August 2009

We’ve had a little mouse in our house for a while. It was a bit elusive when we tried to catch it, so we just let it roam around. It would come out of an evening and run from behind the TV to behind the bookcase and into the spare room. It wasn’t really a bother so we just left it, especially as Kira and I had been reading a book about a little mouse who just wanted someone to look after him and feed him.
One evening Jon noticed two mice behind the bookcase. Hmmm, two mice can mean potentially lots of mice, and pretty soon afterwards he found a whole family of them living in a box in the garage, and then we started to notice different sized mice running around, albeit one at a time.
Jon mentioned it to a few Ugandans who all recommended Mouse Glue. We had never heard of it, but on asking for ‘mouse glue’ at the supermarket we discovered that it’s a very common item. Basically you spread the non-toxic glue onto pieces of cardboard and leave these out in the evening in places you think the mice will go. The next morning we found 4 mice stuck to various pieces of cardboard. I didn’t want to see what Jon did with them, but suffice it to say they are no longer here…

Unfortunately a little gecko got caught on the glue as well. We took it off and left it on the windowsill overnight. In the morning it was still there and we realised it couldn’t move because it had glue on it. Jon decided to do an ‘animal rescue’ and got a cotton bud and washing up liquid to clean the glue off. He then covered the gecko with talcum powder. We weren’t sure if it could open its mouth. This would have been a bit of a problem if it couldn’t eat, so we tried prising its mouth open with a blunt knife. It could open its mouth so we let it go free in the garden.

I still struggle at times to know what to do when people ask for money. Sometimes it’s easy because people ask just to try their luck, but other times people seem very needy.

We support John Bosco’s two nephews and a niece through their education – they go to boarding school - as they are orphans, and were hoping that we wouldn’t have to make decisions about financially helping other people as it’s too difficult to decide who to help and who not to, but things aren’t that easy.

A man came to our gate. He said he was from Rwanda. As he spoke fluent French I assumed he was telling the truth. He told me he had HIV, hadn’t told his mother but hoped that she would accept him when she found out. He had been employed by the local hospital, but when they found out he was HIV positive, had asked him to leave. He needed money to go back to Rwanda. He didn’t ask for money, instead asked if I could give him some work and pay him. He asked if he could clean the car. John Bosco and Geoffrey had just cleaned the car, and we already pay them to do work for us, so I couldn’t offer him work. Instead we gave him some clothing to sell and the children’s tithing money. It wasn’t very much, and I felt uncomfy.

The next morning I was in the ATM queue when an old lady came and stood in front of me. Without words she begged me for money.
I was the only muzungu in the queue. It does get a bit tiring constantly being asked for money because you are a muzungu, so I said no. But then she asked the Ugandan male next to me, who gave her 30/-. I asked him what she’d said. She’d said that she had no food. I told him that we are asked for money almost daily because we are white. He said it’s OK to give to old people, not youngsters. Old people may give you a blessing. She had gone to bed without food.
Now I felt really bad.
It’s very rare you see old people and she had looked at me with old, old eyes. I drove round to try and find her. I drove round and round the streets several times but couldn’t find her. I went home and cried.

And so the shops in Jinja don’t have any trim / skimmed milk at the moment. We’ve been to almost every supermarket and there is none at all. There is such a limited range of food we can get here, so losing one item is a major deal!

Most of the time recently I’ve been working away, running 3 weeks’ training on behalf of the British Council in a place called Tororo on the Kenyan border.
A taxi took me on Monday; I stayed in a hotel for 4 nights while I was working Tuesday to Friday, then the taxi picked me up again on Friday. It was very nice being away, staying in a nice hotel and working from 8.30 - 4.00 then having the evenings to myself.

I hadn’t been to that part of Uganda, and the trip over there took about 2 hours. We went through rice fields and through a forest where baboons live. One time there were about 20 baboons at the side of the road, including a tiny baby. They are fairly people-friendly as they are used to people stopping and giving them bananas. I got quite close to one to take a photo and it didn’t seem bothered. One time a matatu (minibus) overtook us and got very close to one of the baboons. It ran to the side and then turned, looked at the matatu and pulled tongues!

