Royal Ascot 2011

In short: hats, pink champagne with strawberries, goats and muddy shoes. A good time was had by all!

It's a small world after all

It's a small world that I live in, here in Kampala. Stay here a while and you will find it virtually impossible to go anywhere without running into a familiar face.

It's a funny little world too, full of huge contrasts and diversity. Take yesterday for example. In the morning, I was cycling through the villages on the outskirts of the city, past children playing with tyres, frozen in time. Refreshment stops were outside a small shop, where they brushed the dust off the ice cold coke with a grimy cloth.

By the evening, I was dressed in my gladrags at a fancy hotel by Lake Victoria, for a function promising to celebrate the diversity of food and cultures across the world. Or, as we were told, 'it's like your school  International Day, only with wine on the tables and a bar - right up your street!'. We were promised a table with four single men ... only what we actually got was a table with three very dignified Ugandan ladies who demurely sipped Splash juice. Maybe the single men saw the sign that they were seated on a table with the International School teachers and ran a mile in the opposite direction ... who knows?

The evening was fun; full of good food laughter and dancing. The event was attended by people from all over the world, some proudly donning their saris and lederhosen. By the end of the night one thing was clear: it doesn't matter whether you're from Brussels, Birmingham or Bombay - after a few glasses of vino, everybody looks daft when they dance to cheesy 70s and 80s music!

It's a small world after all! 

Or what you will ...

Last night I went to see a KADS performance of 'Twelfth Night'. I had only been expecting drama in the theatre, but it seems I was in for a little extra en-route. Just as I was driving up the lane where I live, a car was leaving the little garage. Nothing unusual in that. I carried on driving along, then I noticed it was reversing. I stopped with a good distance between me and him and then expected him to stop. Except he didn't. He continued to reverse until something would stop him; that something being my car! I don't think I would be a good person to have around in an emergency as I just froze like a rabbit in headlights. I got out of the car to see what he would say. He pointed to the bar with the fog lights in front of my car and said:

But madam, this is here to protect you when something hits you!

I explained that while it may indeed protect me in an emergency, my car is not a bumper car and that I would like it to be taken car of. Whilst in the middle of this debate, a traffic policeman, in his full white regalia, emerged from the same garage. I relayed the story to him and he laughed at me. By this point, several passers by were also laughing raucously. I suggested that the driver should be charged for driving without due care and attention and he said:

But madam, this is here to protect you when something hits you!

Clearly I was not going to get anywhere with this situation, even though I am sure that if I had made the same error I would have been presented with a hefty fine. I drove off with a slightly shaky right leg.


As for play, the local am dram group is most famous for the annual pantomime, and this wasn't far off it! The groundlings didn't quite heckle, but if they did, they would have shouted 'you're in the wrong play' when Antonio appeared as a perfect double of Jack Sparrow! Our thespian doctor played the permanently inebriated rascal Sir Toby Belch a little too well. Malvolio was suitably malevolent and Olivia got more and more flirtatious and French as the play went on.

I had gone in with the attitude that Shakespeare played by amateurs could be dreadful, so I was pleasantly surprised. I do think it was a wise choice to stick with a comedy. What a shame the venue was the stuffy old National Theatre though - it would have been lovely to watch the play outdoors with a pic-nic and a glass of wine!

Just an average week in Kampala

Another week of the ups and downs of life in Kampala!

The week started on a serious down as a serious downer as I was struck down by the lurgy. On Monday morning I wasn't feeling quite myself. By the time I had delivered a mental maths test literally doubled over with stomach cramps I decided it was time to give in and go home. The rest of the day was lost in sleep and unpleasantries I won't explain in detail! On the upside, I have discovered there is a female doctor at the surgery who just gets on with it and treats you, without any inquisitions or inappropriate sarcastic comments - what a delight! Also, a friend explained to me how you are actually supposed to collect the samples. How was I supposed to know? Nobody ever talks about it - I am enlightened!

