Culture

Here’s a story that we can all tell. You’re sat on a train. The conductor enters the carriage from behind you, asking to check tickets. You get yours ready. A few seconds later, you hear a commotion from a few rows back. You subtly pause your ipod so you can hear what’s going on, but pretend to keep reading your book. Somebody’s hasn’t paid, and they’re getting angry. You can only hear one side of the discussion because the conductor is keeping his voice respectfully low. You’re dying to have a look. You consider ‘going to the toilet’ so you can walk past but realise this would look too obvious. The customer is getting more and more irate. You can’t wait for the moment when they get up and walk down the carriage so you can at least see what the back of their head looks like.

Here’s a story I can tell. The police stop a coach rammed full of people going for their Christmas holidays in their village. They tell the conductor it’s overloaded and some people have to get off or they’ll fine him. Everybody stands up to get a look and the bus leans heavily to the left as people push to the windows. The conductor, very irate, returns to the bus and tells anyone without a seat to get off. A handful of people do. But one man refuses – after all, he’s paid. An argument begins. Every single passenger joins in, loudly, in a selection of at least three different languages: Luganda, which they speak in Kampala; Luo, which they speak in Lira, the coach’s destination; and English, which they speak everywhere. Proxy arguments begin in other parts of the coach. The conductor grabs the man’s ankle and tries to physically pull him off (which is how they get goats to comply, by the way). Then the driver, so far the only person not to stick his nose in, realises he has ultimate power and drives off, leaving the furious conductor by the side of the road, waving his arms manically, with only the police officer for company. About 200 yards down the road those who got off get on again.

Friendometer

Our brilliant housekeeper, Galvin, is full of hidden surprises. I have recently discovered that her uncle is a king and that she used to own a restaurant. Worried about my state of mind over Christmas, she kindly invited me to spend it with her family in Lira.

The road north was straight as a rod and passed through endless miles of bush, as if God had rolled a giant bowling ball through his lawn. We passed a fair few cheeky monkeys and a torrential cataract on the Nile, and didn’t get attacked by the LRA, which was all rather nice.

I’ve never been to India, but I suspect if I had, it would’ve looked a lot like Lira. It was a dusty outpost full of decidedly South Asian architecture and vast seas of bicycles. One man was carrying his little piggies to market on the back of his when one snorting charge escaped from the rudimentary wooden cage, sparking half the town into a Charlie Chaplin style chase down the middle of the road. Meanwhile, Galvin sent the shopping home with a complete stranger, keeping the cushion off the back of his bike as a retainer. There weren’t really any other muzungus around and everyone seemed refreshingly honest, two ideas which must surely be linked. It was all a very welcome tonic from Kampala’s mayhem.

Galvin’s home was in a village out of town, meaning I was entering a world of no electricity and a pit latrines. The mud hut that I was given to sleep in was carpeted. It was very comfortable. The dead ancestors were buried in the compound. The women used the concrete tombstones as platforms for washing the dishes. The place was full of millions of cousins, some of whom lived there and some of whom were just visiting. Some of them weren’t even cousins. Who knows who they were. Being English I was embarrassed by the special treatment I was getting. I felt guilty about breaking the foil on a new jar of coffee. Meals seemed to be prepared for me alone, but that made no sense at all. I just did I was told.

At least Christmas dinner we had all together – or as good as, because men sat at the table, while women took their place on the ground. All the rules were reversed. What I considered polite was considered rude, and what I considered rude was considered polite. Unlike at home, where the host will serve you, you were to serve yourself. I was the guest so no-one could go until I had gone. Countless pairs of eyes watched me as I went from pot to pot and got a plateful of food. It was a long few seconds. At home, I wouldn’t dream of starting before everyone had got. The host would be vehemently urging me to begin, but it’s still unlikely that I would. But here, I had to start eating while everyone else waited their turn to serve themselves up. It felt very rude. But it wasn’t. Then I made the mistake of finishing what was on my plate. At home, reserving any element of the meal tends to indicate you didn’t like it, and risks causing offence. But here my clean plate implied that I hadn’t had enough. And perhaps my reluctance to take more implied that I hadn’t enjoyed it – I’m not sure. It was only when Galvin threatened to cry if I didn’t keep eating that I suddenly understood what was going on. I was full to bursting but at risk of causing grave offence. So I had to take more and this time remembered to leave a sturdy amount on the plate. And at the end of the meal people belched ostentatiously. No matter how open-minded you are, your manners – those social rules that you learn from a very young age – run very deep.

Close Encounters of the African Kind

I returned to our house in Kampala late on Friday night, in a daze from hours on the road. I was supposed to find a man called Roland there. I’d met him twice and he’d agreed to guard the house over Christmas. But he wasn’t there. Instead, I was confronted by a figure in a long black coat with the hood up, holding a huge spear that reached above his head. This was it – I’d survived six hours on Uganda’s dicey roads in a bus held together by prayers alone, only to meet Death on the doorstep of my home.

