Home.

 

I'm home. It is wonderful.

Things to cherish about my home:

Hot showers all the time.

Drinking water from the tap.

My housemates.

Coffee made properly.

Different clothes to wear.

Clean streets.

Clean sheets!

Phone reception.

Proximity of friends and family.

Amazing food.

Sit down and flushing toilets.

Fast internet.

Wine.

Not taking malaria tablets.

There are heaps more but my jetlag adled brain can think no longer!

Things about Uganda. Part 3.

People

Ugandan's (especially the people of Buganda) have quite noticibly small ears...

People are extremely homophobic. However the culture is very friendly and touchy amongst same sex friends. Men walk with interlocked fingers down the street all the time. Or stand and talk holding hands or wrists. It is very rare to see a couple touching though and guys hanging around on the street will stare and sometimes whoop if Tim holds my hand or puts his arm around me.

Every child everywhere knows "Muzungu owareyou" and "imfine" from the tiniest babe and up.

Foreigners are novel to about 95% of the population. Agape staring, pointing and waving is common outside of Kampala and the various tourist destinations.

Ugandans don't shout at each other in conflict.  Arguments seem to be conducted with smiles and problems conveyed with a hint of irritation rather than anger.

Handshaking is a long process here (like an uncomfortable amount of time to have your hand held by a stranger) and formal greetings are essential to get along.

Young Ugandans seem to be aware of their need for education to better themselves and to think of the future.

That said I have seen and met far too many young girls with babies and no partner. Condoms are evidently still not being used and Aids is still on the rise here.

Most people have at least 8 children and are very shocked when they find out Tim and I don't have any. They are still more shocked when they hear that 2 children is the norm where we come from.

Most kids have huge sticky out belly buttons. (I haven't had the opportunity to see any adults tummys!)

Ugandan's love and often laugh when you use some of their language. I am surprised not more Muzungu's take the trouble to learn the few words we did as it is not a hard language and it makes peoples day.

Most people are Christian (80%), but there is also a significant Muslim population. Strangely there is more animosity between Catholics and Protestants than there are between Muslims and Christians here.

A huge mosque stands on top of a hill in Kampala (and one in most towns throughout the country too) with loud speakers blarring out the call to prayer five times a day, the first of which starts at 5am. It can be heard for at least 2 - 5kms all round. The sound of it is, to my ear, horribly discordant and eery and it drives me nuts been woken up by it so early. As intolerant as I may sound, at least church bells are only once a week and at a decent time of day!

People love pool and we have seen some absolute pro's playing in tiny villages.

T.v's and sound systems are always on really really really loudly. I now hate football. Especially at 1am, full volume, heard from 3 streets away.

Most people never travel out of their county.

There are no detectable sub-cultures or alternative view points. All the different radio stations play the same kind of music, all the clothes are either traditional garb or plain western popular fashion (a couple of years behind).  You couldn’t split people up into categories like: goth, hippy, new age, trendy etc. Similarly, everyone is religious either Christian or Muslim (and of course some traditional beliefs remain - but we didn’t meet any). Atheist's or agnostics don't seem to exist here.

Vaseline (petroleum jelly) is sold as a hair product here!

Things about Uganda. Part 2.

Environment

Banana tree's are everywhere. Banana's aren't native to Uganda. Or Africa for that matter! Also Eucalyptus trees thrive here. We have never seen in Australia the health of Ugandan Eucalypts!

There is no better way to see a town or the countryside than from the back of a boda boda (motorbike/scooter). Sunglasses are a must though because of the dust kicked up along the roads.

The soil is deep red! And stains! 

Hippos and warthogs are cute in an ugly kind of way.

I would guess that there is under 200kms of tarmac road in the entire country. Even Kampala is riddled with death trap pot holes. The foot paths (when they exist) are even more dangerous, with meter's deep man holes in the middle, sharp bits of metal and wire protruding from them and the entire city's household waste fermenting on them.

The land is extremely fertile and lush and most people subsist off it. The frustrating thing is, people only work and grow enough to survive day by day - not to better themselves or their futures. Whilst it is impossible for some (single parents and orphans especially) to do any better - plenty just need to learn to save and not to be wasteful and lazy towards their land and animals. For example we were looking at some peoples piggery. They where complaining that they thought the pigs were sick. I asked where the pigs water was and they seemed surprised that pigs needed water. Incredible.