On Tuesday I started to recover and lost myself in a world of books and movies. I found 'Made in Dagenham' on my shelf (I must have subconsciously wanted a visit down memory lane the day I bought that one - maybe to remind myself how fortunate I am to live in the salubrious neighbourhood of Bukoto!?!) For those of you who don't know, I started my teaching career there. I can't say I look back on that time with rose tinted glasses. Sure, it's near enough to London, as long as you don't mind a ten minute bus ride to the 'eafway (Dagenham Heathway Underground station if you don't speak Dagenhamese), followed by an hour long ride through over twenty stations on the dilapidated District Line. And if you couldn't face the epic journey into town, then you could always entertain yourself by watching cars burning on the Safeway Car Park. The borough kindly provided us with affordable 'key worker' accommodation - a converted car park nestled between two tower blocks. I have never felt like more of a foreigner or outsider - when I went into shops and spoke in my dulcet northern tones, I was regarded with stranger looks than a muzungu in a remote Ugandan village. Anyway I digress ... back to the movie. I had no idea that the women of Dagenham were so instrumental in bringing about the Equal Pay for women act. I enjoyed watching these brave women fight for what was right and am not surprised that the feisty women of this area managed such a feat!

By Wednesday I was well on the road to recovery and enjoyed celebrating a friend's birthday at a Mexican restaurant. I ordered sangria and it came in a vase. She was also served a very special cake - it's amazing what can be done with a bit of icing these days!

Back in school, I have been surprised by how innocent my Year Sixes are. I'm not sure whether it's the cultural differences or whether they just have a different vocabulary, but they have certainly not giggled at the same things I did when I was eleven. At the start of the year, I read aloud from 'Godnight Mister Tom' and there was barely a snigger at the mention of poor little Willie. Yesterday, I was teaching the kids about Blogs and had to spell out the pun of Blogroll - a gag that most English eleven year olds would get in a second. We have been using calculators in maths for sometime now and the kids have been experimenting with spelling out the usual words - hello, shell, oil and so forth. I don't think my student was expecting to be congratulated when I spotted he had 58008 displayed on his screen. I said it was fine as long as he could write me a 3 step problem leading to that answer!

Fast forward to the weekend please!

Oh my - someone's in for a happy birthday!

Oh dear - have just noticed my vase of sangria is chipped!

The luck of the Irish!

A friend who has now left Kampala coined the phrase FOMO - this stands for Fear Of Missing Out. It affects most of us from time to time and I had my dose this weekend. I had decided that I definitely was not going to go to the Paddy's night celebrations in the Irish pub on account that last time I didn't drink any of the free Guinness and when I asked for a vegetarian alternative to the Irish Stew I was told I should just have extra potatoes! In fairness, that's a pretty authentic Irish vegetarian meal, except there would probably have been a wider range of potato products on offer on the emerald isle! Besides the food issue, I was also determined not to ruin all my triathlon training with a late night.

So I definitely wasn't going to go. Nobody could twist my rubber arm ... until we went to the Ireland V England sports afternoon. This is an annual tournament where they play football, rugby and Gaelic football. Still dressed in our England t-shirts from International Day, a few of us went along to support the home team. Ireland were well kitted out (my favourite slogan being 'Well oil beef hooked') and had a massive group of supporters. The England team was a total shower, with a team of any old random muzungus and a six year old and no kit whatsoever. Pretty pathetic really. I think we won the football but lost the rugby and Gaelic football, but to be honest I was just enjoying a Friday afternoon beer and forgot to keep track of the scores.

By the time we were leaving the game, I was feeling seriously sorry for myself and my impending night of self-imposed solitary confinement. Everyone was going and even the kids in school thought I was a bit sad for not going along. I never believe that anything in Kampala really sells out. But this had, and the fact that there were no more tickets left made it seem even better.

An hour or two later, I was just settling down to Glee when a friend called to tell me she had a ticket. 20 minutes later, I was dressed in a sparkly green top and ready to go.

The band had been flown in from Ireland and the fiddler used to play with The Waterboys. Their most famous song 'The whole of the moon' was very appropriate for the night, as the supersized moon we are experiencing right now cast a warm pinkish glow on everything around and tinged the night sky dark purple. A friend was totally star-struck and told me it was the first dance at her wedding - as opposed to my school-days memory of the boys singing the song on school trips whilst pulling moonies out of a coach window! The Irish pub was a sea of green and a few brave souls led the dancing. By the second half, the Kampala crowd was doing a great Riverdance impression. There was so much leg kicking and skipping around that I would consider the evening a full cardio work-out!

