Hey team!
I’m home now, pretty jet-lagged and trying to stay awake for another half hour but home and life is good. The layover in London went much better this time, I got a full night’s sleep and ended up having breakfast with Marcus and Andes from Germany. They’ve been backpacking around Europe all summer and thought it was hilarious that I’d done something as silly as go to northern Uganda. We had a good chat, I gave them the information for the Antigallican because Central was full the following night and then we went our separate ways.
Gatwick was kind of interesting. I’ve heard plenty of horror stories about Heathrow, but really… Gatwick was way slower. Yes Heathrow is huge, but they’re so used to processing ridiculous amounts of people that they’re also very efficient. I waited for 2 hours trying to clear immigration in London on the way TO Africa, and border security again took me an hour coming home. Nope, I’d do Heathrow again before Gatwick any day. It’s also way easier to get to Heathrow by rail, you can do it on the tube. Technically you can take the tube all the way to Gatwick, but if you want to get there in anything that resembles a timely manner you take the express and pay ₤16.00. Hm… kind of expensive, but a very nice train. Very nice train, they fed me, it was hilarious.
They also insisted on going through my box of declarable things. I don’t begrudge them that, I had plenty of things that were wood or wood products and ground nut paste, but I thought it was very strange that they’d search the box on my way OUT of Britain, and not on the way in. That was also kind of time consuming, it ended up being good that my flight was an hour behind schedule because I wouldn’t have made the plane otherwise. By the sound of it Greg and Chris had much better luck with Gatwick than I did, so please keep in mind that I am definitely biased on this.
The final tally for Africa stands as such:
1561 Pictures taken
27 Mosquito bites
20 Nights in Uganda
17 Blog posts
8 Chimps chased madly through the jungle
5 Species of monkey spotted
4 Cities and towns visited
3 Co-teaching sessions at Lelaobaro Primary School
3 Baboon sightings
3 Rhinos (2 black, 1 white, lined up like an oreo cookie)
1 Vicious battle with a bottle cap on a coke bottle; the cap won
1 Case of food poisoning (bad fish… >.<)
1 New Ugandan girlfriend (?)
0 Individuals informed of my return date, time and flight number (… oops)
0 Bad boda-boda incidents (yee ha!)
If I had counted the number of times I was randomly asked to marry someone on the street I would have included that as well, unfortunately that seems to happen on a rather frequent basis and I have a sneaking suspicion that that had less to do with my physical attractiveness and more to do with the novelty of a white girl wandering the streets of Gulu and Bigodi.
All in all I’d say it was a pretty awesome trip. As it stands the walls and the roofs have been put up on the library and the teacher’s quarters. The foundation and walls are complete on the pit latrines (VIP Latrines, as in Ventilation Improved Pit Latrines, oh yeah!) and… the Opening Ceremony is set for August 4th!
I’m sure I’ll into everyone this week, see you all soon and thanks for reading!
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Friday, July 17, 2009
Jinja and the Pretty Princess Net
Jinja is east of Kampala and the home of the source of the Nile. So we figured that being as I’m here I should probably go check it out. The plan was to leave early but due to a series of delays – as is common in Africa – we didn’t leave until much later. Think like… 4:00pm. Traffic in Kampala is nasty so a 90km drive took us something like 2 hours. When we did make it to Jinja, Zoe and Billy spotted a Chinese restaurant and the energy in the car hit the roof. They’ve only ever been to one Chinse restaurant before so they hugely enjoyed telling me everything they knew about plum sauce, sweet and sour pork, fried rice, spring rolls and so on. It was fun, I let them do all the ordering and had all sorts of Africa-style Chinese food.
After dinner it was getting dark so Freddy made the call that we’d be staying the night. Hotels are competitive along the Nile and we stayed at one called Paradise. It was pretty awesome, Billy’s favourite part was that there were flush toilets instead of pit latrines. By that time it was very dark outside, but Brenda and Fred were dead set on me seeing the source of the Nile and the falls. We ended up hiring a cab (called a ‘special hire’) because the route to the falls was so twisty and unmarked. It was cool to hear the force of the water but we couldn’t really see much in the dark. During the day there’s a whitewater raft that you can do down the rapids and if you’ve got 2000 shillings to spare there are kids who will hang on to an empty yellow jerican and jump into the falls. I hear they just vanish for a while under all the white foam and then pop out at the bottom, smiling and paddling their way back to the edge to do it again for the tourists.
Definitely not something I’d be up for.
Back to Paradise Hotel we went. Zoe and Billy’s little cousin Tyra had come with us as well, so we stayed in two rooms and split up the wildest members of our party. 5 year old Tyra slept with Zoe and I while Fred and Brenda stayed with Billy.
When we woke up the next morning we had an excellent breakfast courtesy of the hotel and headed out to get a glimpse of the Source of the Nile. The currents are so strange looking, the water wells up from underneath and makes the surface ripple and boil all over the place. It reminds me of when we have scuba divers at the bottom of the Y's pool actually.
The drive back to Kampala was much faster than the drive out to Jinja, and I spent the rest of the day re-packing my backpack and generally hassling the kids. Billy wants me to come back soon so that he can beat me at Monopoly again and Zoe is hoping that we can swap more music at some point. I may have gotten her hooked on swing, once I was packed I taught her the jitterbug stroll and Tyra joined in. Kealo, the lady who helps around the house, thought the whole thing was hilarious.
Phil picked me up, I said my goodbyes and we headed out to Entebbe. My flight left so early this morning that it didn’t make sense for me to stay anywhere other than next to the airport. We ended up checking in and sleeping for a few hours before I was due at the airport. When we walked in to find rooms Rona was the concierge on duty. She happily showed us around and answered all our questions about prices, then informed us that the Deluxe room size would be best because otherwise we wouldn’t fit. I was confused at first, what did she mean? Of course we'd fit, it's not like the rooms were closets. Phil understood what was going on right away though. They had a short discussion and later when Phil and I were eating dinner he explained that Rona believed we were planning on sharing a room, and that it was squishy to fit two people on a twin bed. No no Rona, that's not the plan. We did have a good laugh about it though, it definitely explained the stranged looks she kept giving us.
I’d would like it noted that my room was equivalently awesome to Phils' even though his was bigger. This is because my mosquito net came with plastic gem-things along the side. That’s right, I got the princess mosquito net! Yee ha!
Rona was a great help in getting my masks and baskets packed into a box too, she provided me with plenty of newspaper and tape so a big thank you to her for that. A brief 2 hour nap later and it was 3:00am and time to get back in the car. I lucked out with security and managed to be just ahead of the crowd the whole time. The immigrations officer had a good giggle at me though, apparently I needed to fill out some forms before I left. Unaware of this I sleepily stumbled past customs and did not initially recognize that it was me they were yelling at. Needless to say once I knew what they wanted I was happy to fill out the bright yellow cards next to the big sign on the wall saying ‘Exit Forms: Immigration’.
Safely on the plane I slept all the way to Nairobbery, as I have learned Nairobi Int’l Airport has been aptly nicknamed, and met a group of three Brits headed down to Uganda to work in an orphanage. Phil, Rosa and Claire are all about the same age as myself and they met on the flight down from London. We chatted and hung out until it was time for my flight to board, they had a layover of no less than 7 hours and weren’t sure they wanted to leave the airport to explore. I am definitely glad my layover was short, there is nothing to do in Nairobi’s airport.
I boarded and bid ‘goodbye!’ to the Brits. The best part of this flight was that the plane was a 777 and it wasn’t a full flight at all. I found myself a window row and curled up along three seats for a nice long sleep. Before we took off we had a bit of a funny experience though, before we even got off the ground we were all sprayed with some sort of insect killing gas. Between that and the strange disinfectant block they had in my bathroom at the hotel my nose was toast. The poor little thing has been running and sneezing ever since.
On the bright side though I’m back in London. It’s grey and rainy, as London tends to be but I’m staying at this excellent little hostel in zone 1, so most everything I want to see tomorrow morning is in walking distance. That and really… who can beat a hostel that’s got murals and maps on all it walls and doors? I’ll definitely be staying here when I come through again.
The strangest part about being back in a developed country is how white everything and everyone is. I’m surprised at how accustomed I became to being the only mzungu around, whereas in London even the buildings are clean and white. It’s like everything glows or something. Very strange. The best part is how little dust and the smell of diesel is kicking around in the air. Kudos to that!
Thursday, July 16, 2009
The Good Samaritan
Internet is kind of a fickle thing out here. Wireless is not hard to come by but Fred and Brenda don’t have any at home, it’s something they’re considering for next month because the kids are in secondary school come fall. So I was on my way up to Backpackers Hostel - which is the most reliable source of internet - when a slightly lost looking white lady came down the drive from Backpackers and asked me how long the walk was to downtown Kampala. The walk is not epically long or anything, but I certainly could not have given adequate directions for her to arrive there without getting lost in the twisty, unlabelled streets. Her name was Laura from Colorado. I flagged down a boda-boda and haggled with the driver for her, and she looked horrified at the solution puttering away in front of her. Part of the horror was the cost of the boda-boda, she only had 3000 shillings and couldn’t afford the cost of the ride downtown. So I hopped on and told her I’d go downtown with her. We set her on the bike between the driver and myself so she wouldn’t fall off and away we went!
It turns out she’s a research biologist who’s headed down to Kibale National Park to work with the chimps! We had fun on the ride downtown. I answered her questions about Kampala as best I could and showed her how to use the very specific foreign exchange system they’ve got for visa cards. Once she’d figured out her exchange and I’d convinced her that really it was ok, I didn’t need to be taken for lunch, she paid for my boda-boda back to Backpackers and we went our separate ways. In theory she’s just reached Fort Portal, and didn’t even have to take the Kalita because a vehicle was sent to get her. Lucky girl, I bet she’ll have a great time with the chimps.
From there the plan was to go swimming with the kids at their school pool. Unfortunately the pool was closed for summer renovations, so no swimming for us. That’s alright though because it sounds like today we’re headed to Jinja today to go check out the source of the Nile. Yee ha! So we’re taking along swimsuits and seeing if we can find a good spot to hop in.
Hope it’s sunny and warm back home, cheers!
It turns out she’s a research biologist who’s headed down to Kibale National Park to work with the chimps! We had fun on the ride downtown. I answered her questions about Kampala as best I could and showed her how to use the very specific foreign exchange system they’ve got for visa cards. Once she’d figured out her exchange and I’d convinced her that really it was ok, I didn’t need to be taken for lunch, she paid for my boda-boda back to Backpackers and we went our separate ways. In theory she’s just reached Fort Portal, and didn’t even have to take the Kalita because a vehicle was sent to get her. Lucky girl, I bet she’ll have a great time with the chimps.
From there the plan was to go swimming with the kids at their school pool. Unfortunately the pool was closed for summer renovations, so no swimming for us. That’s alright though because it sounds like today we’re headed to Jinja today to go check out the source of the Nile. Yee ha! So we’re taking along swimsuits and seeing if we can find a good spot to hop in.
Hope it’s sunny and warm back home, cheers!
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Kibale... Chi-ba-lee... Chi-baaaa-li...
So I have this excellent Tae Kwon Do instructor. His name is Phil Ndugga, and it’s because of him that it’s safe and awesome for me to be in Uganda, he’s the director of Ssubi. Phil’s got this wife, Tracy. Tracy is a super cool woman who at one point worked for the Jane Goodall Institute tracking chimps in Kibale National Park in Southern Uganda. When Tracy left her position tracking and researching with JGI another lady and a good friend of Tracy’s took over the position, and her name is Julia.
Right. Now that that’s sorted, guess where I am at the moment? At Julia’s place, on a great big piece of land with a series of high and low tree houses on it for the occupants to stay in. So for the past three days I’ve been living ‘bush life’ and it’s amazing. The tree house I’m in is the original so it’s all made of off cuts of wood. It gives this really rustic feel to it because you can see through the gaps between the walls and floor to the outside. There are big swing-down and normal swing-out barn windows on every wall and the view from the front porch is amazing because Jules’ land is on top of a hill overlooking a valley.
Jules herself is living in the newer, lower tree house (because it’s actually cooler lower to the ground) which is a little more modern. So she has an actual spring mattress (that’s pretty luxurious out here) and a smooth, evenly joined floor. The walls and the shelves and such are all still made of off cuts and the roof is still thatched grass so it still has a very similar feeling to the original house. The garage/storehouse that the car never actually parks in is done the same way but with a dirt floor, so it’s the best for food storage and it’s wonderfully cool inside. The only real issue with that particular building is that there’s a snake living in it.
The kitchen is cool, it’s outside and done with only three walls. Most of the food storage is done using metal tins or big metal… boxes? Trunks? To keep the mice out. There isn’t any refrigeration but the shade works pretty well to keep the water in the very posh filter nicely chilled. Jules is British, and figures the filter is posh because you don’t need to boil the water or anything before you run it through the filter, and then… tada! Safe drinking water.
The showers are all raised platforms that are flush to the floors of the tree houses with spaced slats of wood for the floor. The whole thing is surrounded by woven grass mats and you get a great big jug full of cool water, a thermos or a kettle full of boiled water, a wide bucket to mix the two in and a wide mouthed mug to use for dumping water on your head. It’s such a gong show. You definitely need to shower in the middle of the day though, when it’s really hot out, otherwise you freeze when the breeze comes through and there’s no sun on you. I did not consider that the first evening I got here. Ah… that was poorly planned.
She’s got these three great dogs that have such distinct personalities. They’re all rescue dogs from Kampala or Fort Porteal. Sparkle Bailey is the alpha and she is a gorgeous dog, all tawny and big brown eyes. She’s such a brat though, she’ll climb up on tables to get at food she wants, sleep on the bed, push you off the bed, jump up on you, all that jazz. Her training is still a work in progress. Slim Shady is the male in the pack. He’s got some Doberman in him but he’s very tall and long, and very timid about being introduced to humans. He’s definitely the sentry though, he’ll run patrols around the fence at night and you know there’s actually something up when it’s Slim who’s barking, not just Sparkle. I may or may not like him best, he’s such a sweet heart. The last is Foxy Lady, and wow…what a unique dog. She’s coloured like a mangy german shepherd but with this huge ridge of fur running down her back that sticks straight up. Then her tail has been broken a few times so instead of being straight, or even crooked, its spirals like a pig’s tail. She’s by far the biggest suck for attention, and definitely lowest on the totem pole.
Now, Jules is living in a very rural area of Uganda, so at first the idea of getting three dogs was really only a companion thing, then they became more guard dogs when Slim started running patrols along the fence. Ugandans don’t like dogs. At ALL. They find them dirty, dangerous… basically everything that is bad in the world is embodied in a dog. So the neighbours come to Jules’ house and the first thing they’re greeted by is Sparkle leaping up to put her paws on their shoulders. Then they see slim all legs and sleek Doberman features with his big deep bark, and then they see Foxy and they’re just like ‘Whoa… ok, I don’t even know what that is I think maybe it’s time for me to leave!’ It’s really kind of fun to watch.
The other really cool thing about Jules’ land is that it borders on Kibale National Park. There are two great big trees at the edge of the park with canopies that cross the border into her land, and they’re full of fruit. It’s not unusual for the chimps (a.k.a. the boys) to come and climb the trees and stay there all afternoon eating all the fruit they can get.
