Soon – and it’s already getting there – it will not even cool down at night.  The upside is – there is still water, though my neighbors say they have been hauling theirs.  I think I just still have some in the tank.  Thank you God.  Climate change, whatever its origins, is also manifesting here according to the locals.  This year there has been spotty rain in the middle of dry season – almost unheard of.   Usually, when it’s dry season, there’s not a hint of moisture anywhere. 

Last weekend I spent a day playing tour guide to an Irish woman who will be here for two years with VSO (Volunteers Services Overseas). I love it because the lovely woman has a potty mouth (or trucker’s mouth it’s been called) to match mine, but she does it with an Irish brogue and it is somehow … charming. You’d hardly know you’d just been told to “go to hell.”  I’ll have to work on a different accent I guess. She’s also closer to my age (i.e only 20 years younger as opposed to 40 years younger…) and it’s nice sometimes to pal around with someone in your century.  It was fun showing a new person around, but in this heat – exhausting. 

I also paid a visit to Peter, my “surrogate Ugandan child” who has now finished a week plus in school.  He greeted me with a reminder that he still needs 13 notebooks.  This is costing more than I anticipated.  Silly me – I should know better.  So – in the god-awful heat, I went to find 13 more notebooks… and delivered them back to the school.  This is going to be interesting and I can only hope that it will help him change his life. Maybe just knowing someone out there cares will make a difference for him.  If he’s a good student and can stay engaged, it will be he’ll have a better shot at life. Anyway, after the errands the only respite from the heat and grit was a few minutes in the shower.  The perversity of it is, that dry season  – when all you want is a cold shower – is the ONE time of time the year that the water is hot.

So today, there was another planning meeting.  Ugandans love planning meetings.  These things take on a life of their own, so I sat chatting with the only other Munu in the room, another British VSO volunteer who told me his tale of going to a workshop in Pakwach – I think.  Stayed in a hotel (loosely called – a bed and a “proper toilet.”) Went to flush the toilet and three frogs came out.  After being flushed into the bowl, they climbed back into the tank.  So of course – the entertainment value  of this frog-show being high in the village of Pakwach – he flushed again: again producing three frogs – and so on and so on this went.   Then he told the tale of going to a restaurant which he assumed would have a “proper bathroom” and found it – but had to share it with a pig.   

The other adventure was the purchase and cooking of a frozen chicken.  Yes – even cooking a chicken can be an adventure infused with mystery here.  Here, if you want a chicken – you kill it yourself.  My last effort at this – and I was just a bystander – was gruesome because cutting off a chicken’s neck with a knife that will hardly cut butter – is well – grisly for both cutter and cut-ee.  Not doing that again… So I have found two places where I can sometimes buy a very pricey frozen one.  Still – it’s not all that straight forward, because one needs to know it’s been frozen the whole time since processing.  As you know, power has the habit of going in and out, so that’s the way a lot of stomach problems happen here.  You eat something you think has been refrigerated from start-to-finish, and realize it’s been thawed several times. 

So, back to the chicken.  It was a scrawny little runt of a thing, but I took it home and cooked it.  Most chicken you get here is so tough it is truly un-cuttable with anything but a bandsaw and I haven’t actually tried that.  It gives new meaning to the term rubber-chicken.  This one was edible, if a little tough. From the carcass of this entire chicken – picked absolutely clean, I got a little over a cup of meat.  With the broth I made Mexican chicken soup with fresh (or shall we say “revived) cilantro on the top and it brought me right home to Texas.  So it was worth it every shilling.  I doctored the rest of the meat with the Marsala spice Mix and have had a few meals from it. My new excitement is iceberg lettuce, which I would hardly give a second look in the States, but it’s a rare delicacy here.   So I’ve chicken salad, tuna salad, veggie salad!  Life is thrilling.

In other worthless news, but perhaps it will re-ignite the pioneer spirit deep within, is the adventure of the stopped up sink.  Normally one might hop in the car or maybe if you’re an environmentally sensitive sort – you’d hop on your bike or walk to your local supermarket-hardware-store-Jiffymart: any of which would be likely to have drain cleaner. You’d pour some of the toxic stuff down the afflicted drain, go have a cup of coffee or ICE TEA, watch an episode of Downton Abbey, do a chore – something…. And in a bit of time you would return to a clear drain.   