Last night was the St Patrick's day ball and the tickets sold out weeks ago. I was ready for a quiet night when I found 6 missed calls and a text saying 'call me urgently'.  I called my friend immediately, envisioning that she had been knocked down by a runaway matatu or was lying in a hospital bed with some unknown and incurable tropical disease. The emergency was that I had a ticket and had roughly half an hour to get dressed and get to the hotel downtown!

More dancing, drinking and silliness ensued for the rest of the evening. Tables were danced on and the red carpet came in use for an Ireland V the rest of the world tug of war competition. I believe I missed the crowd surfing! I even got to wear my favourite sparkly stilettos too - they don't get much action in Kampala!

Tomorrow it's back to the triathlon training ... starting with a running hash from the Irish pub with beer stops along the way - erm what am I doing?

Shhhhhh - it's a silent disco!

This weekend, I attended my first ever silent disco. I have to say I was a little dubious. The idea of dancing in a room with headphones on seemed a little strange. We went for pre-disco cocktails in the bar next door and wondered how we could tell whether the event had actually started ...
When we arrived, we were issued with a set of headphones and told that we could choose between House and chart music on station A and R & B on station B. We quickly invented hand signals to show which station we were listening to. It was easy to guess what people were listening to just from looking at their dance moves - so while we were waving our hands in the air to dance tunes, others were bumping and grinding to R & B music! The djs seemed to be having a great time, watching to see who was listening to their station and competing to see who could get the most listeners. I feel very sorry for the bar staff, who had to listen to people singing along to the music, as not even the best singers sing in tune when they have headphones on and can't actually hear their own voices!
I actually think that silent discos should be encouraged in Uganda. I could start with marketing the idea to the nightclub behind my apartment block that is currently blasting out music on a Sunday night, when I am trying to get an early night!

Freshly disappointed

There I was, all excited about getting into the Cape Town vibe at the 'Freshly Ground' concert on Saturday, when I hear news that they have cancelled due to some disagreement over the contracts. Disappointed does not even start to describe it! Good music concerts are such a rarity here that I would probably go and see 'Chas n Dave' if they said they were playing Kampala! That being said, I did give the riotous R-Kelly concert a wide berth last year.

Instead I will have to content myself with the Am-Dram group's pantomime - 'Shrekerella'. Penned and directed by an Austrian and starring a range of nationalities from German to American, it promises to be interesting at the very least! I will have to prep my Ukrainian friend in the rituals of pantomime beforehand I think, especially as Thursdays reputedly attract the most raucous Old Kampala ex-pat crowd.

So come on 'Freshly Ground' please change your minds and come and play afterall. Kampala needs you!

A night in the House

After a hectic week in school, I'm having a quiet night in with Dr Gregory House. If you're not familiar with this series, then a typical episode goes something like this: the featured patient will be going about their business, playing tennis, mowing the lawn, having dinner in a restaurant or whatever seeming perfectly healthy, the next moment, they collapse clasping their chest, or their hands will swell to three times their normal size,  or they turn blue or blood pours out of some orifice or other. Somebody then yells 'Call 911'. Cue title music. Throughout the course of the episode, House and his team will treat the patient for several bogus diseases, the patient will experience major organ failure, then at the last moment, some essential medical evidence will come to light and the patient will recover within a few minutes. 
I am slightly addicted, as I enjoy the dark humour and Hugh Laurie's sarcastic tones, but every now and again I have to stop watching as I start to fear that I am at risk of some strange disease.
House will often send his lackeys off to the patient's home to search for traces of fungus, dust, vermin or parasites that may have affected them. He always asks if they have travelled abroad, so a passport jam - packed with African visas would send the diagnostic team at Princeton-Plainsboro into a frenzy. I regularly find cockroaches and mouse droppings in my cupboards at school and sweep them into the bin with barely a shudder anymore. What does make me shudder though, is the thought of what their little feet have run through on the streets of Bukoto. In my time here, I've taken pills designed for horses to rid my body of bilharzia and have had my body invaded by various amoebas and bacterias.   I inhale lungfuls of dust on my bike rides and have leaped over open sewers on the hash. I expect myself to be fully immune to every infection on earth by the time I leave here!
Touch wood, though, I'm in fine fettle at the moment ... but should I turn a funny shade of purple, please call for medical assistance!

A rolex is chapatti, eggs, cabbage, onion, tomato and who knows what added extras!

