Thea's blog

Signing off

2011-05-14T07:15:00.000-07:00

My last day in Uganda. Feeling a bit teary. Not very good at farewell speeches (as several people tactfully pointed out after my mumbled monologue at MMU leaving do!) so will keep it brief. It's been a fantastic 23 months. So many horizons opened, so many new experiences, good friends made, even a modest number of achievements accomplished. Uganda is a wonderful country and Ugandans are wonderful people. I will miss it painfully. I hope one day I will be back.

That's all.

Over and out.

Some things I'm going to miss

2011-05-02T09:39:00.000-07:00

Here are some of the sights of Fort Portal I am going to miss:

- The ‘suit men’ who walk around dressed in 10 jackets one on top of the other in the midday heat trying to sell them to passers by.
- The ‘maize men’ who work in the maize mills and occasionally emerge in to the sunlight covered from head to toe in white dust like apparitions from the next world.
- Little kids screaming ‘maazzuuungguuu!!!!’ as if I’m the most exciting thing they’ve ever seen, even though I come past twice a day, every day.
- Boda drivers standing at the side of the road tipping their motorbikes 4 feet in the air to get the last drop of petrol out of the tank.
- Goats in comic places (doorsteps, backs of bodas, one trying to rest its hairy chin on my knee in a crowded matatu).
- The ‘lawnmower men’ balancing two strimmers vertically upright in either hand on the back of a boda like medieval knights in a jousting competition.
- The boda drivers on the way to Saaka who yell ‘Abwooli I loooove yooou!’ and try to jump on the back of my boda as I drive past. The joke never seems to wear thin for them…
- Chirpy, flirty, yellow-clad prisoners shouting rude things in lutooro.
- Double beds on the backs of bicycles (only seen that once - it was impressive!)
- 4 adults + 2 chickens + 1 suitcase on one boda
- The beautiful, regal, ever-present Rwenzori mountains.
- Banana trees, crater lakes, thunderstorms, blue skies, fresh air, cows with big horns, matooke on bicycles.

April already

2011-03-31T08:16:00.000-07:00

February and March have whizzed past while January was still getting its coat on. I’m kind of disarmed by the insane speed with which my VSO experience has shot by. I have never in my life before known time to pass so quickly. I guess it’s because I’m having such a good time. I really, actually am. Love the job, love the place, love the people…

So why then am I leaving? It’s a good question, and one I have been asking myself fairly regularly since accepting a job in West Africa. But more of that later…

Meanwhile…lots of rain since the beginning of March. Pretty cold here in FP although KLA as sticky as ever. Trying to do a zillion things at once – finalise MMU’s ten year strategic plan, get life skills/career guidance off the ground, goad my hopeless unit in to becoming something vaguely passable, start up a fundraising short course, coax students in to taking over termly magazine, develop a grand plan for solving the university’s financial woes. Kind of semi-succeeding with some things and miserably failing with others. Usual story. Meanwhile shamelessly neglecting my smallholding. Vegetable patch has been reclaimed by the jungle. Abwooli the hen came to a sad end when she tried to befriend a pussy cat (curiousity killed the chicken in this case). Atenyi and Atooki are once more on egg strike (perhaps because I usually only remember to feed them every third day). Glad there’s no such thing as the RSPCA in this country.

And all of a sudden I have only 6 weeks left to go.

It’s all a bit of a wrench. I feel I could very happily continue bumbling along here indefinitely. But this irritating, naggy little voice keeps whispering things like: you’ve been a volunteer for two years, it’s frankly ridiculous at your age, it’s time to stop farting about and get a proper job. Humpf. Unfortunately I can't really argue with these home truths. So no extension for me after all. Instead I’m off to the rust- and mould-inducing heat of Sierra Leone. It's all happening a bit too fast for my liking. Slow down, slow down. This is Africa after all.

Rally

2011-01-20T08:17:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago President Museveni came to Fort Portal in a gigantic helicopter like a ripe avocado. He spent the week giving speeches and opening factories and schools around and about. The grand finale was a rally in Fort Portal town itself. Feeling it was an essential part of my cultural and social education, I went along.

It was advertised as 4-6pm but I’ve been in Uganda long enough to know there was no point in arriving until at least 5.45. There were a good few thousand people at the sports ground, mostly in the bright yellow t-shirts of the NRM that had been handed out liberally over the preceding week. We were frisked on entering. It was an unusual kind of frisking - more an evaluation of my feminine attributes (the lady gave my boobs a squeeze and patted my bum) than an effective screening for bombs or guns. I proceeded with some speed into the fray.

The sports ground was flanked by two stages. Revealing of the savvy nature of Museveni’s campaign, the biggest one was for the musicians and dancers, while a far smaller platform on the other side of the grounds was dedicated to the political candidates. Well over 60% of the Ugandan population are under 25 and really aren’t that interested in the crumbling regime of a crusty old sexagenarian president. Clearly mindful of this, Museveni has given himself a makeover of cool. One of his most effective campaigners is indeed Bebe Cool, Ugandan’s favourite popstar, who accompanies him on most of his rallies whipping the youthful crowds in to a frenzy with his muscle-bound torso and high-energy songs. Either by accident, or by careful design, the president’s famous rap incident has evolved in to the catchphrase of the campaign ‘Do you want another rap?’ ‘Yes, ssebo!’. (Even I joined in for that bit!).

So a strange but clearly not un-deliberate situation emerged whereby the warm up speakers (NRM candidates for mayor, MP, LCV, women MP etc) were in direct competition with the entertainment stage. Both were fighting for the attention of the crowd, although generally the musicians appeared to have the upper hand. Once or twice, a boring speaker was cut short by the volume being turned up on the music stage. The crowd absolutely loved the spectacle and after thirty minutes of this hilarious carry on, a fantastic, high-spirited, excited atmosphere had been generated.

Just as it was reaching its peak, in a masterful moment of event engineering, Museveni all at once glided through the centre of the crowd on top of a landcruiser. An omniscient, omnipotent deity, smiling paternally at the crowds, seeming to bear the message that the Movement, and by extension himself, are above music, above politics, above all things. The speech that followed was largely forgettable and delivered in rather tired and slightly bored way. However it hardly seemed to matter as the magic spell had already been cast. Even the crowd’s angry response to the failure of the agricultural advisory service (which the president cleverly channelled towards a scapegoat woman manager) seemed to lack any real vehemence since everyone was too drunk on the party atmosphere. I too found myself a little intoxicated by the spirit of the event and as we left, just for a moment, seriously contemplated buying a Museveni baseball cap.

January already

2011-01-16T05:43:00.000-08:00

A jump of three months. Gone in an eyeblink. Still can’t believe how quickly time passes here. There are only five months left to my placement. Not sure if I’m ready to leave yet.

A quick summary of the last 3 months. All going well at MMU. Finally managed to get some money for infrastructure, which has hugely helped the case for my department, the so-called Planning and Development Unit. I think it’s no coincidence that we have since been given a new staff member. This is good news for me because finally I have someone to train in resource mobilisation in a genuine capacity-building way. She is young but keen and seems to be pretty on the ball. The same sadly cannot be said of the existing members of the department. What else? Have enjoyed facilitating a strategic planning process, out of which a reasonably solid 10 year plan will soon emerge. Have also enjoyed piloting a fundraising training course with some very appreciative third year students. Hope to turn it in to a short course before I leave. Other side projects– careers service, alumni office - moving on slowly but steadily.

Outside work my serene, rural life continues. Chickens and lettuces are my main preoccupation. Both are flourishing. Have also taken up bread-making and other culinary experiments. Am struggling to learn Lutooro, although I hope a renewed new year’s determination will move things on a bit.

Had a lovely xmas and new year with Mum, Lettice and Duncan. Saw more of Uganda than I had seen in the previous 18 months. It was a fun, action-packed three weeks: we dodged night-time buffalo in Murchison; laughed at lions slumped in comically uncomfortable poses in trees; we perfected our mazungu corkscrews on Lake Bunyoni and we saw the only four zebra in Lake Mburo (apparently there are 15,000 more, but we saw no sign of them). I was a bit embarrassed to discover what a skewed view I have of the country, having spent all my time in affluent Kampala or the fertile bread-basket of the west. The area around Murchison opened my eyes a little to some of the harsher living conditions in the drier north. Feel I need get about more.

Meanwhile starting to wonder about life after VSO. Still have plenty to do at MMU and not sure if I will have made that much of an impact by June. Thinking about extending while also keeping my options open.... humpf. I've never been very good at decisions.

Ssesse islands

2010-10-15T05:06:00.000-07:00

Healthcare

2010-10-09T02:51:00.000-07:00

This week I got a taste of public healthcare in Uganda. Luckily for me, I wasn’t actually the patient, only the chauffeur. The patient was a 16 year old relative of Mary, our maid, whose leg was horribly mangled in a bus crash in November last year. I actually narrowly avoided the same bus crash myself, just happening to be on a different bus on the same road a few hours earlier. At the time I was so shaken by the near miss that I sent a furious email to the VSO Country Director telling him he was putting our lives at risk by forcing us to travel in ‘flying coffins’ to pointless meetings in Kampala. I haven’t been invited to a meeting since so I guess the message got through.