I asked Death to unlock the gates so I could get in, but of course, the key was with the guy who hadn’t shown up. This meant I had to do a Dan Dare and jump the gate, dodging a low-hanging power line as I went. This also meant the guy inside must have done the same thing. There is no greater evidence that our ‘guard’ dog is a chocolate teapot: a total stranger jumped the gate and she just sat there impassively. In fact, I bet she wagged her tail and tried to lick his face.

Once I got on the same side of the fence as the sinister figure, I realised that this wasn’t death himself but a poor imitation. The giveaway was that the coat had ‘SECURITY’ written on the back in big white letters. But the question still remained as to who this kid was and who had talked him into the Grim Reaper act.

Now, you’ll have to forgive me. During my four months in the country, I’ve been involved in sacking four people and in chasing down three separate contractors who ripped us off because for one reason or another we didn’t have a written agreement with them. Add to this the countless boda-boda riders and shopkeepers who have tried to charge me five times the price for something (and that’s not an exaggeration) just to see if they can get away with it. Four months in Uganda has taught me to expect people to do the wrong thing if the opportunity is there. I hope that this is healthy cynicism rather than outright misogyny, and in some ways it served me well here: it came as no surprise to me whatsoever that the guy who was supposed to be guarding wasn’t around. I’d even half expected him to use the knowledge that the house was empty to effect an elaborate break-in, at least to enjoy the facilities for a couple of days. But it came as a huge surprise to me to discover that our neighbour’s guard, not wanting to see our place left vulnerable, had got his cousin to come to Kampala from his village in the north as a stand-in. For all my legislating against being cheated, I need to keep the faith.

Office Hours

What are you talking about? It’s Christmas!

Competition time!

The family Hipps receive a point for pointing out a deliberate mistake: "making everyone go to the www.peas.org.uk/gifts website to try and get a definition of PEAS which up till now most people would have thought were spherical, green and edible."

The Police

On Wednesday, I got caught in a radar gun. It irritated me that the Ugandan police even had a radar gun. But it irritated me more that they were wasting their time catching me doing a glacial 15mph when I should have been going an even more glacial 12mph over the precious Owen Falls Dam. What about the coaches haring along at five times that speed through the middle of towns and villages? What about the public minibus drivers overtaking said coaches on blind corners? What about the trucks that are so mechanically deficient they actually move along the road at an angle? Is the speed limit on the bridge really a priority?

The policeman informed me that even if I was only 1mph over the limit there would be a fine of 100,000 Ugandan Shillings. My irritation intensified. “So I give you a receipt and you go to the bank and pay,” he said, looking hard into my eyes. I stared back inscrutably. We stayed locked in this stalemate for a long, long time. It was the point where I was supposed to offer him a bribe, and I wasn’t sticking to the script. Eventually he prompted me: “not so?” I gave him a “what are we waiting for?” face, somewhat insolently, and thus sealed my fate. But I’d already decided I’d rather pay twice as much and let the Uganda Revenue Authority have my money.

Friendometer

Having been adopted as a trophy Muzungu by an ambitious young Ugandan entrepreneur called Charles, I spent most of last week going to various launches and lunches, with the primary purpose, I assume, of smiling and looking white. After one such party – the launch of a new cake business – Charlie took me and another of his pets to the Speke Hotel to see a dance troupe he manages. The troupe were outstanding, but what he had failed to mention was that they were just the filler in another show: a beauty pageant being run by an Indian transvestite, who, by the way, really wasn’t trying hard enough to maintain the illusion. As if that wasn’t bizarre enough, the place was riddled with prostitutes who would stop at nothing (short of tearing off your trousers) to drum up some business. It was all perfectly not the way I would have chosen to spend a Friday night.

Working Hours

My working hours were lengthened, much to my vexation, by the 5.30am call to prayer emanating from the loudspeaker of the local mosque. Some croaky old crooner got trigger happy on the volume knob and spoilt my sleep three days running. I wanted to get out of bed and go and tell them that God was busy doing other things and shouldn’t be bothered until later, but I don’t think they’d have appreciated the advice.

Close Encounters of the African Kind

We’re coming dangerously close to only being able to open one and half schools, rather than two, in February. We’ve had to take drastic steps to cut expenditure. We’ve decided to reduce the daily delivery of roses to twice-weekly and now we only have champagne on Fridays. Someone told me there was a global financial crisis but I don’t believe them. I would’ve seen it in the papers.

I could abuse my position as a writer of moderately entertaining ramblings and spend a paragraph persuading you that PEAS is a cut above other charities, but I won’t.

Actually, yes I will. The ambition of PEAS is to overhaul the Ugandan secondary education system, and I work with such a talented team of people I truly believe we can do it. Firstly, we can improve its financial efficiency, which is the first step to widening access (enrolment is just 20% of those eligible). Secondly, we can improve its quality through innovation and the import of best practice. We’re a small fish in the Ugandan not-for-profit community but our schools are really just examples for us to show the big fish how it should be done. Perhaps most importantly, we think very, very carefully about even the tiniest expenditure before we approve it. I’m sorry we’ve got such a stupid name but you can’t have everything.