There is no waste disposal system and the country is filling up with plasic. Rubbish is dropped where it is made. People drop their litter on shop floors, on the street, in peoples houses, in waterways and in the national parks. It is a disgusting public norm and an environmental disaster. A towns rubbish is swept into piles and set alight, putting putried fumes of burning plastic, paint and metal into the air. And as well as burning hard rubbish people burn food scraps and garden waste as well, instead of putting it back into the land to keep the soil fertile.

Tree's are cut down, burnt, then sold as coal for people to cook on.

No one seems to tune their vehicles. Tons of expensive petrol is being wasted out of exhaust pipes in vile black blue fumes everyday.

At first we thought the bicycles that are used everywhere here were really cool. They look like just the thing that is fashion in Sydney at the moment. Old school thin tall bikes, in black with leather seats and shiny metal breaks. However after having a go on one we decided they are in no way desirable modes of transport. They weigh an absolute ton, have handles that are in the way of your knees when you need to peddle and steer at the same time, bad breaks and people ride these on rutted dirt rodes laddened with the most improbable things. Crates of glass bottles of cola, 6 stems of green banana, huge tea chests and bags of coal. 

Things about Uganda. Part 1.

Food:

A decent cup of tea. What I wouldn't do for one. Here tea not only has an odd flavor to it, it is served to you with hot milk only. I mean you are handed a cup, a tea bag, sugar and a thermos of hot unpasturised milk. No water. I don’t recommend it. Sometimes you get a pot of chai spices as well. Suprisingly this makes it more bearable...

The national diet consist mostly of a glob of carbs made from green bananas (Matoke), millet (Kale) or maize (Posho). Then with a bowl of some sauce on the side. Goat is the most common meat, followed by beef and chicken. If you are by a lake then fish is common (usually eyes and all). Other sauces are made from ground nuts (peanuts), or beans (our main diet).  Some places you could get vegetables like sweet potato, pumpkin, yams (the most disgusting vegetable on the planet I reckon) and normal potatoes (They call them Irish potatoes here which is quaint). Oh and a vegetable they call eggplant but which looks like a small green tomato and has this awful bitter aftertaste.

The pineapple and actually all the fruit here is the sweetest and tastiest I have ever had in my entire life. Fruit is mainly: Pineapple, mango, pawpaw, jack fruit, tomato and tiny yellow bananas.

We found we could buy Cadbury's chocolate at some places, but its taste is a little different to chocolate at home. It is made in a Cadbury factory in Kenya and has some change in the recipe that means it doesn't melt - quite remarkable really!

Coffee = Nescafe. So I have been coffee free (with one or two exceptions in Kampala at a real café) for 2 months. It's true folks. The addict is free! Not that I will continue my abstinence of that heavenly substance the moment I get back home…

Beer is offered either warm or cold (if the place has a fridge) and often given to you with a straw! Beer also comes in 500ml glass bottles so 2 is generally enough for me. There are about 6 or more Ugandan beers. Club being my favorite and Eagle being Tim's.

All soda (why the American term stuck here and not the British I do not know) comes in glass bottles which have to be returned to the person you bought it from so they can return them to the company for washing and re-using (same goes for the beer). The one bit of recycling that happens in the entire country and it is done by Pepsi and Coke. Crazy.

Cooking takes place almost always outdoors on little coal burners that fill the countryside and evening air with charcoal smoke.

The one bit of street food we have taken a shining to is the Rolex. A chipati with a freshly made vegetable omlete rolled inside it in a heavenly greasy combo. At least it's fresh!

We were shocked to see whole cow and goat hanging from meat hooks in the sun. When a piece of meat is bought the desired part is pointed to and the butcher hacks at it with what must be a blunt machete, until the piece of flesh comes off the animal. Meanwhile flies and dust from the road loiter on the "prime cuts". The smell is horrendous, and I turn my head when we are passing them.

Most foods are heavily flavored with either salt (to an unbearable amount at times), sugar (the bread is sweet - so wrong) or oil (the chipatis are grease-tastic!)

I don't think we have had food poisoning on our journey, but we have had some travellers tummy. Tim has had alcohol poisoning though. ha!

