Sadly, to travel out of Kampala my beloved boda bodas are not the best mode of transport (even I have my limits!) I've wanted to see the botanical gardens of Entebbe, Entebbe being the former administrative capital of Uganda until the 1960s, an hour's journey towards Lake Victoria. The botanical gardens were reportedly where an early Tarzan movie was shot and I've heard great things about the place.
In order to catch a matatu (taxi-bus) you must go to the 'Old Taxi Park' in the centre of Kampala. This place is totally Crazy! http://www.pbase.com/bmcmorrow/image/63363780 (thanks Brian McMorrow whoever you are). A heaving hell hole where matatus are rammed in together back to back, side by side, all waiting to go somewhere... how on earth they emerge in any order I have no idea, but emerge they do. People mass through the park, carrying and trying to sell their wares, find out where you are going, get money out of you. A kindly man took it upon himself to lead me over to the far corner of the park where the Entebbe bus was parked and proceeded to get disgruntled when I wouldn't pay him for his unrequested or required service. I was bundled into the last available seat on the bus and off we went... well, to join the static traffic jam which leads out of the taxi park. The only mzungu on the matatu – fairly conspicuous really, but it doesn't bother me any more. I take the stares, respond to them politely with smiles and get back to trying to blend in.
The botanical gardens are lush and tropical. Soaring palms, towering bamboo, long draping vines, vibrant blushing bourgainvillea – cheeky chatty monkeys flying through the treetops, what looked like a small dinosaur / crocodile crossing my path a couple of times, and the gardens sweeping down to the shore of Lake Victoria. A tranquil haven away from the taxi park's antithesis of tranquillity.
Another gem is Kampala's Baha'i Temple where we went for yesterday's Sunday morning service. I was initially drawn to this place for its green space in a city which has a significant lack of such areas. Perched on top of a hill, the temple is striking; a beautiful monument showing its graceful head above the ragged rush of everyday life. The Baha'i Faith propounds the spiritual unity of mankind – different religions are seen to pose no barriers to the oneness of life and God. The temple welcomes people from all faiths, symbolised by the 8 doors around its circular structure which are open throughout the service, onto views over the city through the calm of the surrounding gardens. It is really special.
Equally special was being listed all the merits of marrying a Ugandan man on my boda ride home, after revealing my unmarried status (have I learnt nothing?!) I did manage to get away this time, but these guys can be pretty persuasive, who knows what could happen in the next 3 weeks.....
Sunday 28 November 2010
Tuesday 23 November 2010
So, why & so what?
Nearing the midway point of my time in Uganda it is shameful not to have mentioned the main purpose of my trip, the work I am doing. For as well as having a blast careering around town on motorbikes, camping out in the wilderness, learning to salsa and so on, I am also being put to work at a very special place. Childs i Foundation is a charity which was set up to deal with the significant problem of child abandonment in Kampala. In the absence of a welfare state desperate parents abandon their babies at an alarming rate, especially if the child has a disability.
The Childs i social workers receive calls from police stations and hospitals to inform them when a 0-2 year old has been abandoned and the charity takes the child into its 'Malaika babies home'. This is a building with capacity for 25 babies at any one time and it is currently full. The children are first and foremost nursed back to good health as far as possible and the social workers work to establish whether the child can return to its parents or extended family, or if not they will search for an adoptive Ugandan family. The home aims to resettle the children in a family within 6 months of being taken in. Across town is Malaika House, where mothers go with their babies to work together with the social workers and vocational trainers to get themselves on a sound footing in order to avoid reaching the point hit by the mothers of the 25 at the babies home. Thus the 2 strands of care and prevention are addressed.
The organisation was set up a couple of years ago by Lucy Buck, a young British woman, who had spent a lot of time working with this issue in Uganda and was compelled to try her own approach. What she has done in a few years is remarkable.
My role out here has been to implement a structured 'Learning by Play' programme at the babies home and work alongside the carers to get it embedded into a daily routine. We have set up a schedule so that at certain times throughout the day the babies of different age groups are brought together for focused sessions of educational play. We're doing pretty well with it I think! Circle Time now has a good turn out as the word has got out among the ranks of the 1 year olds, and the afternoon 'messy play' sessions for the 2 year olds is getting oversubscribed as they push their way towards the nursery area for finger painting or play dough! (There are actually only 4 who fit this age group, but the crowds at the baby barrier grows by the day....). I am enjoying getting back in touch with the old 'Wheels on the Bus', 'Row row row your boat', 'If you're happy and you know it', and of course the classic 'Head, shoulders, knees and toes' routines – good training for entertaining my hordes of potential offspring in years to come!