Buhinga hospital, the regional referral hospital, is quite an eye-opener for a sheltered, privileged westerner like me. Everywhere you look, huge queues of people sit patiently, resignedly, despairingly in some cases, waiting for someone to help them. On the congested wards, sick people lie on shabby, closely-packed cots, elbow-to-elbow with no dividing curtains. Patient privacy doesn’t seem to exist as a concept. When I went to the surgical ward, I found a group of about ten doctors and trainees bunched around a bed examining a post-operative patient. Any other patient who was well enough was craning their neck to hear the prognosis of their neighbour, while another group of people were poking their heads through the glassless windows like it was some kind of spectator sport.

There are none of the reassuring hallmarks of hygiene and sanitation we take for granted in a western hospital. No comforting smell of disinfectant, or nice clean patient gowns or well-stocked storerooms full of gloves and drugs and catheters. I found myself trying not to breathe too much in case I picked up something nasty. I thought of how things work back home, with patients demanding more and more for information, explanation, choices and services. Here people are passive, disempowered, powerless. They don’t, or believe they don’t, have any right to claim for a good service. They just hope if they wait long enough a doctor, with God’s will, will help them get better. And if they can’t be helped, so be it.

Trying my hardest to blot out the queue of 150 people patiently waiting people in outpatients, I realised I would have to start throwing my mazungu weight around if we were to have any chance of getting out of there in one day. As it turned out, I didn’t really need to do much weight throwing, as everyone seemed happy to bend over backwards to accommodate my requests. I was ushered up to meet the surprisingly young surgeon, who finished his rounds then came straight away to see Rosette. In five minutes, he had diagnosed a persistent infection and proscribed an x-ray, antibiotics and physiotherapy. Meanwhile I diagnosed him with a dreadful bedside manner and hopeless communication skills but attributed this to being overworked, underpaid and the fact that gruff, unapproachable doctors are clearly the norm in Uganda. We then went up to the X-ray theatre, where I found myself offering my first ever bribe to the radiologist to make sure Rosette bypassed the long queue of patiently waiting sick people. I am utterly ashamed in retrospect, but at the time all I could think about was getting out of that hell hole as quickly as possible. Thanks to my temporary loss of scruples, we were in and out in about two hours (less than a trip to A&E in the UK I couldn’t help but notice), and Rosette is hopefully a little further along the way to recovery.

Rent-a-crowd

2010-08-29T05:48:00.000-07:00

My first Ugandan introduction ceremony turned out to be a bit of a surreal experience. Surreal because, at an event which is traditionally all about show and performance, we somehow found ourselves to be inadvertantly part of the spectacle rather than the discreet fly-on-the-wall spectators we’d planned to be. I’d been invited by my colleague Evarist, who had to bail at the last minute leaving us sadly without an interpreter, but I’d managed to drag along Duncan and new MMU volunteer Brendan. We’d been handed a few titbits of information beforehand, like the fact that the groom was Danish and the wedding was out of town but we could get a lift if we were punctual. But it later turned out that a few other details had been held back, such as the fact that we were going to be the only other mazungus attending and furthermore the real reason for inviting us was so we could substitute for the groom’s own family who couldn’t themselves be there. So we soon found ourselves in the bizarre position of being fake Danes among a rather modest, otherwise-Ugandan groom’s party. At one hairy moment it looked like either Duncan or Brendan was going to be asked to stand in as the groom’s father - despite him being older than the pair of them - but luckily the moment passed and they were let off the hook. In the end our only assigned task was to drink the traditional glass of milk offered by the bride’s family. Even this simple job Duncan and I utterly failed at, it being a bit too cow-y for our taste. The grass around Duncan’s chair was momentarily flushed white as if from an inexplicable chemical spill.

In Uganda the introduction is traditionally far more important than the wedding itself, reflecting perhaps how pragmatism rather than romance is the dominant theme. During the ceremony, a complicated pre-nuptial agreement is symbolically signed between the two families, setting out the terms under which marriage is to take place. Critical of course is the bride price (an ‘insurance policy’ is apparently a less sexist way of looking at it) which is usually agreed in terms of alcohol, cows and money. The two families and their friends sit opposite each other in large decorated tents. Each has an MC with a microphone who has been hired to do the negotiating. The MCs prattle on, cracking jokes, having little digs at each other and generally keeping everyone entertained. The negotiations are interspersed with a booming soundtrack of East African pop, country and western and the inescapable Celine Dion. The bit I liked best (and about the only bit I understood as the whole thing was conducted in Lutooro) was when three different groups of beautifully dressed girls were brought in the arena – first some shy little ones, then some timid teenagers, then finally some elegant ladies – and the groom was asked to say among all of them who was his betrothed. I wondered what would have happened if he’d got it wrong.

After a couple of hours the ceremony drew to a close and the milling and chatting began. We realised we might be heading for hot water when Brendan was asked what life was like in Denmark. Rather than spend the next two hours making up stories of ice-skating in Copenhagen, we decided it was probably a good time to slip away.

It seems we’re not the only rent-a-crowd in Fort Portal at the moment. The NRM primaries are taking place on Monday, and the campaigning is noisy and hazardous to other road-users (I was nearly flattened by a fast-moving, honking motorcade on the way back from work). Anyway, someone said that they had been studying the faces in the campaign processions and apparently they’d seen the same people rooting for the incumbent MP on Monday, who’d been out on Thursday supporting his challenger. The conclusion being most people’s support can be bought for a few thousand shillings. It seems that voting preference here boils down to an uncomplicated equation of whoever promises to divert more money towards ones interests. Simple and fair enough I suppose.

Chickens

2010-08-26T08:19:00.000-07:00

At last my chicken house has some residents! First I swapped a fancy mobile phone (a temptingly nick-able hot potato I was glad to get rid of) for two fat hens. Then my friend Joe presented me with a third one, skinnier but cannier. In a rather unfortunate allegorical way, Atwooki is fat, white and domineering, Abwooli is thin, brown and bullied, and Atenyi, the last to arrive and a beautiful shiny black with purple bits, is so scared of the others she spends most of the day hiding in the hedge.

To date the chickens have firmly resisted all effort to contain them. I painstakingly erected a metre-high chicken wire fence, but they quickly learned to outwit me and fly clean over it whenever my back was turned. Then, with much squawking (chickens) and shrieking (me), I managed to catch them long enough to clip one wing each. Despite what I was told, this made no difference at all and they continued to shoot merrily, if a bit wonkily, over the fence at every opportunity. I then got a bit fed up and, in a frenzy of flying feathers, chopped the second wing back as far as it would go. It has stopped them flying but it hasn’t stopped them breaking through the bamboo bit of the fence where I ran out of chicken wire. So despite my best efforts, the chickens continue to run riot through the compound covering it in huge, sludgy turds and eating everything they can get their little yellow beaks in to. They have scoffed all my neighbour’s strawberries and kicked my pea plants out of the bed. The only person who seems to have any control over them is the compound’s resident two-year-old, Nino, whose new hobby is to chase them around in circles prodding them with a bamboo stick.

They also show no hesitation about wandering in to the house. My chicken policing hit a new low today when I came home to hear from flatmate Ciaran, recently returned from South Africa, that one of the chickens had spent the morning in the bath tub. Some casual questions sprang to mind such as why did no one stop it, or remove it (especially given the thick carpet of shit it had deposited). But somehow it required too much energy to ask.

Worst of all, they have laid a single egg in nearly 3 weeks. When I complained about this to a passing Irish woman, who happened to be a chicken inspector in a previous life, she suggested they might actually be male. Apparently, the only way to tell is to check their pelvic bone structure which I feel a little unqualified to do. Another way might be to get a cockerel and see if he can jolly things along, but then I don’t think I could handle cockadoodledoing in my ear from dawn to dusk. I will seek further counsel.

Public speaking

2010-08-01T09:35:00.000-07:00

Ugandans are very confident and articulate public speakers. On many occasions I have witnessed people being called upon, without any prior warning, to address a crowd on a particular topic and have been astounded and impressed by the unblinking calmness, coherence and eloquence with which they have done so. For me the thought of having to speak in public without comprehensive prompt notes and at least an hour of practising in front of the mirror is the stuff of nightmares, literally.

I should have guessed what was coming when I was invited by Betina, MMU accountant stroke youth mentor and motivational speaker, to accompany her while she addressed a group of prefects from St Leo’s college on the occasion of their annual induction last Saturday. St Leo’s is a bit like the Harrow of Uganda – expensive, traditional and with a glittering alumni. Its complicated prefect system is probably modelled on the English public school (although I doubt whether Eton has a Prefect for Furniture and Electricity) and the prefects clearly take their responsibilities very seriously. The boys, each in a dazzlingly spotless white shirt proudly bearing the school’s crest, had names like Basil, Hilary and Godfrey. As they began a jaunty, slightly mischievous warm-up game involving songs and disappointingly pedestrian dares to pass the time while the teachers arrived, I felt like I was being transported in to some kind of Ugandanised Evelyn Waugh novel.

