I finished off the training in Tororo at the beginning of the month. The others came over on the last day and we went away for the weekend to a place called Mbale about an hour from where I was working. We stayed in an older hotel, though it was nicely maintained.
The children liked it as they had their own room, complete with TV. Heaven only knows what time they got to sleep.
The first evening we ordered our evening meal, it took an hour and a quarter to arrive. We decided to be clever the next day and ordered our food an hour before we wanted it, while we stayed in our room. They called us through after an hour and a quarter for our meals, but Jon’s wasn’t ready. Even though he had ordered an ordinary meal from the menu, they thought he might want a variation on it. They hadn’t contacted him to ask, which meant they then had to go away and prepare it. He had to wait 2 hours in total!

On the Saturday we went to a place called Sipi Falls, a well known tourist spot which has three separate waterfalls. We used a guide to take us to one of the Falls. It was very impressive.
We spent the afternoon at a local guest house, having lunch and reading. It’s a new place and is decorated in a trendy yet homely fashion. We loved the living room, which had several book cases. Given the lack of ‘real’ libraries here it was a rare treat to be able to sit and read.

The scenery in the west is different to here and on the way back we drove past a small forest of thin trees.
Builders here use wooden, not metal, scaffolding.
“I didn’t know you could grow scaffolding” remarked Jon.

And so, not only did the shops not have any low fat milk, they had a phase where they hardly had any milk at all. We were reduced to buying the tiny 250ml cartons of milk, the ones that come with a straw!
Anyway a shipment must have arrived in the last week as supermarkets now have the longlife trim milk again. Excitement!

You may have heard in the news that there were riots in Kampala. Uganda has a president. It also has kingdoms with rulers of each kingdom. The ruler (kabaka) of the Buganda kingdom and the president don’t always see eye to eye which ultimately ended in riots flaring up over a proposed visit by the kabaka. Most of the riots took place in Kampala over a period of a few days. The city centre was virtually closed down and a number of people were killed.
Jon had been to Kampala the day before the riots started, and had seen the beginnings of unrest. The Buganda kingdom starts just outside Jinja, and apparently there were some minor riots on the outskirts, though we didn’t see anything. Things are back to normal now.

Jordan has decided that he is never going to cut his hair and has developed a mane of hair now. I said I’ll need to get the door widened so he can get in. He is several inches taller than me now, so must have shot up over the last year.
He is always talking about driving so I’ve started giving him driving lessons. We go to a grassy area over the road from us. Jordan is pretty competent and is doing really well. He picked up the basics easily in the first lesson. There is a path we can drive around and after we’d driven round about 230 times (in first gear) we decided to follow a track through the grass. Jordan drove about 100 metres down the track until we realised we were on the golf course!
Given that he’s only 13, I’m not exactly sure what he’s going to be able to do with the driving skills he is acquiring. He claims he’s seen a 12 year old boda driver, but I’m not convinced.

And talking of which, Kira and I were on a boda. It stopped a few hundred metres from where we were going. The driver had run out of petrol!
“The petrol, it is lost” he said.

Our houseboy and gardener have started a chapatti business in the garden. They cook rolexes for 800/- (chapatti with omelettes in them) and chapattis (200/-) for local folk. Quite often Jon and Jordan will order them for their lunch. Much more convenient than having to prepare food yourself!