For the first couple of days of the training, Richard the training coordinator from the British Council was with me. He had booked us some rooms at the largest hotel there. However it’s an older hotel and quite run-down and there was hardly anyone there. He had asked for the best room for me and they gave me the ‘suit’ (ie suite), which was basically two rooms that had been joined together. It still had two front doors to it and two bathrooms. One of the bedrooms had stayed as a bedroom (complete with a round-shaped bed), while the other had been turned into a living room.
We went out to see the hotel where we would be running the training and when we got back there was no one on reception so Richard went behind the desk and rooted through all the drawers until he found our keys!
At meal times we were the only people in the very large dining room. We were amused at the part of the menu which said ‘bona petit’.

When we tracked down the receptionist we asked her to order a taxi for us for 7.30 in the morning. Ugandans aren’t generally known for being on time so she said she would ask the taxi to come early. “I will order it for 6am.”
He was there at 7.30 and tried to charge us 35,000/- ($11, $25) to go two kilometres, a ride that should only cost about 5,000/-. We were appalled, but his view was ‘it’s a fixed fee’.

Anyway the hotel where we were doing the training was newer and nicer so we moved there. It was more convenient being based on the premises and also saved us the appalling taxi costs.
Tororo is known for its Rock, which is a small mountain in the centre of the town. The hotel room I moved to had a balcony with a wonderful view over the Rock. Very impressive, and very nice to wake up to such a lovely view.

In the second week Jon, Jordan and Kira came with me in the taxi on the Monday and we had lunch at the hotel then went to look at the Rock. It is breathtaking to see it close up. Jordan took 30 photos of it.
As we were there a Nun came to talk to us. She lives in the little convent at the base of the mountain and works in the hospital next door. She asked us if we wanted to look round the hospital.
It was very special being shown around. The hospital was as you would expect it to be. Fairly old and very basic. She took us into the children’s ward. The beds were very simple metal framed ones with green plastic coated mattresses. A number of women were there with very small children. It was a sad experience.
(Photo below is of me and Kira in hospital grounds)

Jon has learned some of the language and was talking to some of the nurses in Luganda. They are always impressed, and laugh at the fact that a muzungu can speak their language.
We then all went round the market and then I went back to the hotel and the others went home in the taxi.

The first day in the new hotel, Richard and I ordered an evening meal in the restaurant. “What on earth did you order?” Richard asked as my plate arrived at the table. It looked like two large crumpets.
What I had ordered was a pineapple and cheese salad. I had expected a salad with cheese and pineapple. What actually arrived was two large slices of pineapple topped with grated white cheese … and that was it!
During the meal, two small Ugandan children who were with their family at the next table came over to see us. One was about 5 years old and the other was about 18 months.
Ugandan children are not only very cute, but also very polite. The 5 year old came over to me, knelt down and put his hand up for me to shake it. Then the little 18 month old did the same.
The 5 year old went to do the same with Richard, then called out to his tiny brother “Come and greet this one.”
Choochie!!

Anyway the cheese and pineapple salad was actually very nice so I ordered it again a few days later. This time the hotel had no cheese, so my ‘salad’ was simply pineapple.
Undeterred, I ordered it again the following week. This time it came with much smaller slices of pineapple, a small sprinkling of red cheese … and an ant. This is Africa. I took the ant off and carried on eating.

The food we got on the course was interesting. Often morning tea would comprise a banana and a boiled egg. The lunchtime food was very filling, very carb-rich. They would have rice, potatoes, matoke (liked solid mashed potatoes), posho (very stiff maize and water mix), along with chicken, fish, beef or goats meat.

Quite often the hotel would lose their electricity supply and would provide a generator instead – very noisy! One time the power was off most of the day which meant there was no water either. They gave all the residents a jerry can of water during the day and then in the evening a little housemaid staggered around the rooms delivering a jerry can of hot water to everyone.