Chimps, baboons, red-tailed monkeys, black and white colobus monkeys, red colobus monkeys, grey-cheeked mangabes… I’ve seen all of them since I arrived. They’re great fun! Both mornings I’ve been up early to do a walk around the wetlands and then the morning after for tracking chimps. Tracking the chimps was insane! They do it with tourists in groups of six or less and you do a sort of mad dash through the forest towards wherever you happen to hear them calling at each other from. The guides are all equipped with walkie-talkies so they’re chatting back and forth to make sure that if one group can’t find chimps at least another group has and they can double up.
Our guide was a guy named Charles, and I think he broke just about every rule in the book. Because the chimps are still wild there are limitations that are supposed to be considered, things like ‘stay at least 7 meters away from the chimps’ and ‘don’t use the flash on your camera’. Seem like pretty good rules to me being as the chimps aren’t small animals, and the alpha males are aggressive and like to display. Oh! And if they charge you during a display, you’re to stand perfectly still and not look at them. If you run, they’ll chase you, and they’re way faster than we are. Anyway, Charles took us veeeeeery close to the chimps. Like… possibly less than 3 meters. He’d move us forwards one by one with a friendly ‘Come, stand here’ and then before you knew it you had to keep your movements slow and easy so as not to startle them into thinking you were some sort of enemy.
It was amazing to be so close to them, but at the same time, one of them was an aggressive, highly ranked male named after the dictator in the DR Congo. Mubutu? It sounded like that. He likes to display, and yell, and make noise, and is very territorial. So knowing all of that from Jules’ and Charles I wasn’t terribly thrilled to be quite that close to him. They named him Mubutu because he runs his section of the community like a dictator. The little elderly male with him was funny though, he was nearing 40 years and his named sounded like Magezi. He was so funny, he’d look at you in a terribly bored way and chomp down on his shoots. His teeth were all there but they were chipped and his gums were brown with age.
My current location is outside of Fort Portal, which is about 3 hours west and a bit south of Kampala. From Fort Portal Jules picked me up in her car and we drove to the western side of Kibale National Park. The nearest town I could place to where Jules lives is a little town inside the park called Bigodi. So that’s where I am, and mostly how I got here. To get from Kampala to Fort Portal and back though I took the Kalita, which is kind of like Greyhound… but very ghetto. They wrap all the seats in plastic so that when it rains and the water leaks through the roofs and the holes in the windows the passengers get wet but the seats avoid water damage. There’s no air conditioning or anything (which in all fairness I did expect) but it would be very nice if they did have it because they squeeze you into this bus like sardines in a can. Being as I had my first ride on a boda-boda, going from the bus stop to Jaja’s so that I could tag up with Phil and the family, I have devised a ranking system for traveling in Uganda.
1) Private Car, if at all possible take your own or a friend’s car
2) Taxis, of the single passenger, marked variety
3) Kalita, for long distances it definitely beats boda-bodas but is aromatic (think diesel, dust and sweat)
4) Boda-bodas!, yes, despite the dangers and the wild driving and the ‘IthinkI’mgoingtodieohmanholdon!’ they are very convenient and a kind of hellish fun.
5) Kamapal Express, this is the lime green version of the Kalita and it speeds around like it's the only vehicle on the road. I rank it above mutatus because at least if you crash into something you're big enough that you're likely to win.
6) Mutatus, those are the crazy minibus/taxis that I don’t think you could pay me to get in, when a mutatu crashes it’s like someone pulled a scene out of ER and put it on the side of the road.
I’m now back in Kampala with Brenda, Fred, Zoe and Billy. It’s definitely louder here, but good to be in a familiar setting again. I should have access to the internet for the next few days so my posts will be more regular again.
See you later!
Right. Now that that’s sorted, guess where I am at the moment? At Julia’s place, on a great big piece of land with a series of high and low tree houses on it for the occupants to stay in. So for the past three days I’ve been living ‘bush life’ and it’s amazing. The tree house I’m in is the original so it’s all made of off cuts of wood. It gives this really rustic feel to it because you can see through the gaps between the walls and floor to the outside. There are big swing-down and normal swing-out barn windows on every wall and the view from the front porch is amazing because Jules’ land is on top of a hill overlooking a valley.
Jules herself is living in the newer, lower tree house (because it’s actually cooler lower to the ground) which is a little more modern. So she has an actual spring mattress (that’s pretty luxurious out here) and a smooth, evenly joined floor. The walls and the shelves and such are all still made of off cuts and the roof is still thatched grass so it still has a very similar feeling to the original house. The garage/storehouse that the car never actually parks in is done the same way but with a dirt floor, so it’s the best for food storage and it’s wonderfully cool inside. The only real issue with that particular building is that there’s a snake living in it.
The kitchen is cool, it’s outside and done with only three walls. Most of the food storage is done using metal tins or big metal… boxes? Trunks? To keep the mice out. There isn’t any refrigeration but the shade works pretty well to keep the water in the very posh filter nicely chilled. Jules is British, and figures the filter is posh because you don’t need to boil the water or anything before you run it through the filter, and then… tada! Safe drinking water.
The showers are all raised platforms that are flush to the floors of the tree houses with spaced slats of wood for the floor. The whole thing is surrounded by woven grass mats and you get a great big jug full of cool water, a thermos or a kettle full of boiled water, a wide bucket to mix the two in and a wide mouthed mug to use for dumping water on your head. It’s such a gong show. You definitely need to shower in the middle of the day though, when it’s really hot out, otherwise you freeze when the breeze comes through and there’s no sun on you. I did not consider that the first evening I got here. Ah… that was poorly planned.
She’s got these three great dogs that have such distinct personalities. They’re all rescue dogs from Kampala or Fort Porteal. Sparkle Bailey is the alpha and she is a gorgeous dog, all tawny and big brown eyes. She’s such a brat though, she’ll climb up on tables to get at food she wants, sleep on the bed, push you off the bed, jump up on you, all that jazz. Her training is still a work in progress. Slim Shady is the male in the pack. He’s got some Doberman in him but he’s very tall and long, and very timid about being introduced to humans. He’s definitely the sentry though, he’ll run patrols around the fence at night and you know there’s actually something up when it’s Slim who’s barking, not just Sparkle. I may or may not like him best, he’s such a sweet heart. The last is Foxy Lady, and wow…what a unique dog. She’s coloured like a mangy german shepherd but with this huge ridge of fur running down her back that sticks straight up. Then her tail has been broken a few times so instead of being straight, or even crooked, its spirals like a pig’s tail. She’s by far the biggest suck for attention, and definitely lowest on the totem pole.
Now, Jules is living in a very rural area of Uganda, so at first the idea of getting three dogs was really only a companion thing, then they became more guard dogs when Slim started running patrols along the fence. Ugandans don’t like dogs. At ALL. They find them dirty, dangerous… basically everything that is bad in the world is embodied in a dog. So the neighbours come to Jules’ house and the first thing they’re greeted by is Sparkle leaping up to put her paws on their shoulders. Then they see slim all legs and sleek Doberman features with his big deep bark, and then they see Foxy and they’re just like ‘Whoa… ok, I don’t even know what that is I think maybe it’s time for me to leave!’ It’s really kind of fun to watch.
The other really cool thing about Jules’ land is that it borders on Kibale National Park. There are two great big trees at the edge of the park with canopies that cross the border into her land, and they’re full of fruit. It’s not unusual for the chimps (a.k.a. the boys) to come and climb the trees and stay there all afternoon eating all the fruit they can get.
Chimps, baboons, red-tailed monkeys, black and white colobus monkeys, red colobus monkeys, grey-cheeked mangabes… I’ve seen all of them since I arrived. They’re great fun! Both mornings I’ve been up early to do a walk around the wetlands and then the morning after for tracking chimps. Tracking the chimps was insane! They do it with tourists in groups of six or less and you do a sort of mad dash through the forest towards wherever you happen to hear them calling at each other from. The guides are all equipped with walkie-talkies so they’re chatting back and forth to make sure that if one group can’t find chimps at least another group has and they can double up.
Our guide was a guy named Charles, and I think he broke just about every rule in the book. Because the chimps are still wild there are limitations that are supposed to be considered, things like ‘stay at least 7 meters away from the chimps’ and ‘don’t use the flash on your camera’. Seem like pretty good rules to me being as the chimps aren’t small animals, and the alpha males are aggressive and like to display. Oh! And if they charge you during a display, you’re to stand perfectly still and not look at them. If you run, they’ll chase you, and they’re way faster than we are. Anyway, Charles took us veeeeeery close to the chimps. Like… possibly less than 3 meters. He’d move us forwards one by one with a friendly ‘Come, stand here’ and then before you knew it you had to keep your movements slow and easy so as not to startle them into thinking you were some sort of enemy.
It was amazing to be so close to them, but at the same time, one of them was an aggressive, highly ranked male named after the dictator in the DR Congo. Mubutu? It sounded like that. He likes to display, and yell, and make noise, and is very territorial. So knowing all of that from Jules’ and Charles I wasn’t terribly thrilled to be quite that close to him. They named him Mubutu because he runs his section of the community like a dictator. The little elderly male with him was funny though, he was nearing 40 years and his named sounded like Magezi. He was so funny, he’d look at you in a terribly bored way and chomp down on his shoots. His teeth were all there but they were chipped and his gums were brown with age.
My current location is outside of Fort Portal, which is about 3 hours west and a bit south of Kampala. From Fort Portal Jules picked me up in her car and we drove to the western side of Kibale National Park. The nearest town I could place to where Jules lives is a little town inside the park called Bigodi. So that’s where I am, and mostly how I got here. To get from Kampala to Fort Portal and back though I took the Kalita, which is kind of like Greyhound… but very ghetto. They wrap all the seats in plastic so that when it rains and the water leaks through the roofs and the holes in the windows the passengers get wet but the seats avoid water damage. There’s no air conditioning or anything (which in all fairness I did expect) but it would be very nice if they did have it because they squeeze you into this bus like sardines in a can. Being as I had my first ride on a boda-boda, going from the bus stop to Jaja’s so that I could tag up with Phil and the family, I have devised a ranking system for traveling in Uganda.
1) Private Car, if at all possible take your own or a friend’s car
2) Taxis, of the single passenger, marked variety
3) Kalita, for long distances it definitely beats boda-bodas but is aromatic (think diesel, dust and sweat)
4) Boda-bodas!, yes, despite the dangers and the wild driving and the ‘IthinkI’mgoingtodieohmanholdon!’ they are very convenient and a kind of hellish fun.
5) Kamapal Express, this is the lime green version of the Kalita and it speeds around like it's the only vehicle on the road. I rank it above mutatus because at least if you crash into something you're big enough that you're likely to win.
6) Mutatus, those are the crazy minibus/taxis that I don’t think you could pay me to get in, when a mutatu crashes it’s like someone pulled a scene out of ER and put it on the side of the road.
I’m now back in Kampala with Brenda, Fred, Zoe and Billy. It’s definitely louder here, but good to be in a familiar setting again. I should have access to the internet for the next few days so my posts will be more regular again.
See you later!
Friday, July 10, 2009
Moving Rocks and Baby Obama
I am no longer supersick, only somewhat sick. Much better. So yeah… sorry about disappearing.
Lesson 4: Do not eat fried fish in Uganda
Anyway, the construction at Gulu is going well now that we’ve pitched the first engineer and found a second one. Then pitched him and found a third that is really, really good. Work schedules are different in Uganda. It’s not unusual for work to start at 7:00am, but all the workers to arrive at say… 11:00am, or noon. I have seen what an entire nation of tardiness is like, and I solemnly swear I will work harder to be on time henceforth.
In the last few days I’ve been up to a lot though. I am a pro rock mover! I specialize in small rocks!
The foundation was finished at the teacher’s quarters site on the 6th, and the next step is to fill the foundation with red dirt, pack it down, and then fill the top third with great big chunks of rock. HEAVY rock. Oh man, we had a little train going where you’d walk single file over to the pile of rocks, pick one up and then carry it around wheelbarrows and up onto the brick framing, then dump it in the square of foundation that needed to be filled. The biggest rock I was able to carry without falling over or otherwise hurting myself was only a little greater in physical size than my head. I imagine most of them would have fit inside my ribcage, so not exactly big. They were so dense though! So I’d drop my little medium and small sized rocks into the gaps left by the big ones, then walk back to the pile and see some short guy with whipcord muscles struggling with a rock the size of your average footstool; or two guys picking up others that were only a bit smaller than a golden retriever. These rocks must have weighed more than I do!
Once we’d filled in all the squares of the foundation they handed me a huge hammer. Yes! Best part of the day! My job was then to smash the rocks so that they made a fairly even surface for the next layer. Undoubtedly cool, but I made a point of keeping my glasses on. Chunks of the rock tend to fly when you hit it, and I definitely got a few scratches on my arms from the battle.
Prior to smashing and carrying rocks I was also busy. The English teacher at Lelaobaro Primary is a fellow named Patrick. Very nice, very sociable. Also did not ask me to marry him or profess love, he gets extra points for this. Either way, Patrick invited me to team-teach the English classes in the higher classes, Primary 6 and 7 (equivalent to grades 6 and 7).
It was so much fun!
I was with the P6’s first. It made sense to sort of sit back and observe for a bit, so I watched Patrick for the first 10 or 15 minutes. Things are done differently here, almost everything is oral. It makes sense, I guess. The average class size here is like… 90+. After that I was handed some chalk and given the green light. We worked on synonyms because it was a nice, easy topic to explain and teach. We only did three words, so synonyms for ‘good’, ‘fast’ and ‘funny’. At first none of the kids would put their hands up, I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. Turns out my accent was really throwing them for a loop. Patrick helped a lot; he repeated most of what I said so the kids could get a grip on what I was trying to ask them to do. At the end of the lesson they caught on and we were making sentences with the synonyms we’d covered. When we reached ‘fast’, one of the littlest kids in the class put his hand up excitedly to give a sentence. When I called on him he stood up and stated clearly, with excellent pronunciation: “Madam speaks very rapidly.” The class burst into laughter, I don’t think he was the only one thinking this. For the next few lessons I made sure to write ‘speak slow!’ on the top of my lesson plans in red.
The following day, on the 7th, I was invited back for two classes! The P7’s have excellent English and their proficiency made it much easier to communicate with them. The gaps in English skills year to year are pretty big. Mostly with the P7’s we did word games to review their vocabulary and grammar. There is a national exam at the end of your P7 year in Uganda, if you don’t pass, you don’t get into secondary school. It’s big for them; it determines whether you can raise yourself out of a refugee camp and unskilled labour as a career for most of these kids. They loved the games. One of them involves accurately describing to someone how to perform a task. In this case: opening a bottle of water. If they say ‘To open the bottle you must twist off the cap.’ then I would stand at the front of the class with the bottle on the floor and twist the cap with one hand, merely spinning the bottle in circles on the cement. They had to be specific and give one direction at a time. So ‘To open the bottle you must grasp the bottle tightly with your left hand.’, ‘To open the bottle you must place your fingers firmly on the side of the cap.’, and so on. It was an absolute riot, much of the vocabulary for that is so mundane that it’s not often used. It was a good review for them and it’s so satisfying to see these serious kids laughing and having fun at school.
The P6’s were excited to have me back again as well. They had become more accustomed to my accent and I made a point of speaking less ‘rapidly’, hahaha. I would ask a question and 30 hands would hit the air, Hermione Granger style. At the end we played another vocabulary game and as the period started to end kids from other classes were coming in to watch at the sides of the classroom, curious about the noise and the laughter. I could absolutely spend a summer here working with them, they’re so much fun. I was told that if I came back for that next summer I’d even get my own refugee hut as a teacher’s quarters. Pretty swanky.
