Ugandan Christmas!

It’s been an amazing and eventful week, so much so that it’s been suggested I break this down into a mini-series of blogs, maybe even one for each day. Don’t worry, I’ll save the overly detailed versions of these stories for later, probably when I see you in person and you inadvertently make me realise I haven’t yet told you the finer details of a long Christmas speech by the RDC (I don’t know what that stands for but that’s what people called him) that included festive themes like the constant threat of terrorism at any group event you are gonna visit over Christmas, neck-tie wearers being philanderers (cue embarrassment for the two people present wearing ties) and the likelihood of your child actually being fathered by your neighbour (this was at a school’s Christmas party) or other beautiful little moments of the week. In keeping with the topsy-turvy nature of a Christmas where temperatures exceed 35°, I think I’m gonna go backwards through the week!

Today has been lovely. As you’d hope from a country where English is the sole official language, Boxing Day is loved up here and is a fully-fledged public holiday. I managed to break my record for latest lie-in in Uganda as I’d stayed overnight at BJH (which is free of roosters (well, nearly)) and slept until 10:24… poor public holiday behaviour, I’m sure. Anyway, the day’s progressed at a leisurely pace with cards (yes hearts!), snacks, Mr Popper’s Penguins (great film) and a nice chat with Min and Lesley.

Christmas Day began much earlier (as my inner child thinks is appropriate), sparked into life by serial crowing from a particularly excited rooster (I counted 8 cockle-doodle-do’s from one chicken before finally giving up on sleep). I treated myself to a breakfast of Weetos (which is actually extravagant given their price here) and enjoyed a steady morning before heading on to church.

Now, I love going to church on Christmas Day in the UK. However, this is partially cause I know the service is guaranteed to be less than an hour, give me an opportunity to see church friends on Christmas Day, include carols and mince pies and be followed by Christmas lunch. Only the last of these was true for me yesterday and I did struggle at times not to leave early from the three hour service (which would have been three and a half if I’d turned up on time). The dilemma is that the end of the service was great (someone got saved and lots of people got prayed for), it was just put back by a few things I wouldn’t have included if I’d set the schedule… Anyway, Christmas lunch was great times with char-grilled chicken, chapatti, rice, spaghetti (that Christmas classic), beef and the now traditional Stoney (ginger beer). This was followed by present giving and it seemed I’d done okay at guessing at what makes a decent Ugandan Christmas present.

Guns for small children, ideal.

Phoning home was a great moment of the day and I got to speak to lots of the family despite it being dispersed around the UK; it was particularly nice to talk to the parents who only got back from three months in Mozambique earlier last week, but the rest of them were quite cool as well ;).

Company was pretty good too!

The third part of Christmas was dinner at Stuart and MJ’s who seemed to have take compassion on us unfortunate young men who were away from home on Christmas. Dinner included bbq-ed turkey and ham as well as smoked oyster stuffing (boom) and finished off with Christmas pudding and brandy butter. I hope that previous sentence doesn’t damage the amount of sympathy you have for me missing British Christmas too much… It was a lovely evening with their family and a few other guests.

After dinner, us boyos went back to BJH for a mini-round of present giving of our own. Dan got me a very exciting Ugandan shirt (which I can’t wait to wear whenever people start forgetting I went to Uganda for 7 months!!!) and Sam bought me a chicken! After much thought (apparently 2 days worth), Sam gave it the name Bernadette (which is obviously a beautiful name). Unfortunately, it now looks like it is actually a he… Looks like it’s gonna be a Berny instead.

Modelling my shirt, holding Berny

I spent all of Friday shopping for presents. Well, actually, I spent part of the morning watching 24 (season 3) and finished shopping at 5, but you know what I mean. One subtle difference between Ugandan and British Christmas is that the Friday was way busier in town than the Saturday (which I’m aware I missed out) as loads of people go back to ‘the village’ for Christmas. Thus town on Saturday was comparatively silent. The other weird thing about Ugandan Christmas shopping is the streets as more busy due to increased consumers but also loads of people who’ve decided to set up one-day only businesses (typically selling high-quality tinsel) right in the middle of the pavement.

Don't they look nice!

Thursday ended up being my last day a work before Christmas and included genuine work as well as a staff meeting where everyone got presents from the Dr/the Hospice, followed by a staff photo which took appropriately long to organise.