So there were welcomes by various members of staff and a speech by MMU’s own DVC Professor Semana, an OB and St Leo’s board member. Then Betina began her very entertaining and engaging motivational address and I settled down comfortably in to my squishy sofa in order to enjoy it the better. Just as I was starting to really relax, Betina suddenly stopped mid-flow, turned to me and said, ‘and now Thea is going to address you on the subject of teamwork.’

I was seized by completely blind panic. I really do not have the first idea about team work, being a bit of a poor team player myself, and certainly have no wise words on the subject to convey to a knowledge-hungry and impressionable group of young men. To make matters worse, I am completely incapable of thinking on my feet, even more so when 50 pairs of eyes are trained on me. Of course I couldn’t refuse to speak or feign a sore throat or something, I just had to try and minimise the damage and not make too great a tit of myself.

As the other speakers had been talking, my mind had been wandering vaguely in the area of my brief and rather unhappy experiences of teaching in the UK school system. It was these thoughts that came flooding in to my mind as I stood up to address the crowd. Consequently, in the space of the following five minutes, I managed to convince a room full of 16 year old Ugandan boys that UK schools are full of rabid, knife-wielding criminals who attack their teachers and each other on a daily basis and that the social and moral fabric of the UK is in a state of collapse. I did manage to end on a slightly more positive note by telling them they were the ‘cream on top of the milk’ (somehow ‘crème de la crème’ sounded a bit foreign) and should seize the opportunities offered by their superior education. I don’t think many of them will be dreaming of study in England any more though.

Back again

2010-07-24T11:05:00.000-07:00

Back to school after a lovely, long, lazy break in the UK. Suddenly panicked at the thought of a twelve-month stint without another trip home, I was a bit overzealous with my victualling: 5kg of porridge, 12 tins of tuna, 2kg of chocolate, 1kg raisins, marmite, custard powder (odd craving I agree), olive oil, 1kg of mixed nuts and 4 boxes of lasagne sheets. As I lugged half my own body weight on to two cars, a train, two taxis, two planes and two buses, I had one or two moments of regret (particularly when I ran over my sandaled foot with my suitcase) for my earlier provisioning enthusiasm. But now, once more installed in the Lodge in Fort Portal, I am very happy with my cupboard of goodies. Several times over the last few days I have opened the door just to take a little peek at all the pretty, shiny packets and be filled with a warm sense of contentment.

As I clambered on to the sun-beaten tarmac at Entebbe, a young Ugandan guy next to me grinned, ‘home at last.’ In a funny way, I sort of agreed with him. The overloaded bodas whizzing by, the marabou storks peering down their noses like self-important judges, the sweet scent of woodsmoke all had a cosy sense of familiarity. I think it would be overdoing it to say it felt like a homecoming. But yes, it’s good to be back.

The university is in a bit of a state of dormancy at the moment, it being the holidays. I don’t think I missed much while I was away apart from the installation of my very smart new computer (hooray) in my new office (hooray). But the new term is just around the corner and with a record number of new enrolments, things promise to become a bit busier soon.

The Switzerland of Africa

2010-06-03T12:20:00.000-07:00

Just come back from a mind-blowing trip to Rwanda. I first sensed something odd when I stepped out of the bus park in Kigali to find a moto driver (that’s a boda boda to you and me) not only wearing his own helmet complete with visible licence number, but also proffering a matching green helmet for me. I was tempted to scoff “ha, I don’t need one of those, I’m Ugandan!” but I quickly learned Rwandans don’t think it’s funny or cool to break the law. Indeed they take the law very seriously. I was astonished by the neat queues of traffic waiting patiently at the traffic lights. I was dumbfounded by the cleanliness, the neatness, the lack of street hawkers (they’re illegal), the coifferred box hedges and roundabouts covered in flowers. It was amazing, wonderful and somehow disconcerting.

Over the next few days I began to pick up wafts of the mild scent of Big Brother that hangs over the streets of Kigali and perhaps explains the Swiss-style adherence to orderliness. The state is not especially visible, although the army does pop up now and again. But if you allow your imagination to wander you can convince yourself of a paranoia-inducing presence, watching and listening. People are careful about what they say in public places and nobody wants to be caught doing something they shouldn’t.

But, then again, it isn’t hard to blot out the mildly sinister atmosphere and instead be wowed by the speed at which things are moving forward in Rwanda. Kigali has changed hugely since I was last there in December 06. French Riviera-esque villas have sprung up in big suburbs around town. Someone has filled in the pot holes and built quaint, cobbled residential streets reminiscent of Provence. While I was there, the state passed a social security bill to support the poorest farmers. Because it’s Rwanda, this money won’t be secreted in to the pockets of greedy officials as in other countries I could mention, but will really help those who need it.

And Rwandans, it seems, are rapidly becoming empowered, confident, opinionated capitalists. I largely formed this impression at an inspirational speaker event that my friend Maia had squeezed in to our action-packed schedule. (We also managed to fit in a hash, a university tour, some future job prospecting and dancing till 4). The speakers themselves, flown in from across Africa and the US, were an inspiring bunch, but it was the organisers and audience, many of them young returnees from the States, who really caught my imagination. If this sassy, smart, driven, opportunity-grabbing group of 20-somethings are representative of the new generation, and if the state continues with its impressive developmental strategy, Rwanda one feels should have no problem fulfilling its goal of become a middle-income country in a decade’s time.

So, lifted, excited and full of hope for the future of the continent, I began my journey back to Fort Portal. It didn’t take long for the Rwandan spell to be broken and for Uganda to come back with a bump. Or rather a series of bumps. The first bump being the completely unnecessary hour-long queue at immigration orchestrated by aggressive and incompetent officials. The second being the hour-long tour of Mbarara in a taxi that refused to leave until there were two people crammed on to every seat. But at every bump I was also reminded of why I love Uganda so much. Each inconvenience elicited embarrassed apologies and groans of shared frustration from my Ugandan travelling companions. Even the good-spirited driver was apologetic as he circled Mbarara for the sixth time looking for passengers. Everyone I sat next to on the 3-bus, 14-hour journey wanted to engage me in initially shy, polite, curious conversation. The stoicism, the patience and the good humour of people here is phenomenal, as is the friendly interest in and acceptance of outsiders. If only Uganda could take a leaf out their Rwandan cousins’ book and start investing in a meaningful development agenda. We live in hope.

Kings and chimpanzees

2010-05-06T10:23:00.000-07:00

Busy busy. Three weeks ago the Tooro King, officially the youngest king the world, turned 18. There were massive celebrations spanning 2 days with fireworks, favourite Ugandan pop stars, lots of alcohol and - judging from the carpet of condoms in the palace grounds the next morning - quite a bit of nookie. Duncan came down with a gang of journalist friends. Somehow, despite not having a proper press pass, he managed to get himself in to the main arena with me clinging to his coat tails. We had prime viewing of young King Oyo, who looked completely, miserably bored throughout, and President Museveni, who seemed to be asleep for most of it. The ceremonies went on for hours but were visually transfixing. There were hypnotic spear-dancers from the king’s clan, brightly-dressed ululating aunties and 50 virginal beauties tottering about on impossible heels. About half way through, Museveni woke up, put on some kind of lion’s beard over his pin-striped suit and joined in the rituals. There were two tents full of kings and queens from across Africa, many of them naked beyond a spattering of gold jewellery and an animal skin. We were all hoping Col Gadaffi would show – he is rumoured to have a special place in his heart for the queen mum – but he sent some dull-looking envoys instead.

The following weekend I was treated to a trip to Queen Elizabeth National Park by my friend Bill Bruty who – fortuitously for me – was stranded in Uganda by the dust cloud. All the animals seemed to be having it off. We saw humping elephants, humping monitoring lizards and probably humping hippo, although it was hard to tell because they were mostly underwater. We also came across a pride of 7 lion, hidden in the grass on a plain full of Uganda Cob. They looked too lazy to hump. Perhaps the highlight of the trip for me was a trek through the chimpanzee gorge. For about an hour and a half we scrambled up and down through the undergrowth, falling on our arses, getting slashed by thorns and completely dripping with sweat. We saw lots of chimp signs – eaten fruits, nests, droppings – but not so much as a whisker of a real, live chimp. We were just resigning ourselves to having wasted 50usd for nothing but a bruised bum, when the tracker spotted a chimp rapidly clambering out of a tree. This initiated a surreal scene in which we found ourselves running headlong back in to the gorge in pursuit of a hairy primate not that much smaller than us. I was first in the queue – my excitement having got the better of me – and so it was me who got the full brunt of the chimp’s shriek as it spun round to ward off its pesky human pursuers. A split second later the air was full of shrieking (my own in the mix) as the rest of the group of 30 responded to their friend’s distress. A minute later two big males wandered out of the bushes, gave us a once over, itched their balls, then wandered off again. The experience was kind of magical, if a little alarming, and definitely worth the cuts and bruises.