Kamwenge

We weren't sure what to expect from our volunteering time in Kamwenge with Toro Integrated Childcare (TICH). I will say that Toro is doing amazing work in its community, and it was incredible to see the real life manifestations of an NGO. However, TICH is not set up for volunteers. Especially not international ones. And that makes perfect sense. It's doing community work and empowering the community to help themselves. I am not part of the community - how, therefore, can I be helpful?

It was a really hard two weeks for me. I am a restless person by nature, and so don't easily adjust to the African "poly poly" (slowly slowly) attitude. I also felt extremely uncomfortable being guest of honor for 2 weeks, given my lack of knowledge about community development, and also my lack of years and general life experience compared to the people we were meeting. In this area of Uganda it is customary to kneel as you shake hands (a very limp gesture on the most part here) to show respect. It was quite alarming to be kneeled at by 60 year old men and women as well as younger people. I also don't take to kindly to forced public speaking.

It's hard to sum up our time, but generally it went like this:

Catching a boda boda through the lovely countryside for any time between 10 minutes to an hour to arrive at group of waiting people. The amount of people varied between 10 and 100. Here we shake an awful lot of hands and get stared at an awful lot (okay so the staring is nothing new by now). Then we are escorted to chairs either under a tree or in a church building at the front of the waiting crowd. We are greeted by the leader of the group with a speech (which is translated to us) Thanking God for our arrival, our help and our existence. Then Bosco or Reverend (whoever from Toro has travelled with us that day) gives a speech telling the crowd who we actually are (interspersed by clapping from the crowd). We are from Australia, Tim is on the Australian board of TICH, the people in Australia give money to TICH etc. Sophie is Tim's wife. They don't have any children!

Then we are requested to give a speech. We started taking it in turns who would do which gig, but in the end demand was for both of us to speak so that is what we did. And then it would be translated.  I am uncertain as to how faithful some of the translating was…

Then what often happened was that the person with us from TICH would explain a new embellishment to the micro finance scheme that they are rolling out. It was good that we were able to draw crowds for them to be able to explain to the most amount of people. But sometimes the talk would go for 2 hours, in a different language and we were obliged to sit gracefully in front of everyone while this happened. I was bored to tears!

We also visited a lot of the workshops that have been set up by tich in carpentry (for boys) and sewing (for girls).  On several occasions we were given presents. Including a coffee table and cloth to go on it. The coffee table had to join the two of us plus our driver on the motorbike home! We also got given kilos of avocado, potatoes, mango, peanuts, eggs (!) and jack fruit! Another heavy load for the boda boda! We started off loading these food presents to others that travelled from their villages into town to see us and give us more gifts of hand woven baskets.

What else did we do in Kamwenge?

We were taken to meet the Bishop of the East Rwenvori diocese of the Church of Uganda (Anglican essentially) and also went to that church (a bizarre experience for another day).

We went to Bigodi wetland sanctuary and saw a huge variety of monkeys and birds.

Had dinner with the lovely British couple that were living next door to us, and ate Cadburys chocolate and different food to what we had been having every meal before. (rice and beans)

There is a gully, where the gum tree's hide the bright moon (when it is out) and the children aren't around, between our favorite pub (Tides Inn) and our "hotel". At night time fireflies twinkle magically in the long grass, and it is quite beautiful if you hold your nose to block the stench of the stewing rubbish pile that is smoldering there. On some nights there was no moon and it is completely pitch black.

Emerging from that gully to go up the hill to our hotel it was rare to not be bombarded by the local kids who took quite a shine to us, because we span them around in our arms and gave them our leftover slices  of bread from breakfast. I tried to get them to say different responses to "owareyou?" other than "imfine" but to no avail.

Sunday 24th January

On Thursday 21st we shoved our bicycles into a matatu and travelled to Jinja. ("Adventure Capital of Uganda!") Jinja is set up for Muzungu's and so we had an amazing coffee (affagato for me, latte for Tim - flat whites don't exist outside of Australia) and lapped up the amazing customer service at the Nile River Explorers backpackers. We read, ate great western style food (you wouldn’t believe what you get cravings for when you don't have a choice), drank cold beer and watched a rather stunning sunset over the "source" of the Nile. ("Source" is a matter of some contention - of course it is one of the sources of the Nile, in particular the "Victoria Nile" it is amazing to think though that if you carried along this river for almost 1000Kms you would end up in the Mediterranean!) We were lulled to sleep by its rushing waters and nothing else.