So buy me a Christmas present from this website and I’ll be a very happy man: www.peas.org.uk/gifts

That chicken don’t belong to nobody

The chicken found its way back into the larder the other day, where it flapped around and upset all Galvin’s spices. We concluded it was suicidal and was trying to marinade itself to save Galvin the job. I nearly accepted its plea as it seemed to have stopped laying eggs, until I discovered it’d been hiding them in the storeroom at the back, the devious bird.

Tikka the chicken, as she’s now affectionately known, is very much her own woman. She frequently lets herself into the house and poos on the floor, which tends to culminate in her meeting the hard end of Galvin’s foot. Sweep Dog still makes some half-hearted attempts at intimidation from time to time, but that hen just don’t care. She’ll do what she damn well pleases…

A fun-packed Saturday

Disclaimer – the following story really isn’t funny.

Working Hours

Because I seem not to be able to stop working, I stupidly stitched myself up to do a day’s hard graft last Saturday. I’d volunteered to man the PEAS stall at the pleasingly assonant ‘Mayuge Day’, which was like the County Fair, if you like. Being an efficient soul, I had also arranged a meeting in the same direction at 7pm with a lady called Helen, another NGO volunteer, to discuss the thrilling topic of bricks.

The day got off to a bad start with that common travellers ailment that need not be named, so attending the Mayuge fair was pretty risky – I didn’t anticipate finding many toilets, and I didn’t anticipate any I did find to be the sort you’d want to use. But I decided to attend anyway – after all, what’s immodium for? Thankfully the day passed without any further intestinal crises, but it got past 7pm and I hadn’t yet left Mayuge.

Close Encounters of the African Kind – pride comes before a fall.

I began the ride back under darkening skies along Uganda’s best road, a beautiful stretch of wide, smooth tarmac, through endless fields of sugar cane. I was watched over by the (still prostrate) Orion, the one-eyed Great Bear, and all their friends, plus the slimmest sliver of silvery moon sitting low in an inky sky. I was captivated by the atmosphere and revved up to a decent cruising speed. As I rode I pondered upon what a Uganda veteran I was now. I’d been around for three whole months – I could practically write the guidebook! One thing I had definitely learnt, I smugly reflected, was to expect the unexpected on Uganda’s notorious roads. Yes – as long as you’re ready for anything you’ll be fine. Then I hit a central reservation at 100km/h.

For a few revolutionary seconds I became the first man to achieve completely unaided flight, before inventing a new sport, sledgeless grass sledging. When I came to a standstill I quickly reviewed my state of mortality, decided that I was alive, for the moment, and hastily got to my feet to make sure it stayed that way – I didn’t want my two accolades to be instantly annihilated by making myself a sitting duck for a pursuing vehicle to wipe out. A dizzy look around revealed that I was still in the central reservation, a good ten metres from the bike, which was half in the road and half out. I couldn’t even see as far as the point of impact.

There was a scarcity of passing cars, none of which stopped, probably because they couldn’t see me either. This was a bummer because the bike was wrecked and I couldn’t get it out of the road. I texted Helen and told her I couldn’t make the meeting cos I had a flat tyre.

Eventually two local guys came to the rescue. I planned to leave the bike by the side of the highway and come back when I could see something. But then Helen, who I’d only met once before, and only very briefly, called and offered to pick me up. This was the start of a favour that gradually grew to pretty epic proportions, so she gets a much-coveted Blog shout-out (plus beers for the next few months, no doubt).

She showed up in a mate’s pride and joy, a 1974 Land Rover. As an ex-army girl, she stood back and barked orders while us lads lifted and pushed and pulled and shoved and strained and eventually fitted what was left of the bike into the back of that piece of bombproof British engineering.

We offered to drop the worthy assistants back at the sugar factory, where they worked and lived. This is when our noses told us that the bike was leaking petrol. Fearing that this would cause a catastrophic explosion and a subsequent river of caramel across Eastern Uganda, we stopped on a deserted but refreshingly well-lit roundabout next to the factory entrance, where a guard watched us suspiciously. We asked him for a jerrycan to drain the petrol into: I’d just filled up the tank owing to yet another fuel crisis, so I wasn’t about to pour the precious yellow liquid on the floor. I disconnected the tiny fuel line and eight-and-a-half litres of glittering fuel started trickling lamely into the plastic container.

Realising we’d be there for some time, we settled ourselves down. At this point the guard approached us and perfunctorily requested us to move our car as we were “causing an obstruction.” Well, we were hardly parked on Uganda’s busiest roundabout. We were obstructing a grand total of nothing. “Ur, we don’t really want to start the car until the petrol dries,” we pleaded. “Well you’ll have to,” he countered. “If you don’t move it you will cause an accident.” An accident worse than blowing up your factory?

After several seemingly endless minutes we’d still only collected a fraction of the tank’s volume into the jerrycan, and one of the local guys lost patience. He went to fetch a pipe to siphon the petrol from the top of the tank. Now there’s only one way that I know of to get a siphon started: suck. Which is how he ended up with a mouthful of petrol. That was really beyond the call of duty, but he knew as well as I that such self-sacrificing levels of service significantly increased the value of the subsequent gratuity. And the more he coughed and spluttered and spat, the more those shillings ticked up.