2010-04-12T10:38:00.000-07:00

Sore feet, nice views.

Movies and motorbikes

2010-04-12T10:17:00.000-07:00

I can’t believe a whole seven weeks have passed since I last updated my blog. And I can’t believe even less - if that’s English which I don’t think it is - that I’m only a couple of months shy of being here a whole year. It’s somehow ironic that time is flying despite the fact that I feel I spend so much time waiting for things to happen (for people to turn up for meetings, for buses to fill up so they can leave, for the beans to cook, for someone to answer my question etc.). I have got quite good at filling my time with manic multi-tasking. I find if you have 10 things on the go at once, you can convince yourself you are making overall progress even if it is through broken, scattered mini-steps.

The last 7 weeks have been a total blur. Late Feb, Duncs came to FP to very generously make a promotional film for MMU. For 3 weeks I ran around carrying the tripod and pretending to be a film director. I helped with planning the script, coaxing our interviewees (who, luckily for us, needed virtually no encouragement to give us the juicy soundbites we were after) and offering (somewhat reluctantly received) editorial input. It was a surprising amount of work but fun a lot of the time, and the end result was pretty good. Plus it helped me score an all-important brownie point with the executive. It was also a mutually insightful exercise for Duncan and I – he got to see where I work and who I work with, and I got to see what I nightmare it is doing TV. We also had a useful lesson in the perils of spending every waking and sleeping hour with each other for 3 solid weeks. We survived.

I then had a hilarious time in Kampala learning to ride a motorbike. The training ground was a piece of wasteland belonging to the Buganda king, and our instructor was apparently one of the Kabaka’s courtiers turned muzungu motorbike trainer. We had a total of 3 hours training over two days, which involved going round and round the field trying to dodge the learner drivers and, more challengingly, the rally car whizzing up and down at 100k/hr creating huge dust clouds with its screeching handbrake turns. At the end of the first day – after just 1 and a half hours of training – our instructor took us in the full flood of Kampala traffic. This was quite an adrenaline-filled excursion particularly when, on the way back, I momentarily forgot where the footbrake was and skidded undaintily in to the path of a speeding truck. I also survived this experience. And I even passed the test. This was not very difficult if I’m honest. All I had to do was tell the examiner I’d had 3 weeks of training (not 3 hours), laugh at his jokes, and name four road signs. The bikes, to my immense relief, stayed on the back of the pick-up.

So many other things to mention. I will summarise. After the training D and I had a lovely 24hrs in Jinja stuffing our faces with such rare treats as baked potatoes, hummus and falafel. Easter weekend I joined 5 other VSOs on a mammoth trek over the top of the Rwenzori mountains to Bundibugyo. 4 hours of steep descent did my toes and knees in, but the pain was at least partly eased by the completely breath-taking views of the Semliki river and the eerily empty forests of Congo. I’ve been boosting my knowledge of indigenous Uganda trees from proof-editing a book for some French friends. I’m about to plant FP's largest plantation of lettuces.

Little triumphs

2010-02-24T22:53:00.000-08:00

It’s been a fortnight of small victories, mostly of an IT nature. Firstly, my new computer memory chip arrived in the post after only a month in transit from the UK, and now my ancient laptop hums along with 5x the RAM it had before. Next, the friendly guys in the IT department, after only a little gentle coaxing, presented me with my own desktop. Okay, so it’s a bulky Frankenstein’s monster patched together from random, discoloured parts with half the RAM of my laptop before the upgrade, but at least I have a university machine to call my own. Reeling from this victory, I then spotted a pile of rusty shelving bits covered in spiders’ nests in the corner of the campus courtyard. Using my rapidly evolving skills of persuasion*, I managed to secure them on the spot for my office without the usual need to fill out 2 forms in triplicate and wait a month for sign off by a procurement committee (I exaggerate, but there is definitely a strong taste for red tape here).

*So the trick I have learned – first roadtested on an unfortunate immigration official at Central Immigration on the day of my flight home to England in December – is that a polite, light-hearted approach but one where there is a clear threat of oncoming hysteria, can be a very effective tool of persuasion. People are extremely non-confrontational here. Open displays of anger get you absolutely nowhere, but emotional meltdowns can move mountains. Perhaps a Ugandan’s worst nightmare is to suddenly find themselves with a hysterical, tear-stained mazungu woman on their hands. In the case of the immigration official, the desperation of the situation (I’d been threatened with a bill of 1,800USD to leave the country) led me to take things to such a theatrical extreme that the poor man ended up pleading, ‘Madam, please stop staring at me and leave my office immediately.’ I’m pretty sure that my irritating persistence paid off in that case, and I have therefore been applying the same approach in a modified form ever since. Obviously this is something you can overdo, and is best used sparingly like chilli sauce.

With my new Frankenstein’s computer and bookcase, I now feel quite comfortably settled in my corridor and have even begun to do a spot of work.

Oh dear

2010-02-15T10:46:00.000-08:00

Well at risk of sullying the portrait of a worldly-wise, cool-headed and in-control volunteer I have been striving to project over the last eight months, I feel I have to get a few things off my chest. Sometimes a blog is a handy therapeutic/confessional tool in the absence of a priest or psychotherapist. Although admittedly a slightly more public arena than either, it does have the distinct advantage of not talking back.

So here we go. To cut a long, mortifying story short, I seem to have single-handedly started the Ugandan (or at least Fort Portal) chapter of that well known international campaign to propagate the stereotype of British girls as the drunken piss-artists of the world. The sole redeeming factor about my fall from grace was that is was witnessed only by my Irish colleagues at MMU, some chivalrous lads from the Peace Corps and one surprisingly sympathetic boda driver who was apparently prepared to suspend his disbelief and accept that madam (smelling suspiciously of vomit and mumbling incoherently) was just ‘very tired’ after a long evening. I’d like to say that this was an isolated event, but there have been one or two other marginally less cringe-worthy occasions in recent months that would seem to indicate an unfortunate and rapid regression to my late teenage/early student years.

That’s probably enough public self-flagellation for now. I don’t think there’s any need to sign up to AA just yet. I’m secretly hoping that behind these embarrassing experiences actually lies something a bit more positive to do with me shedding my control-freakishness of recent years and loosening up a bit (I was actually having a lot of fun until the third glass of Bond 7 - an evil, evil drink - did something to my ability to walk, talk and hold down my dinner). I suppose I could also use the pretty lame excuse that I was only doing what the Romans (or in this case the long-term resident mazungus, particularly those of an Anglo-Saxon extraction) do, but then that doesn’t make me look any less of a tit really.

2010-01-29T06:56:00.000-08:00

Slow start

2010-01-29T06:51:00.000-08:00

Well not an immense amount happened in my first week. I have been presented with a desk - somewhat small and sandwiched between the PR Officer and a mysterious entity called Albert (who has not yet made an appearance but is apparently head of my department) in what can only be described as a corridor. I don’t yet have a computer and, if initial indicators are anything to go by, I may have a small battle on my hands to obtain one. I’ve met with a few people, or rather I’ve barged in to a few offices to introduce myself, since nobody seems to be especially interested in showing me around. The departing VC has given me 2 bulging paper files and about 30 electronic ones to read, so I have no shortage of information to digest. It’s going to be a slow start, but I’m already getting a sense of where I can help and what I need to do. And despite the slow momentum, I am feeling reasonably enthused.

This afternoon, as I bumped home from town on the back of a boda boda with my newly filled gas canister squashed uncomfortably between my thighs and the driver’s back, I realised that, although it’s taken a while, I feel pretty at home. The things that startled or surprised me when I first arrived, I hardly notice any more. What seemed like insurmountable challenges (How do I shop in a market full of dead animals and flies? How do I dispose of my own rubbish? How do I ride on a boda without falling off?) I don’t even think about now. The thrilling realisation that, not only can I ride a boda, but can do so with a full gas canister balanced on my lap, surely must mean I have passed some kind of milestone. I may not be an old-hander yet, but I feel I have certainly graduated from green newcomer status.

Connected!

2010-01-23T10:37:00.000-08:00

So the blog entries are coming thick and fast because, after a week of I’m-gonna-throw-this-effing-computer-out-of-the-window-and-possibly-jump-out-after-it outbursts induced by my initiation in to the university’s hopelessly intermittent power/internet supply, I decided to take the bold and un-volunteery step of investing in MY OWN INTERNET.

Okay so it costs 3½ days salary per month and is still pretty painful as a result of my INANELY SLOW if comfortingly familiar old laptop, at least it works without (quick tap on the wooden table) apparent interruption. And they tell me if I ever upgrade my computer’s memory, it will be fast enough for all manner of fancy caper like movie downloads and skype-video.