I spent Wednesday with large numbers of children due to me finally going to visit Lulwanda Children’s Home (where Natalie works) at the start of the day before going to Christmas party for the amazing school I visited in mid-September (http://pgladwell.blogspot.com/2011/09/much-to-my-amusement-life-seems-to-be.html ). The children’s home was wonderful to see and it was nice to see some of the kids I knew before from swimming. There are over 100 kids who live at the home and then they go to a school run by the home along with other local children who are also invited. However, the kids have been on holiday for quite a while so I got to see them in a more relaxed context. It was great to see these kids who often have very sad backgrounds so clearly feeling completely at home in the surrounds and with each other, living in a large and loving community and great to be able to play and interact with these kids.

Unfortunately, I got caught up in playing and ended up arriving at the party just after the dances, right in time for the speeches (including the one above). However, I was still in time for the visit of Father Christmas. It was great to see the kids generally so happy, but also to see the amount that the local community (who had a very large and noisy presence at the party) valued and appreciated the work done by Child of Hope. It was interesting to see the two organisations side by side as both work for children but the backgrounds of these kids means that the best response to their needs takes completely different forms.

It's really him!

Some of you realised from the previous blog that I was a bit grumpy last Monday and I succeeded in carrying this through to Tuesday in the form of having less patience than usual. However, it seems that I’m better at some aspects of my job when I’m tired. I was introduced to a local government accountant who “has been really helpful” but then I realised that in actuality she’d been a real pain over annoyingly small things. I may not have been wholly friendly toward her over a few things which meant I got to speak to the DHO (District Health Officer) which turned out to be surprisingly productive! Plus, they gave us free things (I can’t claim this was directly related to the disagreements but it certainly chronologically followed the whinging).

Generally it’s been a good week. There have been moments where the lack of Christmas pies (and family of course) has been on my mind but generally there have been good times here. I’m really grateful to God for the quality friends and family that He’s given me here who’ve brought fun and cheer to this time and have made it a very different but still enjoyable Christmas.

God is faithful.

Irregular

Diarrhoea, thankfully, has nothing to do with this blog (except verbal… right, funny), but whilst my bowels stay constant and true to me, the rest of life seems to have gone slightly crazy. Now I don’t think that all change is bad and not all things here are changing (indeed, the lunches at work have followed the same weekly pattern since I first arrived) but I can definitely say that things will never be the same again.

(Some things will never change)

One major network of roots for the Tree of Change has been Christmas, running through the pavement of my life and causing little folds that I trip up on if I’m not careful (this image comes from our ‘carpark’ at the Hospice where soil erosion has turned the roots of one tree into a miniature system of terracing). On Saturday morning, I waved goodbye to several lovely people including Tiff, Ali, Ben and Ruth who have headed home for Christmas. Their departure significantly affects the odds of Christmas weight-gain and it was quite sad to see them go.

Still, the remaining crew have still got plenty planned that will infuse life with Christmas cheer. Excitingly, we’ve got Christmas pudding (our thanks to Steve and Lorraine Thomas) AND brandy sauce! It looks like we’re set for a Christmas BBQ in the evening where it is rumoured there will be sprouts which seems a serious achievement (and a bbq-ing conundrum). Unfortunately, our turkey is already dead (as of last Monday) and now partially eaten (as of yesterday)… whoops. With the goat conspiring to be pregnant, and the turkey forcing the hand that wielded the knife it looks like it’s gonna be chicken for lunch.

I am that cute

Christmassy feelings are now appropriately strong. The Christmas trees at home and friends’ houses have helped (as have some of the ones in shops in town but lots of them just look amazingly miserable), as did present giving at our Christmas/leaving party on Friday and also another exciting gift from home, but in honesty it’s the overload of carols on Friday and Saturday evening that’s made the big difference. You’ll be pleased to know I’m now singing and whistling carols at passers-by.

Unfortunately, the week has also conspired to throw up some unseasonable problems that now jar with the festive cheer. These range from people refusing to give us the drugs that we ordered in Kampala and have to collect before Christmas Eve, through Vincent continuing to bodge up bank things (it’s a good thing we’re not paying him by the hour) onto a rather large problem with staffing for the village clinic come January. Needless to say, I think having a five-week holiday is probably a better way to do Christmas.

