The Cold Came To Uganda

---

It has been an interesting December in Uganda. From what we saw Ugandans don’t really do a build up to Christmas, which was quite refreshing on reflection although it was quite surreal walking down the street in the blazing sun to occasionally hear Jingle Bells being played.

Now we have been here for over four months, I think we are starting to understand the culture here. Well I say understand, I mean realize how things work. During December I did a fair bit of work with Softpower Education. This was the charity I went worked for with my in-laws, we dug a trench in the October sun. I was helping out in a school each afternoon that caters for children with disabilities. There are around 35 of these children who board at the school, along with the day students. It is annoying that these 35 children are made to wear a red shirt as opposed to the light green uniform of everyone else. I guess it helps to identify them?!? John, another Softpower volunteer has been coming over to Uganda for the last couple of years, and he attends two schools each day to play games with the children during their break. John has supplied footballs, basketballs and parachutes over the years and this time he brought a table tennis set (which the kids loved playing when the plywood he purchased finally arrived) and rope to use for skipping. Now the really annoying thing is John wanted to hold an end-of-term Sports Day event for the 35 children. This was a bit of fun for the children to enjoy and have something to work towards. John had arranged this with the school, and we had planned the events and found more Softpower volunteers to help for the afternoon. The Thursday before the event (planned for Monday) John and I went to the school for our usual hour playing games with the children only to find out that 25 out of the 35 children had gone home for the Christmas break a week early. No notification the day before, just a shrug of the shoulders and they have gone.

To say we were gutted was an understatement. The sport day didn’t really matter, although I really think the children would have enjoyed it. At the time I was surprised but looking back, the teacher who had the key to the store is never there at 3:15pm to give us the sports equipment - John or I have to go looking for him and a couple of times he wasn’t even in the school grounds or had gone to the market. The same occurs at 4:30pm when we want to put the equipment away. If it were not for Softpower going to the school, the equipment would stay in the store room and never be used by the kids. It was a shame not to say goodbye to many of them. There was one little girl who is deaf, has the most amazing smile and when I see her she would run and give my one leg a huge hug. I probably won’t see the children again as term restarts after we leave Uganda in mid Feb. Yes the summer holidays are nearly three months long.

So rant over, I did have a couple of fun days helping with Softpower’s fun day and Christmas parties. On the fun day I was asked to help with the cooking. This entailed cooking rice and beef for 240 children about 40 staff. When dishing up I refused to let go of the plate until the child said thank you. I would say only about 10 to 15% said it with no prompt. Softpower held two Christmas parties that lasted a morning, around 80 children each day. The first day I had a group of 10, all about 7 or 8 years old. The second day I had the really small children about 3 or 4 years old. We were given a list of activities to do each lasting 15 minutes so time management was very important (should put this on my CV?!?) and the plan was to move from one activity to the next. We started the day with every child having their face painted. Then came the real fun; bowling, skipping, pin the tail on the cow (you don’t see many donkeys in Uganda!!) musical chairs, balloon popping and colouring in Merry Christmas. It was funny looking at 10 scared faces looking at me at the start of each day, but I think we bonded, which is very hard to do considering none of them spoke English. I really miss not going to the schools and interacting with the children.

So for Ness and I being so far away from home and missing the usual Christmas build up we tried to do some festive activities. Ness happened to be in Kampala at the beginning of December and found her self at the annual Christmas pantomime of the Kampala Amateur Dramatics Society – ‘Beauty and the Beast’. I was gutted to have missed this, but Ness did say it was interesting watching the Ugandans trying to understand what was going on and why there was a bloke dressed as a woman. Also we were invited to the home of the British High Commissioner for a Carol Service. I say invited… the commissioner didn’t pick up the phone and ring me, a friend was going and asked if we wanted to join her. There must have been well over a hundred people there. It was a brilliant night, singing carols, free bar with mulled wine and even had freshly baked minced pies.

The following day we went to the largest mosque in Africa, which happens to be in Kampala. Called the Gaddafi Mosque - the Libyans paid for it. The building is amazing and can hold over 15,000 people for prayers. The reason we went is you can climb the tower, over 290 steps, and have an amazing 360 degree view around Kampala. Ness and the other ladies with us had to dress appropriately. The lead up to Christmas was very cold by Ugandan standards. The temperature dropped to the low 20’s and I even had to put a jumper on one morning.

So we had a very Ugandan Christmas, we stayed at a hotel over looking Mount Elgon, an extinct volcano in Mbale. We were the only Muzungus in the place really which was nice for our real Ugandan Christmas experience. We travelled up on Christmas Eve, unfortunately Ness had a stinking cold from one of the little blighters in the hospital and the cool weather. Christmas morning I woke up with a massive cold (10 times worse than Ness, well male colds always are). It was an amazingly hot day with breakfast next to the hotel pool, as the restaurant was being prepared for the big Christmas lunch!! During breakfast we witnessed a calf being born in the neighbouring field… I say we I was at the bar area trying to negotiate a more civilised volume for the repetitive Christmas music and Michael Jackson’s ‘Heal the World’. It was funny when the manager came over to beg us for our cooperation as other guests (who incidentally had finished their breakfast to get away from the music) may want to hear the same Christmas songs repeated over and over loudly during their Christmas breakfast.

After breakfast we went to visit a specialised hospital called ‘Cure’ that is a state of the art hospital for children’s neurosurgery in Uganda. We had randomly met a guy the night before that was very friendly with the Director and when he found out what we were doing here, thought Ness would want to see it. As it happens Ness has referred patients there so we couldn’t miss the opportunity for a tour when the Director and his wife went to give gifts to the mothers and children that were inpatients over Christmas.

So this was it, back to the hotel for the big Ugandan Christmas lunch with Turkey I might add. We had a lovely meal as the hotel really tried; there were no Muzungus in sight. The turkey was a little dry and they even had Christmas pudding cake with whiskey sauce. The hotel put a concert in the afternoon, with most of Mbale turning up we were given gospel music with a large array of people shaking their bones!!

After this, we spent two nights in Sipi, which is famous for waterfalls. We stayed in an amazing Bandas (a round hunt with only a bed) and the best thing was due to the altitude it was cold and there were no mosquitoes. There was even a log fire in the restaurant area. We had a good couple of days hiking around the waterfalls and as the area is known for growing coffee, we visited a coffee plantation and even learnt to roast and grind our own beans for a lovely medium-to-dark-roasted cup of coffee. We even saw Kiprotich, the Ugandan marathon runner out for a jog whilst we were drinking our coffee. See if you can spot him in the photo?

It was back to Jinja with a bump, but with great memories of an amazing Ugandan Christmas. I write this on NYE and rumour has it Jinja does fireworks at 12am tonight. I am not getting my hopes up as we have been disappointed many times with different things here, but even if I just hear one loud bang (from a firework) I’ll be happy. I hope wherever you are and whatever you are doing to see the New Year in, it is a good one and you have a very happy start to 2014!!

PS – I have uploaded some interesting Boda Boda pictures and one of a man carrying a sack of coal!

---

Comments

[Sally Mike and Tom]

Happy New Year
Hi both, glad you had a good Christmas - Happy New Year! See you soonx x

[Alisa]

Happy New Year
Happy new year both. Glad you had a nice Christmas. Is Kiprotich the red blob on the top of the mountain, lol. Speak to you soon. Alisa x