Oh! And today we saw rhinos! For my birthday, and because Phil thought it was silly that I’d come to Africa and wasn’t going to see any of the big 5, we went to the rhino sanctuary on the way back to Kampala. Wow, what a treat. I stood (and I kid you not) 4 or 5 meters from wild rhinos, no fence, no car, just standing on my own two feet with Phil, Dusman, and three park wardens. We saw two pregnant white rhinos called Cory and Bella. The third rhino with them was a younger black rhino by the name of Hassan.
There was a little baby rhino at the sanctuary too, but being as the only fence is the electrified one meant to keep the rhinos in and the poachers out it was safer if we didn’t go see him. His mother (whose name sounded kind of like Namibia or Marimba…?) was still very protective of him so aggression was an issue. The best part is that the baby’s mother is from a zoo in Florida, his father is from another park in Kenya, and he is named Obama. That’s right, Obama the baby black rhino.
The entrance fee was a little higher than I was expecting, but it was totally worth it. They only charge locals 5000 shillings ($2.50CND), I am a foreigner, I am monetarily worth 8.8 Ugandans with an entrance fee of 44,000 shillings ($22.00 CND). Not an outrageous fee when they explain everything it goes towards but we had a good laugh in the car about Phil getting away with paying the local entrance fee despite his lack of a local passport. Even with the electric fence all seven rhinos are accompanied by park wardens who specialize in rhinos 24 hours a day. It’s sad that it’s necessary, but they’ve also never had a poacher succeed in killing a rhino in the history of the park. 33 years of protection and counting.
The parks’ reputation is so solid that South Africa is actually sending another 12 rhinos, mostly female, in just a few weeks. The logic is that they will be safer here in Uganda, under supervision, than in the parks in their home country where poachers have an easier go of it.
I spent yesterday in the market in Gulu, too. That was great fun. They don’t cat-call me in Gulu! Oh! It’s awesome! I can walk through a market and be the only white person there, not even an interracial person in sight, and no one is grabbing at my hands or stepping in front of me or yelling ‘mzungu’. So good. It means that I can do things like walk up to a vendor and look at the wares instead of being ambushed by the vendors on the other side saying their products are better.
All in all, I’d say life is pretty good.
Lesson 4: Do not eat fried fish in Uganda
Anyway, the construction at Gulu is going well now that we’ve pitched the first engineer and found a second one. Then pitched him and found a third that is really, really good. Work schedules are different in Uganda. It’s not unusual for work to start at 7:00am, but all the workers to arrive at say… 11:00am, or noon. I have seen what an entire nation of tardiness is like, and I solemnly swear I will work harder to be on time henceforth.
In the last few days I’ve been up to a lot though. I am a pro rock mover! I specialize in small rocks!
The foundation was finished at the teacher’s quarters site on the 6th, and the next step is to fill the foundation with red dirt, pack it down, and then fill the top third with great big chunks of rock. HEAVY rock. Oh man, we had a little train going where you’d walk single file over to the pile of rocks, pick one up and then carry it around wheelbarrows and up onto the brick framing, then dump it in the square of foundation that needed to be filled. The biggest rock I was able to carry without falling over or otherwise hurting myself was only a little greater in physical size than my head. I imagine most of them would have fit inside my ribcage, so not exactly big. They were so dense though! So I’d drop my little medium and small sized rocks into the gaps left by the big ones, then walk back to the pile and see some short guy with whipcord muscles struggling with a rock the size of your average footstool; or two guys picking up others that were only a bit smaller than a golden retriever. These rocks must have weighed more than I do!
Once we’d filled in all the squares of the foundation they handed me a huge hammer. Yes! Best part of the day! My job was then to smash the rocks so that they made a fairly even surface for the next layer. Undoubtedly cool, but I made a point of keeping my glasses on. Chunks of the rock tend to fly when you hit it, and I definitely got a few scratches on my arms from the battle.
Prior to smashing and carrying rocks I was also busy. The English teacher at Lelaobaro Primary is a fellow named Patrick. Very nice, very sociable. Also did not ask me to marry him or profess love, he gets extra points for this. Either way, Patrick invited me to team-teach the English classes in the higher classes, Primary 6 and 7 (equivalent to grades 6 and 7).
It was so much fun!
I was with the P6’s first. It made sense to sort of sit back and observe for a bit, so I watched Patrick for the first 10 or 15 minutes. Things are done differently here, almost everything is oral. It makes sense, I guess. The average class size here is like… 90+. After that I was handed some chalk and given the green light. We worked on synonyms because it was a nice, easy topic to explain and teach. We only did three words, so synonyms for ‘good’, ‘fast’ and ‘funny’. At first none of the kids would put their hands up, I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. Turns out my accent was really throwing them for a loop. Patrick helped a lot; he repeated most of what I said so the kids could get a grip on what I was trying to ask them to do. At the end of the lesson they caught on and we were making sentences with the synonyms we’d covered. When we reached ‘fast’, one of the littlest kids in the class put his hand up excitedly to give a sentence. When I called on him he stood up and stated clearly, with excellent pronunciation: “Madam speaks very rapidly.” The class burst into laughter, I don’t think he was the only one thinking this. For the next few lessons I made sure to write ‘speak slow!’ on the top of my lesson plans in red.
The following day, on the 7th, I was invited back for two classes! The P7’s have excellent English and their proficiency made it much easier to communicate with them. The gaps in English skills year to year are pretty big. Mostly with the P7’s we did word games to review their vocabulary and grammar. There is a national exam at the end of your P7 year in Uganda, if you don’t pass, you don’t get into secondary school. It’s big for them; it determines whether you can raise yourself out of a refugee camp and unskilled labour as a career for most of these kids. They loved the games. One of them involves accurately describing to someone how to perform a task. In this case: opening a bottle of water. If they say ‘To open the bottle you must twist off the cap.’ then I would stand at the front of the class with the bottle on the floor and twist the cap with one hand, merely spinning the bottle in circles on the cement. They had to be specific and give one direction at a time. So ‘To open the bottle you must grasp the bottle tightly with your left hand.’, ‘To open the bottle you must place your fingers firmly on the side of the cap.’, and so on. It was an absolute riot, much of the vocabulary for that is so mundane that it’s not often used. It was a good review for them and it’s so satisfying to see these serious kids laughing and having fun at school.
The P6’s were excited to have me back again as well. They had become more accustomed to my accent and I made a point of speaking less ‘rapidly’, hahaha. I would ask a question and 30 hands would hit the air, Hermione Granger style. At the end we played another vocabulary game and as the period started to end kids from other classes were coming in to watch at the sides of the classroom, curious about the noise and the laughter. I could absolutely spend a summer here working with them, they’re so much fun. I was told that if I came back for that next summer I’d even get my own refugee hut as a teacher’s quarters. Pretty swanky.
Oh! And today we saw rhinos! For my birthday, and because Phil thought it was silly that I’d come to Africa and wasn’t going to see any of the big 5, we went to the rhino sanctuary on the way back to Kampala. Wow, what a treat. I stood (and I kid you not) 4 or 5 meters from wild rhinos, no fence, no car, just standing on my own two feet with Phil, Dusman, and three park wardens. We saw two pregnant white rhinos called Cory and Bella. The third rhino with them was a younger black rhino by the name of Hassan.
There was a little baby rhino at the sanctuary too, but being as the only fence is the electrified one meant to keep the rhinos in and the poachers out it was safer if we didn’t go see him. His mother (whose name sounded kind of like Namibia or Marimba…?) was still very protective of him so aggression was an issue. The best part is that the baby’s mother is from a zoo in Florida, his father is from another park in Kenya, and he is named Obama. That’s right, Obama the baby black rhino.
The entrance fee was a little higher than I was expecting, but it was totally worth it. They only charge locals 5000 shillings ($2.50CND), I am a foreigner, I am monetarily worth 8.8 Ugandans with an entrance fee of 44,000 shillings ($22.00 CND). Not an outrageous fee when they explain everything it goes towards but we had a good laugh in the car about Phil getting away with paying the local entrance fee despite his lack of a local passport. Even with the electric fence all seven rhinos are accompanied by park wardens who specialize in rhinos 24 hours a day. It’s sad that it’s necessary, but they’ve also never had a poacher succeed in killing a rhino in the history of the park. 33 years of protection and counting.
The parks’ reputation is so solid that South Africa is actually sending another 12 rhinos, mostly female, in just a few weeks. The logic is that they will be safer here in Uganda, under supervision, than in the parks in their home country where poachers have an easier go of it.
I spent yesterday in the market in Gulu, too. That was great fun. They don’t cat-call me in Gulu! Oh! It’s awesome! I can walk through a market and be the only white person there, not even an interracial person in sight, and no one is grabbing at my hands or stepping in front of me or yelling ‘mzungu’. So good. It means that I can do things like walk up to a vendor and look at the wares instead of being ambushed by the vendors on the other side saying their products are better.
All in all, I’d say life is pretty good.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Trusty Blue Rubbish Bin
I am so sick.
Not cool.
We have been eating breakfast and dinner at the Acholli Inn, which is where we stay when we are in Gulu. It’s a very nice Inn, I’d absolutely recommend it, for the record. They have pretty Western food as far as Africa goes, so for example in the morning you can have beans, eggs, toast, tea, etc. The strangest things they’ve served thus far have been goat and liver. For lunch I usually leave the site with Phil or Dusman and we find a local restaurant to try some local food. I keep being surprised when I try something that looks gross but is actually quite good. There is a runny brown paste called odee that is basically peanut butter; a white millet made out of corn (which is referred to as maize) and tastes like newspaper; sweet potatoes that are good but are green in colour; a yellow goo that is made out of cooked plantains and is kind of a strange, gluey texture in your mouth but appropriately a nice bright yellow; and matoki. Matoki is the staple food in most parts of the country, and wow is it terrible. You mix what looks like little green plantains with real, yellow plantains, boil them in water and out comes a grainy, kind of bitter, cream-coloured paste. I don’t suggest it. Usually one of these base foods – or rice – is served on a plate separate from a meat dish of your choice with sauce over top. Meat might be your standard beef or chicken, but there is also boar, goat, liver from a few different animals, or a variety of fish I cannot pronounce.
The most exciting of these dishes thus far was when I received a fish a little larger than my hand with a peanut sauce over top. Fish and runny peanut butter taste really rather odd together, but I’d do odee on rice again.
Anyway, this ‘try local food’ thing was a grand idea until yesterday.
I am now as comfortable as I will ever be being served a whole fish. Head, tail, eyes, scales, truly the whole fish. It is a common dish in this little land-locked country, which kind of worries me being as the refrigeration in the north is quite questionable. Either way, I had tried whole fishes in a variety of sizes and sauces over the last couple days, and yesterday I was thinking ‘hm, the last fish I ate had more bones than meat, let’s try something different’. So, Dusman had a gigantic whole fish and I had an innocuous fish fillet and chips. A second whole fish was brought back to the site for Phil. Nice, common meals, right? Hm… no.
All three of us woke up in the middle of the night with the runs.
Phil and Dusman are in a different room than I am, and so I did not know at first that they were also experiencing not goodness. My lack of knowledge initially brought me a scare that I had mixed medications by accident, had food poisoning, or caught malaria or some other equally nasty tropical disease. The good news is that it is none of these, and I will not need to be moved back to Kampala for any sort of hospitalization or treatment. Yes! Points for Kenna!
Phil ended up splitting his fish with someone on the site, so he is in the best shape. Dusman was down until about 10am, and I am still not doing so hot. It’s been a long time since I was last sick like this. My new best friend is the trusty blue rubbish pale that used to live in my bathroom. Oh trusty blue rubbish pale, what a good friend to me you have been.
In other news the Ground Breaking Ceremony went very smoothly yesterday. It was great! There are kids from Baby Class (kindergarten) through Primary Seven (grade seven, year seven) at Laleobaro Primary School, and all 728 of them showed up for the ceremony. Just for reference, the average class ratio is 100 or more students to one teacher. The school choir sang some songs for us in both the local language (which none of the three of us happen to speak, but sounded very nice) and English. Definitely got that on tape for this year’s promotional video. We were also presented with a poem by one of the girls in P7. Poem is kind of a loose term though; in Canada we’d probably call it a spoken word piece but all the same it was done very well.
Speeches were given, and Phil and Dusman managed to secure some guests that really made Ssubi look good. The best speaker by far was a high-standing member of parliament who went by the name of Jacob. Most of his speech was given in the local language of the Acholli tribe but it didn’t really matter because he was so charismatic. The kids smiled and laughed, clapped and waved their hands, he was excellent.
Construction started right after the ceremony and is going fast. The tools they use here are very different from the ones we use back in Canada and so the labor is much more intensive. The building is first measured with string and a measuring tape, then outlined with a slightly raised stick and string frame. From there the hoes come out and everyone starts to dig foundation for the walls, pulling out unwanted rocks and such as they go. The thing about the hoes is that they aren’t terribly reliable though. Phil asked that when I’m on media duty with the video cam and the camera I not stand in front of anybody digging. This was kind of a strange sounding request, so I asked why. Well, turns out that the tops of the hoes are known to come flying off on occasion, and if you happen to be in front of a hoe when this happens you get hit with a great big flying chunk of metal.
The workers are pretty relaxed about the whole thing though, the first time I saw it happen he walked over, retrieved his top and banged it back onto the handle with another hoe as the hammer.
How about that.
Cheers to everyone back home, have a ginger ale for me!
Not cool.
We have been eating breakfast and dinner at the Acholli Inn, which is where we stay when we are in Gulu. It’s a very nice Inn, I’d absolutely recommend it, for the record. They have pretty Western food as far as Africa goes, so for example in the morning you can have beans, eggs, toast, tea, etc. The strangest things they’ve served thus far have been goat and liver. For lunch I usually leave the site with Phil or Dusman and we find a local restaurant to try some local food. I keep being surprised when I try something that looks gross but is actually quite good. There is a runny brown paste called odee that is basically peanut butter; a white millet made out of corn (which is referred to as maize) and tastes like newspaper; sweet potatoes that are good but are green in colour; a yellow goo that is made out of cooked plantains and is kind of a strange, gluey texture in your mouth but appropriately a nice bright yellow; and matoki. Matoki is the staple food in most parts of the country, and wow is it terrible. You mix what looks like little green plantains with real, yellow plantains, boil them in water and out comes a grainy, kind of bitter, cream-coloured paste. I don’t suggest it. Usually one of these base foods – or rice – is served on a plate separate from a meat dish of your choice with sauce over top. Meat might be your standard beef or chicken, but there is also boar, goat, liver from a few different animals, or a variety of fish I cannot pronounce.
The most exciting of these dishes thus far was when I received a fish a little larger than my hand with a peanut sauce over top. Fish and runny peanut butter taste really rather odd together, but I’d do odee on rice again.
Anyway, this ‘try local food’ thing was a grand idea until yesterday.
I am now as comfortable as I will ever be being served a whole fish. Head, tail, eyes, scales, truly the whole fish. It is a common dish in this little land-locked country, which kind of worries me being as the refrigeration in the north is quite questionable. Either way, I had tried whole fishes in a variety of sizes and sauces over the last couple days, and yesterday I was thinking ‘hm, the last fish I ate had more bones than meat, let’s try something different’. So, Dusman had a gigantic whole fish and I had an innocuous fish fillet and chips. A second whole fish was brought back to the site for Phil. Nice, common meals, right? Hm… no.
