keep the costs down and only spent 5.3 million shillings on the introduction and 9 million on the wedding ($11,000 / £4,500). Most people spend a lot more than this. Given that Ugandan wages are low, this is a huge cost for them, so those getting married invite a select group of friends to help them fundraise for this. The group of helpers are expected to contribute a sizeable amount financially and then attend several pre-wedding meetings to help with the fundraising.
I asked how many people were invited to his wedding. “A thousand” he replied. “Did you know all of them?” I asked. “Well, I knew some of them” he said.
When he asked how many were at my wedding and I said 70 for the wedding and another 70 for the evening do, he thought this was highly amusing.


And so we all had plane tickets booked to come back to the UK at the end of June. However it is logistically easier if we go two at a time as then we can stay with people. So in the third week of May I wandered into the Emirates offices in Kampala to see if I could bring my and Kira’s flights forward a bit. We only had one-way tickets booked and I wanted to book a return flight using my air miles.
“To be able to use your air miles, you have to return to Uganda by 8th June at the latest” said the woman.
In order to make the trip worthwhile this meant we pretty much had to go almost straight away, and so a few days later we found ourselves on a plane to the UK, much to the surprise of our family.
We had the flights booked with Emirates and while it is a great airline and an excellent way to go from NZ to the UK, it isn't the best route from Uganda to Manchester. Whereas an airline like British Airways will go direct and take about 9 hours, Emirates goes to Adis Ababa in Ethiopia, then to Dubai (which is in the wrong direction). You have to hang around from midnight to 7am in an overly-cooled air conditioned airport and then have a 7.5 hour trip to Manchester. This takes about 23 hours.
However, the good part is that as there is only 2 hours time difference between the two countries we didn't get any jetlag, and in terms of the world, we feel so much closer to the UK and felt like we were 'popping home' rather than making the long, long journey from NZ.
The two weeks we had at home flew by. We had a lovely time though we didn't get to see everyone this time unfortunately.
It was a nice change being in a first world country, and things that are in reality very ordinary, seemed very novel to us. Like being able to buy a wide range of food at the supermarkets. Like being able to drive on non-potholed roads with drivers who know the road rules and who actually value their life. Driving on the M6 on a Friday rush hour was such a doddle compared to simply driving on roads here at 'normal' time.
I was impressed with how clean England looked. Because there is so much red earth here, seeing pavements made everything seem so clean!

Kira and I left the UK on 8th June and arrived back in Uganda on 9th. It's a 3 hour trip from the airport, so we used a taxi driver called Aaron to pick us up. Aaron is great and the muzungus use him a lot. The Ugandans who have worked out what white people want, and know how to work with them do very well in business here.

When I got back, Jordan's home school tutor and the boys were away so I taught him at home for 3 weeks. I still teach Kira maths every morning.

He has a sports lesson for two hours every Wednesday morning with the boys, and as they were in Kenya, he asked if I'd come to the tennis lesson with him. I haven't played tennis for about a hundred years, but decided to go along. We had changed the lesson to the afternoon that day, and - flipping heck! - it's hot playing tennis in the afternoon sun. I really enjoyed it but was aching all over for the next two days. I was in A Bad Way.
Unfortunately Jon and I went to an evening 'QBP' event (to be explained) the next day where we had to stand up all evening. We very rarely go out in the evenings these days, and when we do, we certainly don't stand up all the time! My legs were aching so much I was just about collapsing at the end of the evening.

Anyway I enjoyed the tennis so have started having lessons with Ronnie, the sports tutor, myself. He seems very good and has competed in the Davis Cup. I'm fairly coordinated and was doing quite well (or so I thought), though am having to re-learn how to play. He thinks it quite funny because I play in an 'old-fashioned' way. It must have been how I was taught at school and apparently the way you play tennis has changed quite a bit since The Old Days.