One of the things I found a bit unnerving was the fact that the public toilets in the hotel had a bolt on the outside of the door! Whenever I used them I made it a quick visit in case anyone felt the urge to lock me in…

Running training course for Ugandans does have its differences. For example when I asked people what their expectations were, about 50% of them said they expected a certificate at the end. Ugandans generally like their pieces of paper showing their qualifications. One person said she expected a test at the end. Traditional training here is of the ‘chalk and talk’ kind, so they appreciated the interactive and varied nature of the training.
One of the feedback comments at the end was ‘Very active throughout so that I could not sleep off’. Another comment said ‘Feeding was okey’.

Some of the training was on CV writing. Things here work differently and apparently it’s not uncommon for people to send in CVs that are not their own, so part of the interview process is to quiz people on their CV so that the employer can check if it’s genuine!

The course attendees worked in the health field. Part of the field worker’s role is to visit people in the villages and ensure that they seek medical attention when ill. Even when some villagers are ill with life-threatening illnesses such as HIV or malaria they won’t seek help. I asked why. “They have learned to be dependent and will wait for someone to come and help them” they said.

Part way through one of the days all the staff had to go off to a seminar about Weapons of Mass Destruction. Crikey!

Sometimes after the training I would walk into town (a 25 minute walk) and go round the market. They got to know me there after a while. Mind you, in all the times I went I never saw another white person, so I guess it wasn’t difficult.
You can get things very cheaply there, especially if you want to haggle. Often I don’t as the prices seem fair. I got Jon some smart leather shoes for 30,000/- ($22, £9). I bought myself some sandals for 3,500/- ($2.50, £1), both of them without haggling.

As I was buying my sandals I heard someone saying “Food”. I turned round and there was a boy of about 12 standing by me. He said “Food please.” He didn’t look under-nourished but he was shaking. I wondered if he was shaking with hunger or was perhaps ill.
I’d given the stall lady a 5,000/- note for the sandals, and as she brought back the 1,500/- change I handed it to the boy. Again I felt uncomfy as it wasn’t much, but he was very grateful.
Some other stall holders had seen this and were laughing and calling out to the boy in their own language. As I walked away I wondered if they were saying “Well done, you got some money out of a muzungu”, so I turned to look at him, but he just looked very grateful.

One of the things we have to be aware of is ‘muzungu prices’. This is when Ugandans bump the price up because you are white. Sometimes if we don’t have an idea of the price we don’t know if we are being ripped off. Sometimes we know that prices are just way too high, and other times we can tell because when we ask the price, the shop assistant will pause, then they have a certain look on their face – one which means they are thinking ‘If I really bump the price up will they pay it?’. They then come out with a figure you will never pay.
I went into a small shop in Tororo to buy some baseball caps.
“How much are the caps?” I asked.
Pause…The Look…
“Eight thousand shillings.”
I hadn’t bought one here before so didn’t know what kind of price they would be, but absolutely knew that that was a rip off price. I went round the corner to a market stall and got them for 3,000/- each.

During the training course I split people into teams and have team competitions. The team that wins gets a baseball cap each.
I paid for the caps with my money and so the British Council reimbursed me. They asked me to get a receipt so I went back to the market stall, but the man didn’t have any receipts. I gave him a blank receipt I’d taken with me and asked if he would fill it in.
“No” he said.
The man at the next stall looked at the blank receipt and said it looked like a simple form to fill in. “No” the man said.
The man at the next stall explained how easy it was to fill in.
Eventually I worked out that he couldn’t read or write, so we went to another stall where the stall holder filled out the receipt for him, accompanied by 6 other people who had gathered around. There was a part on the form where the man had to put his signature. He didn’t have one, so the other stall holder drew a shape on his hand in biro and the man copied it onto the receipt.

Uganda has many tribes and Tororo has about seven, which is a large number for a fairly small place. There are two main tribes, one which is in favour of splitting Tororo and one which wants to keep it as it is. Tororo has become known for a famous incident between the two tribes. During a presidential visit, a member of the tribe supporting the split, ate a rat in front of the president to show how committed he was to the cause...

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.

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?”

