Heavy Equipment

This morning, Arleen and I went out to meet with the District Education Officer, because we had some questions regarding the licensing process for the school. When we left, there was a truck that had come to dig a well on the property that was too heavy for the soft wetland and had sunk to its axles in the mud. We managed to squeeze by them and get out of our driveway, but when we arrived home again, this is what we saw blocking our way:



Yes, that is a tow truck with its front wheels off the ground. We parked our car right there, and walked the rest of the way. Here's why:


It was trying to pull a well-drilling truck out of the mud. How stuck was this truck? See below:


The above photo was taken after about an hour and a half of trying to dig the wheels out. Here's another view of the scene:

And a closer look (when we left for the DEO's office, there had been no digging, so that tire was barely visible.)

We left this morning at about 9:45. It is now 1:30 and the scene doesn't look that much different now. They're going to have to basically build a rough road to be able to get it out of there. Just another day really...

Cheese

I almost couldn’t believe my eyes, was I seeing what I thought I was seeing? How could it be true? It was April 1^st, this must be someone’s idea of a joke. There it was, just sitting in the freezer case looking as innocent as can be, like it had always been there and nothing out of the ordinary was happening. Yes, there it was... a wheel of gouda cheese AND it was selling for 18000 Uganda shillings! A mere $9.00! Here I was picking up a few things at Smartshopper, (Masaka’s largest supermarket) never suspecting that I’d see such an amazing thing on such an ordinary day. Will wonders never cease?

Let me provide some background in order to help you understand why I was so stunned. Here are some basic facts:

1. Ugandans don’t eat cheese in their regular diet.

2. check it out in a cookbook if you don’t believe me, but Westerners eat cheese in some form or other probably every day. We like it particularly in many of our favourite comfort foods—pizza, mac and cheese, TexMex, grilled cheese sandwiches, etc. We also use it in countless other meals, appetizers and desserts.

3. Being far from home makes you crave comfort food...a lot!

4. until fairly recently one couldn’t buy cheese in Uganda

5. nowadays you can buy a variety of cheeses (feta, cream, cheddar, processed) in Kampala, but it is expensive

6. cheese is not an item that Smartshopper usually stocks

7. we normally have to travel to Kampala-a 2 ½ hour drive away- to replenish our cheese supply as needed and we are very willing to pay 25 000 Uganda shillings there for the privilege. (that’s about $12.00)

So perhaps you can begin to see why I was so delighted with this discovery. If Smartshopper begins to stock cheap(er) cheese here in Masaka, it means we might be able to live an almost Kampala-free existence here. And that means fewer trips on that dodgy highway, less time spent in the crazy Kampala traffic and a lower petrol bill. Sweet!

Actually, that’s not exactly true. We may have scored cheese in Masaka, but if we don’t go to Kampala, we can’t stock lettuce, broccoli, Kraft dinner, chicken that has been skinned, boned and conveniently packaged, red peppers or sour cream in our fridges! I guess Kampala continues to be a necessary inconvenience from time to time. That’s ok, Kampala also has shopping malls, movie theatres and guesthouses where I can blow dry my hair; it’s not so bad!

P.S. Think of me when you open your lunch bag and unwrap that cheese sandwich you have every day. Don’t take cheese for granted!

Construction

In case you were worried, I am aware that while the subtitle of my blog is “stories of starting a school in Uganda,” I haven’t actually told any stories of starting a school. I think the only explanation I have for that is that most of what I’m doing to start the school at the moment does not rate very high on the Good Story Potential Scale. I spend my days on the computer coming up with policies, manuals, and solutions for hypothetical problems. Believe it or not I enjoy that activity. Someday it will all be useful, but the school doesn’t open until next February!

Recently, however, the school has been really starting to take physical shape. Paul and his 60 plus workers have made some real progress on one of the dormitory blocks and, what is of most interest to me, this week they poured the foundation and floor on the administration building—the future home of my office. The hill in the background will be the view I’ll be looking at from my office window in a few months when we start holding staff and student interviews, filing all this paper I’m creating at the moment and meeting with local officials and dignitaries as we try to get the school registered with the Ministry of Education. Seeing this building well on its way makes this whole project seem very real!

(Just before taking this photo, one of our guard dogs woke up from his nap right in the middle of the wet cement. I was sorry not to have gotten the shot sooner!)

So there is a brief look at a school coming together—it’s a huge task! But I continue to grit my teeth and repeat “Is no problem!”