A later, beer-assisted post-mortem of the accident revealed its cause clearly. I was riding through the middle of a sugar plantation on a virtually moonless night. It was really, really dark. Even the bike’s full beam double lamps barely seemed to light the way ahead. Suddenly some drops of very muddy water coming from goodness knows where made a mess of my visor. I attempted to wipe them away with the sleeve of my leather jacket. This had the effect of smearing the mud, thus reducing my visibility even further. Meanwhile, the start of the dual carriageway section lay silently in my path. Against my own advice which I had been smugly intoning in my mind barely thirty seconds earlier, I foolishly neglected to expect not to expect it. In fact, I don’t think I knew it was there until I’d hit it, which shows just how little I could see.

Of course, there was no warning that the road divided, and no lights to light it up. This was simultaneously the cause of my crash and the reason it wasn’t more serious, as there was no bollard or signpost for me to hit. I therefore walked away with little more than a scraped knee. The most unfortunate thing, apart from the damage to the bike, is that by escaping uninjured I must have used up most of my lifetime’s quota of blessings in one go. I was very, very lucky.

Friendometer

The strangest thing about the whole story is that later the same evening I got the chance to give some feedback about the cause of my accident to someone who could actually do something about it. Helen took me for an anaesthetic beer and I found myself sharing a table with a member of the extremely wealthy Ugandan-Indian Madhvani family. They own the plantations, the factory, the surrounding population and the stretch of tarmac where I had my accident, which, as he helpfully pointed out to me, is why it’s Uganda’s best road. But even the best roads can use improvement. I gave him an entry for the Madhvani comment box.

Competition Time

I’m giving a point to Ibbsy, partly because it’s great to hear from him and partly because his caption for the chicken photo had me clucking with delight. We had actually put it in the larder to stop the dog eating it but the smell was fowl. Happy thought it was a poultry creature and wanted to kill it, and Galvin egged him on, but I didn’t feel like chicken tonight. The only thing for it was to sensitise the dog, and you can see the results of that below…

You must be able to come up with some decent captions for some of those, between the lot of you. I’m also still accepting the identifying of deliberate mistakes for anyone who’s still enjoying finding them. Ben’s recent absence of pedantry was due to a broken leg keeping him from the blog, apparently, which is strange, as surely that’s the ideal time for such pointless activities.

It’s nice to be back – bumper issue!

Some people have attributed my reduced blogging frequency to greater workload, rather than greater laziness, which is kind. In fact, neither is true – I was testing you all to see whether you missed it. I wasn’t exactly inundated with objections, suggesting most of you welcomed the respite. Well, tough. I’m back.

Last night Galvin took me, Alex and Chris (the current short-term volunteers) to her cousin’s graduation party. Being the only muzungus there, we were asked by the uncle, who was leading the proceedings, to introduce ourselves over the mic. He gave us a lovely introduction where he explained how we’d sacrificed our income (true) to come and help orphans (less true) including dressing them (OK, we’ve really strayed now). Somewhere in translation my name got changed from Nigel to Bob, perhaps in homage to Geldof, that other great dresser of African orphans.
Still, it was a hoot. I was asked to dance by a gorgeous girl who it was impossible to turn down. Even though she was five, she could still dance twice as well as me.



Close Encounters of the African Kind

I woke up on Thursday morning with a mild hangover, having sunk a brain-rotting two beers whilst playing pool (hopelessly) the night before. When I got to the office, Christine, our new Director of Educational Excellence (yes, that’s really her job title), asked if I’d looked in the mirror this morning. Obviously my malaise had external manifestations.

In fact, the looking glass revealed a forehead littered with the nocturnal mischief of a certain ancient but prolific bug, who after a night of searching had clearly located the hole in the mosquito net and snuck in for the feast of a lifetime. Putting two and two together, I went for a malaria test. This meant confronting two things that I generally make a point of avoiding: needles and medicine. But at least the nurse was pretty. She pricked my finger, smeared my blood all over a microscope slide (how romantic!) and left me waiting in the corridor. Thirty minutes later I received the outcome, handed to me perfunctorily on a slip of paper: positive. Obviously this made me feel the opposite. I wasn’t too surprised though – I haven’t met a Ugandan yet who hasn’t had malaria at least once in their lifetime (although I had hoped to last a little bit longer). At least it meant I wasn’t as much of lightweight as I had thought.

I wasn’t actually feeling all that unwell, and given what people were saying about the side-effects of the drugs, I was tempted to flush them down the bog and let my own immune system do the hard work. Any doctor would tell you that this is choosing the long road – a road reputed to lead to the unassuming but much-feared door of death himself – so for prudency, and because I love my mother, I swallowed the tabs. It remained in the back of my mind that the clinic, privately owned and run, would have had a vested interest in diagnosing me with something or other as soon as I walked in with full pockets, and that perhaps it was an unearned hangover after all, but my cynicism had to stop somewhere.