April 2009

One of the many things we have to get used to here is how the Ugandans speak English.
For example, the electrician said to me “Could you be having a flash light around?” which means “Can I borrow a torch?”
And when we park the car in the town centre we pay by using parking tickets. You buy them in a strip of five for 1000/-. The only way the parking wardens earn money is by selling tickets, so they are always asking if you want to buy some. I told one of them I already had tickets. “You’re remaining with many?” he asked, which means “You’ve still got a lot left?”
And when we lived in Kampala I used to buy bananas from a woman who owned a little fruit stall. I was back in Kampala recently and went to the stall again.
“You are lost?” she said. “Um…no” I replied. Jon had to explain to me that it means “Long time no see.”
They also use terms of address that we find quite endearing. We get called “Madame Kim”, or “Mr Jon”. Geoffrey our gardener calls me “Mummy”, which is a sign of respect. “Hello Mummy, how are you?” he calls out.

And talking of speaking English, I was on phone to a woman from the UK. “I take it you are from Australia” she said …

Cathy, the woman who asked us for a job, also calls me Mummy. I’ve been looking round for work for her, and fortunately she now has a job in a local factory which makes matches. She came round to see me the day before she started, as she needed some money to photocopy her birth certificate and HIV results and also to get a form from the LCI - the local government official.

Last month John Bosco asked if he could have a room built in our compound for him to live in as it would save him paying rent. We asked the landlord Christopher, who very kindly agreed. Christopher came round to get an advance payment on the rent which he would use to pay the builders. Literally 5 minutes after we gave him the money a truck turned up with the building materials and the men got to work! It’s been quite an interesting experience watching the building going up. It’s only a small room, but it took quite a while to build.
Anyway John Bosco has moved in now and is very happy there. He and Geoffrey sit outside on their bench in the evenings chatting away.

One of his jobs is to do the washing. We don’t have a washing machine, but it’s pretty normal for clothes to be hand washed here. In fact, it’s hard to find packets of washing powder in the supermarkets for use in machines. We have an outside tap in the garden and he takes his many buckets and bowls outside and does the washing there. Even though it’s sunny pretty much all the time, it usually takes two days for the clothes to get dry as he can only hand-wring them out.

We also don’t use a rubbish collection service, as it’s normal to burn your rubbish. John Bosco and Geoffrey have an area in the compound where they burn it all. They must go through our rubbish as sometimes I see stuff we have thrown away turn up in their houses! We haven’t had to buy any new bin bags since we came to this house as he empties the rubbish out then puts the bag back in the bin again!
I was woken up in the middle of the night last night by a sound I couldn’t identify. After a while I wandered round the house to see what it was. It turns out that it’s Geoffrey cutting the grass at 4am in the pitch black. When I asked about it later on, I was told that the grass needs to be cut in the morning!

One of the things I find quite amusing is the way Ugandans seem to want to lock things. They have locks on everything. Every door in our house has a lock in it. There are locks on the wardrobe doors and on the drawers inside the wardrobe. One of our friends even has a fridge with a lock and key on it! Our bedroom has 9 locks and two bolts in the doors and wardrobes, plus 8 bolts on the mosquito screens on the windows. We had some bedside cabinets made. and the man was most surprised when we told him we didn’t want locks on them.

So, things at Kira’s homeschool centre continue to be interesting - and challenging for me as the coordinator.
One of the things Jon and I do is pay people who are involved in the school. Part of the night-guard’s wages is 2 kilos of sugar! Each month I have to go shopping for sugar for him. Ugandans like their sugar. John Bosco goes through a huge amount of ours. We are forever topping up the sugar jar.
Because we use tutors who are not employed as teachers, there are times when they are not available and I have to find a replacement.
Sometimes I can’t – and have ended up teaching French a couple of times when the tutor was on holiday. Sacre bleu! It’s about 30 years since I studied French. Fortunately I have a friend who is French so I can ask her the words I need to use in the lessons. It’s very useful when you need to know words like ‘une balançoire’ and ‘un portail’.
We do employ one teacher, Vicky, a Ugandan, who is very good and very reliable. She teaches two of the children from 9-10am in a room downstairs while I teach Kira Maths at that time in the room upstairs. The other kids join the school around 10.30.
One day Vicky couldn’t be there so the other 2 children came into the classroom with me. One of them is a girl with special needs. Every day since then she says to me “I come upstairs with you today?”
There was a baby snake in Vicky’s classroom one day. It was only small like a silver worm, but a baby snake means a mother snake will be around. Vicky killed it with a stone.
We did an end of term performance just before Easter. It went really well as the 7 children did various performances, and some of the home-schooled children, including Jordan came along and did something too. Jordan recited the poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling. It took him weeks to learn it as the language used is very complex, but he did well.