On Wednesday I went to renew my visa again. Given the fact that I had inadvertently ended up bribing the senior immigration officer last time I did this, I went in with a gently militant mood. I went in, told the guy how long I wanted my visa to be extended by and he stamped it. He then asked me for “something for Christmas”. Now, I’m no expert on bribery, but I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to ask for the money before giving the person what they want (I think I learnt that from Friends). Anyway, rather than advise him on this, I got a little bit carried away berating him for abusing his position and acting in a “bad” way (that’s right, I went there!).

Inspired to fight for justice (and my money), I decided I might try to get my original money back. Unfortunately, the Senior Officer wasn’t in and I ended up spending ten minutes alternating between continuing to berate the guy for being ‘bad’ and even  and trying to extricate the number of his boss. After I got the number I thought it would be simple enough to find him and then convince him to give me my money back (or at least a receipt so the government got it instead of his wallet). However, like in a film, he’s so far inadvertently foiled my attempts by being generally disorganised and forgetful (you could say he’s dundering). Even better (from an external perspective), he’s unconsciously fighting back. He phoned me at 7:47 on Saturday morning (which was early considering we had a wild party followed by Settlers the night before) to tell me he’d be back from Kampala in the afternoon; he’s a cunning man. In the evening he called to apologise and reschedule following him failing to make it back in time. Needless to say, I’m close to giving up until after Christmas!

I hope you have a wonderful Christmas!

Lots of love

Paul

Feeling hot hot hot...

After my remarks about how the rainy reason seemed to be progressing indefinitely, I guess it shouldn’t have been a huge surprise when the dry season arrived on Thursday heralded by four days without rain and temperatures making their way toward the mid-thirties. Now that repairmen are confident that the dirt they use to “fix” potholes won’t be washed away immediately, there’s been a brief flurry of throwing mud into holes. Unfortunately, there is a tendency to simply dump all the dirt in the middle of the road that another team will come to spread out the next day. As such, some roads have ended up being less passable.

It's like the answer to a riddle...

In the absence of rain, there have been several more exciting things that have appeared over the last week. On Wednesday I went into town to collect a mysterious parcel and discovered that I’d been sent an advent calendar by Phil, Sammi, Josh and Charis (brother, sister-in-law, nephew and niece). This made quick work of laying a solid and chocolately foundation for Christmas sentiment. The calendar is now in the office at work so I’m embarking on a varied form of cultural education; staff involved so far seem very appreciative.

Ideal

As if this hadn’t been enough for the week (not sure if that implies huge excitement or minimal expectations), I got told on Wednesday evening that I had ANOTHER parcel! After I’d found a suitable excuse to head to the Post Office again, I discovered a Christmassy compilation of contributions from some wonderful friends in Oxford that included food for the stomach, brain and heart and elicited several “Oh, guys!”.

Also ideal

Work over the week went pretty well, made some decent progress with some of the things that are on my ‘Will be summoned back if this is not finished before February’ list. That said, I also spent Thursday morning putting up Christmas decorations at home so I guess it was a bit of a mixed bag. I also got to spend some of the week with Dan’s parents who were over visiting him. Thankfully, Dad liked Settlers so this cut short discussions over what we might get around to. In fact, in a moment of exceptional coolness, we spent some of Saturday afternoon playing poolside Settlers, that’s right!

A final very exciting arrival of the week came in the form of Steve Thomas and Glen who’d been speaking at a Deliverance Church Convention in Kampala, but had then been able to come and see the medical work in Mbale and the village. It was brilliant having them around and was really encouraging to be able to discuss the future of the projects with someone who has been involved from the very beginning. It just so happened that their visit coincided with the Rev Dr’s tea-party to celebrate her ordination to Steve ended up becoming guest-of-honour for the evening. The party was really nice, lots of nice speeches and food. One strange side-show of the evening came from the Dr’s turkey falling rather ill and needing to be killed before it died which people thought would be in the night. So, mid-preparing food for about thirty people, Aunt Grace also got to kill and pluck the Christmas turkey. I did complain about being overlooked, but Aunt Grace said she hadn’t thought I was that keen to murder animals; this struck me as both flattering and untrue. All this party excitement kept me from blogging yesterday which I’m sure has thrown several of you out of your weekly rhythm, so sorry but there was mass-washing-up to do instead (plus ‘tidying-up’ leftover pineapple and cake).

Vis-ta's!