How interesting that a mosquito, which is essentially just a flying bag with a pipe on the front, is capable of killing something as big and complex as a human being. How vulnerable we are, really.



Friendometer

I’ve got a new best friend in Uganda. She’s silver, with two wheels, two pedals and a chain.




Office Hours


Tuesday, though productive, was possibly the most physically uncomfortable day of my life. Tell me what you think:


1. Ready for a busy day ‘in the field’, I wearily leave the house at 6am, foregoing breakfast in the interests of maximising time in bed.


2. 50km down the road, our Toyota van dramatically overheats and, what with the engine being beneath the front seats, smokes us out. Coughing and spluttering, we abandon it in the middle of nowhere.


3. Without use of a vehicle, we decide to split ourselves up, and I draw the short straw, since my destination requires me to use a ‘boda-boda’ (motorcycle taxi) 26km along a dusty dirt road. When I arrive, someone writes ‘clean me’ with their finger on my forehead.


4. By now much delayed, I don’t have time for lunch, either. Someone points out a distant rumble of thunder but it turns out to be coming from my empty belly.


5. For the return journey along the dirt road, I can cadge a lift in a small hatchback as long as I don’t mind sharing it with seven other grown men and a live chicken. I’m squeezed between the front seats, so releasing the handbrake requires me and the driver to enter into a level of intimacy not commonly exhibited between men – especially not in Uganda.


6. The journey back to Kampala, past our stricken van, is courtesy of some greedy minibus taxi operators who shoehorn about twenty people into a van designed for far fewer.


It’s days like that where taking your shoes off when you get home is a catharsis worthy of few comparisons.



Close Encounters of the African Kind

After my motocross adventures at the Jinja Motor Rally, a man, clearly dazzled by my abilities, approached me in the ‘paddock’ and asked for my autograph. Not really – but I gave it to him anyway. Godfrey is also a fan of everything with wheels, which not only means I’ve got a friend to go on bike rides with, but also that I’ve got someone take me to more events in Uganda’s hectic motorsport calendar. Last Sunday found us in Mukono, watching more dramatic rally action.

The general approach was to get an ordinary Toyota (always a Toyota), drill a hole in the exhaust silencer, paint on some decals, and pretend you were going really fast. The resulting vehicle could best be described as a sheep in wolf’s clothing. Despite this, it was proved that it’s possible to overcook a corner even in the slowest car when one guy rolled his onto its roof right in front of us. If I’d been any closer I could’ve read you the chassis number.

Every ending is a new beginning

The more dedicated readers of this blog may be wondering how the story of our NGO registration ended, at the infamous, Kafka-esque NGO board. The good news is that they haven’t arrested me (yet). On Wednesday, feeling patient, I decided to go back. As I approached those hated gates, I felt a sea of patience swell up inside me. They could have made me thread a thousand needles with a pile of inch-long threads of frayed black cotton and it wouldn’t have broken my patience. I was aching with patience.

I entered the office clutching the battered and torn receipt that was our only official evidence of existence as an NGO. The ugly lady (a new one this time!) took it, picked up her envelope, rifled through its contents, and produced – could it be? Could it possibly our Certificate of Registration? I started to salivate. There it was, on her desk! The thing we had been waiting eight months to receive! The world went into slow motion. She picked up the signing-out book. She opened it at the page. She turned it for me to sign. I took the lid off my pen. I placed the nib in position. Then: “STOP! You cannot sign for this certificate! You are not the Director!”

Previously I would have shown great dismay at this revelation, but not this time. It barely even ate into the surface layers of my abundant patience. Instead, I smiled angelically. The ugly lady then started looking for our file to check exactly who the Director was.

After a cursory search, she failed to locate it so summoned a minion to hunt instead. This was when she took the opportunity to pass her judgment on our charity, ‘Promoting Equality in African Schools’, which she found highly amusing: ‘how useless, there is already equality in African schools!’ This was so funny she shared it with her ugly colleague, in Luganda, of course, so I couldn’t understand. After more than thirty minutes of three different people searching, they pronounced our file lost. Even after all this, my patience had barely waned.

I asked Mike to come down, who was the Director way back when we submitted the application. After lots more waiting and smiling and behaving very politely towards very unpleasant (and ugly) people, they clearly finally abandoned hope of a bribe and surrendered the damn certificate. I mentally cracked open a bottle of champagne, and then mentally cracked it over the ugly lady’s ugly head.

By this point, another gentleman had entered and was attempting to submit his NGO’s application – the stage we were at in February. The ugly lady refused to accept it because the annual report was the other way round to all the other papers. “How will the board members read it?” (It is beyond their intellect to turn it through 90 degrees, obviously). I couldn’t help smugly thinking “you’ve got a long eight months ahead of you, mate!”

Office Hours

As a teacher, I used to grumble about the long hours the profession inflicts upon its purveyors. I would hardly have been allowed to qualify if I had not mastered the skill of complaint, one of the most fundamental within the vocation. I shall now illustrate the relative validity of these complaints with a familiar analogy borrowed from cookery.

