Liberation Day!

Today was Liberation Day in Uganda. A day to celebrate nearly 3 decades of ruling by M7 and the NRM party ...

Today I liberated:

• A few braincells as I had my last glass of white wine around midnight last night
• A couple of hundred thousand Ugandan Shillings from my wallet as I shelled out for a new phone. Last night, I came home to no light whatsoever so thought it would be a great idea to perch my phone on the sink as a light source. It was, until it dropped into the sink and appeared to die. I dismantled it and dried it out as best I could in the pitch darkness, but in the morning it still appeared to be dead. I invested in a new phone that can access maps, You Tube, Facebook, Internet and God knows what else, but have no idea how to make a call or send a text. Old phone now seems to have resurrected itself. Will dedicate time at the weekend to a spot of manual reading!
• At least a million calories on the roasting hot mid-afternoon bike ride
• A few tears as my eyes watered when I got suncream stuck in them
• Much orange dust that was washed down the plughole after the bike ride
• Most importantly, the beautiful bike ride with views overlooking Lake Victoria liberated me from all of the stress of the job fair weekend

Feels good to be liberated!

Teacher Idol ... The Job Fair!

Exciting news ... Ali's Adventures will soon be coming from a new location - Singapore!

I am currently in post job fair recovery, after an incredibly hectic and stressful weekend. I know I got to enjoy a few more bites of Cadbury's and caught up with a couple of friends, but this was no holiday.

For those of you who have never experienced a job fair, it is some kind of cross between a cattle market, speed dating and X-Factor auditions. At sign-up, armed with only a CV, you have approximately 2 minutes to wow the recruiters and convince them to give you an interview. I'm an old fashioned kind of girl - I thought a CV was the way to get you noticed. Clearly, it had never occurred to me to go to the extent of designing personalised chocolate bars, with my own logo and a brief resume on the wrapper. The sour aroma of BS still lingers ...In my view, there were far too many candidates and not enough positions. Being told that there was a 40-60% of walking away from the fair with a job made my heart simultaneously sink and panic.

Once the interviews start, it's an emotional roller-coaster.Painting on the smile for an interview after you've just had a rejection is NOT easy! I nearly went to the pub instead of the final interview, having convinced myself that all the jobs had been given away! What a good job I didn't!

So soon it will be farewell to potholes and power cuts and hello to more sunshine, shops and  Singapore life!

Are you bearing arms?

Today, my friends, I bring you another classic example of Ugandan tact and diplomacy.

This morning, as I pulled up to the supermarket car park for the obligatory glove box check (surely any would-be terrorists are not storing their bombs and firearms in the glove compartment anymore), I was greeted with a wide smile and the disturbing words ‘good morning, sir’.

“Sir?” said I. “I am not a sir, I am a madam!”

I paused, to give the guard the opportunity to retract his opening greeting. Perhaps to apologise and say he was distracted and didn’t really look at the driver of the oncoming car.

I wondered how I could possibly be mistaken for a ‘sir’, given that I was wearing a low cut, lilac top, positively feminine sunglasses and had my chin length bobbed hair down.

But no. This is Uganda, where the foot never strays far away from the mouth.

“Oh madam. I thought you were a sir because of your arms!”

I’ve always quite liked my arms. They are quite normal looking arms, spattered with a few freckles and of average size and length. They’re not particularly muscly, but then the bingo wings aren’t that bad either. Nor are they hairy or covered in sailor style tattoos.

For the sake of my sanity, I decided not to delve any deeper.

I told the ssebo I was not bearing any dangerous arms and drove off.

Cutting For Stone

This is my first post of 2012 - so if it's not too late to say so, Happy New Year! I decided to take a little holiday from blogging when I was on home shores, so I think my writing has got a little rusty.

Yesterday, we had our first book club of the new year to discuss 'Cutting for Stone' by Abraham Verghese. It was a feast for our bellies as well as our minds as we tucked into some Eritrean food, that was kindly prepared by one of the generous mums from my class. She explained what all the food was ... then I lost the bit of paper, so you'll just have to look at the pictures ...

According to the book:

The mark of a native is that your fingers are never stained by the curry; you use the injera as your tongs, as a barrier, while you pick up a piece of chicken or beef sopped in the sauce.

We ate like ferenjis!

Now I thought we had made an effort by organising to have some traditional food from the region. It would seem not though, when you compare to this website that I found when I googled some book club ideas. Most disturbing is the fact that this woman decided to recreate the amputated finger in a jar for her party. Some people have too much time on their hands!

For the record - I highly recommend the book (but won't give any more away now)!

Feeling Festive

I spent the last week in Kampala trying to be festive. Eggnog at Book Club on Monday, four Secret Santa games (yes four!!) at various parties, mince pies, Christmas carols and mulled wine, all in the hottest week since August. All of these activities conducted in floaty skirts and flip flops. Whatever you do, it's hard to understand that it's Christmas.
Now I'm home and have forgotten I have ever been warm. I'm wrapped up in fleeces and blankets, unable to tear myself away from the fire. But it does feel Christmassy. As I drove back from the airport this morning, I saw the blanket of snow covering the surrounding hills.  There were even 2 reindeer in town this morning! Since when do we get so much snow here? Must dash - it's time for a mince pie and a Baileys!

Flaming Rain

"It's just a little drizzle," said one of the Belgians as we set off for our Sunday bike ride around Flametree Stables, 20km or so out of Kampala.
Clearly, he was unfamiliar with the Peter Kay definition of drizzle of being 'that fine stuff that gets you wet'. This was no drizzle, but a continuous, all day downpour.
And with the rain, came mud, and lots of it. By the end of the ride, my wheels were completely blocked and I had to shovel great big chunks out with my hands. I was ready to abandon my bike altogether and give the village kids a very generous early Christmas present.
As usual, the planned 40kms turned into 48km as we had to divert along different routes.
In spite of the rain and cloud, Factor 30 and wearing a coat for most of the day, I still managed to get sun burnt ... how is that possible?
Here's a few pics from along the ride ...

An old friend ...

8 men + 2 women = too much mud for my liking ...

Swamp number 1

Mud enforced walking

Feathers!

Today I received a complaint from a parent about our production of Seussical the Musical. She thought it was unfair that the male teachers were given bottles of wine as a 'thank you' whilst the women got bunches of flowers. I couldn't agree more!

It's been the usual hectic rush of making props and scenery, organising costumes, programs and displays. For the past few days I've been coming home covered in glitter and feathers. Luckily, this year, the feathers in question were prettily coloured ostrich feathers from South Africa. In my first year here, the experience was a little less pleasant. Our team ordered some feathers to make costumes for some of the kids. Instead of the brightly coloured synthetic feathers us teachers are accustomed to we were presented with a big black bin liner full of chicken feathers. Straight from the abattoir. Smelly, dirty and complete with lumps of recently deceased foul fowl flesh. With metaphorical pegs on our noses and rubber gloved hands, we sat in the open air and rinsed the feathers in soapy water and snipped off the offending lumps of flesh. My vegetarian soul was scarred to the core.

Feathers: dyed and processed - just how I like them!