On Friday Vicky travelled the 2 hour journey to Kampala in a matatu (a minibus driven by lunatic drivers). She said that she usually avoids going in ones with young drivers, but this time was in a hurry so chose the first one that came along. After a few kilometres she realised that he was too dangerous a driver, so got out and waited for the next one. It came a short while afterwards, and when they arrived at the next town, she saw the first matatu she had been in. It had crashed and all the passengers had been killed.

Our friend Lindsay works for a health insurance company. They did eyesight tests on matatu drivers and found 50% of them needed glasses. Very few Ugandans wear glasses. Not only that, but many of them have HIV which can affect both the eyesight and the brain.

One time I was driving along and there was a boda boda behind me. On it was the driver and 2 male passengers, all of whom looked similar. All I could see was the driver and the heads of the two passengers behind him. As I looked in the rear view mirror it looked like a man with 3 heads. I got such a shock!

And – at last - after 6 months Jon has now managed to find a regular boda boda driver to take him to and from work, a nice guy called Kabuye. Although there are many drivers around and they spend most of their day sitting about waiting for customers, none of them was interested in having a regular customer. ‘Surely’ you would think it would be good business sense to have a regular source of income…. The added benefit for Jon is that he doesn’t have to haggle over the price every time he gets a ride.

And ‘surely’ you would think that the postal service, Posta Uganda, would work out that they need stamps of decent sized denominations. A package may cost 30,000 to send and they only seem to produce stamps of small denominations. The last parcel I sent had 24 stamps. That’s a lot of stamps to lick!

Some business things work differently too. Jon went on a training course in Kampala. For morning tea they had sausages and cinnamon cake.
I ran a course for the Hotel Owners Association with a person I co-train with, Aziz. He had hired a data projector for us. It came without a plug, just bare wires. Looking completely unperturbed by this, Aziz gets out a biro and plugs the bare wires into the socket, complete with blue sparks flying out.
I told the others about this and Jordan said “”Oh yes, that’s what it was like when I did the woodwork with Chris. We just had a drill with bare wires too.” Crikey!

Aziz comes from an interesting background. He is a Muslim, and his father has 3 wives and 27 children. I’ve spoken to a few men about this and in the towns and cities at least, there is a move away from having several wives and lots of children as they now feel it’s too expensive.

In Kampala there is a group of home schooled teenagers who meet once a fortnight on a Friday night for a get-together. As we happened to be there one weekend when they were having their meeting, Jordan and I went along. It’s a religious group and the people were very nice. At each meeting they have a ‘speaker’, and the time we were there it was one of the parents. He is from the US and is here as a Bible teacher, writer and counsellor. He gave a great talk, and also explained a bit about himself. He is married to a Kiwi and has two children. He lived in the Ukraine for a while and has 4 adopted Ukrainian children. He now lives in Uganda and has 10 adopted Ugandan children, and expects to adopt more. There are some very interesting people around.