Imagine we are all sausages. As we sizzle away in the frying pan, we complain about how hot it is and how we let ourselves get fried without ever doing anything about it. The more inquisitive sausages among us wonder whether perhaps there is a nicer climate in that unexplored territory beyond the rim of the pan. Eventually curiosity draws one among our number to jump out, and we all know where he lands: in the fire! In the language of this inspired analogy, I am that foolish Frankfurter.

I’m working every waking hour and even when I’m asleep – last night I planned an entire meeting through the medium of dream. Sometimes such unrelenting pressure causes unchaste thoughts: working this hard could bring me pots and pots of gold as an Investment Banker in the City! I purge such filthy ideas with the following mantra: “Think of the children! Think of the children!”

Friendometer

I know this section is supposed to be for Ugandan friends, but to be honest, at the moment I don’t have time to make any. For now, let me draw your attention to another shout-out that is up for grabs in this very space – for the first non-Nigel’s-parent to talk to me on Skype. The current contestants – my cousins Eleanor, Lydia and Robert, and Julia, the girl-next-door of my teenage years, have been promised a mention for at least stating their intent in this respect.

Close Encounters of the African Kind

Last weekend I went to Jinja on the motorcycle to watch a car rally. The warm-up act was a spot of motocross (motorbike racing off-road, for the uninitiated). It quickly became apparent that what the considerable crowd liked to see most of all, mainly for comedy value, was riders stack it. As I enjoyed this spectacle, several people saw the motorcycle helmet that I was sat on and asked if I was going to participate. I remembered that I was in Uganda and therefore there was probably no reason why I shouldn’t, and also realised the bike I had was better than every single one currently on the field. So with visions of wheelying over the finish line in a glorious victory, I ambled up to the ‘paddock’ to inquire. Five minutes later I found myself amongst the riders I had only a short time ago been a spectator to, racing around the circuit.

I came very, very last, but I feel that isn’t important when you consider that I single-handedly turned the race into an international event, therefore promoting the winners to world champions. Another great service to Uganda through the fruits of my dedication.

Disclaimer for boss: I realise that this use of the motorcycle contravenes the PEAS asset policy, which only shows my stupidity in publishing the story on my blog.

Disclaimer for mum: I realise that this use of myself contravenes the family asset policy – same goes.

Competition Time

Since you are all useless at spotting mistakes, and the attempted caption competition yielded frankly dire results (although points are certainly due to those brave few who dared to try), I am going to abandon this whole idea of audience participation altogether. Kindly participate by calling me on the phone.

Worthy but hopeless attempts in the caption competition have put my Dad on a joint first place spot with Ben, as well as re-introducing my Mum onto the table (hooray). Phil’s attempt was probably the best of the three so he gets on there too.

Ben 2

Nigel’s Dad 2

Julia 1

Uncle Simon 1

Nigel’s Gran 1

Brother David 1

Volunteer Jo 1

Phil 1

Nigel’s Mum 1

Time for some serious thoughts

I’m going to inflict my opinion on you now in an attempt to be polemical, and also to show you why I wouldn’t make a good columnist.

The question that I want to answer is what’s so great about our way of life in developed countries that makes me and countless other misguided do-gooders work so hard to make developing countries the same? Many would say that we’re all fat and unhappy. No-one seems too enamoured with the pressures of modern life and lots even go so far as to plot their ‘escape’, by moving to the countryside, emigrating, retiring somewhere quiet or killing themselves. Contrast this with, for example, rural Africa. It has such alluring innocence and charm. People live off the fat of the land, share with their neighbours, go to bed when it gets dark and let their children play with each other in a playground with no fences: the entire countryside. Doesn’t it seem to address so many of our complaints with the world? So why are we trying to change it?

There are two answers. The first answer is simple: it is going to change whether it we think it should or not. Materialism is infectious and it spreads everywhere. If you have nothing and others have lots then it is natural that you should want to join them. So, since the change is inevitable, let’s try to make it an equitable change.

The second answer is that the change is right and good. People try to escape ‘modern life’ without realising that the imprisonment must be in their mind, because they are politically and economically free. You can exercise your democratic rights through a wide variety of means and although it sometimes might not feel like you have any influence over the government, together with your fellow citizens, you are empowered to end their dominion.

You are also highly likely to be economically empowered. Even at the bottom end of our society, people have enough money to make basic choices in their patterns of consumption and enough for basic luxuries like a really big TV. Higher up, you really do have that option of ‘escape’ if you want it – retire to Spain, buy a Post Office in Scotland, or volunteer for a year in Africa.

Contrast these freedoms with our rural African community described earlier. You are likely to be stuck with a government who it is impossible to shift out of power and who therefore have no incentive to work in your best interests, yet you probably don’t realise you have the right to demand more. Furthermore, you might not even be on the first rung of the economic ladder where people use money for the exchange of goods – the land provides all your basic needs, provided there is no drought, flood or hungry thieves. Your life may have a charm and innocence that people who have more enviously marvel at, but you don’t have the external viewpoint that allows you to appreciate it in that way: you aren’t looking at it out of a car window, you’re living it.