The Pictures - Kampala Style

A trip to the cinema in Kampala is a guaranteed spot of entertainment – often not so much for the films, which are your general Hollywood twaddle, but more for the audience and the general experience. I know I shouldn’t complain as we are lucky to have a 4 screen cinema in a city right in the middle of Africa, and as my friend pointed out, popcorn is one of the few foods that Ugandans prepare particularly well – the other delicacy being Spanish omelettes! Even though the sound crackles and the screen flickers, it is still more up to date than the Odeon in Lancaster that I used to frequent in my student days, where you would often hear shouts of ‘two fat ladies – 88’ from the adjoining bingo hall! It is not without its quirks though. In the past, I have experienced power cuts and once I realised that the rather large blob that kept moving across the screen was infact a giant rat! The pre-movie adverts are like relics from the 1970s, with a hand-held camcorder and cheesy slogans promoting the latest newly built ‘executive homes’ (the word executive is used synonymously with luxurious here in Uganda – I’m not quite sure what an ‘executive’ bridal suite should offer – perhaps a free Filofax and oversized basic cell phone to truly embrace the spirit of the 80s?) which are just a ten minute drive from the centre of town … by Tardis I should imagine!


I had quite fancied seeing ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ as I was in quite a tetchy mood and I thought that the process of muttering and chunnering abuse at the infinitely irritating main character played by the even more aggravating Julia Roberts would be quite cathartic. Clearly this would not be such a lovely experience for anybody else, so instead we opted to see ‘Takers’ – some kind of cops and robbers film. Within minutes, the Ugandan members of the audience were splitting their sides with laughter. Now I have heard Ugandan audiences laugh uproariously at pathetic rom-coms that barely raise a smile from me, but this was meant to be full of suspense. The only point that made me laugh was that one guy was trying to sound like an East End gangster and failing miserably. When there was a slightly tense moment in the film, the lady next to me virtually leapt onto her partner’s lap. Meanwhile, I was unsuccessfully trying to stop myself from dropping off to sleep. I snapped awake as the closing credits rolled and wondered what it was all about!

Trivial Pursuits

The pub quiz is something of an institution in Kampala town. Once a fortnight (that's every two weeks if you're from North America) a selection of Kampala's finest long term residents and short term volunteers, who are taking a break from saving the world, gather to put their trivia knowledge to the test. The prize for winning such a contest is the honour of setting the next quiz and if you tie in a round there is the notorious 'drink-off'' where you are forced to down a pint or knock back a noxious and cheap spirit. The winners are generally the team with the most Blackberries and fastest Internet connections. The quiz master is typically the member of the team with the least grasp of the English language, the female with the shriekiest voice or the American with the most drawling accent. The questions range from the sublime to the ridiculous. Tonight was no exception. Since we were unable to name any famous field hockey players from the Netherlands (I was told that writing down the name of a former colleague didn't count), nor did we know the name of the leader of the Ugandan sports press leader, we decided to quit while we were behind and made an early exit. We started to compose a few questions of our own, in the unlikely event that we should ever get the opportunity to host the quiz. Here are a few of our questions, deliberately chosen for their obscurity and their irrelevance to anybody else's lives:

1. Sports round - How many runs did South Shore cricket team score in 1982 throughout the course of the year?
2. Food and drink - What is the most popular dessert on a Hungarian menu?
3. Commerce - In which Bogota shopping centre did the first branch of Zara clothing shop open?
4. Education - What was the name of my maths teacher when I was in Year 9?
5. Music - Sing the third verse of the Ugandan National Anthem, then translate into Luganda

Seriously, I know that people need an excuse to go to the pub on a Thursday night, but this is painful. Rain check for another six months!

My Road

Bukoto Market Road

If you step out of my house, you arrive at Bukoto Market Road. At first glance, there is nothing particularly unique about this road – it is the usual dusty, many potholed road that you find all over Uganda. However, having lived here for some time, I started thinking that this street can provide you with pretty much every service you could possibly need, it just isn’t that obvious to the untrained eye.

One of the first things you notice is the market itself. The stalls are filled with an abundance of tropical fruits and vegetable that people pay a small fortune for in Waitrose, from ripe and delicious avocados to sweet and juicy pineapple or bundles of green bananas known as matooke. There are small cages filled with squashed looking hens to provide eggs laid right there on site, fresh tilapia fish from Lake Victoria and butchers selling every last part of the animals for meat (to be honest, I try to avoid even looking at the butcher’s – it is quite gruesome to a veggie like myself and gives off a horrendous stench due to the lack of refrigeration).