We went white water rafting the next day on the river. This part of the Nile is a constant balmy 27 degrees Celsius. Just perfect to cool off in the hot sun and not in the least bit painful or shocking to jump off a raft into. The paddling was really hard work (I think our 4 other passengers may have been napping while Tim and I did all the rowing up the front! I had huge blisters on both my palms. But the rapids! Oh My Gosh! So much fun! I can not recommend rafting as an adventure sport enough! The water is amazing and so powerful. We even went down a 16ft waterfall at one point! Most of the rapids were really deep so even though some were grade 5 it didn't matter if you fell out.

The next day (Saturday 23rd) we travelled back to Kampala, making sure we indulged in an amazing eggy breakfast before being squished in a bus with children, adults and chickens alike. We stayed overnight in a Chinese run hotel called "888" it was just like the place in Hong Kong, only with and extra 3ft of space either way! We spent the afternoon in Garden City shopping mall, which is full of every Muzungu in Kampala, young rich Ugandans and many Ugandans of Indian origin. We bought haribo lollies, sunscreen, coffee, used fast internet and to cap it all off went to the movies and saw Sherlock Holmes (Review: Entertaining fun, nice explosions and costumes. Well set up for the sequel.)

Today (Sunday) we travelled to Kamwenge. We got harassed onto a bus which said it was leaving in 15 minutes. 2.5 hours later we left through the dense Kampala traffic. Sitting on a bus waiting for it to leave in the middle of a hot city is not fun. People board the bus every 5 minutes selling things from sweets to shoes and meals to bed sheets. When we did get going the bus seemed to be racing another one going the same direction from a different company and went around all the corners way to fast. Ugandan roads aren't the safest full stop. Bus crashes rolling and killing all the passengers get reported in the newspapers every week. Huge fatal crashes are recorded every day because of negligent driving. Needless to say these facts where whirring around in our heads and the whole journey was pretty stressful. The bus was also overcrowded with little stools being put down in the coaches aisle, then Tim almost got left behind (much to my panic) at the toilet stop because people pushed in front of him in the line to buy water. ARGH!

When we got to Fort Portal 5 hours later, thankful to be in one piece (or two pieces really), we had a little sit down at a bar to recuperate and work out how to get to Kamwenge. Taxi being the answer. Not the mini bus taxis that are everywhere in Africa but an unmarked sedan car with a cracked windscreen and more rust than paint. We arrived first and the driver said that when 2 more people come for Kamwenge then we would go. We waited, and I went off to buy some phone credit, and got blatantly stared at so much by men that as I approached Tim at the car I slow mo ran into his arms and he twirled me around and dipped me down and kissed me. The reaction was hilarious! I swear the whole market place and street stopped to whoop and cheer at the audacious Muzungu couple!

Our taxi left when 5 more people had come. There were 5 full grown adults in the back, and another 2 adults AND the driver in the front. Then we squished another person in the front (sharing a seat with the driver) along the way. Not a particularly comfortable way to travel, but at least he was a safe driver. Not that he had much choice on a rutted road riding that that low to the ground. I'm surprised we didn't get someone in the boot, though that was wide open with all the passengers luggage roped in.  Reverend Kwizera met us in Kamwenge, he is lovely with a mouth and nose always itching to smile. Our accommodation looks good too and we met a lovely British couple working for an NGO called LINK.

hi

I miss blogging. I miss reading your blogs. I miss writing. I have been writing on old fashioned paper, and find it is much harder to motivate myself.
But I will tell more.
We are on our last 2 weeks in Uganda. We are looking after precious babes at an orphanage here. Today is bright, bright blue and hot. I bathed the littlies in cool water in tubs outside. So cute. Tim is amazing with kids.
We are starting to really look forward to going home. I am so grateful for all this time off. I no longer have dark circles under my eyes. It's amazing! 2010 = year for change... We have big changes planned for when we get home. I will try and write some of my thoughts from the past month down here and then I will start telling about what's next...