Ugandan Life…


Advertisement
Uganda's flag
Africa » Uganda » Eastern Region » Jinja
September 16th 2013
Published: September 16th 2013
Edit Blog Post

We’ve started to settle into our new home in Jinja. Ness has completed two weeks in the hospital, still mostly shadowing but has seen a few patients who speak “Muzungu” during one or two clinics. Also Ness went out to village close to Jinja last Friday to observe a talk to families in the community. It was really interesting, but very hot as it was under a tin roof. Was funny when she walked in… it was straight for a cold shower!

I also had a little road trip, again not too far from Jinja. I went to visit an orphanage, which took an age to find as once we were off the main road there were no signs for it. It was a sad visit – not because of the state of the children, just because there were no children to be seen! We were told that they were on holiday… well if you are an orphan surely you have nowhere to go during the school holidays and need stay in the orphanage?!? I was taken by my friend Pat who has lived in Uganda for over 10 years and has experienced similar situations before – we tried to locate Pastor Roberts who runs the orphanage but he was not known to locals. Seems this happens a lot in Africa…?

Zai (our housekeeper) keeps telling us how lucky Vanessa is to have married me – please note that Rippon Family! Deep down I know she’s right, but I say it’s me that is the lucky one. Ugandan men do nothing in the home: the wife (even if she works) will do the cooking, cleaning and washing. I keep telling Zai our agreement is that I would do the house work as Ness is the one going out to work, but she struggles to comprehend this. At weekends Ness and I are working our way around the hotels with pools in Jinja - we are looking for somewhere to relax and top up the tan. You pay about a pound and can stay all day. Well we’d love to stay all day but each time we’ve had good cause to leave. The first place was lovely for an hour or two then it became overrun with children, some sporting water pistols. After tolerating this for an hour more, the heavens opened and we decided to call it day. The other two pools we’ve tried have been nice, but about 2pm they turn into a party pool, the music is cranked up and becomes over run with teenagers playing it cool and trying to out do each other by completing a width.

The pace of life here was a little difficult for me to adjust too. If you arrange to meet someone at 11am, this actually means between 11am and 12pm, if not later still. We’ve learnt that you need to state “Muzungu time” as that means the time stated not within the hour. I love the way Ugandans know they’re bad time-keepers and that “Muzungu time” is necessary! When Nowela from the UPA office was showing us the route from our guest house to the hospital she said about Ugandan and Muzungu time, so I tried to introduce Welsh time, which consisted of me demonstrating how they do the walking marathon in the Olympics… this only slowed her down even more as she could stop laughing.

It’s quite funny to see how resourceful Ugandans are. I was struggling to lock our door one day and our landlord said he had tried to fix it. This meant hammering a nail in to the bottom of the handle as he didn’t have any screws. I said “Don’t worry, as long as Zai doesn’t wear my clothes, we’ll leave it unlocked and I’ll fix it.” The next day a man appeared to mend the lock but didn’t bring any tools. He improvised with a large rusted spanner (as a hammer) and a machete blade (as a screwdriver).

How do you tell a drunk driver on Ugandan roads? They’re driving in a straight line. I must say if you think the potholes are bad where you are, you have haven’t seen anything. I was told when a road is being built or resurfaced, they don’t use cones to divert traffic, you just carry on and have to dodge the work vehicles and piles of sand, stones or whatever else they have dumped in the middle of the lane. Long journeys can be painful and if the main road happens to go through a village there are a series speed bumps as you enter and leave. These come in two forms: the mini Kilimanjaros that if you hit at speed you will take off and be airborne through most of the village; and the ‘what I call’ fat wobblers, (which don’t really affect me). The fat wobbler consists of about 5 small speed bumps very close together that makes the whole car shudder like mad. Not only do you spend your time avoiding the potholes and braking sharply to master speed bumps, you also have to avoid other vehicles. Even though you have your indicator on and are probably in the middle of the road waiting to turn right, they still try to overtake. It’s very fun how Ugandans are so slow on foot but put them behind a wheel or on a motorbike, time is of the essence.

There are two types of bike transport, nearly all being some form of taxi. The Boda-Boda is a motorbike and a Boda-Boda Bike is a pedal bike. The latter is cheaper although they do so much more work. You will see some amazing things on the back of bikes. For example our fridge freezer broke so a replacement was brought on the back of a push bike. I have started to take Boda-Boda if I’m going somewhere on my own. They are quite fun, if not a little scary at first. I think the first driver that took me thought I was going to break the anti-homosexuality law when I nearly hugged him as he went round a corner. I’m used to it now and they are a lot better in Jinja than Kampala. I wouldn’t take one there as they are mental drivers. We saw a huge protest of some sort in Kampala, this consisted of hundreds of Boda-Boda’s speeding through the streets sounding their horns, cheering and in some cases doing acrobatics. I was too slow getting my iphone out to film it, but it was brilliant to see. It turned out it was a celebration ride as the government want all Boda-Boda to be registered, which they are not happy with, so what we saw was a result of the government agreeing to talks before any law is passed.

Everywhere you go the Boda Boda drivers shout “Muzungu, where you want to go?” or you hear “Muzungu hello…. Muzungu bye” with little kids waving at you. You have to same conversation with every child that says hello:

Child: “Muzungu”

Muzungu: “Hello, how are you?”

Child: “I am fine, how are you?”

You find yourself repeating “I am fine” in the sing songy way they say it. I walked passed a group of teenagers the other day and one said “Hello Muzungu” and as I turned to say hello he continued and said the whole conversation himself. I wanted to say actually I’m not fine, but thanks for asking. We saw a t-shirt in one of the huts that said: “My name is not Muzungu”… was funny to see a Ugandan wearing it.

You can buy anything in the marketplace. It is unreal if not a little nerve-racking for someone who had only ever travelled in Westernised countries until 18 months ago. You have to see it to believe it. From what I can make out Jinja main market is made up of five areas - fruit and veg, meat, fish, household and clothing. Shakira had only taken me to the fruit and veg area, so when I went with my friend Andy we walked for miles down one alleyway and there are about 4-5 parallel across. As you can guess there are two areas I’m not au-fait with, no prizes for guessing which two? It took be back to China when I was shown the marketplace there, complete with flies on raw meat and fish. No refrigeration, food is all laid out on the benches and on one stall they have a white big round thing half hanging off the wooden counter. I later found out this is the intestines of some animal. I took Ness to the market to show her; unfortunately we had just had a down pour of rain so it was really muddy. I luckily did a wrong turn and we missed out the meat and only saw the last part of the fish area, again the big white round intestines was hanging off the counter!

I’ve started to haggle; because of the Muzungu price you have to call their bluff. I was really happy when I managed to get five thousand off a pair of flip-flops, to be honest I didn’t have enough and I told the lady I would be back the following day. Ness said I was had, should have haggled at least 15 thousand off. I only paid £10 for a pair of Tommy Hilfiger flip-flops and they’re definitely genuine… I saw them come out of a big sack full of flip-flops. Each time I go to buy a pineapple and watermelon. The man keeps telling me they are out of season, that’s why the price is higher. Funny how you go round the corner and there are more pineapples than you can image. When you buy pineapple you can request it to be peeled and cut, which is cool to watch. You hold the pineapple in one hand and use a large knife to peel it, and then you draw the knife up it to create wedges, place in a bag and cut the top off to release the long wedges.

I hope this has given you a little insight into Ugandan life. I did want to talk about the food we are experiencing, but I think I have send enough for now…


Additional photos below
Photos: 16, Displayed: 16


Advertisement



Tot: 0.068s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 9; qc: 49; dbt: 0.036s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1; ; mem: 1.2mb