July 2009

Jon and Jordan were in the UK for most of July, and Kira and I had a nice girly time together. Usually she gets very upset when Jon is away, but she managed really well this time. Sometimes she had sleepovers which meant I was in the house on my own (along with the dog). It seemed very strange, but I got used to it. We also had more invites out and actually had a better social life than we usually do.

We borrowed a DVD from a friend ‘The Gods Must be Crazy’. We hadn’t seen it before, and we both loved it. We ended up watching it 8 times! I love the African setting to it, and if I wasn’t living in Africa, would very much want to, having seen that film.

Kira slept with me every night, and decided to ‘take over’ the bedroom. “Daddy won’t need his dressing gown, so I’ll wear it.” Daddy won’t be using his wardrobe, so I’ll put my clothes in here.” “I’ll just bring my toothbrush and put it in your bathroom.”
Just before they arrived back she said to me “I want to sleep with you forever.”
“What about daddy?” I asked
“He can sleep here when I’m having a sleepover with friends.”

There are always lots of things to organise at the the homeschool centre.
Some are drastically exciting like buying carbon paper, Omo to clean the floor or a new lightbulb …. but they need to be done.
A couple of rooms in the building are rented out by tenants, and sometimes at lunchtimes Vicky, the teacher, would have to go and knock on their doors and reclaim some plates and cutlery so the children could have their lunch! She asked if we could have some new plates and forks so the children could easily have their lunch every day. Kira and I went off to the market and had a bit of a shopping spree.
We have arranged for a caterer to bring in a cooked lunch for the children every day and we pay 3000/- ($2.15 / 87p) per child per day.

The garage is also rented out by a young Ugandan who needed a place to stay. I popped in one time and he’s made it look very homely. He teaches African crafts to the children once a week. He’s very talented, the children have done some very impressive craft work (the photo is a picture Kira made), and they think the world of him.
Because we are a homeschool centre we can organise our own term dates. As people here are very ‘international’ and tend to travel a lot, we’ve organised the term dates around when people are going to be away, which means we have unusual term dates.

I am slowly working my way through ‘Mary Ominde’s African Cookery book’ and have made a few interesting recipes. I don’t think, however, I will be trying all of them even though the blurb on the book says ‘This book will lend glamour to any kitchen’. There are recipes for invalids (gruel, rice water etc); cow blood cookery; recipes for cooking fried white ants, fried grasshoppers and fried locusts.

I also think I’ve worked out the difference between maize and corn – I always thought they were the same thing. Do correct me if I’m wrong, but as I understand it, sweetcorn is yellow and maize is white. Eaten as cobs, they taste very difference. Corn is sweet, and maize is tough and floury. As flour, maize flour (‘posho’ as they call it here) becomes very stiff and tastes very different to cornflour.

And so I am still having tennis lessons – twice a week in fact. It would be very nice to play tennis on a non-sunny day, though that’s not very likely. Even if the day starts out looking a bit overcast, it pretty much becomes sunny by mid morning. I usual have a lesson at 10am, and even at that time it’s really hot. One time I got mild sunstroke, and felt pretty sick for a few hours after. I’ve started wearing a cap now and it seems to help.

Mind you, I’m surprised I can play tennis at all, if Muwanga is anything to go by. Muwanga is the real estate agent (‘blocker’) who has been looking out for a property for us. I see him fairly often and one time asked how old his 7 children were. He didn’t tell me their ages, instead he told me the year they were born. He then told me the year he was born (1968) and at this point I felt obliged to tell him when I was born.
“1959” I said.
“You are 50 then?” he asked, astounded.
“Yes” I replied
“And you are still alive!!!” he shrieked.

The life expectancy here used to be around 45, though now is around 52. We rarely see older people here. We’ve got used to it now, but in the beginning we used to look around and say “Where are the old people?” Seeing someone with grey hair is quite unusual.

