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.