Not so here.  After wasting my time pouring boiling water down the drain, picking tidbits of slime out with a pair of tweezers, etc. I walked through a cloud of dust dodging Bodas, bikes, cars and goats to the nearest grocery store and tried in vain to explain drain cleaner.  Clerk: “Ah! You need JEK (local Clorox product).”  Me: “No, I don’t want to sanitize it; I want to open it up so water can move.”  Clerk: “ You first try   …. (demonstrating a plumber’s friend with great up-and-down clasped hands motion.”) No, I explained, there’s a curve in the sink and besides the last one turned up its little rubber lip and died that way.    There is no such chemical as drain cleaner in town – at least at this place.  So I left with a new plunger.  Admittedly, this one was an improvement over the last, but still pretty poor action.   Finally, I used a crochet hook, tweezers and a pair of 14-inch knitting needles (in lieu of the required wire coat hanger of which there are none in all of northern Uganda) and performed minor surgery on the drain.   I’m happy to report that both patient and surgeon survived and the drain now does what’s it’s supposed to – but slowly-by-slowly as they say in Uganda.

How someone can write two paragraphs on clearing a clogged drain would have been incomprehensible to me 18 months ago. But here I am, brought to my knees by a clogged drain, white ants and dust. How will I ever adjust to civilization again? Better hang on to those knitting needles…

New rant: Planning ahead is not done here. It’s always a continuing source of frustration, but for some organizations, it’s an art form. I – along with all staff – are expected at a big regional symposium this weekend. It’s in one of those places you can’t get to from here. So it’s a full day of travel Friday. Meanwhile, I have made plans for the weekend that if I cancel will impact others.   Organizations do this all the time. Failure to plan is one of the reasons Uganda is still a “developing country.”   They continue to do it because everyone just drops everything so things that were scheduled don’t get done, etc. etc. etc. I screwed up my courage and said I could not go, due t short notice. I anticipated horrible fall-out, but there was none. Note to self: don’t right short stories about consequences, just stand your ground…

And in other news not to be missed is: Uganda launches mouse into space.http://www.newvision.co.ug/news/639792-uganda-to-launch-its-first-space-observer.html  

The picture come from a FB invitation from PCVs to PCVs to help celebrate the event, consistent with at least the younger crowd’s commitment to find any excuse for a party Thank you Andrew.  Now – if I could just recruit those mice in my kitchen… for space, not partying.  All evidence would indicate they’ve been having one in my kitchen – and I can tell you they are not nearly this cute or well groomed.

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So here we are.  I paid his fees for this term – part of them anyway – enough to get him in.  And as we get our PC stipend each month I’ll add to it.  He’ll work on holidays to finish it out, but the requirement with boarding school is that you don’t leave campus unescorted for the full three months of the term.    Interestingly, school fees include a contribution of: cement for repairs, a lightening rod, beans and posho, exam fees and an odd assortment of miscellany.   It amounts to 286,000 shillings (about $100 US). 

The dorm consists of a large room with cement floors, where the boys lay their mattresses butted up against each other on the floor.  They share an outdoor latrine and bathing area (bucket baths) and are required to bring their own toilet paper, copy paper and broom – among other things.   He couldn’t afford the socks or the flashlight or the toilet paper or the shoe polish or Vaseline or –or –or the 6 passport pictures or the 21 notebooks – so we’re piecing that all together.   I’ll post a picture when I get one.  

Today I walked to the school to take him a bag of supplies and it was an odd feeling to be helping another young man with school: a mixture of old memories of going to school for my own kids and somehow becoming a surrogate mother to a 17 year old  man-child.  This term is a test of sorts to see how he does.  Considering the fact that last year was his first year back in school and part of that time he was working to pay for it, he’s done pretty well.  In the process of getting him back in, I’ve met what amounts to a handful of people who represent his support system.   Since he has no home to go over the holidays, someone has agreed to find him “some small space.   Others have agreed to continue to seek a place for his street kids.  It’s rather daunting and the Nigerian proverb “it takes a whole village to raise a child” has become real. Here it’s quite literal.  

As we were walking back to the school yesterday he asked what we do in America when the electricity goes out.  I answered that that rarely happens and he was stunned.  Then he said:  “I hear that in the UK they don’t use candles for light, they are only used for celebrations! Can that really be true?”    When I answered “yes” he was silent for a long time after uttering an almost reverent, “wow!”  

And that’s my week in review. It’s now Sunday morning and it’s uncharacteristically quite.  The club music provided a thud all might and turned into the Call t Prayer this morning followed by church music on steroids.  I guess everyone has finally fallen asleep, because the only sound is a rooster and the wind through the trees.  Onward to another cup of coffee…

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It must be the Louisiana girl in me, but I begin to wither when there is no rain.  And it’s not just my skin and hair – I was warned of this by a Ugandan woman.  My soul withers in the kind of heat and unending dust combined with lack of water and electricity, all of which typify dry-season here.  As I’ve said before: it’s the perfect storm for the demise of spirit.  So the rain thus far is soul-mending.  I may feel differently when all my clothes begin to smell of mildew, but right now I feel like dancing in the rain. I’d better hurry tho, because the sun is beginning to share the sky.