I’ve been trying to find a suitable building so I can set up my Activity Centre. I found a wonderful venue and put a proposal in, in April, to rent it. I’ve been waiting expectantly ever since. Unfortunately the proposal was turned down, and all the other properties I’ve looked at haven’t been suitable.

I’ve also been spending my time writing a book called ‘Better Speaking Better Thinking’, which is now ready to send off, so that’s my next project. One of my goals for coming here was to be able to sit in the Africa sun and write.

A friend from Kampala, Anne, and two of her children came over one weekend. We decided to go clothes shopping in the market.
Shopping in the market is quite an experience. It is outdoors, very busy, the alleyways are narrow, and 99% of the people there are African. Each section of the market is filled with people selling the same things – eg fruit and veg, clothing, DIY items, shoes.
There are two different kinds of clothing stalls – ones where they hang clothes up on the walls on hangers, and ones where they dump the clothes on the ground in a big pile. The ones with clothes hanging up are more expensive (though not expensive really), so we rooted through the ones on the ground. I got Kira a pair of trousers for 2000/- ($1.44 / 58p) and a t-shirt for 700/- (50c / 20p).
Anne, who is white, can speak Luganda, and most Ugandans don’t expect white people to speak their language. As we were walking round she overheard one stall holder talking about her, saying to another “That muzungu has got a big bottom”. She replied in Luganda, much to their surprise.

And so John Bosco our houseboy came to me asking if I had some brake fluid.
“Why?” I asked
He showed me his arm which had a big gash on it.
“To put on my arm” he replied.

A week before Jon and Jordan arrived back, there was the annual Agricultural Show which is the big event in Jinja. We live opposite the Showgrounds (a big area of land) where it’s held. When we moved into the house everyone warned us that we would need to move out for a week when the show was on because of the noise. They were right about the noise. It was unbelievably loud, from 9 o’clock in the morning until 4 o’clock the next morning. Non stop.
A friend Trish, offered to put us up - she lives out of Jinja and has a self contained flat on her land. We thought about it, but I decided to stick it out.
I got very little sleep all week. Sometimes I got to sleep then woke up when the noise stopped.

Anyway Kira and I went to the show – once in the morning, but had to leave as it was too hot and there was no shade, and once in the evening which was a much better temperature but most stall holders didn’t have any form of lighting so we couldn’t see what they were selling! Kira also went a third time with some others.
It was quite impressive what some of the organisations had done – they had planted various crops at the right time in order for them to be ready for the show. There were animals around – cows, pigs, goats, horses, even a camel. There was also a mini zoo which housed an enormous snake. There were merry-go-rounds, all looking pretty old and not terribly safe, lots of food stalls, promo stalls for agricultural goods, and stalls selling clothes, crafts, shoes, etc.
One man had a mound of trousers in a pile on the ground. I wanted a pair of ¾ pants, so he rummaged through, determined to sell me something. We found a pair, but there was nowhere to try them on. At this point he produces a tape measure, measures the trousers and measures me and announced that they would fit. I bought them and they do fit.

Some people we know in Jinja are from Zimbabwe. They were telling us that before they left the country, their last pay check was for 3 trillion Zimbabwean dollars…

And so Jon and Jordan arrived back at the end of the month. I’d explained to Jordan a while ago how youngsters travelling on their own on planes are called UMs, Unaccompanied Minors. Since then he’s wanted to be a UM.
They both had one way tickets so needed to book return flights. Jon had airmiles he could use, while Jordan didn’t. It ended up being cheaper if Jordan flew separately, so that was one ambition realised!
Jon arrived back on the Sunday, so we stayed at a guest house near the airport, while waiting for Jordan who arrived back on the Monday.

And finally, Trish (who offered us her flat during the Agricultural Show) lives a few kilometres out of town. Some of her neighbours are Ugandan, one of whom is a 10 year old boy who plays with her son. The boy didn’t come around to her house for a while. They discovered that he had been sold by his teenage sister for sacrifice to a witch doctor. His body was found two weeks later with the tongue missing.