All three of us woke up in the middle of the night with the runs.
Phil and Dusman are in a different room than I am, and so I did not know at first that they were also experiencing not goodness. My lack of knowledge initially brought me a scare that I had mixed medications by accident, had food poisoning, or caught malaria or some other equally nasty tropical disease. The good news is that it is none of these, and I will not need to be moved back to Kampala for any sort of hospitalization or treatment. Yes! Points for Kenna!
Phil ended up splitting his fish with someone on the site, so he is in the best shape. Dusman was down until about 10am, and I am still not doing so hot. It’s been a long time since I was last sick like this. My new best friend is the trusty blue rubbish pale that used to live in my bathroom. Oh trusty blue rubbish pale, what a good friend to me you have been.
In other news the Ground Breaking Ceremony went very smoothly yesterday. It was great! There are kids from Baby Class (kindergarten) through Primary Seven (grade seven, year seven) at Laleobaro Primary School, and all 728 of them showed up for the ceremony. Just for reference, the average class ratio is 100 or more students to one teacher. The school choir sang some songs for us in both the local language (which none of the three of us happen to speak, but sounded very nice) and English. Definitely got that on tape for this year’s promotional video. We were also presented with a poem by one of the girls in P7. Poem is kind of a loose term though; in Canada we’d probably call it a spoken word piece but all the same it was done very well.
Speeches were given, and Phil and Dusman managed to secure some guests that really made Ssubi look good. The best speaker by far was a high-standing member of parliament who went by the name of Jacob. Most of his speech was given in the local language of the Acholli tribe but it didn’t really matter because he was so charismatic. The kids smiled and laughed, clapped and waved their hands, he was excellent.
Construction started right after the ceremony and is going fast. The tools they use here are very different from the ones we use back in Canada and so the labor is much more intensive. The building is first measured with string and a measuring tape, then outlined with a slightly raised stick and string frame. From there the hoes come out and everyone starts to dig foundation for the walls, pulling out unwanted rocks and such as they go. The thing about the hoes is that they aren’t terribly reliable though. Phil asked that when I’m on media duty with the video cam and the camera I not stand in front of anybody digging. This was kind of a strange sounding request, so I asked why. Well, turns out that the tops of the hoes are known to come flying off on occasion, and if you happen to be in front of a hoe when this happens you get hit with a great big flying chunk of metal.
The workers are pretty relaxed about the whole thing though, the first time I saw it happen he walked over, retrieved his top and banged it back onto the handle with another hoe as the hammer.
How about that.
Cheers to everyone back home, have a ginger ale for me!
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Landmines and Skipping and Smiles, Oh My!
I am absolutely in rural Africa now. The day has flipped back and forth between laughing and smiling so hard that my face aches and moments of heavy reality. I’m with Phil and his main man on the ground, Dusman. I could not be safer if I were with a detachment of military guards, these guys know their stuff.
Back to the beginning though. The drive up to Gulu was supposed to take us as much as 7 hours. Well, back before they paved the road and filled in the pot holes of death, I can see how 7 hours would have been good time. Our trip was much faster. Since last year the roads have been paved. And I mean paved. They are even, they are smooth and there are even sections as you leave Kampala and head north that have the swanky new stone drainage system installed so that when it pours rain the road isn’t flooded or washed away. This means that a 7 hour trip really only took 3.5 or 4 hours total, even with stops for lunch and such. Sweet!
I don’t know what I was really expecting out of the scenery on the way up, but it was beautifully lush and green the whole way. Lots of jungle. Plenty of trees. Plenty of people too, apparently boda-bodas do highway travel. So now you’ve got the congestion of a normal road in Kampala on a highway doing anywhere from 60-100km/h. It’s absolutely wild. Drivers regularly honk or flick their lights to communicate. For example, the roads are still very narrow, so if you drift to the right a bit to check if the oncoming lane is clear to pass, you’d get hit. Instead the driver in front uses his signal lights to tell you when it’s not safe to pass (right indicator) or safe to pass (left indicator). This only works if the vehicle ahead of you has lights though. To compensate, sometimes hands will be used, or horns, or the driver will yell the signals to whomever is riding in the back of his truck and they’ll pass it on with their hands. It’s really fairly flexible. You can honk to say ‘thanks’, ‘get the #%@* out of my way’ or ‘heads up, there’s a car behind you and you’re in the road’. The latter can be used to warn other cars, boda-bodas, bicycles, groups of school kids walking home along the highway, and the odd ox-cart/dog combination.
When we were just about halfway to Gulu we passed what looked kind of like a paved rest stop, like we have on the TransCan with bathrooms, etc. These are far from common in Uganda because of the manpower it takes to grade and pave a large area. Phil then explained that this was the original transition area from only somewhat risky rural country to a war zone. Cars would line up in the rest area and wait their turn for a military escort up to Gulu. As in the military would put trucks with armed men at the front, another few in the middle, and again at the back, and they would drive a minimum of 90km/h down a narrow, hella-sketchy pot-hole path and hope that they made it to Gulu without being ambushed by rebels. Holy death.
The military is treated very seriously here because they don’t care to be questioned. I’m not to be taking pictures of anything or anybody that has camouflage, an AK-47 (these are only issued to the police and the military) or a military-specific green and white license plate. You don’t ask them for directions if you’re lost, you don’t joke with them, and if you make eye contact they all watch you until you’re past or out of site. It’s unnerving. For a while many of the soldiers hired by the government were from the areas of Africa that speak Swahili natively, so if someone was giving you trouble or picking a fight you’d turn to your buddy and start going off in Swahili. I’m told this was enough to stop most people in their tracks, and very quickly clear a room.
Anyway, a little bit past the transition area we came up to a section of the river that narrowed into a waterfall and some stunning rapids with huge white froth everywhere. I went to pull out my camera and Dusman gave me one of those ‘nono’ looks. I’ve found that listening to Dusman and Phil is best done without question, immediately. Turns out that the hill on the other side of the road was well outfitted with camouflaged soldiers, and that the area had a great tactical advantage for fighting the LRA. This means that no pictures are allowed to be taken. If one of the soldiers sees you with a camera and radios ahead you get stopped at the bridge over the river and receive a talking to from the commander. Not something any of us wanted a part of.
Past there you’re also in landmine country. There is a white building in town surrounded by the standard barbwire and electric wire fencing full of a team that is dedicated solely to pulling out all the landmines left behind by the LRA. Case in point, last year when Phil and Dusman came to survey the site for this year’s project they could not leave the area directly surrounding the school because the field in front (which is huge, like think football sized) was all mined. This year, we’re building on the other side of that field. Which was also mined.
Both have been cleared of course, but it’s totally surreal to see these swarms of kids, literally hundreds, in their uniforms laughing, playing soccer, skipping games and such in an area that you know was a battlefield.
The realism of the ‘battlefield’ bit got me today too. There are these grooves in the ground that are fairly grown over, no more than 2ft in width, that run in a line between the side road and where the new teacher’s quarters are going to go. These are trenches. No, seriously. Rebels would lay in these with a bunch of grass and a bush or something overtop of them and shoot people. Once I knew what they were I could see them all over the place. Whenever two of the lines meet there’s a mound of dirt in front for someone to set up a tripod. From there if you turn 180 º you see the walls of a little building with three rooms. It’s decrepit, even by African standards. That is because it’s been bombed out.
This is all across from a primary school! 10 minutes outside of downtown Gulu!
The kids are all so happy though. After I’d taken a bunch of photos of the area where we’ll be building I went back across the side road to take some shots of the kids playing. Most of the boys were in the bigger section of the field playing a game of soccer. The ones playing ignored me, which made it really, really easy to get some excellent pictures of the game. The littler kids who were watching were fascinated by the camera and the muzungu operating it.
I have to be careful when I want to take pictures of the kids because I am such a novelty to them. If I show up (even without a camera) they tend to drop whatever they’re doing and come see me. Not necessarily talk to me, being new I think I might kind of scare most of the littler ones, but all the same whatever they were just doing is suddenly way less interesting. The trick seems to be to kind of lurk around the sidelines and not make eye contact until the shock wears off. This only really works with the older kids; I don’t think there is a trick for the little guys.
Anyway, from there I crossed the field to where most of the girls were. They had the right idea, they’d set themselves up under some great big trees in the shade. From there they divided by age group into all sorts of games involving jumping and long loops of what was once string, or hemp. Some were skipping, one group had double-dutch going, but the most popular game involved two girls standing across from each other with the string looped over their heads and around their waists so it was taught between them. Then another girl would do a little hop-dance over the two strings. At first the strings were low, ankle height, then knee height, then waist, then a little higher. It was incredible to see how high they could go without touching the string. Every once in a while someone would land on the string and it would snap. Standard procedure is to knot it back together and carry on. The string they have is very loved, very frayed, and has many knots.
After watching this with great fascination for a while one of the girls asked if I would like to play. Yeah! Absolutely!
I did not stop to consider the level of difficulty involved in the game, this made it much more entertaining when I realized what I’d gotten myself into. They were assembled in a circle around us almost before I had time to set down the camera and my glasses. The girl who had asked me to play was named Clancy, and I learned through imitation. She would do a short routine once or twice, just a few moves, and then I would try. She would do another one with the rope higher, I would attempt it and land on the string. Our audience was wonderfully dynamic, Clancy was of course very good so they would clap and cheer when she’d finished. When it was my turn they were very quiet, crowding in closer. I could usually get the first few jumps right, after that I tended to lose it and got creative. They thought it was hilarious! Clancy had it down to an art, she didn’t look awkward at all, easy as pie. This makes it look deceptively easy. I don’t have any pictures of my attempts, but my arms were definitely flapping and more often than not my feet ended up in front of me instead of behind me where they belonged.
It was so much fun. I definitely need to practice and then try again.
When I was pulled out to go back and film Phil and the others some more I realized that my face actually hurt from laughing and smiling. These kids are amazing. I can’t describe how excited I am to be a part of the team that’s going to give them access to a library. Their own library, with Uganda up-to-date textbooks (this is a big thing in the north), light bulbs, and computers equipped with internet.
Many of them are still living in the refugee camp huts on school property. No running water, no electricity, grass roofs, one room clay and mud huts. School assembly is under a big tree outside because there are too many kids to fit in any of their buildings; one of the classrooms is just a grass roof with benches. Admittedly, it is also the most fun to sit in because that’s what you think of when you think of ‘Disney’ Africa.
Tomorrow if the groundbreaking ceremony, and then the real work starts. Time to jump in, both feet first, no looking back now!
Back to the beginning though. The drive up to Gulu was supposed to take us as much as 7 hours. Well, back before they paved the road and filled in the pot holes of death, I can see how 7 hours would have been good time. Our trip was much faster. Since last year the roads have been paved. And I mean paved. They are even, they are smooth and there are even sections as you leave Kampala and head north that have the swanky new stone drainage system installed so that when it pours rain the road isn’t flooded or washed away. This means that a 7 hour trip really only took 3.5 or 4 hours total, even with stops for lunch and such. Sweet!
I don’t know what I was really expecting out of the scenery on the way up, but it was beautifully lush and green the whole way. Lots of jungle. Plenty of trees. Plenty of people too, apparently boda-bodas do highway travel. So now you’ve got the congestion of a normal road in Kampala on a highway doing anywhere from 60-100km/h. It’s absolutely wild. Drivers regularly honk or flick their lights to communicate. For example, the roads are still very narrow, so if you drift to the right a bit to check if the oncoming lane is clear to pass, you’d get hit. Instead the driver in front uses his signal lights to tell you when it’s not safe to pass (right indicator) or safe to pass (left indicator). This only works if the vehicle ahead of you has lights though. To compensate, sometimes hands will be used, or horns, or the driver will yell the signals to whomever is riding in the back of his truck and they’ll pass it on with their hands. It’s really fairly flexible. You can honk to say ‘thanks’, ‘get the #%@* out of my way’ or ‘heads up, there’s a car behind you and you’re in the road’. The latter can be used to warn other cars, boda-bodas, bicycles, groups of school kids walking home along the highway, and the odd ox-cart/dog combination.
When we were just about halfway to Gulu we passed what looked kind of like a paved rest stop, like we have on the TransCan with bathrooms, etc. These are far from common in Uganda because of the manpower it takes to grade and pave a large area. Phil then explained that this was the original transition area from only somewhat risky rural country to a war zone. Cars would line up in the rest area and wait their turn for a military escort up to Gulu. As in the military would put trucks with armed men at the front, another few in the middle, and again at the back, and they would drive a minimum of 90km/h down a narrow, hella-sketchy pot-hole path and hope that they made it to Gulu without being ambushed by rebels. Holy death.
The military is treated very seriously here because they don’t care to be questioned. I’m not to be taking pictures of anything or anybody that has camouflage, an AK-47 (these are only issued to the police and the military) or a military-specific green and white license plate. You don’t ask them for directions if you’re lost, you don’t joke with them, and if you make eye contact they all watch you until you’re past or out of site. It’s unnerving. For a while many of the soldiers hired by the government were from the areas of Africa that speak Swahili natively, so if someone was giving you trouble or picking a fight you’d turn to your buddy and start going off in Swahili. I’m told this was enough to stop most people in their tracks, and very quickly clear a room.
Anyway, a little bit past the transition area we came up to a section of the river that narrowed into a waterfall and some stunning rapids with huge white froth everywhere. I went to pull out my camera and Dusman gave me one of those ‘nono’ looks. I’ve found that listening to Dusman and Phil is best done without question, immediately. Turns out that the hill on the other side of the road was well outfitted with camouflaged soldiers, and that the area had a great tactical advantage for fighting the LRA. This means that no pictures are allowed to be taken. If one of the soldiers sees you with a camera and radios ahead you get stopped at the bridge over the river and receive a talking to from the commander. Not something any of us wanted a part of.
Past there you’re also in landmine country. There is a white building in town surrounded by the standard barbwire and electric wire fencing full of a team that is dedicated solely to pulling out all the landmines left behind by the LRA. Case in point, last year when Phil and Dusman came to survey the site for this year’s project they could not leave the area directly surrounding the school because the field in front (which is huge, like think football sized) was all mined. This year, we’re building on the other side of that field. Which was also mined.
Both have been cleared of course, but it’s totally surreal to see these swarms of kids, literally hundreds, in their uniforms laughing, playing soccer, skipping games and such in an area that you know was a battlefield.
The realism of the ‘battlefield’ bit got me today too. There are these grooves in the ground that are fairly grown over, no more than 2ft in width, that run in a line between the side road and where the new teacher’s quarters are going to go. These are trenches. No, seriously. Rebels would lay in these with a bunch of grass and a bush or something overtop of them and shoot people. Once I knew what they were I could see them all over the place. Whenever two of the lines meet there’s a mound of dirt in front for someone to set up a tripod. From there if you turn 180 º you see the walls of a little building with three rooms. It’s decrepit, even by African standards. That is because it’s been bombed out.
This is all across from a primary school! 10 minutes outside of downtown Gulu!
The kids are all so happy though. After I’d taken a bunch of photos of the area where we’ll be building I went back across the side road to take some shots of the kids playing. Most of the boys were in the bigger section of the field playing a game of soccer. The ones playing ignored me, which made it really, really easy to get some excellent pictures of the game. The littler kids who were watching were fascinated by the camera and the muzungu operating it.
