It Was Meant To Be A Quiet Week… May 27, 2011

So I come to the end of my work from home and get loads done week in which the adult literacy curriculum was going to be well on it’s way and I was going to feel far less stressed about it. However this is Africa and I should have known I was kidding myself! A couple of days this week have been successful on the work front and I even managed to go out twice in the evenings and connect with something other than my computer. Yesterday it all got a bit interesting though…

Our gardener Peter came to tell me that he’d found some baby snake eggs and by the look of them they were cobras. We lost a dog to a cobra just before I moved in here so they make us a bit nervous and having met my first snake only a few days ago I’m over the fascination. Peter had decided he wanted to keep the eggs to show my housemate as he thought she’d be interested! I texted 3 people to say we’d got cobra eggs and all replied instantly – Jo gave a list of instructions to solve the situation, Tiff said we should get praying as snake are often seen as spiritual here while Viv’s instructions were ‘get photos!’ In the end I got photos and then our night guard opened one of the eggs up and we watched it squirt like a cadbury’s creme egg. Funny thing is that it reminded me of when I was a child and I was told that the more bright yellow the egg yolk was the more free range the animal was. I remember a cake mum made that had used extremely free range eggs that had come from a farmer patient of dad’s, this cake nearly glowed in the dark! Well turns out we have free range snakes as that egg was luminous!

So that was part of the excitement of yesterday and today was my last day at home so I planned to work really hard. The morning sort of began ok except for a sick cat who has not made a sound all day which is worrying when normally she doesn’t shut up. I managed a bit of work until I was told that the inside of the house needed to be sprayed against snakes. Not entirely sure why my room which is far away from the front door needs protection and why we can’t just spray around the doors but apparently every room needs doing and then the house needs to be sealed for an hour against the poison. That led me on a cat hunt because I didn’t particularly want her being finished off whilst hiding away. Finally found her just as Peter said he’d spray in the afternoon instead! So I managed a little while longer before being told the neighbours house was on fire. Wasn’t quite sure what he meant until I looked out the window and saw that in fact our neighbours house had smoke pouring from the roof. The house is rented by American friends who are currently on sabbatical in the US for several months. They’ve lived there for 15 years and so it’s a hugely blow to them. It took a while for someone to raise the alarm and even longer for the fire service to get here. Turns out there is only 1 fire engine in Eastern Uganda but at least it’s in Mbale. However there is no mains water system to plug into and so it kept having to leave everytime it ran out of water. In the end it was about 5-6 trips to get enough to put out the flames. Thankfully the rain came and helped out a bit but was a bit scary watching an 80 foot column of smoke and 20 foot flames. Before the fire brigade came I had asked our housegirl whether the service existed here and she had said they would not come which had prompted me to try and phone my housemates to ask for any suggestions! Although there is a road between us and the neighbours there are several trees in between and so my housemates hurried home and we began a quick packing session in case our house went up as well. Quite funny looking around your room and genuinelly trying to answer the question of ‘imagine your house was on fire and you could only grab a few things, what would you take?’ Turned out to be my computer (photos and adult literacy curriculum!), contact lense solutions, passport and money. Later on I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten my guitar! Thankfully between the rain and fire service our evacuation plan was not needed and so bags were unpacked and in true English style we had a cuppa to relax our nerves.

And so after all the craziness and upset of watching a house burn down I went back to work and made a video of our holiday programme to send to the church that raised money for it. My attempt to be super organised and high tech failed when I discovered that you can’t send files that big over the internet and so therefore the royal mail will have to help me out through a friend who leaves next week. Well it’s now 10.30 on a Friday night and I’m exhausted after my day of activity. In the end the house didn’t get sprayed that’s another adventure for Tuesday when I’m going to Musoto for some peace and quiet, I hope…

Snakes and Other Small Creatures… May 23, 2011

So on Saturday I finally fulfilled an ambition and saw a real, live, wild African snake! It was just outside our front door and was only spotted when a friend nearly stepped on it. It turns out that the many black worms we thought have been inhabiting the house for several months are in fact baby snakes and instead of rescuing them we should actually be squashing them! I have saved at least 2 in the past few months completely ignorant that they would grow to 2 foot long poisonous killers – oops! On Saturday we tried calling our night guard to come and kill it but couldn’t wake him up despite very loud shouting in his direction for several minutes. We couldn’t get to him prod him into consciousness because there was a large snake in the way! It finally slithered away and as I drove out the compound to drop people home he’d woken up and I asked him to look for the snake which upon my return he said he couldn’t find, he then added that we should have woken him up so he could kill it – now there’s a thought!