As anticipated, it was a somewhat frustrating week as I hung around the university like one of the many stray dogs in town, pretending I had a job and was desperately busy with it. The sad truth being I had no such job and was desperately busy with nothing but trying to look desperately busy. Finally on Friday I received my expected summons to the office of Professor Kasenene, the Vice Chancellor, to effectively plead my case for employment. I had met Prof K before and knew he was not in any way scary, but I couldn’t help but feel a tinge of nervousness nonetheless. So when the Prof, after hearing a somewhat stuttered summary of my proposed workplan, erupted in a huge smile and said ‘Thea,’ (he even got my name right!), ‘you are most welcome,’ I had to crush an impulse to hug him.

So I have a job. First hurdle cleared. And I now have a job description, largely of my own crafting. I even have, thanks to Buhara Edward, a newly fixed bike on which I can propel myself along the dusty, sweaty road to the out-of-town campus where I’ll be based. All I need now is a desk, a computer, and a bit of will among my colleagues to point me in the right direction and get me settled in. I don’t want to prematurely nay-say, but I do have a certain hunch that this latter will not be especially forthcoming. The clear lesson of my not-quite-first week is that self-sufficiency and doing-it-yourself where no one else is obliging is sometimes the only way to get anywhere.

New year, new job, new look blog

2010-01-23T10:28:00.000-08:00

Three weeks in the UK eating, sleeping, taking the dog for muddy walks, throwing snowballs and catching up with the Archers, have done wonders to restore my enthusiasm for this whole African adventure. I read somewhere over Christmas that cold climates help to concentrate the mind, and I certainly found myself doing some pretty serious navel-gazing on the snow-clad fields of wintry Somerset (not literally because that would be quite cold). The upshot of it all is that I return to Uganda revived, refocused and ready for new challenges.

Ha ha. New challenges eh? So I knew it was overoptimistic to expect a welcoming committee with a bunch of flowers as I took up my new post of Resource Mobilisation Advisor for Fort Portal’s own Mountains of the Moon University. A scheduled induction was also clearly unrealistic. However, my newly inflated balloon lost a tiny puff of air when I was told on my first day that my position still hasn’t been approved by the new Vice Chancellor, and I can’t start until he’s okayed it. It sagged a little bit more when I discovered I don’t have a desk or a computer or indeed much of a job description. This latter I will basically be developing myself and then, it seems, presenting to the VC on Friday (that was actually yesterday but it's taken all week to post this blog entry) in some kind of court hearing. Again I am reassured there is nothing to worry about as it’s more about the big man exerting his authority than any question over my placement. Although it’s a little frustrating, I have been filling my time munching like a rabbit through my abundant crop of lettuces, dislocating my limbs at aerobics then trying to pop them back into place at a new bi-weekly yoga class.

I have been in Uganda long enough to understand that things here happen Mpola mpola (slowly, slowly – a versatile phrase, particularly useful for screaming in the ear of over-keen boda boda drivers). I am pretty certain that I am wanted and needed at the university and there will be plenty for me to do once I get started. Most importantly, unlike my previous placement organisation, there is absolutely no question about the importance and usefulness of the university to the region. Patience is not a virtue here, it's an essential survival skill.

Grasshoppers and Ground Zero

2009-12-01T01:32:00.000-08:00

The latest animal infestation to hit Fort Portal are the grasshoppers. Apparently every November millions of spindly, gawky, feeble-legged grasshoppers pop out of the ground and start flying around crashing in to things and getting in to all kinds of trouble. Unfortunately for them they are a favoured delicacy: Ugandans go absolutely mad for fried grasshopper. At night, huge lamps are shone above metal sheets (haven’t seen this myself only heard it described) and the luckless grasshoppers charge at them, only to be caught in giant baskets which are then taken to the market. I tried one – not very vegetarian of me I agree – and it tasted like deep fried straw with a delicate hint of cow dung. Apparently they’re a great source of protein if you can get over the taste.

So at last I have taken some decisive action with RFPJ. I’ve quit. There is only so much positive spin you can put on a disaster zone. The dimensions of this particular ground zero being that I’m now the only member of staff (Vickie is on maternity leave until Feb); the Board are a sorry joke; the mandate is confused and potentially redundant; we are gathering debts far faster than we are raising funds (the landlord is apparently demanding rent for Nov and Dec which we won’t cover without selling the computers and furniture!); and most critically - if the discussions at yesterday’s miserable AGM are anything to go by – no member is prepared to put in any more than the most cursory effort to rescue RFPJ. Without wanting to overdo the melodrama, I do think RFPJ goes quite far to embody much of what can be wrong with civil society here. An NGO with no real interest in contributing to the communities it is meant to be serving, but rather interested in undertaking the bare minimum of work in order to secure an income for a few staff and Board members. If it hadn’t been for VSO’s support, I believe RFPJ would have been weeded out by natural selection a long time ago.

Glad to get that off my chest.

Anyhoot, I very much hope this is not the end of my Ugandan experience. In theory, I should be taking up a placement with the local community university, Mountains of the Moon, from January. Although this looks like a far more interesting role in an established and apparently viable organisation, I worry a little bit about frying pans and fires. I hope to have more luck than the grasshoppers and not head for the light only to crash and burn in the basket of despair.

2009-11-23T02:04:00.000-08:00

Piggery Part 2

2009-11-23T02:00:00.000-08:00

After months of anticipation, piggery day finally arrived last Saturday. All available VSOs, plus a few extra mazungus, travelled out to Buhara, a nearby village, to help a local NGO – the Buhara Good Shepherd Childcare Project - construct a luxurious 3-bay pig pen. Piggery being a tried and test means of income generation, and this being one of the agreed VSO-sponsored cluster projects for the year.

The biggest drama of the day happened before we even reached the village when a monkey, recently released from its cage and seeking revenge on its captors, took a bite out of Sabrina’s leg. Not wanting to risk the small but scary possibility of contracting rabies, Sabrina and Geoff headed off in search of the treatment and sadly missed the day’s activities. With the monkey still at large, the rest of us did not hang around but set off at a pace towards Buhara.

So we were a slightly reduced party who eventually arrived at Edward’s Dad’s house to offer our not-very-advanced construction skills. Not wanting to interfere with the engineering of the site itself, we started off with some basic labouring – carrying stones, water and wooden poles. But even here we were desperately shown up by the children, who seemed able to carry twice their body weight with no visible difficulty. Once the basic shape of the pig pen had been marked out, we turned our hand to some hole digging, post mounting and even a little bit of hammering. With maybe as many as twenty of us at work, the pen went up with impressive speed. We were then rewarded with an immense meal followed by dancing and singing from the kids.

Creeping crawlies

2009-11-02T00:02:00.000-08:00

Perhaps because we’ve hit the deepest, drenching midst of the long rains, over the last few days there has been a sudden abundant infestation of spine-tingling, monstrous, alien creatures of varying hues and leg numbers turning up in unexpected places. Last night Esther called me in to her bathroom to show me a bright orange 20cm-long hairy millipede that had just scurried out of a bucket of washing powder. This morning on the way to work, my eye was drawn to what I initially thought was a pretty silver bracelet lying by the side of the road. I bent down for closer inspection only to discover a nightmarish horror – hundreds of silver maggot-like beasts slithering at great speed over and under each other in an almost perfect ring. My nerves were a little frayed after this, and I felt no calmer when shortly afterwards a small black gecko leapt at me out of the toilet roll tube in the office loo.

Meanwhile, things are limping on at RFPJ. No money yet although some funders have been sniffing around. There was a slightly hilarious episode a week or so ago when Vickie conjured up a fake volunteer to fill the office during a funder visit. This imposter did a very convincing job and seemed more able to articulate RFPJ’s strengths than either Vickie or I, which is sadly revealing. The fate of RFPJ will be decided one way or another over the next 6 weeks. I am personally not holding my breath for an 11th hour reprieve.

Piggery

2009-10-22T05:28:00.000-07:00

I didn’t even know piggery was a word until I came to Uganda. Although it sounds like something done behind closed doors – perhaps closed barn doors – and certainly ethically dubious or maybe borderline illegal, it is actually the Ugandan word for pig farming. My VSO cluster is sponsoring a local NGO to set up a piggery project. Despite being entirely agriculturally ignorant, I somehow got landed with the job of filling the holes in the project’s business plan and finalising the budget.

So yesterday morning I set off with Mr Asaba - trustee of the project, Chair of the local agricultural board and Edward (of the graduation)’s Dad - to a far flung corner of the subcounty to learn about piggery from an established farmer. It was a long journey but luckily Mr Asaba had brought his bicycle. For the downhill and flat parts I clambered on to the back and we bounced clankingly along, weaving our way past the potholes and goats. The spectacle delighted the village kids who shrieked a chorus of ‘maazuunguuu!!’ as we passed. When we met a hill, we’d both dismount and Mr Asaba would push, greeting every other person as a long lost friend and somewhat retarding our progress. Meanwhile I tried to ask intelligent-sounding questions about livestock, house-building, fish farming and earthquake-proofing.