I have to be careful when I want to take pictures of the kids because I am such a novelty to them. If I show up (even without a camera) they tend to drop whatever they’re doing and come see me. Not necessarily talk to me, being new I think I might kind of scare most of the littler ones, but all the same whatever they were just doing is suddenly way less interesting. The trick seems to be to kind of lurk around the sidelines and not make eye contact until the shock wears off. This only really works with the older kids; I don’t think there is a trick for the little guys.
Anyway, from there I crossed the field to where most of the girls were. They had the right idea, they’d set themselves up under some great big trees in the shade. From there they divided by age group into all sorts of games involving jumping and long loops of what was once string, or hemp. Some were skipping, one group had double-dutch going, but the most popular game involved two girls standing across from each other with the string looped over their heads and around their waists so it was taught between them. Then another girl would do a little hop-dance over the two strings. At first the strings were low, ankle height, then knee height, then waist, then a little higher. It was incredible to see how high they could go without touching the string. Every once in a while someone would land on the string and it would snap. Standard procedure is to knot it back together and carry on. The string they have is very loved, very frayed, and has many knots.
After watching this with great fascination for a while one of the girls asked if I would like to play. Yeah! Absolutely!
I did not stop to consider the level of difficulty involved in the game, this made it much more entertaining when I realized what I’d gotten myself into. They were assembled in a circle around us almost before I had time to set down the camera and my glasses. The girl who had asked me to play was named Clancy, and I learned through imitation. She would do a short routine once or twice, just a few moves, and then I would try. She would do another one with the rope higher, I would attempt it and land on the string. Our audience was wonderfully dynamic, Clancy was of course very good so they would clap and cheer when she’d finished. When it was my turn they were very quiet, crowding in closer. I could usually get the first few jumps right, after that I tended to lose it and got creative. They thought it was hilarious! Clancy had it down to an art, she didn’t look awkward at all, easy as pie. This makes it look deceptively easy. I don’t have any pictures of my attempts, but my arms were definitely flapping and more often than not my feet ended up in front of me instead of behind me where they belonged.
It was so much fun. I definitely need to practice and then try again.
When I was pulled out to go back and film Phil and the others some more I realized that my face actually hurt from laughing and smiling. These kids are amazing. I can’t describe how excited I am to be a part of the team that’s going to give them access to a library. Their own library, with Uganda up-to-date textbooks (this is a big thing in the north), light bulbs, and computers equipped with internet.
Many of them are still living in the refugee camp huts on school property. No running water, no electricity, grass roofs, one room clay and mud huts. School assembly is under a big tree outside because there are too many kids to fit in any of their buildings; one of the classrooms is just a grass roof with benches. Admittedly, it is also the most fun to sit in because that’s what you think of when you think of ‘Disney’ Africa.
Tomorrow if the groundbreaking ceremony, and then the real work starts. Time to jump in, both feet first, no looking back now!
Blast from the Past: Part 2
That's right. It was so exciting the first time that I'm doing it again!
June 29th
Mission statement: ‘Wait for Phillip’. He got in at 7:30am only to discover that his luggage had been left in London. So between filling out all of his lost luggage forms, renting a car, getting caught in the atrocious entity that is rush hour traffic here and running the errands for Ssubi that he had to in town he didn’t make it to us until the evening.
The kids were totally jazzed to see Uncle Phil, and you could tell that he was glad to have made it. It sounds like at some point I’m helping him out with something in downtown Kampala. ‘Down, downtown Kampala’. I have only a vague idea of what that could mean but when asked he smiled widely and merely said that it would be an excellent story for the blog.
Brenda and I had our own errands to run, however. I arrived on a Saturday, so most of the businesses closed at 1:00pm. Then none were open Sunday. This means that getting my hands on some shillings has been a bit delayed. We fixed that today. The interesting part of this was that it was my first time walking around the neighborhood instead of being in a vehicle with the rest of the family. As I’m sure you got from the razor wire, electric wire and broken glass that rings the top of the concrete fence, it’s not exactly common for the kids to go outside and play.
As Brenda and I left on our mission to the bank, I drew many stares. Not so common to see a muzungu in this area, I think. Out of the neighborhood and onto the main road. Across from us was a long line of boda-bodas waiting for customers. They were mostly speaking Luganda with ‘muzungu’ thrown in every once in a while, smiling and calling at us. Then the one on the far left stood up on his bike and yelled at me: “Lady! I cannot tell you how much I love you!”
Brenda looked at me and shrugged. We had crossed the road and were walking in front of them now. I couldn’t just let the fellow down by ignoring his professions of love. I faced him and walked backwards for a moment so that I could reply. “ And I would love you too! ... But not today!”
The boda-bodas were thrilled. The whole line laughed and the fellow on the end smiled. Brenda was shocked, and then laughed as well. It was a good start to our banking errand.
The issue of colour here is interesting. Muzungu’s are usually charged more by vendors and stores because they are seen as foreigners. Even Fred, who has been here for well over 20 years between his youth and being married to Brenda, is charged more. As we walked to the bank Brenda was laughing because traffic would yield and let me cross if I was already halfway into the road. This is not normal. Normal procedure is to run over the pedestrian and honk because they are in the way. But no, not a muzungu. “You are my ticket to everything!” Brenda giggled, then quickly added. “Unless we are buying something, then you stand to the side and pretend you are not with me!” Oh we laughed.
I am so lucky to be staying with people like these.
June 29th
Mission statement: ‘Wait for Phillip’. He got in at 7:30am only to discover that his luggage had been left in London. So between filling out all of his lost luggage forms, renting a car, getting caught in the atrocious entity that is rush hour traffic here and running the errands for Ssubi that he had to in town he didn’t make it to us until the evening.
The kids were totally jazzed to see Uncle Phil, and you could tell that he was glad to have made it. It sounds like at some point I’m helping him out with something in downtown Kampala. ‘Down, downtown Kampala’. I have only a vague idea of what that could mean but when asked he smiled widely and merely said that it would be an excellent story for the blog.
Brenda and I had our own errands to run, however. I arrived on a Saturday, so most of the businesses closed at 1:00pm. Then none were open Sunday. This means that getting my hands on some shillings has been a bit delayed. We fixed that today. The interesting part of this was that it was my first time walking around the neighborhood instead of being in a vehicle with the rest of the family. As I’m sure you got from the razor wire, electric wire and broken glass that rings the top of the concrete fence, it’s not exactly common for the kids to go outside and play.
As Brenda and I left on our mission to the bank, I drew many stares. Not so common to see a muzungu in this area, I think. Out of the neighborhood and onto the main road. Across from us was a long line of boda-bodas waiting for customers. They were mostly speaking Luganda with ‘muzungu’ thrown in every once in a while, smiling and calling at us. Then the one on the far left stood up on his bike and yelled at me: “Lady! I cannot tell you how much I love you!”
Brenda looked at me and shrugged. We had crossed the road and were walking in front of them now. I couldn’t just let the fellow down by ignoring his professions of love. I faced him and walked backwards for a moment so that I could reply. “ And I would love you too! ... But not today!”
The boda-bodas were thrilled. The whole line laughed and the fellow on the end smiled. Brenda was shocked, and then laughed as well. It was a good start to our banking errand.
The issue of colour here is interesting. Muzungu’s are usually charged more by vendors and stores because they are seen as foreigners. Even Fred, who has been here for well over 20 years between his youth and being married to Brenda, is charged more. As we walked to the bank Brenda was laughing because traffic would yield and let me cross if I was already halfway into the road. This is not normal. Normal procedure is to run over the pedestrian and honk because they are in the way. But no, not a muzungu. “You are my ticket to everything!” Brenda giggled, then quickly added. “Unless we are buying something, then you stand to the side and pretend you are not with me!” Oh we laughed.
I am so lucky to be staying with people like these.
Blast from the Past: Part 1
The thing about Africa is that nothing it really reliable, except perhaps that the AK-47's the police and soldiers tote around are always loaded. So the unreliable bits include things like... electricity. Water. Phone lines. Internet. As a result I've had a terrible time finding an opportunity to connect to the internet while there is actually power. Thus! I give you a blast from the past! Travel back in time with me to when the power was out and all Billy wanted to do was play Monopoly! (Over... and over... and over...)
June 28th
I’ve noticed I’m settling into a routine, which is nice because it’s starting to even out how much sleep I get. The sun rises and sets early here, and I’ve started to follow its example. Brenda and Zoe were teasing me last night because it was hardly 8:30pm and I was absolutely falling asleep in my chair. Then of course I woke up at 5:30am or some silly hour like that.
Today is the day Phil is supposed to get here, and I have a sneaking suspicion that that means things will start to move significantly faster than the nice, relaxed pace I’ve been at so far, hahaha.
Yesterday we went to the Bahá’í House of Worship, and it was so interesting! There is a religion, created by a Prophet called Baha’u’llah that encompasses a whole bunch of other different religions that I had never heard of. The House is located up high on the top of a hill and has a domed top similar to a mosque. The whole thing is circular and there are doors on all sides that are left open so the breeze can come through during service. Service itself was pretty straight forwards, someone comes up and reads a section of the Bible, or the Qu’ran, or the Tablets of the Bab, and so on. Then in between every few readings there is a song by the choir. The choir sits in the middle of the worshippers and just sort of picks up between every few readings. There is a really nice echo in the House, the same as a Church, but without the heavy feeling I get when I’m surrounded by intense stained glass windows and pipe organs. Also, there is no priest or over-seeing holy individual. Every week there is a theme that anyone who wants to read a prayer focuses the prayer on. As you probably got from farther up, there isn’t any one religious text either. It was interesting to sit and listen to prayers read in Luganda, Kiswali, English... there was even a Persian chant at one point. The whole House feels very calm and airy, it’s really quite relaxing and pleasant.
After the service the worshippers split into groups. Most of the adults went a little farther down the hill to a shorter, round building with a flat roof that they called the Centre for a talk on the theme of the week. The kids and some of the other adults grouped together for the equivalent of ‘Sunday School’. First the younger kids were sat down on benches at a table and they practiced that nursery rhyme ‘The more we get together’ in Luganda and in English. I decided to stay with the kids, having no real pull to go to the talk, and they thought it was hilarious when I tried to learn the Luganda words to the song with them. Especially the two little siblings who didn’t speak English; I think that was the most I saw them smile all morning. In all fairness, my Luganda is terrible, so I can’t blame them. Words are so closely pronounced that I’m sure what actually came out of my mouth – despite my best efforts – did not always mean what I intended it to mean.
After the singing they were divided by age and language for ‘lessons’. I went with the middle age group to learn about Manifestations of God.
Now, how many manifestations of God can you name? Bearing in mind that they want people, Prophets, Messengers of God. I, being a pretty non-religious person, had only three that came to mind. These were the ‘big three’ of Muhammad, Jesus and Moses. Islam, Christianity and Judaism.
Oh how I was to be surprised.
First they asked the kids to name these Manifestations and give the date the Prophet came, what the followers were called and what the religion was called. Well, I was infinitely out of my league. They started naming people I had never heard of. There are at least eight Manifestations that these kids could name. So there is the Bab, the Baha’u’llah, Jesus, Krishna, Muhammed, Moses, Buddha and Zorastor. There is also debate about whether Abraham counts. I don’t generally think of Buddha and Krishna as Prophets, but they’re certainly holy so sure, why not? Anyway, we talked about the four aspects of each of these Manifestations and named them, and I can now recite things like ‘the Prophet Muhammed arrived in the year 600 AD, his followers were the Muslims and they practiced Islam’, ‘the Manifestation of God The Bab arrived in 1844, his followers were the Babis and they practiced Babí’. The kids thought it was hilarious that I was having such a rough time keeping all of these people straight because to them it’s very basic. Aiya!
After the House of Worship we drove back to the house and prepared for my first African rain. It dumps here! Think Calgary’s worst thunder storm as their standard rainfall. It was intense, but had a wonderful effect on the amount of dust in the air. I am gaining a new appreciation for heavy rain.
The rest of the day was pretty low key, and then in the evening we went over to the Salon. The Salon is just what it sounds like, a hair salon, owned by a family friend almost right next to where Jaja (Phil’s mom) lives. It’s where all the adults, and thus all the kids, gather to talk and hang out. The noise was incredible! You have the women all meeting to discuss a wedding that’s going to take place this weekend, the men all drinking and laughing, vendors and other locals having a good time as they hawk their wares, and children wrestling, bopping each other in the head, picking up the younger kids (who yell in excitement or cry blue murder), roaring like tigers, screaming, begging their mom’s for a treat or attention and then the regular bustle of an African Salon filled with gossip and the blare of the local radio station.
It was very loud, to say the least. The people are all kind and welcoming, and I was introduced to another wave of family friends. It’s terrible, I can’t keep anyone’s name straight anymore except for the little kids.
The end result is that if I end up coming back from Gulu for any reason I’ve been invited to the wedding on Saturday. Brenda’s sister and a very nice fellow by the name of Scott are getting married up at the Bahá‘í House of Worship in the African style. Even after a lengthy discussion this morning with Brenda I’m not entirely sure I understand how this is hugely different from a Western style wedding, but part of it seems to be how the wedding is paid for. Because it’s terribly offensive to not be invite the whole family these weddings are huge, and therefore expensive. So at the meetings held each week to organize the wedding pledge cards are passed around and people are asked to donate some shillings to help offset the cost of the wedding. This could be anything from 20 Shillings (less than 1 cent CDN) to 5000 or 20,000 Shillings ($2.50 and $10.00).
‘Family’ is a much more encompassing expression in Africa than in Canada. There is the standard nuclear family (mother, father, siblings), and then there is the extended family (grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.) but the extended family has to be considered for the maternal and paternal side of both the bride and groom. Then add friends of the bride and groom, their children, and any friends that come but don’t want to go alone and so bring a friend of their own for company. Ok, we’re now at what I would consider to be a fairly large Canadian wedding. BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!
Women born in the same month often get together in a sort of ‘womens club’, kind of like Bridge night or book club or what-have-you. They all have to be invited. So to give an example Jaja was (I believe) born in August, so the four women who get together with her because they were also born in August and grew up with her have to be invited. That applies to the grandmothers, aunts, mothers-in-law, female friends, etc. So now the number has increased again. As I listened to Brenda explain the process of this African-style wedding I just couldn’t help but be struck by the sheer size of it. Other groups like the ‘womens group’ kept being added, and while there is of course some overlap, a lot of it is pulling more and more people into the celebration.
I don’t think I will get married in Africa.
June 28th
I’ve noticed I’m settling into a routine, which is nice because it’s starting to even out how much sleep I get. The sun rises and sets early here, and I’ve started to follow its example. Brenda and Zoe were teasing me last night because it was hardly 8:30pm and I was absolutely falling asleep in my chair. Then of course I woke up at 5:30am or some silly hour like that.
Today is the day Phil is supposed to get here, and I have a sneaking suspicion that that means things will start to move significantly faster than the nice, relaxed pace I’ve been at so far, hahaha.
Yesterday we went to the Bahá’í House of Worship, and it was so interesting! There is a religion, created by a Prophet called Baha’u’llah that encompasses a whole bunch of other different religions that I had never heard of. The House is located up high on the top of a hill and has a domed top similar to a mosque. The whole thing is circular and there are doors on all sides that are left open so the breeze can come through during service. Service itself was pretty straight forwards, someone comes up and reads a section of the Bible, or the Qu’ran, or the Tablets of the Bab, and so on. Then in between every few readings there is a song by the choir. The choir sits in the middle of the worshippers and just sort of picks up between every few readings. There is a really nice echo in the House, the same as a Church, but without the heavy feeling I get when I’m surrounded by intense stained glass windows and pipe organs. Also, there is no priest or over-seeing holy individual. Every week there is a theme that anyone who wants to read a prayer focuses the prayer on. As you probably got from farther up, there isn’t any one religious text either. It was interesting to sit and listen to prayers read in Luganda, Kiswali, English... there was even a Persian chant at one point. The whole House feels very calm and airy, it’s really quite relaxing and pleasant.
