Orange

People used to tell me that change is rest; I still think most of the time this is just an excuse to get people to do more work, but I guess the fact that I feel tired and refreshed gives some weight to the idea. Lots of my week has been spent clad in orange, doing excitingly non-administrative work, generally making a mess (only once or twice a bad mess caused by a stray hammer blow) and not wearing a shirt and belt.

Tuesday started with the usual drive to the village. They’ve recently resurfaced lots of the journey which makes it much faster, more comfortable and generally more enjoyable (means I can play, ‘How much of this journey can I do in 5^th gear’ too). I was thinking to myself how used I was to driving this route and how I’d gotten used to the roads here when, predictably, something went wrong. Now, I’m telling you this story as my mum is in Mozambique and is thus unlikely to read it. On the newly surfaced road, people have so far only driven one track (for both directions) that runs straight down the middle. This is usually fine until you come past either bodas or bicycles who are also determined to use the track (you don’t pass other cars so much this far out and when you do, you both slow right down and venture out onto the loser bit). The general rule of driving here is that, if you’re bigger, you bully but I’m nice so, when a bike decided that he didn’t want to vacate the track for me, I thought I’d drive off the track, onto the less worn bit. It hadn’t rained recently and I thought it would all be good; this was a bad assumption. As I’m sure this story will still somehow make it back to my mum, I’ll only say that there was some slipping, some sliding, some skidding, some swerving and a lot of breaking as the back of the vehicle (despite being burdened with a bookshelf, 500 tiles and bags of adhesive and grout) decided that it wanted to act up a bit. There was a lot of praying, holding of breath and the like, but it all ended fine with us stopped about 200m from the first place, all very grateful to not be any closer to the fields on either side of the road.

The rest of the day was a mixture of fun and frustration. I put up a set of shelves as straight as I could when the sides and bottom weren’t square and avoiding leaving too much of the wall on the floor (no drill) but then had to transform back into respectable mzungu to go see the District Health Officer. He wasn’t in, neither were the administrator or secretary, they were all at training workshops the whole week (Ugandan public sector workers take the stereotype to a whole new level). On learning that the DHO was to be at training all of next week too, we decided to go and find him so that we could hoik him out of the training to ask him our questions. Unfortunately, this wasn’t immediately possible so we spent an hour waiting outside for him to emerge. Hooray!

The road back to the village

On Wednesday, I went back to the village in order to apply the tiles that had been so carefully conveyed the previous day. This time I took a local taxi (which is like a bus, but obviously more squashed and cheaper) and then a boda which was a pleasantly different way of viewing the familiar journey. The tiling was of a toilet and shower for male patients that had been built a long time ago, but then not finished (scandalously some previous (female) volunteers had only tiled the women’s side). After moving out all the tools that had been kept there and killing some of the big wasp things that had made it home, I set to with my home-made adhesive applier (an old plastic bottle that I hacked at), sat on a delivery stool. Unfortunately, a member of staff who’s decided to not come back after her annual leave (well, she hasn’t told us anything, but not turning up for a month seems like a clue) and another member of staff who’s nephew passed away meant that there was a bit of turmoil at work, so I decided I was in a bit of a rush to get it done and get back.

Tiling like Uncle Phil taught me

I finished the first room around 6pm, and thought I might as well see how far I could go with the other one that night. Being optimistic, I mixed a load of adhesive and started off; it wasn’t long until I was tiling toilets by torchlight which was a wonderful, if strange, experience. I kept telling myself that I’d stop when I ran out of adhesive but in the end, it was when I started to need to cut tiles which I didn’t really fancy doing in the dark. I washed the kit and went in to bed. I got back to my room to everything wonderfully set out including my stuff, my dinner, a cup with tealeaves and sugar and a flask and a cup of water; the dinner may have been cold posho with cabbage, but it was still touching. Even sleep was eventful as in the middle of the night, I was phoned to open the door so that a lady could come and give birth two rooms away. Thankfully, she was very thoughtful and kept the noise down so I could sleep.

The thoughtful mother with her son!



On Thursday, I finished the tiling and came back to town (limping slightly from tiling and with my hand-swelling thing going on) to discover that work was doing just fine without me, so I spent the afternoon with Tiff and Dan (the first Jenga boy!) along with three others continuing the mammoth task of sorting through the container full of stuff that they finally received last week. The work that day comprised of sorting clothes into piles, picking out things that seemed inappropriate for Uganda and, obviously, wondering at the previous owners of some of the more outrageous or large items of clothing (whilst also being very grateful).

Saturday (Friday was good, but words are running out!) was an early start (for a weekend) to watch the rugby matches with Dan. We sat in a hotel bar, drank (ginger) beer and, at different times, really enjoyed, enjoyed and didn’t enjoy the rugby. This was followed by swimming and then the eating of steak before the relaxation took a less structured but still enjoyable form.

Sunday was Ugandan Independence Day. Unfortunately (fortunately for me as a Brit), no one was that excited as Uganda had, the night before, drawn a game with Kenya and thus failed to qualify for the African Cup of Nations. I think you’ve read far enough to deserve my honesty, the day started poorly. Church has often been the area has been the area of life here I’m least satisfied with; this Sunday was a peak of dissatisfaction. At the core of the frustration was the preach which, at two hours (okay, fine I’ll be honest, it was 2 and a half hours) was never likely to leave me delighted, but the content didn’t help too much either. HOWEVER! The day was set on a better course after a lunch of egg and chips. I then set off into town with Odeke to pick up some sodas for tonight (Canadian Thanksgiving, win). Just as we were about to set of back home, we ran out of fuel (in the pickup with a faulty fuel gauge again). We had great times pushing it back to the neighbouring petrol station (you have to pay for local assistance with pushing and our striving sufficed) and then driving back home. On getting back I finally got my chance to use my new panga (machete) to cut down a banana tree that had run its course. I managed this without covering myself with the water inside the tree or dropping the bunch of matoke on the tree to the floor in a damaging way and without appearing too excited to be chopping at things with a machete. Then, I devised a genius plan and finally painted the edge of the ceiling at home (this job may have been first discussed about 3 months ago) whilst watching Mansfield Park (my favourite), what an afternoon! The day was capped off by eating for dinner beef and matoke from the tree that had been chopped down earlier (the beef was not from the tree) and then an early night after some N. T. Wright. Good times.

Perhaps a little too manic