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.