A map of Uganda

My first week in Uganda has been such a richly woven network of experiences it would be impossible to navigate without the aid of an A-Z, which is why I’ve written one. Brace yourselves.

A is for Another guy’s bike, something you ride on the back of to get around Kampala. They are known as boda-bodas, and are particularly useful in traffic (see T).

B is for Birds. There are lots of them, many large and decidedly more interesting than pigeons. The day I arrived there was an eagle in the garden.

C is for Colleagues: Edward, Martin, Mike, Sylvia and Harriet – all Ugandan, as you can tell. See also ‘Office Hours’ below.

D is for Dust – fortunately a highly attractive rust colour since it gets absolutely everywhere.

E is for Eager to lick your face, which is what Sweep, the dog, is. In a backwards kind of way this makes her a highly effective guard dog.

F is for Freecell, an addictive computer card game that I have got our guard (see H) hooked on (oops).

G is for Galvin, our cook, who can, extremely well.

H is for Happy, our guard, who is.

I is for It tastes better than it looks, a universal truth of Ugandan food, which looks like it was intended for the dog but tastes very, very nice.

J is for Job (see Office Hours below).

L is for Luganda, which I can’t speak.

M is for Motorcycle. After two laps of the garden they let me loose in Kampala city centre (see T for traffic). I can’t work out whether the admiring looks from passersby are because it’s a marginally less knackered machine than most of the ones you see on the road, or whether it’s just the novelty of seeing a Mzungu on a bike.

N is for Not really knowing what’s going on – a direct result of ‘L’.

O is for Online, something it is very hard to be in Uganda.

P is for Passionfruit juice, freshly squeezed every day and every bit as good as it looks.

Q is for Questionable advertising, which has to been seen / heard to be fully appreciated.

R is for Rain. When I first arrived I wondered why none of the buildings had guttering. I now realise, one rainstorm later, that no guttering system in the world could deal with such a volume of water.

S is for Silent but deadly, an accurate description of Uganda’s mosquitoes. They quietly suck your blood, leaving no inflammation, no itch, just malaria.

T is for Traffic. I got stuck in total gridlock on three separate occasions in the city centre, and in the end followed all the other motorcyclists and boda-bodas onto the pavement to get round it.

U is for Uphill, the direction I had to push a minibus last night to get it started. This was done in a very African way with lots of shouting but sadly proved ineffective.

V is for Very hot, which it isn’t, really.

W is for Who turned out the lights? You don’t notice it getting dark – it just suddenly is.

X is for X-girlfriends – specifically my predecessor’s trying to get in touch with him. Cf. A is for awkward.

Y is for You don’t need to be white to be a Mzungu. This transpired as I dropped a black volunteer at the airport the other day. Despite being half Ugandan, he was fooling nobody.

Z is for Zeros, which sums of money in Ugandan Shilllings contain a lot of.

Friendometer

I’ve lost count already.

Close Encounters of the African Kind

I’ll certainly have plenty of these if I’m not careful with the 250cc of Honda-powered fun available at the flick of a wrist.

Office Hours

A far later (and kinder) start than in teaching. The guys in the office are highly enthusiastic and switched on, and will be great to work with. This week I’ve mainly been designing recruitment advertising and making a Ganntt chart, whatever one of them is.

And finally… Competition Time!

The winner last time was the supposedly dyslexic Julia Kilner, who spotted that Lamas have only one L in their name (my second lama-related mistake in one lifetime!). This was pretty good going from my point of view since I didn’t even think I’d put a mistake in the first entry.