Peasant life ended in Europe about three hundred years ago. It was probably also charming and innocent until you caught disease, got on the wrong side of your grumpy Lord or were inflicted with a thieving neighbour. I don’t think anyone would advocate a return to feudalism.

Working Hours

Long, tiring and brilliant.

Close Encounters of the African Kind

Put a pothole the size of Wales in front of the car, and a drunk driver behind it, and I’m sure you can work out the outcome: car snooker. A light tap from the pursuing cue ball nicely potted our Toyota.

Friendometer

As you can see, I have responded to Ben’s valid complaint of increasingly short actual entries followed by increasingly lengthy regular features. The customer is always right.

Competition time

Well done to Volunteer Jo for pointing out the erroneous information so far missed: the Nile is not the world's longest river. The rest of you should be ashamed of yourselves!

Ben 2

Julia 1

Nigel’s Dad 1

Uncle Simon 1

Nigel’s Gran 1

Brother David 1

Volunteer Jo 1

Never admit it's your birthday

My birthday started badly when I got to the airport to pick up our boss from the UK only to find someone else had already got him. When I got back to the office I was just getting into the swing of my angry rant about the lack of communication in the organisation when Sylvia poured a jug of water over my head. This doused my fury somewhat.

Thanks to all of you who gave me your birthday good wishes (especially those of the more conventional variety).

Working Hours

The Holy Scriptures (aka Gannt chart) said that we should be starting to dig foundations on the site on Tuesday, but we still didn’t have a site plan to tell us where. That’s how I ended up walking around a big field in the dark on Monday night, in a thunderstorm, wearing someone else’s size 13 wellies, measuring the distance between trees. I always wanted to be an architect so drawing the little buildings onto the map later made it all worth it, even though I did get back home at midnight.

Friendometer

Miss Belinda Crombie of Manchester wins the prize for the first non-Nigel’s-parent to venture a phonecall to Uganda, thus proving that (a) it is possible and (b) you don’t need to be a millionaire. I am therefore expecting the rest of you to follow suit. Billy wins the traditional prize, currently coveted by Lizzie, of a shout out in my blog, catapulting her to the heady heights of international celebrity.

Close Encounters of the African Kind

A catastrophic mechanical failure on the motorbike left me stranded on the other side of town late at night. This had nothing at all to do with my neglecting to fill it up with petrol.

Competition Time

Thank goodness someone knows that the brain is not a muscle. Sadly it does not get bigger with use. So my brother wins his first point (at last!).

Ben 2

Julia 1

Nigel’s Dad 1

Uncle Simon 1

Nigel’s Gran 1

Brother David 1

There is still another brightly shining error that shockingly nobody has noticed. Just think what misleading information I could publish against such an absence of editorial rigour! In the face of such incompetence I am considering changing the competition from the flopped ‘spot the deliberate mistake’ to a caption competition (which will probably be much more fun anyway). So as a trial run let’s see what you can come up with for this bizarre specimen:

The night sky – an appeal

Look to the night sky in Uganda and you will see everyone’s favourite constellation, Orion, lying prone, instead of standing grand and erect like we’re used to, with his sword protruding magnificently from beneath his belt. If I keep going south, does he stand on his head, sword dangling comically? And if I’m in orbit, could I witness him doing cartwheels? He’s needs to watch out or he’ll stab the Great Bear in the eye.

Office Hours - Sherwood Forest comes to Uganda!

The other day, my boss was explaining to me his progress with finding a guard for our site. Getting ones with guns turned out to be prohibitively expensive, so he suggested getting ones with bows and arrows. He didn’t seem to understand what I found so funny.

Friendometer

The source of the world’s longest river, the Nile, is to be found at Jinja, where I spent the weekend. (I’ve thrown a stick into the river for anyone who’s planning a holiday to Egypt and wants to play international Pooh sticks). Jinja is a pretty chilled out place and the people are much more laid back than nearby capital Kampala – a good place, then, to notch up some companions on the friendometer.

Everyone seemed to be called David. David no. 1 was a guy of around my age. He took me all around the rapids where silly people pay hundreds of dollars to float downstream on an overgrown inflatable. He then took me via a load of villages to see where they’re building the new dam, which will put everything I’d just walked through under water when they finish it.

The next day I met David no. 2, a teenager who had cottoned on to the benefits of befriending the prolific Muzungu tourists. He didn’t go anywhere without his trusty stick – once a fishing rod but now a versatile instrument able to perform as a cattle prod, golf club, punchbag, imitation motorbike handlebars, and no doubt several other functions that I wasn’t there long enough to witness.



Close Encounters of the African Kind

As I clambered on the rocks around the mighty Nile, my insatiable curiosity drew me to explore a narrow path leading into some bushes. I met a guy on his way out, who stopped me with the following words: “Don’t go there. They go there to defecate. It is a bad place.” How charmingly he illustrated the importance of seeking local advice.