After the service the worshippers split into groups. Most of the adults went a little farther down the hill to a shorter, round building with a flat roof that they called the Centre for a talk on the theme of the week. The kids and some of the other adults grouped together for the equivalent of ‘Sunday School’. First the younger kids were sat down on benches at a table and they practiced that nursery rhyme ‘The more we get together’ in Luganda and in English. I decided to stay with the kids, having no real pull to go to the talk, and they thought it was hilarious when I tried to learn the Luganda words to the song with them. Especially the two little siblings who didn’t speak English; I think that was the most I saw them smile all morning. In all fairness, my Luganda is terrible, so I can’t blame them. Words are so closely pronounced that I’m sure what actually came out of my mouth – despite my best efforts – did not always mean what I intended it to mean.
After the singing they were divided by age and language for ‘lessons’. I went with the middle age group to learn about Manifestations of God.
Now, how many manifestations of God can you name? Bearing in mind that they want people, Prophets, Messengers of God. I, being a pretty non-religious person, had only three that came to mind. These were the ‘big three’ of Muhammad, Jesus and Moses. Islam, Christianity and Judaism.
Oh how I was to be surprised.
First they asked the kids to name these Manifestations and give the date the Prophet came, what the followers were called and what the religion was called. Well, I was infinitely out of my league. They started naming people I had never heard of. There are at least eight Manifestations that these kids could name. So there is the Bab, the Baha’u’llah, Jesus, Krishna, Muhammed, Moses, Buddha and Zorastor. There is also debate about whether Abraham counts. I don’t generally think of Buddha and Krishna as Prophets, but they’re certainly holy so sure, why not? Anyway, we talked about the four aspects of each of these Manifestations and named them, and I can now recite things like ‘the Prophet Muhammed arrived in the year 600 AD, his followers were the Muslims and they practiced Islam’, ‘the Manifestation of God The Bab arrived in 1844, his followers were the Babis and they practiced Babí’. The kids thought it was hilarious that I was having such a rough time keeping all of these people straight because to them it’s very basic. Aiya!
After the House of Worship we drove back to the house and prepared for my first African rain. It dumps here! Think Calgary’s worst thunder storm as their standard rainfall. It was intense, but had a wonderful effect on the amount of dust in the air. I am gaining a new appreciation for heavy rain.
The rest of the day was pretty low key, and then in the evening we went over to the Salon. The Salon is just what it sounds like, a hair salon, owned by a family friend almost right next to where Jaja (Phil’s mom) lives. It’s where all the adults, and thus all the kids, gather to talk and hang out. The noise was incredible! You have the women all meeting to discuss a wedding that’s going to take place this weekend, the men all drinking and laughing, vendors and other locals having a good time as they hawk their wares, and children wrestling, bopping each other in the head, picking up the younger kids (who yell in excitement or cry blue murder), roaring like tigers, screaming, begging their mom’s for a treat or attention and then the regular bustle of an African Salon filled with gossip and the blare of the local radio station.
It was very loud, to say the least. The people are all kind and welcoming, and I was introduced to another wave of family friends. It’s terrible, I can’t keep anyone’s name straight anymore except for the little kids.
The end result is that if I end up coming back from Gulu for any reason I’ve been invited to the wedding on Saturday. Brenda’s sister and a very nice fellow by the name of Scott are getting married up at the Bahá‘í House of Worship in the African style. Even after a lengthy discussion this morning with Brenda I’m not entirely sure I understand how this is hugely different from a Western style wedding, but part of it seems to be how the wedding is paid for. Because it’s terribly offensive to not be invite the whole family these weddings are huge, and therefore expensive. So at the meetings held each week to organize the wedding pledge cards are passed around and people are asked to donate some shillings to help offset the cost of the wedding. This could be anything from 20 Shillings (less than 1 cent CDN) to 5000 or 20,000 Shillings ($2.50 and $10.00).
‘Family’ is a much more encompassing expression in Africa than in Canada. There is the standard nuclear family (mother, father, siblings), and then there is the extended family (grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.) but the extended family has to be considered for the maternal and paternal side of both the bride and groom. Then add friends of the bride and groom, their children, and any friends that come but don’t want to go alone and so bring a friend of their own for company. Ok, we’re now at what I would consider to be a fairly large Canadian wedding. BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!
Women born in the same month often get together in a sort of ‘womens club’, kind of like Bridge night or book club or what-have-you. They all have to be invited. So to give an example Jaja was (I believe) born in August, so the four women who get together with her because they were also born in August and grew up with her have to be invited. That applies to the grandmothers, aunts, mothers-in-law, female friends, etc. So now the number has increased again. As I listened to Brenda explain the process of this African-style wedding I just couldn’t help but be struck by the sheer size of it. Other groups like the ‘womens group’ kept being added, and while there is of course some overlap, a lot of it is pulling more and more people into the celebration.
I don’t think I will get married in Africa.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Safe in Gulu
Right, I'm in Gulu. The drive up was many things but it was certainly never boring.
I am alive.
I am tired.
I will post tomorrow assuming there is power.
I am alive.
I am tired.
I will post tomorrow assuming there is power.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Tombs and Traffic
Day one in Africa, and I have learned many things already. After the huge breakfast discussed in my last post we sort of hung around the house and just settled in for a while. Really, I’m glad there was no rush to go anywhere because I had a difficult enough time pulling myself out of bed at 9:30am, I’m not sure I would have been good for anything before that. I pulled out my sketchbook and practiced with my oil pastels, really just killing time while we waited for Zoe to come back from her sleepover so we could go visit the Kasubi Tombs. Zoe eventually called and said she’d be staying another night, so we went to the Tombs without her.
Now, please understand that by ‘Tombs’ what is really meant is ‘tomb’. We drove no longer than 10 minutes (during which I got my first real taste of Ugandan traffic, we will come back to this) and were admitted through a chained-off drive to a dusty red half-loop of road where we were to park. The entrance to the tombs was dramatic enough, with a large, round grass… house? Hut? Structure? That you walked through to get to the next house/hut/structure where you were to pay and meet your guide. Being as this was a sacred tomb Brenda and I were not allowed to go in wearing jeans and shorts as we were, so they lent us orange sarongs to tie on over our other clothes. I think the issue was more that we were in pants and not skirts vs. any sort of indecency (ex: entering the Vatican) because both of us had on tank tops and that didn’t seem to be a problem.
Skirts on, we met our guide and he led us out of the little area surrounded by grass fence and out into an open area that resembled a moonscape. The ground was all black and grey and gravel except for a stone path that led us to a supersized version of the previous hut/house/structure. Inside there were women in bright dresses and one or two very small children dressed similarly. I never did find out what exactly the women did but I will hazard a guess that it had something to do with the sacred-ness.
Our guide talked to us about the four kings that reined over the Kingdom of Buganda, and taught us how to play a counting game called Omweso. It’s also referred to as Bo by another tribe, but the word in Lugandu is the translation of the word ‘checked’ in English (checked as in a ‘checked shirt’, or ‘checker board’). That was fun, we watched him and William play a round and got to a reasonable understanding of the rules. While I’m here, I’d like to pick up a game board so that I can bring it home. It’s a little confusing to learn at first, but fun. They don’t call it ‘playing against one another’, here it’s referred to as ‘battle’.
After the game our guide gestured to a leopard with a richly beaded collar that had been stuffed and mounted in a glass case. The leopard was shorter than I thought it would be, its head only reached my hip, but its teeth and claws were more than enough to inflict damage. The leopard had been the pet of the second of the Kings and was named River (Mayaja) because it used to cross the rivers and bodies of water with the King when he went on journeys. The Lugandu word for river has two meanings though, apparently it is more accurately translated as ‘big water’, so ‘to travel on a river or body of water’ uses the same word as ‘over seas’. To keep the leopard tame they fed it a goat and two buckets of blood a day. I imagine just about anything would be tame if it was fed that much daily.
After its owner, the second King died, the leopard apparently went mad with grief and killed people until at last the third King had to have it killed.
We also discussed a little bit about the history of Uganda and the surrounding countries, and it didn’t take long at all before we realized our guide was very extremist. He stated quite openly that he used to hate the whites and do all sort of radical deeds to deter them coming. He then began to talk about how the British were really behind all of Africa’s problems, the issue Uganda is having with East Indian workers stealing all the work that should belong to the citizens of Uganda. Then he covered the topic of refugees from places like Somalia, and how Idiamindada (a.k.a the last king of Scotland) was the best President Uganda ever had because he united the people. Only… gah… I have certainly never heard anything good about Amin, and Brenda and Fred certainly don’t care for him because it sounds like he was charismatic but somewhat insane and very brutal. I’m not local, so my understanding is all very textbook but whoa, that was an eye opener.
Apparently tribalism is still a big problem in Africa and many of the ideas this fellow was spouting sound suspiciously like they would aggravate that. Think Europe before the assassination of Franz Ferdinand.
After the tombs we drove down to Phillip’s mom’s place and met her. The school that was rebuilt last year really is like… right in her backyard.
I played with the kids for a while and looked in all the classrooms. Most of them are divided in half so that there is enough room to have two grades present. Everything was very colourful, they really did a good job on it. With Lily’s done we headed up the hill to Backpackers so that I could see it and get an internet connection for a bit. There are plenty of Muzungu’s at Backpackers. Muzungu’s being the slang term used by the locals for ‘white person’. Fred, being only slightly less white than me, likes to pull it out around the house all the time, hahaha. The compound at Backpackers really was very well put together, and there were plenty of other kids my age who looked quite happy there. The fellow who runs it is ex-military and responsible for the security in that side of town, so the gate is guarded by two men in uniform, and while I only saw one gun, it was plenty intimidating on its own. Previously (when the country was less stable) apparently they had an incident where a group trying to destabilize the government threw a grenade into Backpackers because of the high concentration of foreign whites there. No deaths, but one high profile injury later and armed guards were posted.
I am definitely not in Kansas anymore.
After Backpackers we piled back in the red 1994 Toyota Previa (it lives!) and went down to pick up some meat for dinner at the local meat shop. The meat just sort of hangs in the window, out in the open, un-refrigerated. Plenty tasty though, we made it into spaghetti.
Now, back to the driving style in Africa.
Driving in Africa is like… no, there is no metaphor, driving in Africa is insane. First, they drive on the left-hand side because of the British colonial influence. The roads kind of blend in with the dirt on the sides because everything is dusty, so everything is red-ish. So now we’re on the opposite side of the road and there are no lines and no edges. Now we add traffic. Traffic is special. The bumper-to-bumper is comparable to New York city at rush hour, and the whole area reeks of diesel. No one gives anybody else an inch of space to enter traffic and pedestrians are free game, there doesn’t seem to be any sort of right-of-way law. Now between all the vans and cars and trucks transporting loads of goods put boda-bodas. If there is a two foot wide gap between cars that’s all a boda-boda (motorcycle) needs to squeak through and zip up further in the lines of vans and cars. Not a single boda-boda driver wears a helmet, and they often end up going far faster than the cars because of how much more efficiently they weave through traffic. More often than not I’d look out the window and see two or three of these boda-bodas pressed against the side of the Previa and still moving. Aiya!
SO! The roads are packed and everyone is at speed. You’d think traffic accidents were quite common. Well, not between cars. Cars just run into each other and dent and scratch. Boda-bodas however are in accidents all the time. As we were driving between the Kasubi Tombs and Lily Kindergarten and Primary I saw my first traffic accident. There isn’t really an ambulance system in Uganda because medicine is not socialized, so when a car hits a boda-boda, it’s up to the locals to deal with it. The driver usually drives off so that they can’t be held responsible, and anyone who stops is giving voluntary first aid. The first aid tends to be things like placing a blanket under the head of the person who flew farthest and hit hardest assuming they are still alive. It could also be helping someone who is injured and not at a high level of consciousness onto the back of another boda-boda to get them to a hospital. It’s surreal, driving past a scene like that. We did not get out to help as there were plenty of people there who were quite intent on helping. Also, apparently if you are in the car and you bring someone into the hospital because of an accident, the hospital will actually hold you until someone can declare that you were helping, and weren’t responsible for injuring the person.
Once you’re in the hospital the waits are supposed to be incredible. In excess of 24 hours. The motto of this story is don’t get into any medical trouble in Uganda.
The temperature is amazing though! It’s just cool enough at night that you can lay on top of your sheets and doze off, and during the days it’s hot in the sun but not in any unbearable way. The water has a kind of soil-y taste, but Brenda and Fred boil it all day on the stove before storing it in jugs in the fridge. Cleaning is done every day to keep down the dust and the tiles are deliciously cool beneath your feet. Oh, and the ants are big, I do a double-take every time I see an ant wandering around. All in all though, I’m really enjoying myself. The hospitality is incredible.
I’ll be sure to update again soon!
Now, please understand that by ‘Tombs’ what is really meant is ‘tomb’. We drove no longer than 10 minutes (during which I got my first real taste of Ugandan traffic, we will come back to this) and were admitted through a chained-off drive to a dusty red half-loop of road where we were to park. The entrance to the tombs was dramatic enough, with a large, round grass… house? Hut? Structure? That you walked through to get to the next house/hut/structure where you were to pay and meet your guide. Being as this was a sacred tomb Brenda and I were not allowed to go in wearing jeans and shorts as we were, so they lent us orange sarongs to tie on over our other clothes. I think the issue was more that we were in pants and not skirts vs. any sort of indecency (ex: entering the Vatican) because both of us had on tank tops and that didn’t seem to be a problem.
Skirts on, we met our guide and he led us out of the little area surrounded by grass fence and out into an open area that resembled a moonscape. The ground was all black and grey and gravel except for a stone path that led us to a supersized version of the previous hut/house/structure. Inside there were women in bright dresses and one or two very small children dressed similarly. I never did find out what exactly the women did but I will hazard a guess that it had something to do with the sacred-ness.
Our guide talked to us about the four kings that reined over the Kingdom of Buganda, and taught us how to play a counting game called Omweso. It’s also referred to as Bo by another tribe, but the word in Lugandu is the translation of the word ‘checked’ in English (checked as in a ‘checked shirt’, or ‘checker board’). That was fun, we watched him and William play a round and got to a reasonable understanding of the rules. While I’m here, I’d like to pick up a game board so that I can bring it home. It’s a little confusing to learn at first, but fun. They don’t call it ‘playing against one another’, here it’s referred to as ‘battle’.
After the game our guide gestured to a leopard with a richly beaded collar that had been stuffed and mounted in a glass case. The leopard was shorter than I thought it would be, its head only reached my hip, but its teeth and claws were more than enough to inflict damage. The leopard had been the pet of the second of the Kings and was named River (Mayaja) because it used to cross the rivers and bodies of water with the King when he went on journeys. The Lugandu word for river has two meanings though, apparently it is more accurately translated as ‘big water’, so ‘to travel on a river or body of water’ uses the same word as ‘over seas’. To keep the leopard tame they fed it a goat and two buckets of blood a day. I imagine just about anything would be tame if it was fed that much daily.
After its owner, the second King died, the leopard apparently went mad with grief and killed people until at last the third King had to have it killed.