And so Jordan is now a teenager, he was 13 on 6th April. To celebrate his birthday we took a group of his friends to a swimming pool at a sports centre, then came back to ours afterwards. We had planned to feed them all by asking the cook at Kira’s school to make pizzas for them, but she wasn’t around that day. So we decided to get them food at the venue instead. When we arrived we were told that chef was not in that day.
So I ended up going to a dukka (little shop by the roadside) that sells chapattis and rolexes. A rolex is a chapatti with an omelette in it. It is the kind of food that all the guide books tell you that you should completely avoid as you are likely to get an upset stomach due to the lack of hygiene in the food preparation. However, all the kids have been here long enough to get accustomed to it, so they were all fine.
One of the boys, another Jordan, left his clothes and bag in the changing room. When he went back to get them, his wallet and money had been stolen. I stayed by the pool looking after everyone’s stuff while they got changed, while Jon went to inform the manager. The manager’s reaction was to deny it had happened. “I did not see anyone” he said “you must have left the wallet and money at home.” While this was happening one of the children thought he saw the thief, so unbeknown to us the children decided to run after him across the golf course. Six teenage boys, pus Kira!
We wandered around wondering where they had all gone, and ended up jumping in the car and driving around to look for them. We couldn’t find them and so came back to the pool. Fortunately they had come back safely at this point – without the thief.
We then all got into the car to go back to ours – all 9 of us! Jon was driving, Kira was on my knee, 4 were squashed in the back seat and two were in the boot. Driving regulations here are very lax, and it’s not uncommon to have many kids in the car, several of whom travel in the boot. Sandy (Jordan’s home school tutor) has a 9-seater minivan. She once had 22 people in there, including her kids lying on the roof, holding onto the roof rack!
Anyway we had some snacks at ours, including a wonderful cake Sandy had made. She is the ‘cake lady’ for Jinja, and makes cakes to suit each person. As Jordan now has an interest in American football she made him a Raiders cake.
The day was topped off by someone spotting a snake under our car. We went out with torches but couldn’t find it, so just left it … it’s presumably still somewhere in the compound!
The other Jordan is from the States and was telling us the sad story of how his family are having to leave Uganda. They came over last year to open an orphanage. They went to one of the local villages, where the people handed over the orphans for them to care for. After a year, they discovered that they were not orphans, but were actually the villagers’ own children and that the villagers felt they were onto a good thing by having their children fed, clothed and educated for free. The people said they would have to give the children back, but the villagers then accused the people of child-trafficking and the husband was put in jail. He was released the day before Jordan’s party, and the family left to go home soon afterwards.

And my birthday was a few days later. I was in Kampala most of the day, and got back about 4pm, to find that Jon had arranged for us to have a TV aerial installed as part of my birthday present. We now have two whole TV channels we can watch!
He made us a nice meal, Sandy had made me a wonderful wheat-free chocolate cake, and then we all played Trivial Pursuit in the evening, so it was a nice day.
I’m having a combined birthday and housewarming party this weekend.

The weekend just gone we went to a St. George’s celebration in Kampala organised by the British Resident’s Association. It was a 60’s Night, and almost everyone turned up in 60’s gear. I wore a school uniform and was a ‘child of the 60’s’. It was quite strange because there were 200 Brits there, it was held in a lovely venue, there was a 60’s band called Beatle Juice, a disco, a buffet meal and a tombola. It wasn’t until I walked past the kitchen and saw the Ugandan staff that I realised I was in Africa!
Everything about the event seemed so ‘normal’ that I’d forgotten I was in a third world country.

We stayed with our ex-neighbours, Eric and Lindsay and her two 16 year old twins, Gordon and Tanya. Kira just adores Tanya and glues herself to her when she is there, so we don’t see much of her.
Jordan decided to lock the bathroom door when he went for a shower, something that no one does because there are internal doors for the toilet and shower. Anyway this door has never been locked, and so he discovered that he couldn’t actually open it to get out.
It was quite interesting watching the males’ different approaches to helping Jordan. Because the windows here have bars on them, he couldn’t get out that way, so they had to deal with the door. Jon’s tack was to get a screwdriver and take the lock off and see if he could get it sorted without any damage to the door. Eric kicked the door, put a hole in it, and as it still didn’t open went off to get his pickaxe instead, while 16-year-old Gordon used brute force and just kicked it down regardless. The door isn’t looking too good now! We need t provide a new door methinks.
That’s the second time Jordan has managed to lock himself in a bathroom since we’ve been here. Just be careful if we come and visit you….