The Ugandan Experience

Hello blog readers! How are we all? Well I have had some fun experiences since my last entry, which have given me a taste of real Ugandan life. On both Wednesday and Thursday night, the volunteers were invited to the homes of local families for dinner which was great fun. Although both houses were modest, they were fairly "luxurious" in Mbale terms in that they have electricity, furnishings and running water. Both meals were delicious and we had some really good conversations about Ugandan politics, marriage norms, the history of Jenga and people converting from Islam to Christianity and the difference it has made in their lives. On Friday night, I had organised to have dinner at my friend Natasha's place, so I made a chocolate cake, met her after work and we shared a picky to Namakwekwe where she lives (about 10 minutes out of town). It felt kind of strange walking through a local "suburb" with a local, being the only white person around! Got a few stares and some excited kids shouting out "mzungu!", but hey, I'm pretty used to that now.

We arrived at Natasha's place - I can't really say house, because it's literally one room - and was quite humbled by what I saw. She rents a single room in a line of about four room, only about 3 or 4 metres squared. She has a bed, a couch, two armchairs and a coffee table...and that's really all the room can fit. All her clothes are piled up in one corner of the room atop a small shelving unit and another shelving unit behind the door holds all her cooking equipment. There is just enough room to walk around the coffee table and a thin sheet seperates the bed from the "lounge room/kitchen". There is one window next to the front door and the roof is made of tin. There is no electricity, she shares a pit latrine and "shower" (small room where you pour water on yourself from a bucket or jerry can) with her neighbours and water comes from a shared source somewhere in the area. She has to boil it before it's safe to drink.

Natasha had her younger brother Victor staying with her and he was very excited to have a strange mzungu over for dinner! We did the typical Ugandan thing and started with cake and milky African tea (I think I might adopt the dessert first approach back home!) and Victor devoured two rather large slices of cake with his mug of tea while Natasha peeled the matooke (like a savoury planteen/banana) and got her small charcoal stove going. There was nothing but a single candle to provide light for us. I watched as Natasha chopped up tomatoes & onions and boiled the matooke for our dinner. Here is a girl roughly my age, with a fairly decent job, living in conditions that would be considered unliveable back home in Australia. I realised how easy I have it back home, I earn a decent wage, drive my car home after work while listening to my ipod, get home, turn on the lights, watch some tv, heat some food in the microwave or order some Thai take-away, and the rest of the night is mine to enjoy, always ending with a comfy bed and the promise of a hot shower in the morning. Natasha comes home after earning practically nothing, either has to walk for ages to get home or use a large chunk of her daily earnings to hire a picky, arrives home to a dark, dingy room, has to cook in that same room for herself and her brother, wash all her dishes in water one of them had to carry back from the tap/borehole, walk through the pouring rain to use the stinky pit latrine in the dark, then goes to sleep being bitten by mosquitos (possibly carrying malaria) because she doesn't have anything in the walls from which to hang her mosquito net. And yet she doesn't complain. This is her life.

I have been quite humbled here at how joyful people are when they not only have very little, but are often facing really hard circumstances ie: their husband has run off with all their money, or their child is sick with malaria. We love to whinge in the west. If something isn't exactly the way we wanted it or if something causes us the slightest bit of discomfort, we start stomping our feet and having a little tantrum or pity party. We have a meltdown if the internet isn't working. We go mental if our car breaks down. We have a whinge if we had to wait 15 minutes in the queue at the post office. Nothing ever goes our way. Poor us. Yet, these people who actually ARE poor, are walking around with smiles on their faces, gratitude in their hearts and just get on with life and make the most of what they do have. I think we can learn a lot from the "third world". Maybe they're not so backward after all?