Jordan and I decided to use the library again to see if there was any chance there would be a book on Mussolini for a project he was doing. We went along and discovered that it was ‘Reading Week’, where the aim was to encourage adults to read so that their children would also read. There seemed to be a bigger selection of books this time. We chose 11 and took them to one of the staff. “You can’t take books out, it’s Reading Week” she said, “come back next week.”
Given how long things take here I didn’t want to go through the hassle again and asked if we could take them.
“Have you got a card?” she asked.
I said I had been in once before, had filled in the application form, paid 10,000/- and assumed I could pick the card up this time.
“Go and see the Librarian” she said. I went to see her. She was having her lunch and told me she wouldn’t have my card and that I had to see the Secretary. I went to find the Secretary. She was out for lunch.
Anyway it went on in this vein for quite a bit longer and I began to realise that taking books out of the library was a very unusual occurrence. I also discovered that the system has changed and they don’t use cards now. Apparently the woman who had asked me to fill the form in last time had been dismissed. Use of the library is free and I shouldn’t have paid 10,000/-. They told me to find her and ask for my money back.
In total 5 staff members dealt with my query, including the Secretary who had come back by this time and asked me for 500/- so she could go into town to photocopy the application form as I had to fill another one in.
She came back a lot later. “Have you got a pen?” she asked, “No” I replied so we went into her office - the one with the typewriter – where she asked another woman for a pen. The woman rummaged through her handbag and found one. I filled in the form while the Secretary sat and watched me.
“How long do you want to borrow the books for?” she asked.
“How long do people usually borrow them for?” I replied.
They looked at each other, shrugged their shoulders and said “Two weeks”.

Eventually they deemed that I was a suitable person to borrow books, at which point another staff member took them and made a log of them in a notebook. He spent so long that I thought he was writing the books out word for word in case they never came back. I then had to sign my name 11 times against each book.
Exhausted, we finally left the library without any books on Mussolini.

Reading the newspaper is always an education as they often write about issues that we’re not familiar with or have viewpoints very different from ours. For example there was an article about a cow suckling a dog. I thought it was quite amusing, but the cow owner’s view was that this was an abomination and the animals would have to be killed. He wouldn’t be able to kill them himself in case it brought a curse on his family and so had to get another person to do it.

Another article said that ‘A young man reportedly ran mad last week after charms were poured on him. The man, only identified as Umar, was bathing in a makeshift bathroom when an unidentified person poured the contents of a pot on him. Residents said the charms included chicken heads, human hair, claws and a mixture of blood and herbs. They said Umar began squeaking and growling and refused to get out of the bathroom. He was then taken to a shrine after doctors reportedly failed to treat him. The residents said a man whose son was jailed over a debt with Umar, could be responsible for the incident.’

Sometimes Ugandans talk in ‘Ugandan time’ and we have to work out what they mean. For them the day starts at 6am and the time is calculated on that basis. So 7am for them is 1 o’clock as it is 1 hour after 6am, 8am is 2 o’clock and so on.
One day I took the children from Kira’s school for a cookery lesson in the afternoon. I asked Vicky, the teacher, that morning what time we were leaving. “We will go early” she said “at seven thirty.” “Seven thirty?” I said “that’s pretty late.” I then realised she was talking in Ugandan time and that we were leaving at 1.30pm.

One of the sessions we have arranged at Kira’s school is Community Service. Those children who want to, go to help out at an orphanage after school once a week for about an hour. Kira loves it. She has got to know most of the children there, and while they mainly play with the orphanage children, it’s a big help to the staff there.

We have started to go to dance classes now. An Australian woman has started running classes. Kira goes to ballet and jazz dance, and I go to the same jazz dance class. We are even going to do a short performance in November.
Unfortunately there is no ballroom dancing here.

However the squash court has finally re-opened, it has been in renovation since we arrived here a year ago. It’s now the sport I play instead of tennis. Much easier as it’s indoors and you don’t have to cope with the African sun.
It’s also a sport Jon and Jordan enjoy so it’s become the family sport (or at least ¾ of the family!).

Some friends of ours, Bob & Sue from NZ, have been in Uganda recently, a place they used to live in during the Amin regime. It was nice to see them. It’s always good to catch up with people we know and hear news from the Outside!

And yes, it’s coming up for Panto time again! It was such a success last year that the newly named Jinja Community Theatre is holding another one in December, this time Aladdin. Jon is obviously becoming known as the man in Jinja who is happy to wear a dress as he’s playing the part of Widow Twanky. Watch this space…

Last week it was Kira’s half term break and the two of us went to Kampala to do voluntary work with an organisation helping women with HIV and people in the local community. It was set up by a woman called Moureen and she has done a great job of being able to provide help to a range of women in the villages.
As Kira is underage – and also the first child to be a volunteer – we were restricted in the number of things we could do. However we made health & social education posters and went to schools to give them the posters and explain ways to keep healthy and safe. We helped plant trees and shrubs around the health centre. The organisation is linked with Red Cross, so we would wear the tabards and meet with school groups who wanted to be Red Cross volunteers. Kira gave out weekly food rations to women with HIV.