Just before we reached the pig farm, I was rewarded with a completely breathtaking view north from the Kabarole plateau to Lake Albert glinting 50km away and the Blue Mountains of Congo to the east. I suddenly appreciated the meaning of a rift valley – it’s as though someone has pulled the mountains apart to left and right creating a huge gaping stretch mark in the middle. Finally we arrived at Mr Kagaba’s beautifully kept, flower-covered compound and he ran through the ins and outs of pig care while I hurriedly scribbled notes. Twenty minutes and one giant pawpaw later, I had obtained a fairly comprehensive knowledge of pig keeping in the tropics. Essential life skill development.

2009-10-12T01:29:00.000-07:00

Mountains and monkeys

2009-10-12T01:10:00.000-07:00

Having Duncs to stay for the last week has been a great excuse for some local sightseeing. The weekend before last, five of us with Edward and his friend Jo guiding us (minus Duncan who didn’t get out of bed in time), undertook a hardcore nine and a half hour march to the local Rwenzori peak (3012m). We began with a near-vertical stomp past hillside smallholdings before plunging in to the thick vegetation of the Rwenzori National Park. Although we were armed to the hilt with waterproofs, it didn’t actually rain, although the lingering low-lying clouds irritatingly obscured the views. We mostly had to imagine the plains of Kabarole to the east and Congo to the west, while being tantalised by the occasional glimpse through the mist. The way down was almost as steep but much harder work on the knees and toes. Even our energetic guides were knackered by the time we go to the bottom, but we were all glowing with peak-conquering satisfaction.

Thursday last, Duncs and I took a local ‘taxi’ (11 people crammed in to an estate car designed for 7, including two on the driver’s seat no kidding) to Kibale forest to stay in a lodge stroking the border of the National Park. Our cosy banda looked out over miles of thick, ancient forest, humming with a squillion birds and insects, broken by the occasional spine-tingling roar from an unidentified jungle beast. We took a tour of a local swamp and saw 5 different species of monkey, the celebrated blue turacao, a crested eagle, a woodpecker and countless warblers and greenbuls and whatnot. I was more excited by the amazing vegetation and what might be lurking in the murky red-brown swamp water. Duncs was keen on snake stories, of which our guide had an alarming number. Three peaceful days in the soothing jungle, a huge quantity of food and drink and lots of sleep have been a great for restoring energy and enthusiasm.

Graduation

2009-09-30T05:26:00.000-07:00

Last Fri was second graduation ceremony of 2-year old Mountains of the Moon University. Edward (boyfriend of Celia, another VSO now back in the US) was graduating with a Diploma in Public Administration and he very kindly invited me along to celebrate with his family in their village. Here are Edward's proud Mum and Dad, sisters, auntie who came from miles away up in the mountains to celebrate, plus two senior people from the village.

Aerobics Ugandan Style

2009-09-29T00:34:00.000-07:00

It’s taken me three months to get round to it, but last night I finally dragged myself to one of the 3x weekly aerobics session at Mountains of the Moon Hotel gym. I was told by a veteran that it was going to be ‘quite intense’ but nothing could have prepared me for what followed. We were about fifteen people, bumping up against the running machines in a small, sticky, fan-less room. The demographic couldn’t have been further removed from the standard in the UK. Rather than the usual skinny, lycra-clad, fitness-freak girls, these aerobicians were almost all middle-aged Ugandan men in shell-suits with beer bellies plus three roly-poly Ugandan ladies. Only three mazungus had braved it and I soon understood why.

The cheesy dance music started up and so began an hour and a half of wild high kicks, jumping, squatting and punching the air. We were made to throw our bodies in all kinds of erratic directions, and twist and turn our limbs in impossible angles. Just when I thought it was surely time for a break, the instructor would give us another hamstring- popping movement to copy. An over-enthusiastic young guy in the middle of the room kept yelling out numbers at random which meant we usually ended up doing twice as many repetitions as we were meant to.

And then there was the sweat. I was a little surprised by my own outpourings, but this turned out to be modest compared to some of my fellow exercisers. There were literally puddles on the floor (this is not an exaggeration) in which we then happily sat down in order to carry out a series of abdominal stretches. Despite these discomforts the atmosphere was extremely jolly. The beer bellies were having a great time and their enthusiasm was infectious. Even the large ladies were taking the pain with good humour. Afterwards we were rewarded with a hot shower, some ginger tea and roasted g-nuts. At which point, a bit like after a grueling labour, the pleasant flood of endorphins erased the preceding pain and left me with a warm glow. If today’s intense muscle ache has worn off by next week, I’m definitely going back for a second installment.

Marooned

2009-09-23T07:14:00.000-07:00

It’s going home time but I am currently marooned in the office because there is a terrifying thunderstorm going on outside. A minute ago a heart-stopping bolt of forked lightning struck just about exactly where our house is. I hope I’m not going to go home to find Esther sitting on a pile of smoking rubble. The rain is now pelting in proper equatorial fashion. There’s no messing around with this rainy season business.

The radio phone whatsit that we use for the internet says ‘do not use in a thunderstorm’. The funny thing is the more time I spend here, the less I find myself – a pathological worrier – worrying about these kind of things. I guess it has something to do with the fact that danger, or the perception of danger, seems to lurk in every corner. As a result you kind of build up an immunity to it. Dodgy wiring, dodgy drinking water, insane matatu drivers, malarial mosquitos, sitting on the back of a boda, have all pretty quickly become facts of life. Not to mention the occasional earthquake and riot. Without really trying, you kind of adopt the norms of the people around you and Ugandan casualness about any form of danger is pretty breathtaking. Four helmet-less children squeezed on to the back of a boda is a very normal sight. Exposed live wires under leaking pipes is also another I've seen a few times. If I allowed my natural worry-ability full reign, it'd be a full time occupation. Luckily I have naturally morphed to a more Ugandan frame of mind.

Riots

2009-09-17T05:02:00.000-07:00

I am pleased to say that I can now add riots to the catalogue of new experiences I am gathering in Uganda. Actually, that would be a little misleading. While for three days last week Kampala burned, shops were looted and 21 Ugandans were killed, I was holed up in the quiet, leafy, middle-class suburb of Muyenga wandering happily between the VSO office and a spotlessly clean hotel with an ensuite bath the size of a swimming pool. In my sheltered haven of luxury it was hard to imagine the mayhem being unleashed only a few miles down the road, particularly because there was something of a news blackout as TV and radio stations were taken off air for inciting violence. Perhaps it was a subconscious reaction to a subliminal fear, but I took the odd decision to have a pedicure (never done so in my life before) in the middle of all this chaos. Kampala’s streets might be covered in the black stains of burned out vehicles, but I have now got rid of the 2 months of dirt encrusted on my feet and have gleaming, peachy toenails.

The reasons for the riots are bizarre but have sinister undertones. Superficially it was a reaction by the Bugandans against the government who had prevented the Kibaka, the Bugandan king, from attending some youth day celebrations in a particular district. The government said it was for the Kibaka’s protection as another ethnic group in the district, the Banyala, did not want the king to attend and had threatened violence. The Bugandans saw through this and took out their anger against the government’s heavy-handedness on the police and – more scarily – on anyone with a straight nose who looked like they came from Museveni’s part of Uganda. This kind of violence hasn’t been seen in Uganda for a long time but there is a fear that it will increase as Museveni’s deliberate stirring of ethnic tensions mounts in direct proportion to his waning popularity.

Meanwhile back at RFPJ, things have taken a turn for the worse. Vickie has decided to cut her hours to three or four a day so there is no longer much pretense that I actually have anyone to work with. The Chair, a priest and a schools inspector, was arrested and temporarily imprisoned last week for defiling a 16 year old. (I was also lucky enough to be on the receiving end of his attentions when I first arrived, but I managed to dampen his enthusiasm with a few firm text messages). Unfortunately, he is pretty much the only Board member who turns up for anything. I have written a 5-page tirade to VSO offering some thinly veiled ‘constructive criticism’ of the flawed rationale behind my placement. While this might all sound a bit bleak, I haven't yet lost all hope for salvaging something good from my placement. Time will tell whether this can be realised. On the positive side, I am very happy to be back in the calming green countryside and my strawberry plants are coming on very well.

Strange settlers

2009-09-03T03:03:00.000-07:00

Apparently Fort Portal’s golf course (which, after the cows have been shooed off, is still occasionally used by locals) is likely to be the oldest in Africa. The strange thing is that it was built in 1914 when there were literally six Europeans living here (some missionaries, a clutch of civil servants and the postman). One of them must have been a serious golfing fanatic. I’ve been learning a bit about some of the early European settlers from a little book compiled by a modern-day settler who has a tea estate near Fort Portal. Fort Portal was a serious backwater in the days of the Protectorate. But still a handful of Europeans – who all sound either eccentric, determined, desperate, criminal, adventurous, delusional or a combination of the above – found their way here from the turn of the century. There were no roads or electricity and the first houses they built from local materials kept blowing down in the wind. They grew coffee and then later tea when the bottom dropped out of the coffee market. One or two families somehow rode out the Amin period, and are still here running lodges and vanilla farms. On Sunday Esther and I had lunch at Ndali Lodge – a lovely, slightly crumbling place on the rim of a crater lake – owned by one such descendant. He’s got what must be the best collection of books on the history of the area, which amounts to about five. Problem is you have to be staying there (at a rate of 200 USD a night!) to borrow them. Next time I go, I might try and speak to him nicely.