Not having spent any real time with babies since my lovely big bear of a brother was a tiny sprog 20 years ago, this has all been very new for me, but it is a real pleasure and is coming pretty naturally I think. (If the charity considered international adoption for the babies, I think I'd be in real danger of bringing gorgeous prima donna Cissy home with me! Luckily though, she will be going back to her Dad before long, so it'll be just me getting off the plane this time).
The charity does really excellent work and is in continuous need of extra funding in order to maintain what it does and to extend to areas where it has potential to make real changes to the lives of those it seeks to help, to effect change in government policy and influence local and national practice, so very needed in this country. Take a look around their website if interested http://www.childsifoundation.org/ and if you are looking for a good cause to help http://www.childsifoundation.org/give/ they and so many others would welcome & appreciate it hugely :)
The Childs i social workers receive calls from police stations and hospitals to inform them when a 0-2 year old has been abandoned and the charity takes the child into its 'Malaika babies home'. This is a building with capacity for 25 babies at any one time and it is currently full. The children are first and foremost nursed back to good health as far as possible and the social workers work to establish whether the child can return to its parents or extended family, or if not they will search for an adoptive Ugandan family. The home aims to resettle the children in a family within 6 months of being taken in. Across town is Malaika House, where mothers go with their babies to work together with the social workers and vocational trainers to get themselves on a sound footing in order to avoid reaching the point hit by the mothers of the 25 at the babies home. Thus the 2 strands of care and prevention are addressed.
The organisation was set up a couple of years ago by Lucy Buck, a young British woman, who had spent a lot of time working with this issue in Uganda and was compelled to try her own approach. What she has done in a few years is remarkable.
My role out here has been to implement a structured 'Learning by Play' programme at the babies home and work alongside the carers to get it embedded into a daily routine. We have set up a schedule so that at certain times throughout the day the babies of different age groups are brought together for focused sessions of educational play. We're doing pretty well with it I think! Circle Time now has a good turn out as the word has got out among the ranks of the 1 year olds, and the afternoon 'messy play' sessions for the 2 year olds is getting oversubscribed as they push their way towards the nursery area for finger painting or play dough! (There are actually only 4 who fit this age group, but the crowds at the baby barrier grows by the day....). I am enjoying getting back in touch with the old 'Wheels on the Bus', 'Row row row your boat', 'If you're happy and you know it', and of course the classic 'Head, shoulders, knees and toes' routines – good training for entertaining my hordes of potential offspring in years to come!
Not having spent any real time with babies since my lovely big bear of a brother was a tiny sprog 20 years ago, this has all been very new for me, but it is a real pleasure and is coming pretty naturally I think. (If the charity considered international adoption for the babies, I think I'd be in real danger of bringing gorgeous prima donna Cissy home with me! Luckily though, she will be going back to her Dad before long, so it'll be just me getting off the plane this time).
The charity does really excellent work and is in continuous need of extra funding in order to maintain what it does and to extend to areas where it has potential to make real changes to the lives of those it seeks to help, to effect change in government policy and influence local and national practice, so very needed in this country. Take a look around their website if interested http://www.childsifoundation.org/ and if you are looking for a good cause to help http://www.childsifoundation.org/give/ they and so many others would welcome & appreciate it hugely :)
Monday 22 November 2010
Home from home
I've already found 2 similarities between Uganda & my beloved Fowey :)
- The car ferry which took us across the Nile en route to safari (although this one was a tad rustier & surrounded by many more hippos),
- The brass band at dusk up in the grounds at Namirembe Cathedral overlooking the whole of Kampala playing THE FLORAL DANCE!!! Wow, that made me smile! I almost broke out into the old routine, ha ha.
2 of the differences:
- Coffins being transported via boda boda (horizontally, across the back. Dear God, I hope it was empty...)
- Bus windscreens being transported via boda boda (vertically, in the grip of an audacious / foolhardy passenger perched behind the driver).
& there are many more on the 2nd list!
Saturday 20 November 2010
Safari!
My first ever...
We drove in our trusty matatu all the way from Kampala on Wednesday morning up to Murchison Falls National Park towards the north-west. It felt good to leave the noise and congestion behind and head out on the long open road; green tropical vistas as far as the eye could see. 3 of us from Childs i, a German girl, a Norwegian/British couple and a Thai woman. Driven by silent Ibrahim. The lunch stop in Masindi left much to be desired - I have yet to experience any tasty Ugandan bread, although I have been assured it can be found (not convinced). By mid-afternoon we had reached the national park, and started to see monkeys and baboons around the road. Poor Mary became victim to the dreaded tse tse fly and spent the rest of the trip with a hugely swollen/closed eye.