Anyway, back to my dinner at Natasha's. So we eat matooke in ground nut sauce (very much like peanuts) which is quite delicious, I chat with Natasha and Victor and speak to their parents on the phone (EVERYONE has a mobile phone over here!) and eventually get ready to leave. About this time, it starts raining. Ok, no big deal, we will just find a picky that Natasha knows (by now it's dark and not particularly safe to be jumping on a motorbike with a strange man) and I might get a little bit wet on the way home. Natasha tries to call a guy she knows but his phone is off. Okay, we will just wander down and find someone that someone else knows. It starts pouring. Oh dear. So now, even if I could find a picky willing to ride around the heavy downpour, I'm not sure that I want to risk my life zooming around in the dark on slippery roads. So I wait for the rain to stop. It doesn't. Natasha says I can stay the night, so I text Jo just to let her know that I won't be coming home and that I'm safe. Natasha puts clean sheets on the bed which she makes me sleep in while she takes the couch (Victor had left by this time to stay with their sister round the corner) and we go to bed early with the sound of heavy rain falling on a tin roof. I actually really like that sound. The bed is comfy and I fall asleep quickly and all is well....until I wake up maybe an hour or two later itching all over. I feel like I have been eaten alive. I spend the next few hours until day break fighting mosquitos buzzing around my head and praying to God that I don't get malaria. It was not a fun night! Finally the morning arrives and we get up around 6am. Natasha puts water on the stove for tea and Victor returns. I give him some money to buy some bread and he goes off to the local shop and returns with a loaf. We drink black tea with lemon grass stalks in it and eat bread with honey. Natasha goes to bathe and returns in a towel and picks out her clothes to wear to work that day. She works Monday to Saturday, and Sundays are for hand washing her clothes, cleaning and going to church. There's not really such a thing as leisure time for a lot of people in Mbale. I say goodbye to Victor and their sister Violet who I have also met, and Natasha and I take a picky to town where she jumps off at her MTN counter and I return home around 8am, exhausted.

Oh funny story, I get to the gate and I have my hand on the inside, trying to turn the key in the padlock, when Korah (our fast-growing German Shepard puppy) jumps up, scratching my hand with her paws. I instinctively retract my hand, leaving the keys hanging in the padlock. You can imagine what happens next. Korah jumps up to the lock, pulling the keys out and on the ground on the inside of the gate. Great. My two housemates are bound to be fast sleep, but I text one of them to explain my situation. I wait for her to come and open the gate. She doesn't come. So I unclip my laptop bag strap, shove a stick in the end hook and attempt to do a Macgyver type move where I hook the keys onto the stick and lift them safely through the hole. It doesn't work so well. I am still struggling pathetically when Jo arrives to rescue me. Turns out her phone was on silent, so there was a bit of a delay in her getting my message.  That same day, I made fresh bread, risotto, shepherd's pie, tuna pasta bake, green beans, carrots, corn and brownies for 11 people. Oh and visited the kids Bible club in Namatala to see them get their free school supplies. Phew!

The next day (Sunday) I visitied Sam's local church in Namabasa, near where the storehouse is that I took photos of. His church had a small to medium sized congregation but a big vibe! I was welcomed very warmly and was very blessed by the songs the choir performed and our time of worship together. As a mzungu visitor, I was given a Mountain Dew at the end of the service. Mmm. Afterwards, we (Sam, his wife Deborah and their 3-year old son, Caleb) went back to their house for a "snack" before our late main meal, which turned out to be a main meal in itself. Africans love to over-feed visitors it seems! So I spend the day chatting with Sam & Deborah, playing his guitar, meeting his mum and the millions of children she's looking after in the next plot of land over and enjoying the beauty of village life. Namabasa is far more rural than the other towns I have been to so far. It was really nice to see some open spaces and see large gardens next to all the houses and kids running around safely. Although the houses there don't have electricity or running water, there is something undeniably homely about the place and I actually thought for the first time "I could live here". I am actually toying with the idea of living with locals for the last 3 weeks I will be in Uganda, but I need to find the right fit. It's one thing to work with Ugandans, but it's another to actually live like a Ugandan (to the best of my ability!). I will let you know when I have organised something concrete.

So I left my power adaptor at home today and only have a few minutes of battery time left, so I'm going to have to leave it there. (Did I just hear a sigh of relief?) Thanks again for reading and I will try and take some more pics over the coming weeks cause I have been very slack with updating you visually. Until then,

Louise :) 

   

And then there were three...

Welcome to the next exciting instalment of Louise’s adventures in Mbale! Since my last entry, I have lost a housemate, gained my own bathroom, semi-planned a trip to Rwanda and tried unsuccessfully to find a pair of ankle-length plain black leggings. Oh and opened one of my UHT soy milk cartons. It’s an exciting life I lead here.