The earth moved!

2009-08-28T00:34:00.000-07:00

Last night I had a strange, half-waking dream that a very heavy vehicle was rumbling slowly down the road at the bottom of the garden, causing my bed and the bottles on my shelf to rattle and shake. This morning Esther told me that there had been a tremor at 5.30 am. I was forced to draw the rather disappointing conclusion that I had slept through my first ever earthquake.

It turns out that Uganda is one of the most seismically active areas on the African continent, and Kabarole district, where Fort Portal is, the most earthquake prone of all. It’s apparently all to do with the Western Rift of the East African Rift System which is also responsible for the Rwenzori mountains I spend so much time gazing at. There have been a few biggish quakes in the past that have caused collapsed buildings and some deaths, but generally they tend to be pretty moderate, if fairly frequent, tremors of the type we had this morning. Next time I'll try to be awake.

Animal encounters

2009-08-25T02:12:00.000-07:00

There is this insane brown bird the size of a blackbird, with really mad white eyes that everyday comes and crashes against the windows of our house. It usually picks the room I’m it, fixes me with one of its raving glassy eyes then bashes its beak in to the glass. It carries on doing this for hours. A couple of big sparrow-like birds have also done the same thing on my window sill in the office. Is this normal or have I been singled out for some kind of avian assault? One of the other VSOs here, a Dutch girl called Nynke, has a very friendly dog called Spencer that she adopted when it was abandoned on the compound she was living on. Nynke is now back home for a few weeks and Spencer, having some entrenched abandonment issues, has adopted me as her new muzungu. She has taken up residence on our verandah which Esther – not an animal lover – is not best pleased about. The other day Spencer followed me to work. I tried to shoo her off but she merrily trotted beside me all the way in to town and up the three flights of stairs to my office. She then sat on the floor, wagging her whirlwind of a tail and getting under Vickie’s – also not an animal lover – feet. I had to walk her home again at lunchtime. The only other animals I have been having rather too much contact with for comfort are the mahoosive cockroaches the size of guavas in our kitchen. I’m too cowardly to deal with them so I tend to just will them away with the power of thought. However Esther takes a more pragmatic approach. She pulverizes them with Doom and they lie on their backs and melt in to a brown sludge. It is pretty grim.

Hot airtime

2009-08-18T05:59:00.000-07:00

Telephone etiquette in Uganda has some peculiar idiosyncrasies. Like the fact that nobody ever says who they are when they call, leaving you with the difficult choice of either pretending you know or rather foolishly interrupting the flood of chitchat to enquire who the caller might be. The other odd thing is that Ugandans never say goodbye on the phone. The first time this happened, I thought I’d committed some hideous, undocumented social error and been hung up on in a fury. But it happened several more times and it was then that I realised Ugandans just hang up mid-sentence.

In between these two worrying silences, however, there is a staggering amount of chat. Admittedly this happens less on the phone, where every minute of airtime costs a day’s wage for many, but it is most definitely true of person-to-person conversation. In Uganda, small talk is king. This has been one of the most difficult things for me – tongue-tied, impatient, chat-loathing, party pooper - to adjust to. Traditionally, once you have asked after the health of your friend, their spouse and children, you go on to enquire after their aunties, uncles, cousins, brothers-in-law, cows, goats and chickens. It is extremely impolite in matters of business to come straight to the point without first devoting the necessary time to such pressing subjects as the family, the weather, Michael Jackson, the football results etc.

Money matters are a particularly delicate case as I found last week when VSO came to visit us. By far the biggest issue at stake at this meeting was the signing of a document authorising a subsistence loan to keep RFPJ’s doors open until Christmas. I had prepared the necessary document, put a big X next to where the signatures were required, and placed it very ostentatiously in the middle of Vickie’s desk for all to see. Although it was meant to be a 50minute visit, we spent a total of two and half hours pirouetting around the subject before it was finally raised by the VSO programme officer, not by Vickie. I had in the meantime been biting my tongue trying not to look like a tactless, custom-disrespecting European by insisting we cut the crap and get on with it. Must be more patient. Must try harder.

Sprouting

2009-08-11T05:03:00.000-07:00

They say if you plant a walking stick in the ground in Uganda, within a few days it will be sprouting green shoots. The speed at which things grow here is verging on the alarming (isn’t there some horror film where rampant plants take over the world?). I left some peas in a plastic bag overnight in our somewhat un-cold fridge, and a day later they were covered in little yellow shoots. If I’d sat there long enough I probably would have seen them sprout. Esther put an unpromising, browning lemongrass plant in the ground a fortnight ago and it’s now taller than me. The herbs I’ve planted in chopped up water bottles are shooting in all directions. However the fact that the little seedlings are all identical even though they are meant to be parsley, coriander and mint makes me think that perhaps a faster-growing weed has cuckooed them out. Presumably extreme fertility and highly favourable growing conditions heightens Darwinian competition. I may need to come up with a way of giving my seeds a fighting chance. I’ve planted what I think might be a red hibiscus I bought for 30p from a sleepy boy in an old paint tin and I’m trying to find a home for a miniature rose from the same roadside stall.

In contrast to my horticultural experiences, the search for funds to rescue RFPJ is so far proving pretty unfertile. It’s taking rather longer than it should to get applications together (only one submitted so far), perhaps because, without realising it, I’ve already succumbed to the Ugandan pace of doing things.

Lake Kanyinga

2009-08-04T02:41:00.000-07:00

Somewhat strenuous cycle ride plus hike to Lake Kanyinga on Sunday with Jo, fellow fundraiser VSO, and partner Liam. Passed by impressive luxury lodge being built by eccentric Englishman and spotted colubus and black-faced monkeys, bright blue iguana and suspected snake in the undergrowth! Left is sunset through our front door.

Big smoke

2009-08-04T00:25:00.000-07:00

Does time move faster on the equator? It really feels time is accelerating here. I’ve been in Fort Portal for over a month and I hardly noticed the milestone pass. There are a few other odd things going on like the fact that my fingernails are growing so fast I’ve already cut them twice since being here, and my body clock seems to have taken on a strange new and rigid regime of zonking out at precisely 9.30pm then clicking into awake mode at 6.45am on the dot. I guess the extreme regularity of the sun’s comings and goings has something to do with the latter and perhaps its reliable intensity something to do with the former. It seems the sun plays a very dominant role in human activity at latitude zero.

Had a brief trip to the big smoke (or maybe big smog is more accurate given the pink haze resting permanently over the city centre) last week. Having become very quickly accustomed to my comfortable rural existence, I was a little overwhelmed by the immense bustle of the metropolis and felt glad and relieved I would soon be returning to my cosy village out west. Officially I was there to attend a fundraising workshop, but unofficially I was snatching some time with Duncs who is on a trip here and also going on bended knee to my VSO programme manager to ask for a loan to keep RFPJ afloat for the next five months. Luckily this was agreed so the office will stay open until December by which point we will have hopefully found a way to prop it up for the longer term.

New home

2009-07-21T00:56:00.000-07:00

So far my job has involved a lot of sitting around in the office, either discussing with Vickie how we can pull RFPJ out of the mire, or tapping away at the computer trying to put our ideas in to words. I wouldn’t say this office life is exactly like the UK - the constant scratch of marabou and magpie claws on the tin roof, the cacophony of sounds from the street, the wafts of diesel fumes and smoke coming through the windows, is not exactly W1 - but I am starting to wonder when I’m actually going to venture out in to the real world outside.

So when Esther offered me the chance to go with her to the orphanage she works at on Saturday, I was pretty keen. This was set up by Carol, an philanthropic American lady who runs Youth Encouragement Services, and houses 30 children from 6-16 who are either orphans or whose parents can’t take care of them. Most of them are HIV+, but the motherly matron, another Vickie, keeps them healthy through regular pill-taking, huge, nutritious meals, lots of rest and as much fun as can be provided. Esther and I were there to help out with the latter, but only after a good dose of soul food in the form of Esther’s Sunday school session. I was a little concerned that Esther’s picture of a smiling, bearded white God would lack cultural relevance, but the kids impressively gave their full attention and answered Esther’s questions brilliantly (especially the little girl who announced that God lived in a banana tree to much hysterical laughter). Afterwards the real fun began. We played with bubbles, drew pictures and got deeply involved in a brick-building game. Esther bought all the kids a donut which went down very well. It was a little knackering after a long week in the office, but great to be doing something a bit more hands on.