The camp was a stone's throw from the Nile (the Victoria branch) and thus the stamping ground of lots of hippos! We were told on arrival by our Cornish host not to be alarmed by grunting noises around the tents overnight – it would just be the hippos doing their nocturnal rounds (they particularly enjoy the long grass which grows right next to the tent ... which of course put our minds at ease). No midnight loo stops became the aim of the game. & those oh so friendly warthogs – munching away all over the camp in true Lion King style. The huge marabou storks which dot the skyline perched on top of the tallest trees seem mythical creatures to me – primitive and scavenging they have been described as the 'undertaker bird' and they really do have an ominous, eerie air about them. They swoop from one tree top to the next, enormous wings moving slowly up and down – not dissimilar to a pterodactyl I like to think!
The game drive the next morning was eventful, in a variety of ways. Beginning with a ferry ride across the Nile, we then drove across open savannah for about 5 hours – enormous elephants, herds of buffalo, different types of antelope, graceful lumbering giraffes in their hordes moving steadily across our path, hippos wallowing in pools and 2 MAGNIFICENT MALE LIONS slumbering away in a bushy hideaway 3 feet away from us, wow!
Our luck in the number of animals we saw redeemed the experience for us as we had also had severe trouble with the tracks and the totally unprepared matatu; torrential rains overnight had left the tracks broken and awash with rivers of mud – we had to clamber out repeatedly and walk for a while while Ibrahim forced the vehicle through the obstacle course of holes and gulleys, looking over our shoulders for those pesky lions, while George the guide enjoyed shrieking at the top of his voice for them to come on over and join us. His humour wasn't fully appreciated at that point. We then proceeded to get completely stuck for about an hour and a half until finally a land cruiser came to our rescue – only to get stuck itself! All part of the adventure... and what you get for taking the budget option!
Our view of Murchison Falls itself the next day was breathtaking. Surging, powerful, a truly awesome sight. The perfectly formed rainbow completed the picture.
We drove in our trusty matatu all the way from Kampala on Wednesday morning up to Murchison Falls National Park towards the north-west. It felt good to leave the noise and congestion behind and head out on the long open road; green tropical vistas as far as the eye could see. 3 of us from Childs i, a German girl, a Norwegian/British couple and a Thai woman. Driven by silent Ibrahim. The lunch stop in Masindi left much to be desired - I have yet to experience any tasty Ugandan bread, although I have been assured it can be found (not convinced). By mid-afternoon we had reached the national park, and started to see monkeys and baboons around the road. Poor Mary became victim to the dreaded tse tse fly and spent the rest of the trip with a hugely swollen/closed eye.
The camp was a stone's throw from the Nile (the Victoria branch) and thus the stamping ground of lots of hippos! We were told on arrival by our Cornish host not to be alarmed by grunting noises around the tents overnight – it would just be the hippos doing their nocturnal rounds (they particularly enjoy the long grass which grows right next to the tent ... which of course put our minds at ease). No midnight loo stops became the aim of the game. & those oh so friendly warthogs – munching away all over the camp in true Lion King style. The huge marabou storks which dot the skyline perched on top of the tallest trees seem mythical creatures to me – primitive and scavenging they have been described as the 'undertaker bird' and they really do have an ominous, eerie air about them. They swoop from one tree top to the next, enormous wings moving slowly up and down – not dissimilar to a pterodactyl I like to think!
The game drive the next morning was eventful, in a variety of ways. Beginning with a ferry ride across the Nile, we then drove across open savannah for about 5 hours – enormous elephants, herds of buffalo, different types of antelope, graceful lumbering giraffes in their hordes moving steadily across our path, hippos wallowing in pools and 2 MAGNIFICENT MALE LIONS slumbering away in a bushy hideaway 3 feet away from us, wow!
Our luck in the number of animals we saw redeemed the experience for us as we had also had severe trouble with the tracks and the totally unprepared matatu; torrential rains overnight had left the tracks broken and awash with rivers of mud – we had to clamber out repeatedly and walk for a while while Ibrahim forced the vehicle through the obstacle course of holes and gulleys, looking over our shoulders for those pesky lions, while George the guide enjoyed shrieking at the top of his voice for them to come on over and join us. His humour wasn't fully appreciated at that point. We then proceeded to get completely stuck for about an hour and a half until finally a land cruiser came to our rescue – only to get stuck itself! All part of the adventure... and what you get for taking the budget option!