Okay, so when I say I lost a housemate, I don’t mean that anyone has died, just to put your mind at ease. If you remember in a past entry I said that Tiffany fractured her elbow and had a plaster cast? Well she finally got the cast off but found she couldn’t straighten her arm. They did another x-ray and discovered that there was another fracture or something not quite in place when they put the cast on, which they didn’t realise, and so her arm set for four weeks in the wrong position. Short story is, she had to go back to UK to have surgery to fix it properly, and then will spend another 4 weeks in a plaster cast while her arm heals the right way! Poor girl. She was scheduled to return home in 3 weeks time anyway in preparation for a wedding she’s in, but had to change her ticket and move things up much sooner which she wasn’t quite prepared for. At least her travel insurance stepped in to take care of the financial side of things. Hopefully her second cast will come off before the day of her bridesmaid duties arrive!  

So now there’s 3 of us in the house, but Jo is leaving in about 5 weeks time. And then Penny leaves in August I think but Tiff will be back by then. We have another volunteer arriving from the UK today. Her name is Zoe and she’s been here before a couple of years back. It will be nice to have another female volunteer around! Last week I received my first letter in the mail, courtesy of the ever-wonderful Simone La Posta! If anyone else feels like sending some love my way, please do! I love getting snail mail :)

A new supermarket has recently opened up in Mbale which is very cool. They don’t sell soy milk (yet) but they do have diet coke! I cracked open a can today. The small joys in life. I know it’s full of crap but every now and then I feel like something other than water and it’s the only non sugar-laden drink you can get here! I am planning to visit Rwanda in just over 3 weeks time, which I’m very excited about! I have a Swedish friend living and working in Kigali at the moment and so I’m going to stay with her for a weekend and visit the genocide museum and what not. I think Phil is going to join me for the long coach haul over there! I am also going back to Kampala in two weekends time so I can both apply for a UK working visa as well as escort Duncan onwards to Entebbe to fly back home to Scotland! I can’t believe he’s leaving already. Time is passing very quickly here.

I ate grasshoppers yesterday. Yes, you read that right. They’re small yellowish bugs that they deep fry into crunchy salty/sweet snacks. Felt a bit weird putting the first one in my mouth, but once you get used to the idea, they’re kinda nice! On Friday night I am having dinner at the house of a local girl I have made friends with. Her name is Natasha and she works for MTN (the largest mobile phone company in Uganda) where I buy my “air time” or credit as we would say back home. She’s about 24 I think. I’ve met her younger brother who is staying with her during the school holidays and he’s very cute. His name is Victor and he’s 8 years old.

I went into the hospital just before we left for Safari to see David for probably the last time, but walked in to find he had already left! I was so disappointed, but also glad that he was obviously well enough to go back home again where he belongs. I gave the photos I had printed out for his mum to one of the doctors there who is a friend of a friend and he said he would pass them along to David’s mum when they returned for a scheduled check up a few days later. I hope he didn’t forget.

I haven’t been back for a couple of weeks due to travel and other things going on, but I will be back there this Thursday. Other than that, I think I sufficiently updated you all on the goings on here! Thanks for reading and until next time...

Lou :)

Safari Adventures

Well I’m back safe and sound in Mbale after almost a week out to go on safari and see Kampala at last. I’m not sure if it made the news in Australia, but there were some riots the week before both in Kampala and Mbale against the government and their unnecessarily violent arrest of the opposition leader (as well as corruption/high fuel prices/general discontent etc). The “rioters” were unarmed but dispelled with tear gas and rubber bullets. Thankfully, we weren’t in the office on the morning it happened, so we weren’t anywhere near the commotion! The President is being sworn in on Thursday for his next term in power, and they are expecting there to be a response in Kampala, if not other cities too. We are all taking the day off just in case! I certainly don’t feel unsafe here at all, so please don’t worry but do pray that things won’t get out of hand as we have seen in northern parts of the continent in recent months.

So back to safari. Well, in short, it was amazing! We saw four out of “the big five” - lions, elephants, water buffalo, hippos & leopards – didn’t see the latter but did manage to see a spotted hyena which was odd because the driver said they are normally nocturnal. Very cool. I always thought giraffes were interesting animals, but seeing them in the wild was just incredible. They are such strange and beautiful creatures. I think I would like to have my own pet giraffe one day. Here is a more detailed account of the week:

We headed to Kampala on Tuesday in a private car and went to the main shopping centre where we had lunch, drank diet coke (you can’t get it anywhere else!) and got an amazing pedicure while the boys saw a movie. Spent the night at a great backpackers called Red Chilli, who organise their own safari tours. Left on Wednesday morning around 8am in our van, filled with the four of us Jenga volunteers, 2 Belgian girls (Bieke and Tamara), Sabrina, a German girl, Jessica, an English med student on placement in Kampala, our driver, Jimmy, and another guy training to be a tour guide. Headed to Murchison Falls and had a short-ish but hot walk down a track to see the falls from the bottom, before heading back up to see them from the top. Very beautiful place and it was nice to get out of the van and stretch our legs! Headed to the Red Chilli camp near the falls, where we would stay in tents for the next two nights. Arrived in the late arvo and chilled out and had dinner and chatted to our fellow van friends. Thursday morning we had a nice early start to go on our game drive and I got some great pics of the sun rising over the river while we waited for our ferry crossing. Got to the other side, gliding past a few hippos on the way, and began our journey to spot the big five. If you haven’t already checked out the pics on Facebook, then do it now:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150179148856976.305211.506806975&l=f185494b4e

The giraffes were very cool, as I have already mentioned, but I think the single highlight was seeing a male lion (albeit a 3-legged one!) walk about 10 metres in front of our stationary van. You normally see female lions, but the male ones are more rare in the park so we were very lucky (or blessed – I had prayed for a male lion up close!) to see one. Awesome. The landscape was really beautiful and quite green as you can see from the pics. We stopped by a lake full of hippos to eat our packed breakfasts and take some photos, before continuing through the park and admiring all the wildlife along the way. Arrived back at the river to cross back over and there were a family of elephants grazing nearby! We had only briefly spotted one from quite a distance in the park, so we were very happy to see them up close. Returned to the camp for a nap and lunch before heading off on a boat cruise to the bottom of Murchison Falls. Saw lots more hippos, elephants, colourful birds and crocs! Crikey. They’re not so scary when you’re on the roof of a large boat :P Had some photo opportunities before making the boat journey back towards camp. The sun was scorching, but the breeze was beautiful and the covered lower level provided the perfect viewing spot and a good opportunity to chat with the other people doing safari in the other two vans. Met four med students from England who were on placement in Kampala and had all received texts from home while on the boat tour that they all passed their fourth year exams. Smart cookies.

Returned to camp for chilling out, dinner, cards and sleep before heading off the next morning to the rhino sanctuary. To be honest, it was a bit disappointing. You drive into the sanctuary, then head off on foot to find the rhinos, of which we found two, but they were both sleeping under a tree and you can’t go closer than about 30 metres away. What I wouldn’t give for a decent zoom on my camera. Had lunch at the sanctuary before heading back to Kampala, where we arrived around 5pm. Went to Nandos for dinner with the med students before heading to an Irish pub that was full of white people. Actually felt quite weird to be the racial majority! Almost exploded with happiness when I saw they had Bulmers on tap, only to be disappointed by the bartender who told me it wasn’t running. They had an African cider which tasted okay but it wasn’t quite what I had been hoping for. Oh well. Saturday we headed into Kampala city and checked out an African market which was full of very cool things – lots of souvenirs, jewellery, sandles, drums, clothes, trinkets etc. Walked through the city back to the shopping mall, had a huge salad at a place called New York Kitchen that does American style pizzas and milkshakes etc. And diet coke. Oh salad and diet coke, what a wonderful pair you make. Went to the movies and saw The Dilemma which was actually better than I had anticipated. Ate Cadbury chocolate, looked in the shops, bought some things from the supermarket and headed back to camp. Sunday morning, Duncan and I visited Watoto church, which is a HUGE church in Kampala where the famous children’s choir comes from. They song a lot of Hillsong songs, which was kind of surreal! It has been some time since I was last in a “mega church”, but I liked what they were about.

We took the coach back to Mbale which takes about 4 hours and I spent the trip squished between a sleeping Duncan and an African woman with wide hips. Who needs personal space anyway? Watched the match between Manchester United and Chelsea  (Man U won 2-1) at the Palestinian family’s house before going to bed exhausted. Phew! 

This week I am back in the office and typing up random bits of things for different projects. The farming training last week went really well and people were really excited about the things they had seen and learnt during the program and have already begun to start implementing the principles in their gardens at home. The organisation has recently changed its name, so if you want to see what they do, go to www.foundationsforfarming.org. The guy who ran it was a really great teacher and despite being a Canadian, spoke fluent Lugandan. Very impressive! I’m not entirely sure what is on the horizon for Jenga at the moment, apart from Robby’s 40^th birthday party this Friday night – woop woop! I will let you know more about work matters when I know myself.

So that’s about it, folks. Thanks for your time and don’t forget we have a post box here if you should ever want to send me mail – cough cough (address is at very bottom of this page). Au revoir!

Lou J