It's probably not one of the things I ever associated Africa
with, but being so close to the equator and still not having fully embraced
electricity means that it gets truly dark, very early, every day. Having spent virtually my whole life
in Europe and very rarely having strayed from the safety of home or cheap
hotels, I'd never really seen true darkness; it's all rather magnificent having
only stars (and, I will admit, the occasional electric light or the odd boda
boda's dim, surely not roadworthy, beams) to guide your way. I stumble quite a
lot... but no one can see, so what does it matter!
This evening's stumble has taken me to a thoroughly
unIndian-looking Indian restaurant called 'The Coconut Shack', which has had
some less than disastrous reviews and thus is worthy of further investigation.
I'm getting rather fond of eating alone. In England one might assume I am a sad
loner (shut up!), but in Kampala a muzungu eating alone almost certainly means
that I am looking for an escort, not a prostitute, but someone who will love me
dearly for a couple of days, claim they've become pregnant and milk me of my
riches until I die. I've taken the precaution of getting a table outside that
is discreet by nature of the complete absence of light in the street. I'm still
not convinced the evening will be completely hassle free.
Life has been quite
busy since my last post, generally in a positive way, but starting in possibly
the most harrowing way imaginable.
In 27 years I can only recall three occasions where I have
been unfortunate enough to involuntarily soil myself and I find it to be an
extremely uncomfortable statistic that two of these occurrences have been
within the last twelve months. Each new occurrence seems to take on a new level of embarrassment.
At 8 (it could've been slightly older) I think I managed to
disguise the waddle back to my front door from my fellow footballers on the
green outside my house, but my mum soon pieced together the mystery of why a
pair of my y-fronts were bobbing around in the downstairs loo. Lesson learnt:
y-fronts do not flush. Last Christmas I couldn't hide my shame, but I took
others along with me, infecting my whole family and almost seeing off my
grandma.
However, this was something else. I always imagined shitting
yourself as a pupil at school to be probably be a fate worse than death. I
don't think I'd even contemplated the prospect of this happening as a teacher.
Having nominated myself as the meat taster at a friend's barbeque, I have no
one else to blame. I won't go into all the details, but needless to say, I am
now grateful for the odd shower contraption in school's toilet cubicles,
copious amounts of toilet roll and for owning boxer shorts without holes in
them. I somehow managed to escape school without having to admit I'd shamed
myself, although the harrowed look on my face must've raised some suspicions as
must my sprint to the toilet from lunch.
Ah well, three days of solid shitting (the shit itself was anything but solid, if you care to know) seemed to sort me out.
I'm sure I joked about dysentery helping me to lose that extra bit of weight, but
it hasn't worked and I wouldn't wish my fate on anyone (maybe Gove?). This
episode delayed my first departure from Kampala by a week.
For those ignorant few of you who don't know about Jinja,
it's the home of arguable the best rafting in the world. Apparently I'm a
couple of years late for truly the best rafting, which has been ruined by a
great, whopping hydro-electric dam, but it was pretty amazing all the same.
It is a fairly large town/city by Uganda's standards, which
means, if I'm ridiculously generous to the point of lying, it's of a roughly equivalent size to Stockport. One
roundabout, ten or eleven shops and lots of shacks... and that dam. The
adventure tourism industry is fairly well developed, but from what I saw of it,
these companies tended to be based a little bit out from the town and my group
stayed at a campsite around 15 minutes outside the town.
Setting up a tent was interesting as we arrived in almost
total darkness, but somehow was achieved without death or serious injury (my
pride aside as the girls took charge). A few drinks and a rather aggressive
Dutch drinking game later, I slipped off to sleep in comfort despite being
afforded the most meagre of sleeping areas.
I'm glad we arrived in darkness because it made my morning
so much more sweet. Emerging from the tent (to boos and hisses from my tent
buddies) I was greeted with a magnificent view of the Nile and what used to be
known as Bujagali Falls, but since the dam has become Bujagali Lake. In some
ways it is just a very large river, but all I could think about was the history,
the length and the prominence the Nile retains in every Geography classroom the
world over. It was teeming with wildlife and just stunningly beautiful. I was
joined in my gazing by a family of monkeys who didn't seem troubled in the
slightest by my presence next to them on the wall.
I didn't get into my raft until around 11am, after a
completely unnecessary preamble by our guides. For $115 I got to spend all day
on the river and getting very wet, I initially thought this was an unreasonable
sum, but now I'd happily pay twice that. You forget how hot it is and how
easily sun lotion rubs off with a bit of water, but my body does not forget the
excruciating burns... at least I'm getting used to it now and knees aren't
anywhere near as painful as shoulders. I'm a very odd multi-tonal colour now,
with my back and groinal region completely letting the side down.
Anyway, I abandoned my friends in favour of a raft with
folks prepared to tackle rapids up to grade 5 and quickly found camaraderie
with my crew (I was up front and leading the stroke rate, therefore silently assumed the
rank of captain) who were a charming bunch of American volunteers
doing various odds and sods in Kenya. Each rapid was such a rush and every
break between them was a chance to take in the mesmerising beauty of the river
and all of its wildlife (which unfortunately did not include any marauding
hippos or crocodiles the size of a bus, despite our guides assurances) and the even more interesting site of the local
villagers gathering to do their washing and exploding with joy every time they
caught sight of us: one continuous word 'Howreyou's and cheers of joy when I
was able to respond in Lugandan.
Eventually my friends decided to upgrade to the proper
rapids so I joined them for the second half of the voyage. Almost immediately I
started to get very wet, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and claim
the rapids jumped up a notch at this point. The first submergence felt very
much like the end, stuck under the raft for a good 5 seconds that felt like
hours, emerging to two massive engulfing waves. The second of which housed one
of my friends wielding her paddle like a weapon and trying to make absolutely
sure I didn't survive, but thankfully my head appears to be indestructible.
The one thing better than rafting was getting multiple
chances to swim. I'm not much of a hot holiday sort, so potentially the feeling
is fairly common, but the water felt so fresh, warm and easy to be in that I
could barely drag myself back onto the raft (not an easy thing to do, if
talking literally). Anyone who does come out to visit me in the next two years
is definitely repeating this experience with me.
Next week it's Murchison Falls, which is apparently where I
will see hoards of the animals that define Africa: elephants, lions, hippos,
hopefully leopards and all the boring ones like antelope and that sort. Expect
lots of pictures.
I've gone on a fair bit and my curry is long finished. Even
in Ugandan, Indians still insist on not being able to provide desserts so I am
sipping the last dregs of a black coffee and am starting to feel eyes begging
me to leave. I've not even had chance to mention Independence day (really good
fun), getting stoned (three spliffs for less than 50p), my African instrument collection,
my new job as school photographer nor to regale you with more stories of my
completely barren love life!
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| Independence Day celebrations with my gang/form |
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| Ugandan dancing accompanied by the cry 'Waaalllaallllaaawaaaalllaaallwaaa!!' Very entertaining |
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| Primary school singing: dreadful with an element of cute |
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| Flag hats. Why not? |
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| All my form - favourites are all posing on the left hand side |
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| Morning view from camp in Jinja |
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| If you leave food on the floor of my house this is what happens in 30 mins |
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| Sunset, well just after, on the Nile |
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| Tranquil, sexy Nile |
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| Monkey family grooming each other |
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| Picking at her beard |
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| Sinister baby monkey eyes |
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| More of my lot dressed up |
Please enjoy some pictures and I expect to start having
people sign up to come and visit me. I've got very long Christmas holidays if
you can't wait until the summer. Much love! xxx
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| About to drown |
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| Man overboard |