Our view of Murchison Falls itself the next day was breathtaking. Surging, powerful, a truly awesome sight. The perfectly formed rainbow completed the picture.
Monday 15 November 2010
The little things...
Which I love, like:
The Sedena Gardens hotel eloquently advertising itself on its sign as "a suitable environment for habitation."
The 'matatu' (local bus-taxis) displaying signs across their windscreens such as the various: 'Happy Boyz Bus', 'God's Property', 'Jesus is Lord' followed directly in line of course by 'Allahu Akbar'.
The reassuring 'no weapons please' signs outside so many public places i.e. my local swimming pool.
The vigilant “is everything good in here?” or “do you have a bomb in there?” asked casually by car park attendants without even a peek through the window to check you are trustworthy, in their recent security drive following the bombings earlier in the year.
& I was particularly honoured to be offered a local woman's son for marriage. She did not think the fact that I would be returning to England would pose a problem as we could keep in touch via email & he could then come to visit to gain my parents' approval. Well, if all else fails....
The Sedena Gardens hotel eloquently advertising itself on its sign as "a suitable environment for habitation."
The 'matatu' (local bus-taxis) displaying signs across their windscreens such as the various: 'Happy Boyz Bus', 'God's Property', 'Jesus is Lord' followed directly in line of course by 'Allahu Akbar'.
The reassuring 'no weapons please' signs outside so many public places i.e. my local swimming pool.
The vigilant “is everything good in here?” or “do you have a bomb in there?” asked casually by car park attendants without even a peek through the window to check you are trustworthy, in their recent security drive following the bombings earlier in the year.
& I was particularly honoured to be offered a local woman's son for marriage. She did not think the fact that I would be returning to England would pose a problem as we could keep in touch via email & he could then come to visit to gain my parents' approval. Well, if all else fails....
Sunday 14 November 2010
Kampala calling...
So, here I am in Kampala, Uganda, in the middle of a wild rainstorm! I have never heard anything like it - the loudest, most savage pelts of thunder followed by slicing lightening. The water surges in rivers down the muddy roads - all locals flee for shelter. Sensible. I have no such patience & plough on through; I'm fairly used to my fair share of rainfall on Dartmoor after all! Alas, this is no westcountry drizzle. Within seconds I am soaked through. Shrieks of laughter at the silly 'Mzungu' (whitey) from all sides. Arms folded tightly across chest, head down, homeward bound. & it's hilariously funny! As is my new favourite way of getting from A to B... the boda boda, a motorbike 'taxi'. Having just purchased my very own helmet I now feel like an authentic gung ho Kampalan as I zip my way through the streets tucked in behind one or other of the zillion boda drivers which clamour for your attention at every corner (although I don't have two children and a chicken clinging on to me and I implore my drivers to “mpolampola", go slowly, which is perhaps not the style of your average passenger here). It is by far the quickest, easiest and cheapest way to get around and is exhilarating... but of course is probably not the safest. My drivers so far have all been very good at going slowly and carefully, so don't worry Mum I am being cautious!
And what of Kampala itself? It is a city of hills, hurry, noise, dust, laxity, fervour and fever. A cauldron of bustle and bedlam. Without order, rule or system, so it seems. Roads for ravaging, potholes for dodging, careering boda bodas to circumnavigate. From abjection to luxury in a leap; from a shack to the Sheraton. The city fizzes with vibrancy - just as it languors in lethargy.
Hightailing it from a history of horror, through energy and enterprise. No need for finesse, it is blatant and blunt; it thrusts, brazen and brutish and bawdy and bold. It has a rhythm which resounds in the beat of the streets, in the night chorus which never sleeps, in music blasting, people singing, dogs barking, cockerels crowing. Reluctant to let you rest, it is alive and won't let you forget it!
And what of Kampala itself? It is a city of hills, hurry, noise, dust, laxity, fervour and fever. A cauldron of bustle and bedlam. Without order, rule or system, so it seems. Roads for ravaging, potholes for dodging, careering boda bodas to circumnavigate. From abjection to luxury in a leap; from a shack to the Sheraton. The city fizzes with vibrancy - just as it languors in lethargy.
Hightailing it from a history of horror, through energy and enterprise. No need for finesse, it is blatant and blunt; it thrusts, brazen and brutish and bawdy and bold. It has a rhythm which resounds in the beat of the streets, in the night chorus which never sleeps, in music blasting, people singing, dogs barking, cockerels crowing. Reluctant to let you rest, it is alive and won't let you forget it!
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