We also discussed a little bit about the history of Uganda and the surrounding countries, and it didn’t take long at all before we realized our guide was very extremist. He stated quite openly that he used to hate the whites and do all sort of radical deeds to deter them coming. He then began to talk about how the British were really behind all of Africa’s problems, the issue Uganda is having with East Indian workers stealing all the work that should belong to the citizens of Uganda. Then he covered the topic of refugees from places like Somalia, and how Idiamindada (a.k.a the last king of Scotland) was the best President Uganda ever had because he united the people. Only… gah… I have certainly never heard anything good about Amin, and Brenda and Fred certainly don’t care for him because it sounds like he was charismatic but somewhat insane and very brutal. I’m not local, so my understanding is all very textbook but whoa, that was an eye opener.
Apparently tribalism is still a big problem in Africa and many of the ideas this fellow was spouting sound suspiciously like they would aggravate that. Think Europe before the assassination of Franz Ferdinand.
After the tombs we drove down to Phillip’s mom’s place and met her. The school that was rebuilt last year really is like… right in her backyard.
I played with the kids for a while and looked in all the classrooms. Most of them are divided in half so that there is enough room to have two grades present. Everything was very colourful, they really did a good job on it. With Lily’s done we headed up the hill to Backpackers so that I could see it and get an internet connection for a bit. There are plenty of Muzungu’s at Backpackers. Muzungu’s being the slang term used by the locals for ‘white person’. Fred, being only slightly less white than me, likes to pull it out around the house all the time, hahaha. The compound at Backpackers really was very well put together, and there were plenty of other kids my age who looked quite happy there. The fellow who runs it is ex-military and responsible for the security in that side of town, so the gate is guarded by two men in uniform, and while I only saw one gun, it was plenty intimidating on its own. Previously (when the country was less stable) apparently they had an incident where a group trying to destabilize the government threw a grenade into Backpackers because of the high concentration of foreign whites there. No deaths, but one high profile injury later and armed guards were posted.
I am definitely not in Kansas anymore.
After Backpackers we piled back in the red 1994 Toyota Previa (it lives!) and went down to pick up some meat for dinner at the local meat shop. The meat just sort of hangs in the window, out in the open, un-refrigerated. Plenty tasty though, we made it into spaghetti.
Now, back to the driving style in Africa.
Driving in Africa is like… no, there is no metaphor, driving in Africa is insane. First, they drive on the left-hand side because of the British colonial influence. The roads kind of blend in with the dirt on the sides because everything is dusty, so everything is red-ish. So now we’re on the opposite side of the road and there are no lines and no edges. Now we add traffic. Traffic is special. The bumper-to-bumper is comparable to New York city at rush hour, and the whole area reeks of diesel. No one gives anybody else an inch of space to enter traffic and pedestrians are free game, there doesn’t seem to be any sort of right-of-way law. Now between all the vans and cars and trucks transporting loads of goods put boda-bodas. If there is a two foot wide gap between cars that’s all a boda-boda (motorcycle) needs to squeak through and zip up further in the lines of vans and cars. Not a single boda-boda driver wears a helmet, and they often end up going far faster than the cars because of how much more efficiently they weave through traffic. More often than not I’d look out the window and see two or three of these boda-bodas pressed against the side of the Previa and still moving. Aiya!
SO! The roads are packed and everyone is at speed. You’d think traffic accidents were quite common. Well, not between cars. Cars just run into each other and dent and scratch. Boda-bodas however are in accidents all the time. As we were driving between the Kasubi Tombs and Lily Kindergarten and Primary I saw my first traffic accident. There isn’t really an ambulance system in Uganda because medicine is not socialized, so when a car hits a boda-boda, it’s up to the locals to deal with it. The driver usually drives off so that they can’t be held responsible, and anyone who stops is giving voluntary first aid. The first aid tends to be things like placing a blanket under the head of the person who flew farthest and hit hardest assuming they are still alive. It could also be helping someone who is injured and not at a high level of consciousness onto the back of another boda-boda to get them to a hospital. It’s surreal, driving past a scene like that. We did not get out to help as there were plenty of people there who were quite intent on helping. Also, apparently if you are in the car and you bring someone into the hospital because of an accident, the hospital will actually hold you until someone can declare that you were helping, and weren’t responsible for injuring the person.
Once you’re in the hospital the waits are supposed to be incredible. In excess of 24 hours. The motto of this story is don’t get into any medical trouble in Uganda.
The temperature is amazing though! It’s just cool enough at night that you can lay on top of your sheets and doze off, and during the days it’s hot in the sun but not in any unbearable way. The water has a kind of soil-y taste, but Brenda and Fred boil it all day on the stove before storing it in jugs in the fridge. Cleaning is done every day to keep down the dust and the tiles are deliciously cool beneath your feet. Oh, and the ants are big, I do a double-take every time I see an ant wandering around. All in all though, I’m really enjoying myself. The hospitality is incredible.
I’ll be sure to update again soon!
Saturday, June 27, 2009
The Mysterious Terminal 4 and Accompanying Adventures
Alright! I’ve made it!
I’m in the suburbs of Kampala, Uganda with Phil’s sister Brenda, her husband Fred and their son William. They also have a daughter named Zoe, but I’ve yet to meet her. It was a late night; I wasn’t in bed until past 1am local time. Both Fred and Brenda came to pick me up from the airport and I’m very thankful that they did, it was a long drive and finding a cab didn’t look like it was particularly easy. I slept like a log, and woke up this morning to breakfast in the kitchen. Wow, I have not had a breakfast like this in… a very long time. Two eggs on a gigantic piece of toast, a great big spatula full of fried potatoes and onion, a split hotdog and a mug of tea. I don’t know that I’ll be hungry for lunch.
Anyway, getting here was a bit of an adventure. I did manage to find the Antigallican and tag up with Chris and Greg for a few hours. Chris was asleep most of the time I was there, but Greg and I wandered the area and had dinner. Sleep was short, 3 hours and then I was up to catch the bus to Heathrow for a 6:30am departure. There was a transfer between the two busses, and I’m glad that London is still fairly populated at 3am because I think I asked directions from just about every person I met. Caught the second bus, was confused as to why so many drunk people were getting on the bus, then realized it was a Friday night.
Got to Heathrow and discovered that the bus didn’t go to the only one of the five terminals I needed to get to. The bus runs to terminals 1, 2, 3 and 5, but not 4. Very silly. So I wandered the airport and found a train that ran to terminal 4, but didn’t open to the public until 5am. Hm… not great. There were two other backpackers from the Czech republic waiting by the doors who had never flown before, and I wasn’t sure how long it would take us to get through security being as I’ve only ever heard horror stories of Heathrow. We tagged up and decided to see if we could find some other way to get to the mysterious terminal 4. We headed up to terminal 2, as apparently they’d been told they could take taxi to terminal 4 but couldn’t afford one between the two of them with the number of pounds they had left (and in all fairness, I couldn’t either). Up at terminal 2 we found more people trying to get to terminal 4! There was a British couple, and all of us were on the same flight to Amsterdam.
We did catch a taxi, and the British couple paid the 15 pound fee. Glad that we’d arrived at terminal 4 we hurried down to the check in. It wasn’t as slow as we’d thought it would be, but just the number of people being processed made it slow. The luggage was loaded and we walked the two Czech backpackers through check in and getting their luggage on the plane. I was confused when I turned around in line and they’d pulled out a beer. No, really. So in line they happily gulped down the beer (to some very disapproving looks from the airport staff) and we handed over our luggage.
The first flight to Amsterdam was short, but I was so tired I slept through the whole thing. Even after breakfast at this great little café called Costa. Oh man, the muffins… they had all the normal muffin-ish flavours, and then there were two Epic Muffins. Epic Muffin #1 was an orange and lemon muffin with lemon icing. More like a dessert, but deliciously citrus. Then there was Epic Muffin #2. If I were a muffin, I would be this muffin. It was blackcurrent and white chocolate with macadamia bits. Oh… glorious muffin… we will meet again upon my return to Heathrow. So yeah… Breakfast was good, then I slept. Amsterdam was busy and stuffed full of people, which was frustrating. I’m sure if I’d had more sleep I would have liked it better. They have everything in that airport! Not just your standard duty free shopping, but a museum, a few kids play places, restaurant chains, I may have even seen a sign for some sort of water feature or wading pool. Crazy. They put some sort of effort into that.
At the gate there was a group of high schoolers with Canadian flags scattered across their carry on bags. Turns out they’re a group with Save the Children going to build a school in Kenya. Chatted with them for a bit, they were from all over; a few from Vancouver, Toronto, Calgary (of course) and then a smattering of kids from the States. Then I slept for almost the whole flight to Nairobi, and kept waking up to food in front of me. I think I might have been fed three times on that flight, it was very odd, but all acceptably tasty. The layover in Nairobi was longer than I thought it would be, but I snoozed through most of that too. The last flight was with Kenya Air down to Entebbe. I have to say, even though KLM has all sorts of entertainment and seatback screens, their seats are really, really uncomfortable. Kenya Air totally wins that encounter.
Anyway, I’m here now and it’s a nice spot. The drive back was interesting in that I got a more local view of Kampala. So… for example things that we would normally close roads for in Canada - like huge holes - are referred to as speed bumps, or potholes. There’s also a big cement wall around the house that serves as a fence. On top of the wall is a layer of broken glass, electric wire, and razor wire for extra-deterrence. There are windows all over, and on the inside are bars. Nice bars, but bars.
I think it will take a day or so to get used to how things are done here.
Jambo to Africa!
I’m in the suburbs of Kampala, Uganda with Phil’s sister Brenda, her husband Fred and their son William. They also have a daughter named Zoe, but I’ve yet to meet her. It was a late night; I wasn’t in bed until past 1am local time. Both Fred and Brenda came to pick me up from the airport and I’m very thankful that they did, it was a long drive and finding a cab didn’t look like it was particularly easy. I slept like a log, and woke up this morning to breakfast in the kitchen. Wow, I have not had a breakfast like this in… a very long time. Two eggs on a gigantic piece of toast, a great big spatula full of fried potatoes and onion, a split hotdog and a mug of tea. I don’t know that I’ll be hungry for lunch.
Anyway, getting here was a bit of an adventure. I did manage to find the Antigallican and tag up with Chris and Greg for a few hours. Chris was asleep most of the time I was there, but Greg and I wandered the area and had dinner. Sleep was short, 3 hours and then I was up to catch the bus to Heathrow for a 6:30am departure. There was a transfer between the two busses, and I’m glad that London is still fairly populated at 3am because I think I asked directions from just about every person I met. Caught the second bus, was confused as to why so many drunk people were getting on the bus, then realized it was a Friday night.
Got to Heathrow and discovered that the bus didn’t go to the only one of the five terminals I needed to get to. The bus runs to terminals 1, 2, 3 and 5, but not 4. Very silly. So I wandered the airport and found a train that ran to terminal 4, but didn’t open to the public until 5am. Hm… not great. There were two other backpackers from the Czech republic waiting by the doors who had never flown before, and I wasn’t sure how long it would take us to get through security being as I’ve only ever heard horror stories of Heathrow. We tagged up and decided to see if we could find some other way to get to the mysterious terminal 4. We headed up to terminal 2, as apparently they’d been told they could take taxi to terminal 4 but couldn’t afford one between the two of them with the number of pounds they had left (and in all fairness, I couldn’t either). Up at terminal 2 we found more people trying to get to terminal 4! There was a British couple, and all of us were on the same flight to Amsterdam.
We did catch a taxi, and the British couple paid the 15 pound fee. Glad that we’d arrived at terminal 4 we hurried down to the check in. It wasn’t as slow as we’d thought it would be, but just the number of people being processed made it slow. The luggage was loaded and we walked the two Czech backpackers through check in and getting their luggage on the plane. I was confused when I turned around in line and they’d pulled out a beer. No, really. So in line they happily gulped down the beer (to some very disapproving looks from the airport staff) and we handed over our luggage.
The first flight to Amsterdam was short, but I was so tired I slept through the whole thing. Even after breakfast at this great little café called Costa. Oh man, the muffins… they had all the normal muffin-ish flavours, and then there were two Epic Muffins. Epic Muffin #1 was an orange and lemon muffin with lemon icing. More like a dessert, but deliciously citrus. Then there was Epic Muffin #2. If I were a muffin, I would be this muffin. It was blackcurrent and white chocolate with macadamia bits. Oh… glorious muffin… we will meet again upon my return to Heathrow. So yeah… Breakfast was good, then I slept. Amsterdam was busy and stuffed full of people, which was frustrating. I’m sure if I’d had more sleep I would have liked it better. They have everything in that airport! Not just your standard duty free shopping, but a museum, a few kids play places, restaurant chains, I may have even seen a sign for some sort of water feature or wading pool. Crazy. They put some sort of effort into that.
At the gate there was a group of high schoolers with Canadian flags scattered across their carry on bags. Turns out they’re a group with Save the Children going to build a school in Kenya. Chatted with them for a bit, they were from all over; a few from Vancouver, Toronto, Calgary (of course) and then a smattering of kids from the States. Then I slept for almost the whole flight to Nairobi, and kept waking up to food in front of me. I think I might have been fed three times on that flight, it was very odd, but all acceptably tasty. The layover in Nairobi was longer than I thought it would be, but I snoozed through most of that too. The last flight was with Kenya Air down to Entebbe. I have to say, even though KLM has all sorts of entertainment and seatback screens, their seats are really, really uncomfortable. Kenya Air totally wins that encounter.
Anyway, I’m here now and it’s a nice spot. The drive back was interesting in that I got a more local view of Kampala. So… for example things that we would normally close roads for in Canada - like huge holes - are referred to as speed bumps, or potholes. There’s also a big cement wall around the house that serves as a fence. On top of the wall is a layer of broken glass, electric wire, and razor wire for extra-deterrence. There are windows all over, and on the inside are bars. Nice bars, but bars.
I think it will take a day or so to get used to how things are done here.
Jambo to Africa!
Thursday, June 25, 2009
The Great Escape!
That's right, I'm here! London is busy, smells kind of like diesel all the time and has beautiful architecture that ranges from your standard old fashioned buildings like Big Ben, Parliament and Westminster Abbey right up to their super modern bee-hive city hall. I am also impressed at how far my £'s are going to get me. Food is so inexpensive here! Even with the exchange rate I got lunch today for super cheap, £2.27. Wow, awesome, I am impressed. The fruit is still pricey, but fruit's expensive everywhere so we'll just ignore that.
On Wednesday evening I was dropped off at the airport and made my way through security nice and early. The gate wasn't terribly full of people, so the flight wasn't crowded. Even though I didn't sleep it didn't feel like it was terribly long. I had two empty seats next to me and I was in the middle aisle so there was plenty of room to spread out. The food was impressive too! Admittedly I was surprised when they served beans with their eggs for breakfast but it was all hot and it was all real-tasting. Thomas Cook airlines has put Air Canada to shame. I don't think they were quite excellent enough to beat Air New Zealand, but Thomas Cook is a close second, I'd fly with them again in a heartbeat.
We had a one hour stopover in Glasgow, Scotland and I had a good time chatting with a mother and son who were headed home from a trip to visit family in Saskatchewan. I couldn't help but giggle at some of the things they were surprised at. No, you can't buy liquor everywhere. It's in special stores (he does have a point though, with the barred windows, they do look a bit like jails). There isn't a lot to do during the day in Sask unless you happen to be working. We do call it a trunk, not a boot. We do say 'eh' more often than I think we realise.