The people in the villages are very poor and their housing is very basic. They can buy water from a tap at 100/- for a medium-sized jerry can and 200/- for a large one.
The women clients we met were very nice. Some of them had formed a singing group and gave us a rendition at the office. A blind guitarist from Entebbe had offered to join them.

Moureen is organising for someone to buy pigs for the group - 1 male and 3 females - as an additional way for the women to raise money. She asked if I would contribute as the women had decided to call one of the pigs ‘Kira’!

A couple who are both nurses from Belgium were volunteering too. They have been here for 7 months and have done a lot to help out. Moureen has no funding and relies on volunteers helping her. We paid 150,000/- per person per week ($109, £40) which covers our accommodation and evening meal. The rest she uses to fund the charity. She urgently needs volunteers, so if you know of anyone who would like the experience of being able to make a difference, let me know and I can give you the contact details. There are a wide range of activities people can become involved in.

I did a couple of things I said I would never do. Firstly go on a boda boda in Kampala because of the traffic, and secondly go on a matatu (minibus). However I didn’t have the car with me and there was no other way to get to the villages. We were fine.

I still miss my cats in NZ and a couple of days ago we got an email from our neighbour there, Shirley, who has taken our cats, giving us an update. The cats are doing really well, thank you Shirley and family.
Just after I read this email, Kira and I drove to the shops. We saw a tiny little kitten crossing the road. It was so cute and so much in danger.
“Oh mummy can we have it?” asked Kira.
“If we can find it when we come back” I replied.
We drove back, parked the car and wandered around trying to find it. We eventually found it down a back alley by a small house. A Ugandan boy of about 11 was by the house. I asked if it was his kitten. He said it was (though you can never be sure) and said we could have it.
The kitten had a bad eye infection, its eyes were closed over and the fur around the eyes was dirty and matted. I wasn’t sure if it was his to give away so asked if there was someone else we could speak to. There didn’t seem to be.
We called Jon to see if he was OK to have a tiny kitten. Kira was saying “Please Daddy” and held the kitten up to the phone so he could hear it mewing away. He couldn’t really say no.
“You give me 1000 shillings” said the boy “and you can take the kitten.” We brought it home and I called the vet. He does home visits and so came to give it antibiotics. We cleaned its eyes and it looked a lot better. We don’t know if it’s a boy or girl yet, though it looks like a girl. It’s a gingery colour and because we live in Jinja, Kira has called it Ginger.
It is tiny and very cute and seems very much at home. Even though she’d been living presumably wild and not looked after, she took to using a litter tray straight away. She is too small to eat solids so we feed her with a syringe using milk, egg yolk, oil and warm water mixed together.
Jon pretended not to be interested, but he researched the kind of food we could give it and has been out buying things for it.
Jordan loves it and has made a box and given it a ball while Kira has it sleeping in her bedroom. Even Lotte the dog has been OK with her.

The next day Lotte was spayed. The vet came back again. He gave Ginger more antibiotics and performed the operation on Lotte in our garage. He mustn’t have given her the right dose of anaesthetic as she woke up during the operation and was in a lot of pain, so he gave her some more. I sat with her while she ‘came to’ afterwards and she was in a bad way, crying out loudly. When I went to close the garage door there was a group of Ugandan builders working at the house next door. They were standing and staring, wondering what the commotion was.
Anyway that was yesterday and Lotte is a lot better now.

So we now have a dog, kitten and geckos in the house, and goats, a cow, cockerels and hens next door. John Bosco and Geoffrey have bought some hens and a cockerel which live in our compound and sometimes wander into the house. Never a peaceful moment!