This is also beginning to be Mango season here in the north and  I’m noticing that the green ovals on the tree in the front yard are getting fatter. No pink showing yet, so I don’t know when they will be ready to harvest, but I’m keeping my eye on them.  I’ve been told they disappear pretty fast courtesy of the kids who scale the fence with long poles for knocking the fruit off.  There are those long poles again.  They’re pretty handy here.

And speaking of long poles, I visited the Police Station yesterday in the renewed  hope of getting a copy of the Police Report on my burglary (which was conducted with those long poles).  My case was referred to a young woman named Pomela about three weeks ago, so this is our second conversation.  She’s lovely, but has done nothing on the “investigation.”  When I saw her newly decked out this time in full police garb complete with rifle I said, “Pomela!  You have been missing!”  “Yes, I have been down and this is my first day back.”  We continue this polite conversation as a prelude to more serious business and there are wary looks from older, male police officers who clearly wonder what this Mzungu is doing taking up this woman’s time.  

I’m still not much closer to being able to get a report, but I have a new friend. It reminds me of a saying shared with me yesterday by Cheesburger Man, who has lived in Africa all his life.  The saying is” “Westerners have watches. Africans have time.”   ( I like this image of thrown-away watches, because it’s representative of how useless a watch is here.) It’s a good thing I’m adapting to this, because when I arrived at Coffee Hut yesterday, I found I was without my phone which I’d left at the Police Station.  Another two mile hike to retrieve it and I’m glad I have time, if not energy.  And time is commodity of which there is much in Africa. 

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Climbed on a Homeland Bus this morning and landed a decent seat thanks to another PCV who called ahead and reserved!   Left the luxury abode of the Annex (a step down from Motel 6) with bathrooms down the hall, concrete everything – I’ve mentioned this place before.  Had to negotiate to get the cardboard put back in the window so I could block out the megawatt security stairwell light shining in the room 24/7.  Having had to do this each night, this encore negotiation required getting re-dressed, going into another part of the building up two flights of stairs, explaining for the um-teenth time about light-in-the-eyes being a deterrent to sleep when combined with all night noise and bumping around of maids.  The victory blow was unfortunately: “I will not pay unless you please get someone ‘now-now’ to fix the window.”     “Now-now” takes about an hour, but it is done.   I sleep until mid-night when I’m awakened by voices down the hall having an animated discussion and then again by party-goers straggling in in the wee-hours.

This is all evidently orchestrated by the universe to bring self back to the reality of life after having spent a truly lovely day, which began with good brewed coffee (a rarity) on the terrace of the Grand Imperial Hotel watching the prehistoric, pterodactyle-looking Maribou Storks in some trees across the way.  This was followed by lunch (Greek salad with real honest to god lettuce – even more rare) and going to see the movie, My Week with Marilyn (excellent) in a theater that would rival the luxury of one in the States.  Afterwards, we continued the fantasy by wandering through a bookstore on whose shelves appeared books that were “hot” in the States 10 years ago, but otherwise felt like a mini-Barnes and Noble with  strains of Whitney Houston filing in the tableau.      Pushing our luck, we went for Mexican food afterwards.  It was lovely to sit outside and eat, but you know I AM a Texan and the palate cannot be fooled. The best part though was the dance lessons going on in the main room – beautiful young Ugandans learning to line dance and Salsa and doing it with panache!

Awoke at 4AM to buckets bumping around and at 7AM got a private-hire to the bus park – not quite as disorganized as the hornet’s nest known as the taxi-park, but daunting.  We pay the equivalent of $10 and climb on as hawkers of everything from bottled drinks to shoes and jewelry climb aboard with their wares displayed on boards and racks and selling until about 8:15 when we leave.  This is actually on-time, unlike many buses that wait three-four hours to fill before they will pull out.  There are no goats or chickens riding with us this time, but as we were puling out of the park, I saw a gathering of what appeared to be wedding-goers carrying their gifts.  It was the bright blue ribbon wrapped around a big stick used for grinding food that got my attention.  Another reveler was carrying a big earthen ware jug used locally for storing water and keeping it cool, while another had a big blue bow tied around the neck of an unsuspecting goat, being led by a leash of blue ribbon.  Wish I’d had my camera, but this is a scene that will live on in my mind’s eye forever.

Crossing the Nile on the way back is always the indicator that we’re getting close  and it is a fantastic Force 5+ white water rush.  Just on the other side, the baboons were back and we can feel the temperature rising.   It is at least 10 degrees hotter here. The baboon return must be seasonal, because the last few times we have crossed they have been conspicuously absent.  They are my “up-side of Africa” fix.   Another stop brings us along side the chicken market where live chickens tied by the feet and dangled upside-down are offered for sale. Someone behind me thinks he’ll take a couple and they are un-ceremoniously shoved through the window squawking and flapping indignantly – only to be rejected for reasons unknown.

Welcome home to me or “Apwoyo dwogo,” as I will be greeted tomorrow morning when I return to work.  In other words”  Thank you for returning!”

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