But at the same time, I've been doing the same thing over here all day. It still makes me smile when I think of the 'bins' on the streets marked 'rubbish'. Or when you hear someone Scottish say 'aye'. Or when the police officers on the street have on a standard looking uniform with a bulletproof vest but added the helmet-like Scotland Yard caps. There are still portly fellows at the train platforms with whistles that hold up some sort of small round plastic sign - white on one side, black on the other. Even just how often they use phrases like 'top up', 'mind the gap' and 'bits' makes me happy.
Anyway. I arrived at Gatwick and got off the plane to find myself in a horrifically long customs line. I had not encountered the likes of this for a good while. One of the guys on the flight who stayed through until Gatwick (TJ) and I were next to eachother in line, so we took turns bettering on how long it would take us to work our way through. Initially I guessed 27min and 30 sec, and TJ guessed 47 min. Now, in all fairness we only saw half of the line when we took our guesses. For the portion of the line we could see, my guess was only a minute off. For the portion we could not see...
1 hour and 57 minutes later we had cleared customs and gone on to find our checked bags. It was TJ's first time out of the country, so he brought a lot, but after tramping around London with me for the better part of the day I don't know that he'll be travelling with that much again next time.
Once we had our luggage we purchased some postcards and some 'quid' (£'s, I don't know where the nickname 'quid' came from) and caught the gatwick express into town. We walked from London Bridge Station down to Tower Bridge, and promptly napped on the grass because we were both exhausted. Then there was some debate about how he was going to get to Edinbourgh, so we cleared that up with several of the no-nonsense train station attendents and I decided to work my way towards Big Ben.
I had a classic tourist moment, when you emerge from the Westminster station Big Ben is litterally right on top of you. I did the classic lost tourist thing and looked all over the sky line except above me. It made for some fun times when I did finally ask someone where the elusive clock tower was.
Aside from being crowded, London has a very clean, prompt train system. It's wonderful. With it I've also seen Trafalgar Square today, and tried my hand at oil pastelling Big Ben, but I'm not fine enough with them yet to take on complicated structures with little details like Ben.
Even though it's only 7:30pm here, I think my day will end soon if I can manage to track down the boys. I'm hoping to catch some sleep before I train it back out to Heathrow and leave for Amsterdam. As it is, I keep nodding off in front of the monitor.
Zzzzz.....
On Wednesday evening I was dropped off at the airport and made my way through security nice and early. The gate wasn't terribly full of people, so the flight wasn't crowded. Even though I didn't sleep it didn't feel like it was terribly long. I had two empty seats next to me and I was in the middle aisle so there was plenty of room to spread out. The food was impressive too! Admittedly I was surprised when they served beans with their eggs for breakfast but it was all hot and it was all real-tasting. Thomas Cook airlines has put Air Canada to shame. I don't think they were quite excellent enough to beat Air New Zealand, but Thomas Cook is a close second, I'd fly with them again in a heartbeat.
We had a one hour stopover in Glasgow, Scotland and I had a good time chatting with a mother and son who were headed home from a trip to visit family in Saskatchewan. I couldn't help but giggle at some of the things they were surprised at. No, you can't buy liquor everywhere. It's in special stores (he does have a point though, with the barred windows, they do look a bit like jails). There isn't a lot to do during the day in Sask unless you happen to be working. We do call it a trunk, not a boot. We do say 'eh' more often than I think we realise.
But at the same time, I've been doing the same thing over here all day. It still makes me smile when I think of the 'bins' on the streets marked 'rubbish'. Or when you hear someone Scottish say 'aye'. Or when the police officers on the street have on a standard looking uniform with a bulletproof vest but added the helmet-like Scotland Yard caps. There are still portly fellows at the train platforms with whistles that hold up some sort of small round plastic sign - white on one side, black on the other. Even just how often they use phrases like 'top up', 'mind the gap' and 'bits' makes me happy.
Anyway. I arrived at Gatwick and got off the plane to find myself in a horrifically long customs line. I had not encountered the likes of this for a good while. One of the guys on the flight who stayed through until Gatwick (TJ) and I were next to eachother in line, so we took turns bettering on how long it would take us to work our way through. Initially I guessed 27min and 30 sec, and TJ guessed 47 min. Now, in all fairness we only saw half of the line when we took our guesses. For the portion of the line we could see, my guess was only a minute off. For the portion we could not see...
1 hour and 57 minutes later we had cleared customs and gone on to find our checked bags. It was TJ's first time out of the country, so he brought a lot, but after tramping around London with me for the better part of the day I don't know that he'll be travelling with that much again next time.
Once we had our luggage we purchased some postcards and some 'quid' (£'s, I don't know where the nickname 'quid' came from) and caught the gatwick express into town. We walked from London Bridge Station down to Tower Bridge, and promptly napped on the grass because we were both exhausted. Then there was some debate about how he was going to get to Edinbourgh, so we cleared that up with several of the no-nonsense train station attendents and I decided to work my way towards Big Ben.
I had a classic tourist moment, when you emerge from the Westminster station Big Ben is litterally right on top of you. I did the classic lost tourist thing and looked all over the sky line except above me. It made for some fun times when I did finally ask someone where the elusive clock tower was.
Aside from being crowded, London has a very clean, prompt train system. It's wonderful. With it I've also seen Trafalgar Square today, and tried my hand at oil pastelling Big Ben, but I'm not fine enough with them yet to take on complicated structures with little details like Ben.
Even though it's only 7:30pm here, I think my day will end soon if I can manage to track down the boys. I'm hoping to catch some sleep before I train it back out to Heathrow and leave for Amsterdam. As it is, I keep nodding off in front of the monitor.
Zzzzz.....
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Plan B:
The passport has arrived! With a confirmed visa! Yes!
It's really a bit of an anticlimactic little piece of paper stuck in my passport, next to the International Certificate of Vaccination or Prophylaxis. Despite myself I giggled when I saw the name of the Issuing officer. It seems to be written out as 'Aeeeeeebeeeel'; but I may have mistaken the 'b' for an 'le' that are very close together.
Alright, time to revert to Plan B!
Between Canadapost and myself we came to the conclusion that it would be best for me to leave Wednesday, for very little money ($225.05), than last night, for $1400.oo. It helps that I didn't get my hands on the passport until about 5:30pm yesterday, and the flight I was looking at left at about 2pm that afternoon.
The result of all of this is that I will be missing almost the entire UK portion of my trip, and arrive Thursday just before noon, then leave very, very early Friday morning. While this is incredibly disappointing it is better to miss the London bit than the Africa bit, neh? Also, it sounds like the boys are having an excellent time. As we speak, they could be bonding over footy and a pint in the neighbourhood pub.
So, the total cost of my learning experience becomes missing London, and being out about $500 worth of flights. All considered, that could have been significantly worse. The greatest difficulty was finding things to keep myself preoccupied with. The condo is now quite clean.
The good news is that I fly out tomorrow night at 5:45pm. I have my ticket (in my hand), my passport (in my hand), my visa (in my passport in my hand) and everything is still packed being as I did not unpack.
Cue the celebratory music! I'm on my way!
It's really a bit of an anticlimactic little piece of paper stuck in my passport, next to the International Certificate of Vaccination or Prophylaxis. Despite myself I giggled when I saw the name of the Issuing officer. It seems to be written out as 'Aeeeeeebeeeel'; but I may have mistaken the 'b' for an 'le' that are very close together.
Alright, time to revert to Plan B!
Between Canadapost and myself we came to the conclusion that it would be best for me to leave Wednesday, for very little money ($225.05), than last night, for $1400.oo. It helps that I didn't get my hands on the passport until about 5:30pm yesterday, and the flight I was looking at left at about 2pm that afternoon.
The result of all of this is that I will be missing almost the entire UK portion of my trip, and arrive Thursday just before noon, then leave very, very early Friday morning. While this is incredibly disappointing it is better to miss the London bit than the Africa bit, neh? Also, it sounds like the boys are having an excellent time. As we speak, they could be bonding over footy and a pint in the neighbourhood pub.
So, the total cost of my learning experience becomes missing London, and being out about $500 worth of flights. All considered, that could have been significantly worse. The greatest difficulty was finding things to keep myself preoccupied with. The condo is now quite clean.
The good news is that I fly out tomorrow night at 5:45pm. I have my ticket (in my hand), my passport (in my hand), my visa (in my passport in my hand) and everything is still packed being as I did not unpack.
Cue the celebratory music! I'm on my way!
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Not as Advertised
As you may have guessed due to the time and date of this post, I should be on a plane travelling ridiculously fast over the Atlantic ocean right now on my way to an island that likes to wrap fish and chips in news paper. However, that is not where I am. Where I am is at my friend Chelsea's house baking chocolate delicious. The reason for this is a cascading set of mistakes and so forth by the High Commission, Canada Post, and myself.
The first mistake was made by me, I did not understand the difference between Xpresspost and Priority. The difference is 24 hours, which is the amount by which I have missed my passport.
The second mistake is on the part of Canada Post, for telling me that Xpresspost delivers within 48 hours of recieving the package. This is totally, 100%, undeniably not true. Priority delivers for the following morning.
The third mistake was a drawn out process by the High Commission. Bureaucracy is frustrating to deal with in developed countries, it is impossible to deal with in undeveloped countries that don't really want you in their country in the first place. They were under the impression that I was stealing jobs from their labourers by volunteering... and possibly up to no good because the volunteering involved an educational institute; a.k.a. a library.
So, being as these three mistakes all happened together my passport with the approved visa is somewhere within the Canada Post mailing system, and they cannot tell me where it is. Their hours are also so short that by the time I realized there was an issue, there was not a single living person I could call, e-mail, or messenger pidgeon for help. Did you know Canada post has five different numbers that you can contact about your package and where it happens to be? I did not, but they all have exactly the same message recorded. Awesome.
I have learned my lesson quite well from all of this, and the cost of my learning is more than I would like it to be.
Lesson 1: Do not use Canada Post. Use FedEx, or possibly UPS, they deliver every day of the week and have a significantly more accurate and informative tracking system. They also have someone you can call who is not a machine.
Lesson 2: There is a system for dealing with High Commissions that don't like you. You must call, pester, bother, remind, leave all information six times and promise to call back within the hour to check they have done what you asked. It also helps to have a citizen of said High Commission's home country doing exactly the same thing, with all of your information handy.
Lesson 3: Make sure that when you want something there the following morning, you make that clear at the post office. "This needs to be in Ottawa as fast as possible." apparently elicites a different response from "This needs to be in Ottawa tomorrow."
So, with all these lessons in hand, some cashed savings bonds, and a little bit of luck, I will have my passport by 10am on Monday morning and will by flying out by five. It would be kind of a cool flight, being as I would be routed through Minneapolis and Iceland. Never been to Iceland, so that would be exciting. The nice people at Air Transat also offered me a flight out on Wednesday for $300. However this would mean I get to London, have a strange 20 hour layover, and then get on a plane bound for Africa. So... I would miss the entire London component.
This decision will be made shortly.
In other happier news I saw Greg and Chris off at the airport and they were excited to be on their way. Here's hoping they're not too bored on their flight and that the hostel they booked is as good as advertised. Have fun guys, I'm sure I'll catch up!
Kenna out.
The first mistake was made by me, I did not understand the difference between Xpresspost and Priority. The difference is 24 hours, which is the amount by which I have missed my passport.
The second mistake is on the part of Canada Post, for telling me that Xpresspost delivers within 48 hours of recieving the package. This is totally, 100%, undeniably not true. Priority delivers for the following morning.
The third mistake was a drawn out process by the High Commission. Bureaucracy is frustrating to deal with in developed countries, it is impossible to deal with in undeveloped countries that don't really want you in their country in the first place. They were under the impression that I was stealing jobs from their labourers by volunteering... and possibly up to no good because the volunteering involved an educational institute; a.k.a. a library.
So, being as these three mistakes all happened together my passport with the approved visa is somewhere within the Canada Post mailing system, and they cannot tell me where it is. Their hours are also so short that by the time I realized there was an issue, there was not a single living person I could call, e-mail, or messenger pidgeon for help. Did you know Canada post has five different numbers that you can contact about your package and where it happens to be? I did not, but they all have exactly the same message recorded. Awesome.
I have learned my lesson quite well from all of this, and the cost of my learning is more than I would like it to be.
Lesson 1: Do not use Canada Post. Use FedEx, or possibly UPS, they deliver every day of the week and have a significantly more accurate and informative tracking system. They also have someone you can call who is not a machine.
Lesson 2: There is a system for dealing with High Commissions that don't like you. You must call, pester, bother, remind, leave all information six times and promise to call back within the hour to check they have done what you asked. It also helps to have a citizen of said High Commission's home country doing exactly the same thing, with all of your information handy.
Lesson 3: Make sure that when you want something there the following morning, you make that clear at the post office. "This needs to be in Ottawa as fast as possible." apparently elicites a different response from "This needs to be in Ottawa tomorrow."
So, with all these lessons in hand, some cashed savings bonds, and a little bit of luck, I will have my passport by 10am on Monday morning and will by flying out by five. It would be kind of a cool flight, being as I would be routed through Minneapolis and Iceland. Never been to Iceland, so that would be exciting. The nice people at Air Transat also offered me a flight out on Wednesday for $300. However this would mean I get to London, have a strange 20 hour layover, and then get on a plane bound for Africa. So... I would miss the entire London component.
This decision will be made shortly.
In other happier news I saw Greg and Chris off at the airport and they were excited to be on their way. Here's hoping they're not too bored on their flight and that the hostel they booked is as good as advertised. Have fun guys, I'm sure I'll catch up!
Kenna out.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Ready for take off? Actually... no...
So, having not left yet I've already run into trouble, hahaha!
The High Commission of the Republic of Uganda and I do not get along terribly well it seems. They didn’t like that I sent them Canadian money; fine, sent them more money of the American variety. Then they wanted a letter of invitation and introduction explaining that I was indeed wanted in their country and that I was not pilfering jobs from their labourers; alright, letters sent within 8 hours of the request. Now, after a week without my passport, a significant amount of stress and many phone calls my passport - with my completed visa and my unwanted Canadian money - is on its way home. Only... there's a hitch with that too. The passport is coming home on Xpresspost, which is not as quick as a priority courier, which means that my passport will be arriving - in theory - within hours of my currently scheduled departure flight. Which is tomorrow.
This should be interesting.
Welcome to Africa?
All of the passport and visa issues aside, I am half way through packing and I am impressed with how nice and light my pack is going to be this trip. Here's hoping for sunshine in London and a passport by noon tomorrow!
The High Commission of the Republic of Uganda and I do not get along terribly well it seems. They didn’t like that I sent them Canadian money; fine, sent them more money of the American variety. Then they wanted a letter of invitation and introduction explaining that I was indeed wanted in their country and that I was not pilfering jobs from their labourers; alright, letters sent within 8 hours of the request. Now, after a week without my passport, a significant amount of stress and many phone calls my passport - with my completed visa and my unwanted Canadian money - is on its way home. Only... there's a hitch with that too. The passport is coming home on Xpresspost, which is not as quick as a priority courier, which means that my passport will be arriving - in theory - within hours of my currently scheduled departure flight. Which is tomorrow.
This should be interesting.
Welcome to Africa?
All of the passport and visa issues aside, I am half way through packing and I am impressed with how nice and light my pack is going to be this trip. Here's hoping for sunshine in London and a passport by noon tomorrow!
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