On Saturday afternoon I packed my bags and said goodbye to my grand, airy house and garage boys, and trundled two doors down to Esther’s house. I decided pretty early on that I’d rather trade luxury and space for a bit of company and since Esther was living alone in another massive house just next door, it seemed to make sense to live together. Esther and I seem to have quite similar tastes (early nights, cheesy films, eating tasty food etc.), and although we also have some differences (she’s a born again Christian, for example) I’m pretty confident we’ll get along just fine. If not, it’s a big enough house to get lost in for some time if needs be. I’ve planted some coriander, parsley and mint in empty water bottles and I’m seriously contemplating getting some chickens.

Living with rubbish

2009-07-16T00:11:00.000-07:00

Rubbish is a problem I have up until now been safely, comfortably cushioned from. Back home I might heave my black bags downstairs to the council bin, and maybe go as far as to take my tins to the recycling bank, but after that the problem is conveniently, cleanly removed from my hands and my conscience. Here in Uganda you must confront your own refuse yourself, alone, daily. You basically have to learn to live with it – literally - because the only way to get rid of it is either to burn it or to bury it in your garden. ‘My boys’ as I have grown to refer to them (not so much from affection as from a lack of any other suitable moniker) have dug this massive pit by the boundary of the grounds in to which they throw my plastic bags full of tins, plastic bottles and ladies’ hygiene materials. I guess this is really no different from what happens in the UK, except there landfill is out of sight and out of mind, and not thinly concealed by the rose bushes behind the shed. Living at such close quarters to my own detritus has introduced all sorts of nagging worries – what if I contaminate the soil? What if some noxious chemical from the plastic seeps in to the water supply? What if one of those beautiful electric blue kingfishers chokes on a ringpull? I’d like to say that this unfamiliar problem has made me more careful about what I buy and how much rubbish I produce, but I’m afraid I’d be telling a lie as I am merrily consuming several tins of tuna fish, tomatoes and coconut milk, not to mention huge quantities of bottled water each week.

Work is busy busy, but I’m starting to settle in to the swing of things. Yesterday Vickie and I gave a presentation to the Kabarole Rotary Club at the Toro Club which, judging from the darts score board going back several generations and the golf course, has to be the last remaining building of the British encampment of the Protectorate days. We addressed a room full of local businessmen, hotel owners, and a Scottish lecturer from the Mountains of the Moon University. I have to admit, nobody came running up to offer us large sums of money, however I hope we at least planted one or two seeds that might later germinate. It was quite interesting to watch the Masonic-like traditions of the Rotary Club being acted out. It’s the first meeting I’ve attended so far in Uganda that not only started but also finished on time.

Sunday by Lake Saka and Buhara village

2009-07-08T23:34:00.000-07:00

With VSOs Celia, Hannah, Pat and Richard and Edward from Buhara Village

"Good Morning Queen, God Bless"

2009-07-08T23:30:00.000-07:00

I love my journey to work. Every day something different happens. This morning a man covered in mud with no shoes shouted, “Good Morning Queen, God Bless!”, which made me smile. When the news about a Briton bringing the first case of swine flu to Uganda hit last week, an agitated young man came up to me and said “swine flu is a disease of the rich,” which I thought was quite a clever observation. On my way home little school children sidle up to say “Hello madam, how are you?” with cute, shy smiles. As soon as I turn off the main road on to the panoramic road that I live on, it suddenly feels like the deepest countryside so I’ve taken to greeting everyone I meet. Sometimes I’m brave enough to try a little lutoro, but usually I stick to English.

Apparently the original meaning of the word mazungu was ‘he who walks fast.’ This is, I think, extremely apt. I am very much aware of the fact that I speed ahead of everyone else. I’ve tried slowing down to keep pace with Ugandans, but I find I physically can’t. Yesterday I walked back from a meeting with Vickie, and I’d never have believed it was possible to walk that slowly. After a while I realized that Vickie take a step or two and then rests a beat, another step or two, another rest. It took us about ten minutes to get up a very small hill. It’s going to take some time to adjust to this African rhythm, but probably in a year’s time I’ll be slower than everyone else.

End of week 1

2009-07-04T01:36:00.000-07:00

So end of the first week. It's been quite an illuminating time. I knew that RRPJ have what was euphemistically described to me as 'financial worries', but I didn't realise until this week quite how worrisome these were. It turns out that the rent is paid till the end of August, the internet until the middle of August, but then the money runs out altogether. Vickie, RFPJ's coordinator and my sole colleague, is confident that we can limp on for a few months longer, possibly until the end of the year. In short, I have an absolute maximum of 6 months to bring in a reasonable level of funds or RFPJ will no longer exist and I'll be out of a job.

It is a little bit stressful, but actually I'm quite pleased that my role here is so clearly defined (not to mention time-bound!). I understand that some of the other VSOs have had to carve their role out for themselves, which I think would be quite hard work. I've got lots to be getting on with and it seems at this stage to be pretty clear how I can be useful for the organisation. It would be a lot lot worse to be sitting around with nothing to do, wondering why on earth I'd come all this way.

FP

2009-06-30T04:00:00.000-07:00

1) My house and garage (home to two gardeners) 2) Breakfast on the veranda 3) RFPJ office 4) 3 months advance allowance (about 500 pounds but I still feel like a millionaire!)

Fort Portal

2009-06-29T08:42:00.000-07:00

It's beautiful, just like everyone said it would be, and strangely like home (drizzle, damp and foggy mornings, and an unexpected herd of fresian cows just outside my house). The Rwenzoris, when they make an occasional appearance through the clouds, are a dramatic, looming presence. My house is huge and I've had to spread my possessions widely to fill the gaping spaces. It just so happens to belong to the Ugandan High Commissioner to the UK who turned up yesterday morning, installed herself on the sofa, and guzzled several cups of tea. She was delighted to catch me with a mop and bucket in hand, and equally delighted that I'm English, live in London and am a landlady myself. I was slightly thrown by the fact that I have two boys, the gardeners, who live in the garage. They look after the grounds and guard the house. Having never employed anyone before, let alone two, ragged, impoverished Africans, I was initially a bit perplexed - how should I address them? (Particularly as they both have completely unpronounceable names of at least 10 syllables each and when I asked them what their nickname was they looked at me blankly). What could I reasonably ask of them and what on earth should I pay them? On Saturday, lacking inspiration, I gave them some bananas and they could hardly conceal their laughter, although they accepted them. On Sunday, I gave them 5000 shillings each (about 1 pound 60) for washing my sheets and they smiled and bowed and gushed thanks. Ever since they've been very ostentatiously mopping my porch every half hour. So it seems money speaks louder than words.

Matatu ride

2009-06-26T08:28:00.000-07:00

Haven't yet plucked up the courage to try a boda boda (motorbike taxi, insane driving, strictly forbidden by VSO), but did take my first solo matatu ride into Kampala today. Found the inward journey straightfoward - convenient (the matatu stopped for me outside the guest house), comfortable (nobody brought any live animals on this occasion), and of course extremely cheap. On the return journey I had my first taste of the notorious Kampala Taxi park. This is a real phenomenon. It is complete and utter crazy chaos. Hundreds of little matatu buses pass within millimetres of each other, people shouting, passengers leaping in and out, not a single sign to give you any clue whatsoever about which bus is going where. It took me - bewildered, sweaty, clueless mazungu - about 15 mins to find the right bus and in the process ended up crossing the entire taxi park several times, letting out little terrified squeaks and leaping from left to right as I tried to avoid getting squashed between matatus.

Just finished a week of in-country training at a conference centre on the outskirts of Kampala. We were sharing it with 33 very jolly Ugandan bishops on their annual retreat. We learned how to treat diaorrhea (although not to spell it!), how to use a stove and a water filter, and got a grounding in basic lutoro. Tomorrow I'm being driven with 3 other volunteers to Fort Portal.

Uganda!

2009-06-23T08:40:00.000-07:00

I knew I was going to love Uganda the second the plane wheels touched the tarmac at Entebbe and the Ugandan lady sitting next to me - who'd been silent throughout the flight - turned to me with a massive grin and a gigantic thumbs up. Her very demonstrative positivism may have had something to do with the fact that I'd spent the previous 20 minutes gripping the arm rest between us and gazing fixedly out of the window with a pale, panicked expression (my standard drill during any landing). Whatever her reason, I decided to interpret it as a special Ugandan good omen of many great things to come...
And since then my impression of Uganda has been building up positive layer upon positive layer. The extremely well-informed, politically literate taxi driver who drove me from the airport; the friendly, smiley ladies in the hostel; the amazing, immense greenery; the suprising and most welcome feeling of security walking the streets of Kampala (in distinct contrast to the mean streets of Nairobbery). The only slight downer so far is the stone age speed of the internet...

2009-06-21T02:59:00.000-07:00

A bumpy beginning

2009-06-21T02:37:00.000-07:00

A bit of a baptism of fire by way of my East African initiation... Duncs and my supposedly restful, pre-getting-down-to-hard-work week, was punctuated by food poisoning, encounters with agro monkeys, powers cuts and a train derailment. No doubt ideal preparation for the next two years!

Here is Duncan, fully recovered from the train poisoning experience, tucking in to half a cow at Forty Thieves bar on Diani Beach.