Special feature – volunteer Jo’s latest Close Encounters.

Since we last heard about volunteer Jo’s unfortunate experiences with weirdos, she has been accosted by a man with a beer bottle down his trousers, and chased down the street with a note detailing a phone number and the words “I am Indian”. My goodness.

Competition time

My uncle Simon is about 2 light years behind everyone else:
"In case nobody rose to the challenge, the letter you missed out of your blog was k which is ironic as it is silent in many words!"
Ironic enough to receive a point, in my opinion. Many of you will have also noticed that the blog has received a comment from my gran. There can’t be many grans who could even tell you what a blog is, whereas mine is so down with the kids that she’s calling things “xxxxxxxxxciting”. Definitely worth a point.

Ben 2
Julia 1
Nigel’s Dad 1
Uncle Simon 1
Nigel’s Gran 1

Despite all this gratuitous dishing out of points for anything and everything, I am actually making some genuine glaring errors of fact that are being completely overlooked. You are all disappointing me. It’s almost as if you’ve got better things to do.

Verbal intrigues

A guy phoned me up the other day and the conversation went something like this:

Him: hello, how are you?
Me: I’m fine, you?
Him: My friend has given me this number to call.
Me: OK, what’s it regarding?
Him: I don’t know, she just told me to call this number.
Me: Did she say what about?
Him: She just gave me the number to call.
Me: Why?
Him: OK, let me find out from her first.

It took all my willpower to turn my back on such a clarion call to sarcasm. I was burning up to say “I’ve got a better idea. Let me guess possible reasons, and you stop me when you think I get to a plausible one”.

In fact, such conversational guesswork is not alien to many Ugandans. It is perfectly normal to provide your interlocutor opportunities to finish your sentences for you, as if to prove they are really listening. Our good friend the District Chairman, of petrol station forecourt fame, was particularly fond of such an approach:
“It is important that the community feel ownership of the what?. Especially when they see people from the United what? They must feel it is their what?”
It’s a bit like verbal tombola. As you guess, several throws inevitably miss, but when you hit the right word, your reward is a spark of connection with the speaker. It’s not quite a bottle of wine, I know, but don’t underestimate its value.

Close Encounters of the African Kind

In the UK, we are not unfamiliar with the speed hump, amongst other traffic calming devices. You could be forgiven for thinking that Uganda has enough potholes to render speed humps unnecessary, and indeed, it doesn’t have them. It has speed mountains. It is not uncommon to find you need to put it in 4-wheel drive and engage the low range gears to negotiate them. Not only this, but you are given absolutely no warning that a mega-hump is imminent, meaning if you don’t know the road, you can get a nasty surprise. And don’t be thinking you can employ common sense to guess where to look out for them, because whoever decides where to put them clearly doesn’t have any. Which is why I got all four wheels of the office Toyota off the ground (and mine and Volunteer Jo’s bums off the seats) a few days ago when some plonker put one at the bottom of a hill in the middle of nowhere. (The close encounter was that of the wheel with the wheel arch upon landing).



Friendometer

Mrs Elizabeth Grant of Lordship Park, London (who else would live at an address like that, really?) wins the prize of a shout in my blog for the most devoted friend, as she was the first to send me a handwritten letter on a selection of beautiful papers (stolen from a selection of beautiful hotels, I might add). Maybe this is something that unemployed wives do – writing letters, I mean, not stealing, unless things get really desperate. This is the second time Mrs Grant has achieved such heady fame: as a Miss she won a shout in my South American blog for pointing out that Dulce de Leche was available in the UK. I should add that Lizzie, though a wife, is not unemployed through choice, and would appreciate a job should any reader wish to provide one. I should also add that the only reason she’s getting a namecheck really is because she’s promised me a Christmas Card in return.

Working Hours

I sent our attempt at a contract to be checked by a professional business consultant known to be a regular correspondent in the comments section of the present publication, and he had the following response:

I’m sure you’ve heard the expression ‘you could drive a coach and horses through it’. I wouldn’t have a problem if I approached with the Exxon Valdez.

The rest makes painful reading.

Competition time ('spot the deliberate mistake', for those joining us late)

Come on people, this competition really isn’t about pointing out every last punctuation error, typo and verbal speck of dust you happen to notice, although I have to admit you’d all make superb proofreaders. You need to look at the bigger picture. You’re missing some glaring errors.

Ben did however notice the mistake of awarding a point to my Mum after I’d told everyone the answer, which means she loses a point and he gets one. This is a terrible thing to do to your own mother, I know, but I don’t want to be accused of nepotism.

My father has entered into the true spirit of the pedant by pointing out the difference between a retainer and a security, although I find his repeated citation of as disreputable a publication as Wikipedia distasteful.

Julia 1
Ben 2
Nigel’s Dad 1
Nigel’s Mum 0 (ooh, harsh)

And finally…

I’m starting to wonder if my parents are the only people reading this blog, given their monopolisation of the comments section. Where are the rest of you? Speak up!