So, we were invited to a 'QBP' which is a Queen's Birthday Party hosted by the British High Commissioner in Kampala. Only a select group of people are invited to attend and I was invited because I'm the Jinja representative of the British Residents' Association. Jon came along as my 'plus one'. (He doesn't appreciate how lucky he is to be with me...)
We had no idea it was such a big deal to get an invitation, and had even considered not going, but there are some people who have been here for many years and are feeling quite put-out that they haven't had an invite!
The Commissioner invites those who have 'forwarded the aims' of the British High Commission in Uganda, so there were 500 people of all nationalities there, having drinks and nibbles in his garden. The UK had shipped over a couple of Household Cavalrymen (one of the country's most elite military group apparently), complete with impressive red uniform, helmet and spurs … but not the horse.
The invitation said you had to wear business dress or national costume.
I pondered the costume bit for a while, and given that I come from Liverpool, the most likely costume would be a Liverpool Football Club strip. But I didn't think it would go down very well at the do.

As we were driving over to Kampala for the event, we were flagged down by a policeman.
“Oh here we go again” I thought. The Police seem to go through phases of stopping you and checking your documentation.
I was driving, Jon was in the passenger seat, and Jordan was in the back (Kira stayed in Jinja with her friends).
Jon wound down the window.
“You are going to Kampala?” said the policeman
“Yes” said Jon.
“Can you give me a lift?” he asks.
So, Jordan gets in the front, and Jon and the policeman get in the back. Jon had a good chat with him, and as a result the policeman keeps phoning him up!

The day after we got back from the UK, I was driving along one of the main roads when we saw a woman lying face down on the road. She had just been knocked over by a motorbike a few seconds before. The motorbike was lying in the road, broken. Some people picked her up and laid her face down on the pavement. She didn't move, I thought she was dead. Pretty soon a group of Ugandans gathered around. None of them had a vehicle and I'm not sure how the ambulance service works here, but people weren't really doing anything for her. Fortunately Vicky was in the car with me and I asked if she would talk to the people and see if we could take the woman to hospital. People are wary of taking someone to hospital as it will mean that they are financially responsible for the treatment.
She went and spoke to the policeman who told her to wait, as he was taking a statement from the motorbike driver. We decided to take the woman anyway.
Her forehead was bleeding, she had hurt various parts of her body, and was quite dazed, but looked like she was going to be OK. A couple of people who knew her and happened to be around at that time came in the car with us. They carried her into the back of the car where she lay sideways, and then they got in with her. They didn't all fit, so we drove with the car door open. Kira and the dog were there too and they sat in the boot.
Vicky and the 3 people were talking in the Luganda. The woman was crying, apparently saying “my baby my baby”, but they didn't know where her baby was.
I took the woman to Jinja hospital.
You really wouldn't want to be in need of 'proper' medical care over here – the hospital looked very basic. We have joined the British Residents' Association as their main reason for existing is to help 'Brits in distress'. If anything happens they medivac you out of the country.
I assumed the woman must have been very poor as she had been carrying a basket of nuts and seeds on her head to sell – that will have been her 'job'. There are many women here carrying baskets on their head, usually holding bananas or nuts which they sell cheaply.
As the nurse came over to take her in a wheelchair, I gave her all the money I had on me – 15,000/= ($12, £4.50). Vicky said that would pay for quite a bit of treatment.
When we got home, Kira was very upset. She was in mild shock. She was crying and saying “I don't want Daddy to go on a boda boda again.” Jon gets a boda boda to and from work, but I told her I would make sure he was safe.
Vicky found out a week or so later that the woman's baby had died.

And so it was Kira's 9th birthday on 20th June. One of her friends, Naomi, shares the same birthday and is the same age. Naomi's mum had been trying to contact me to see if we could have a joint party, but I was in the UK and hadn't got her messages. Another girl here, Simran, has a birthday the day after, so they both had a party that weekend. Naomi's mum (who has 11 children) owns a beautiful resort here, and held the party there. The children went swimming in the pool then had the party food sitting in a lovely grassy area amongst the avocado trees. She had ordered 4 cakes – one for Naomi, one for Simran, one for one of her sons who had a birthday the same month and one for Kira.
The children drank a fruit juice cocktail out of scooped-out whole pineapples.