Other small creatures that have taken up my time have been 200 children who came to our holiday programme last week. We also had our Gap team come from Kampala who were great. We had thought we’d aim for 150 children but day 1 was 174, day 2 was more and by day 3 we’d given up counting once we reached 200. It was a great 4 afternoons looking at issues around Education and various Bible characters alongside craft and games. Some truly amazing pieces of art work especially on the day we looked at Daniel where the lions were given stunning manes made out of wool! Our Gap team of 4 girls managed to do several bits of the holiday club in Luganda which is pretty impressive after only 6 weeks in the country, I’m still struggling with the very basics of any language! Sadly the girls managed to pick up food poisoning on the Sunday night they arrived which took out 3 of them for several days. Despite that they got involved most days even if they weren’t up to top energy levels. On the Friday I decided their training day could be from my house instead of trekking all the way to Musoto. Being my house also meant chocolate cake, pringles and lots of tea. Not sure we packed as much into a training day as they normally do but they had fun! On Saturday I convinced them that a day by the pool was a far better way of spending the day than climbing up a mountain especially after several days of sickness. The weather was terrible and was cloudy and rainy for a lot of the day but somehow swimming in the rain was still enjoyable. In the evening the plan had been a movie night with volunteers from Jenga, another NGO. Sadly the power company didn’t agree and so it was a long dinner and chat by candlelight.

I managed to make church for the past two weeks which entitles me to at least the next 2 weeks off! Not entirely sure what the talk was about either week except that they were long! At least I’ve started taking along paper and a pen and writing lesson plans for my adult literacy curriculum so it’s not a complete waste! One thing I definately miss from the UK is church.

Other than those exciting events the rest of life has been attempting to get my head around leaving Uganda in 10 weeks. Can’t believe it’s actually that soon and know it’s going to fly by. I’ve told a few of the staff who weren’t impressed at all, still haven’t told others including my pastor as I don’t want to see their faces. My big task to finish is the curriculum so this week I’m at home everyday ploughing through it and also using it as an opportunity to begin to withdraw from Beersheba and get people used to my absence. So today my lesson plans have included health and safety and the life of Jesus, hoping to get through human trafficking and domestic hygiene before the end of the day leaving savings and family planning for another day! So back to before the thunder that is currently rumbling over the mountain turns to rain and knocks out the power…

Tear Gas, Pizza and a Wedding… May 7, 2011

Another two weeks have passed by super fast and now it’s Saturday night, my rock and roll lifestyle means that I’m home about to watch a movie with my housemates before being in bed by about 9.30! The past two weeks have had their moments with royal weddings, job applications, staff trainings and trying to do hundreds of things. I managed a couple of days at work last week before taking Thursday off to work from home and Friday for the royal wedding. The day didn’t begin quite as planned and instead became a bit of an adventure. I was going to my friend’s house for about midday (10am UK) to watch all the lead up etc and so I went to town and ordered a couple of pizza and snacks and while they were cooking got a big smoothie and sat reading a book. About 11.10 my housemate Jo texted who was on the way back from the airport saying that as they arrived in Kampala, riots had broken out and they had had to take refuge in a motel while tear gas and bullets were going on around them. They couldn’t move for a couple of hours and even when they finally got on the road they still had to get through lots of chaos. So I was sat in Mbale reading this thinking how glad I was to be in quiet Mbale when the cafe owners went, ‘trouble has just started up the road and there’ll be tear gas in a moment’. So they started locking the doors and barricading us all in. I looked out and there were people running up the roads and then there would be calm and then running again – very weird. My food was nearly ready but I didn’t want to be locked in for hours and miss the wedding so I stood trying to work out what to do. Then we heard the canon that lets off tear gas (very deep booming sound) and people running again. Very strange sense of confusion, panic but also uncertainty about what was going to happen next. About a minute after tear gas you got this horrible smell of mouldy egg but at least I didn’t get painful eyes or throat which my friend’s in Kampala now know all too well. In the end I got one of my two pizzas, a guy from the cafe ran and found me a bike and I jumped on and went fast in the opposite direction from the trouble. Very strange though as there were groups of people all through town almost waiting for trouble. Got to my friend’s to find her parent’s had had to close their shop so were joining us to watch the wedding which was nice. All afternoon they were getting messages from folks still there saying bullets were being fired and stuff being burnt everywhere. Lots of chaos. When Jo finally made it back to Mbale she said the place looked devastated with rocks and broken stuff everywhere. We didn’t hear anything else but all a bit crazy. We were then told that we should expect trouble the next morning as well but we had absolutely no food in the house so we needed to move at some point. We decided in the end that because we were almost out of tea bags we would brave the riots and tear gas and go shopping – how very British! Oddly we were told late in the day that World Vision have pulled all their expat staff out of Uganda because of the trouble. Looks like Brits are made of sterner stuff as we all think it’s ridiculous!

So the royal wedding was watched with americans and palestinians and involved me explaining quite a lot about British culture and the crazy way we do things. Got a bit homesick seeing London especially as it looked sunny and we’re now having rain. Nice day though and very glad I took time off to watch it even if my Irish boss thought I was mad!

My biggest acheivement in the past two weeks is probably sitting through and understanding a training session on finance for NGOs! I now know what cash flow is and charts of accounts. Pretty impressive I think!

Other than those exciting things my week has looked pretty normal and so now it’s time to begin our film and eat the cake that I just made and decorated with Christmas toppings for want of anything else! Who says you can’t eat a snowman cake in May…