As far as entertainment is concerned, you can drop into any one of the dozens of local bars along the road. I can walk to at least 5 within a couple of minutes. My favourite is the Beer Garden, which has shady areas for an afternoon tipple and some decidedly scary statues inside that can take you by surprise after a few Tuskers! More recently, The Upper Ends Terrace has opened up only a few footsteps from my house, and the waitress has been well trained in the art of chopping off the head when I order fish and chips. In November and December, local vendors drop by offering fried grasshoppers – a local delicacy. Should you wish to continue into the wee small hours, you simply walk next door to the nightclub, which blasts out R & B music most evenings. If premiership football is your thing, then there are countless small bars with Ugandans gathered around small televisions or big screens of their favourite English teams. If you get the munchies later on, then you can pick up samosas, a chapattis on the corner and of course the famous the famous Rolexes. To the uninitiated, a Rolex is not an expensive watch, but some fried eggs rolled into a chapatti with some chopped onions, cabbage and tomatoes and fried on a pan over charcoal. Kampala’s very own version of the kebab shop!

After all this food, then a bit if exercise is surely in order. Running and cycling down this road is always a bit hazardous, due to the number of matatus, bodas and potholes, but there is also a gym above one of the small supermarkets. I tried out a few of the aerobics classes in the Sunrise gym and it wasn’t too bad, but obviously not on the same scale as the Kabira!

There are a number of local clinics, where the medical equipment and hygiene levels resemble something out of the dark ages. One of the shacks has a sign advertising counselling for rape victims and I also spotted a clinic offering HIV tests. In the UK, I understand that you are strongly advised to go through counselling before even taking an HIV test and even having being tested can have adverse effects on your health insurance and all kinds of things. Sadly, in Uganda, HIV rates are high, and not everyone has access to testing and treatment. I can’t imagine having to go through such a traumatic experience as that in such dismal conditions – and yet it happens on my doorstep every day.

Anything and everything can be fixed in Uganda. Nobody throws anything away unless it is absolutely done for, and even then, somebody would probably be willing to try and sell the parts for a few hundred Shillings. At the top end of the road, you can witness a total lack of regard for health and safety as you see a metal workshop, with sparks flying across the open street and the workers rarely wear any sort of protective clothing. Electricians tinker with appliances so ancient looking that you wonder whether they were originally powered by steam. Roadside mechanics can fix up your car at bargain basement prices if you’re willing to take a chance on their level of expertise and the quality of the parts. Numerous hardware stores are fully stocked with every type of not, bolt and screw and sell the widely advertised paint. Tailors use old fashioned Singer sewing machines to make and repair garments.

Bukoto Market Road can also take you by surprise. Who could guess, that in the midst of all this, are a couple of art galleries that sell paintings that go for hundreds of dollars? Just off the road, there is a studio where a collective of artists sell their work. Inside the galleries, the artists have depicted and interpreted Ugandan life for us, in vibrant colours and larger than life.

If you do decide to stray from this road, there are a number of public transport options available. If you’re feeling flush, you can take a private hire, which is better known to us as a taxi. For short journeys, boda bodas (motorbike taxis) provide a more economical option and are the perfect way of dodging through the busy Kampala traffic. If you want to use a helmet, you have to bring your own, but Ugandan ladies have no problem with riding through the streets side saddle. If you have time on your hands and don’t mind getting up close and personal with your fellow passengers, then you can take a matatu. These battered and crowded minibuses can take you to the furthest reaches of Kampala for about 10p. Again they are not known for their great safety record, as the drivers are somewhat kamikaze and fail to use their indicators. Don’t expect to see an organised timetable or route map though – if you wish to know where they go, you have to ascertain this information from the conductor, who yells the directions of the window in rapid Lugandan.
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If all of this has persuaded you to pay a visit, then you will be happy to hear that there is a hotel, so you can stay as long as you like. I don’t imagine the nightly rates are too high and you could probably secure a booking even in high season. I’m not sure I can vouch for the comfort levels and bathroom facilities – I haven’t been inside, but it does look pretty basic, but I am sure it would offer a very interesting experience!