We decided to have Kira's party the weekend after, especially as that was the weekend that Jon and Jordan left to go to the UK for a month. It gave her something to look forward to.
We had the party at our house and had planned to play a range of party games in the garden.
It very rarely rains here during the day, even in the rainy season, but an hour before her party the heavens opened, there was the loudest thunder I have ever heard, and the driveway became a mud-bath. We had planned to have lots of water games and had asked the children to bring spare clothes, but hadn't planned for it to be quite so watery!
Anyway the weather cleared up for about an hour, so we went out and played the games, and the kids got suitably wet and messy - as did the house!
Sandy had made Kira an impressive High School Musical cake, and I had tried my hand at making scones. Amazingly they turned out well, and people liked them! Crikey, two culinary successes in a short space of time...
So all in all, a good time for birthday parties.

Jon and Jordan left for the UK at the end of June and will be there till the end of July.

And of course, how can I write a blog entry without some 'Uganda life' snippets ...`
There are times when we just can't make people understand us. For example my Mum and Dad have been using an incorrect PO Box number for us. Instead of 1204, they have been using the number 51209 (my PO Box in NZ). Consequently the mail hasn't been reaching us. Once I realised what was happening, I went to the Jinja sorting office and explained to the man that people had been sending me incorrectly addressed mail and asked where it would be.
“What is your box number?” he asks
“1204”
“What box number have they been using?”
“51209”
“It will not come into your box.”
“I know, where will it go?”
“There is no box with that number.”
“I know, so where will it go?”
“There is no box number like that in Jinja. Maybe in different part of country.”
“They wrote Jinja on the envelope, so I think it may be here.”
“There is no box number like that in Jinja.”
“I know. Where do you put letters with incorrect addresses on them?”
“We do not have that number in Jinja.”
…. and so it went on. There were a couple of young women there who explained to him in Luganda what I was meaning.
“You ask at Kampala Post Office” he said
So I emailed Kampala asking where the letters would be. They replied saying they would ask the postmaster at Jinja.
Aaargh

Then yesterday I parked in town. The parking wardens put a slip on your windscreen, keep a note of your car number and the time you parked, and when you leave you 'pay' by giving them a ticket and they make a note that you have paid.
I drove off, having forgotten to give them a ticket, so went back a bit later to give them one. Unfortunately it had rained and the slip had been ruined.
I explained to the warden that I had parked there an hour before and had forgotten to give a ticket.
“You want to buy tickets?”
“No I want to give you one for when I parked here an hour ago.”
“You did not park here”
“Yes I did, but I can't show you the slip, the rain has ruined it.”
“You want to park here now and want another slip?”
“No I want to give you a ticket for when I parked here.”
“You give me ticket.”
I gave him a ticket and said “Will you mark off that I have paid?”
“You did not park here.”
“I did, I am giving you a ticket for when I parked here. Will you check your notes and see if you have my car details?
“I will not have your details. You want to park here now?”
“No, I parked here an hour ago. I did not give ticket for when I parked. I want to give ticket for the time when I parked.”
“You have given me ticket.”
“Yes I have, but I need to you make a note that I have paid.”
“You did not park here.”
In the end I gave up, took the ticket back and left.


An hour after Jon and Jordan left for the UK, my laptop stopped working.
“Well that's just great” I thought, “what IS the point of marrying an IT person and enduring a lifetime of geekness if he can't be here when you need him??”
So I took it to PC World to be repaired.
“Don't leave your laptop there if there are Ugandans working on it” Vicky had said, “you need to be there while they are repairing it or they will steal parts of your laptop.”
“They are Indians” I said.
“Then it will be OK” she replied.
The shop assistant working there is Ugandan and as she was filling in the form for the repair work to be done (by the honest Indians!), she asked me my name.
Now, Ugandans find my name quite difficult, because the KI in Kim is pronounced 'ch' in their language. So really, they would say Chim and Chira instead of Kim and Kira.
And the CH sound in Chamberlain would be spelt Ki, Ky, Ci, Cy, Cu.
So what I've learned to do is either write my name on the form myself, or else give them one of my business cards and they can copy it themselves.

So the conversation went:
Shop assistant: “What is your name?”
Me (looking through handbag): “Hold on, I've got it written on a card.”
Shop assistant (amazed): “You have forgotten your name?”