The only down-side of having lots of visitors at once (Ken and Heather also came up) was that I ended up sleeping in the study. After waking up on Monday morning and discovering that my mid-sleep attempts at batting away mosquitoes hadn’t been very successful, I went to bed with Doom (an insect-killing-spray) beside me. I remember wielding this weapon at least twice in the night, but still ended up with about the same number of bites this morning. Good thing I’m on prophylaxis!

Are you sure it’s December?

Despite it being December (and less than 3 weeks until Christmas) I’m finding it a bit tricky getting into the Christmas spirit. I reckon at least half of that is solely from the fact that it’s about 28 degrees here and set to get hotter. The rest is the absence of relentless Christmas marketing, carols, jingles, and the colour red. Plus, it still gets dark at 6:30 every night here so I’m not quite getting the whole winter thing going on. That said, responding to this by linking me to Youtube videos of carols would just be spiteful as the internet here doesn’t really like video streaming very much.

It’s supposed to be the dry season now, but the rains keep coming. This means two bad things: road deterioration and mosquitoes. The latter have been particularly annoying when disrupting my 24 watching over the weekend. I mean, there you are in a comfy chair trying to cheer Jack on and mosquitoes are feasting (on a small scale) on your blood. The roads is more interesting: at one point, I wondered if it was just that I was slowly losing patience with driving here but then I realised that all but two roads I drive on here are visibly worse than when I arrived. On Tuesday, I was acting as an ambulance and had serious issues in getting a very old and frail lady home from the village without jolting her around too much despite generally deducting 20kph off whatever I usually did on each road and successfully remembering most of the hidden gullies that I normally just hit and then apologise.

There's a lorry stuck here every two days.. this is the best so far.

I first thought the road worsening could be an attempt to spite me (and who knows, maybe it is a conspiracy) but then I realised it was the rain relentlessly running restraint-less, rutting (as in causing ruts) and ridging roads and roundabouts. Generally, if I’m on my own and in the pickup, it’s great fun as one can bounce around ridiculously (with some sympathy for the suspension) when one fails to swerve round the potholes (or in the places where there’s literally no way to pass without going into a least one pothole (into rather than over)). However, the absence of tread on the pickup and it’s dead battery made some of Saturday’s journeys pretty entertaining. I jump-started the pickup four times on Saturday, twice on my own (as in pushing then jumping into the car once speed is built up) and three times in front of an appreciative Ugandan audience who seemed to enjoy the spectacle considerably. Thus, when I slid, stopped and then stalled in the middle of a very slippery, muddy and wet patch near the BJH (Boy’s Jenga House), I was a little concerned. Thankfully, the engine roared back into life. Unfortunately, the road was bad enough that I needed the askari and two friends to shove me clear of the hole I was in. We then travelled at an angle up a straight road due to one tyre having more tread than the other… quite an interesting experience.

Work’s been pretty good this week. A few big things are slowly moving forward but lots of the day-to-day stuff is now happily bypassing me which is ideal in some senses but does mean that I have to be more proactive in finding stuff to do. The plus side is that this gives me more spare time to work out how best to pester those in authority who are delaying me (usually unapologetically). Sometimes, my efforts seem to work well. However, I discovered last week that a lady had misunderstood what I was pestering her about and the thing I actually wanted was already done. That said, they haven’t yet confirmed it’s done so I’m now pestering her for written confirmation.

This definitely counts as work

This Sunday, the Dr became the Rev Dr which meant an exciting road trip to Kumi to watch the ordination. We ended up leaving Mbale an hour late (I managed not to make too many complaints about this) and this meant we missed the first hour of a five hour service. Once I’d realised this, I stopped complaining altogether! Anyway, it was a great day. Quite a few people from work also managed to make the hour and a bit journey out there so the Dr was thronged by her devoted staff!

Churches and individuals often give presents to those ordained and the Dr came back with lots of exciting gifts. Among the mugs (which were obviously cool) and other stuff were a turkey  and five chickens! Thankfully, none of them are roosters so I don’t need to fear for my precious sleep.

Hello Christmas!

Other highlights of the week include Skyping some Oxford (and ex-Oxford) friends on Saturday evening (you guys are sweet), Curry Night on Friday, “Games Night” on Tuesday, WATCHING MERLIN excessively on Thursday (that’s right, I found it in a perfectly legal video shop for 60p… ideal!), eating tic-tacs excessively on Saturday, the ideal food after the service yesterday and being told by several people that the Japanese earthquake had changed the angle at which the earth rotates.