Potholes

When I was in South Africa a few months back, my sister and I took a day trip to the Drakensberg Mountains. It was a lovely drive and we had a beautifully relaxing time. At one point we had to take a more secondary road through a more rural area. As we turned onto this road, we saw this warning sign:

I had to chuckle when I saw that. The road was paved the whole way and I don’t think I noticed a single pothole. The road was a bit rougher than the South African highways, but it was still much smoother than most roads in Uganda. If the quality of the road we took to Drakensberg was here, drivers would easily consider it to be the best road in the country; Ugandan roads are dreadful!

Even the major highways between cities have some very treacherous potholes and eroded edges. In places, more drivers have created a “road” on the shoulder as they are forced to detour the actual road. The pavement on the road to the post office here in Masaka town was recently scraped away and the dirt road that is there now is actually an improvement. Formerly, much of the pavement was broken on that road that it was mostly dirt. The potholes that resulted were very deep and it is practically impossible to avoid damaging the undercarriage.

Many of the side roads in Uganda are not paved at all and after a prolonged period of rain, it is quite the challenge to get from A to B. As our project is located a fair distance from the main road, we have to drive about 3 or 4 km on a dirt road to reach home. In the few months I’ve been here this road has deteriorated significantly—larger potholes, deep trenches down the middle of the road, ditches caused by flowing water, etc. We have a Rav 4 that we use to run errands in town, and that poor little vehicle has really been shaken up driving this road so much. We get a bit shaken up ourselves!

Here is a photo of part of Bukoto Rd that we have to drive whenever we leave home. If it has been raining, we have to splash through large puddles and slide through slick mud:

Urban North American SUV’s must get very jealous of their cousins who drive African roads and have the opportunity to fulfill the purpose for which they were designed! Unfortunately, vehicles in Africa do tend to have a shorter life expectancy. (nothing new for Africa.....)

Soda

Last weekend I attended a party in honour of the woman who will be the Headmistress of Timothy Girls College when it opens next year. She recently completed her Masters degree, so her friends at Kibaale Community Centre (our sister project) organized a big celebration to mark the occasion. When we drove into the compound, it looked like a wedding reception was about to take place. There were three big marquee tents, tulle arches, artificial flower bouquets, straw hats with festive ribbons atop tulle-and-ribbon-draped pillars and a head table set with bottles of soda.

This last detail is important to note. In Uganda, an event becomes an “occasion” when you are given a bottle of soda to drink. Coke, Sprite and Pepsi are readily available, as are a few local favourites that aren’t sold at home, but a bottle of any carbonated beverage is considered a real treat. So special, in fact, that crates of soda are often listed as one of the many gifts a prospective groom is expected to give to the bride’s father as a dowry. Similarly, when Paul bought a bull for the Timothy Centre workers to slaughter and roast at Christmas as a way to thank them for all their hard work, our security guards were put in charge of the soda crates at the party in order to ensure equitable distribution. (The Ugandans made that decision, not us, incidentally!)

The honour placed on bottles of Coca Cola or Pepsi may be viewed, I suppose, as an example of corporate colonialism; American soft drink companies imposing themselves on other cultures. However, no one here seems to be complaining. Perhaps the old commercial got something right...apparently, giving the world a Coke does keep it company!

The head table at the graduation celebration

The Timothy Girls College administrative team

Olympics

Despite all the technological advances that appear to make the world smaller, we’re all feeling very far from home these days as we hear about all the Olympic fervour happening in Vancouver. It all looks like so much fun from this side of the world, and we feel like we're missing out! Reading Facebook status updates from people in the stands as Canadians win medals at home or seeing photos of my nephews all dressed in red to cheer on the Canadian women’s hockey team at Thunderbird Stadium can make a (slightly!) homesick Canuck just a bit jealous!

We’re not totally cut off though. We can stay on top of the medal count and read about the events online and most importantly a restaurant here in Masaka has satellite TV. We’re eleven hours ahead of Vancouver, so nothing is shown live. However, every day at noon SuperSport 2 shows an hour long highlight program of the previous day’s events in Vancouver. Paul, Megan and I have gone a few times to eat lunch and watch images of our city projected on the wall. We’ve been the only ones there watching, but every once in a while a few curious Ugandans wander in to check it out. Once they see we’re not watching football (and snowboarding, luge and curling mean absolutely nothing to them) they don’t tend to stick around. It's a fun way to spend an hour, and it is so great to see familiar places--we always look for people we know when the cameras pan the crowd, but no luck so far!

Given that we're so far away, here’s what we’ll picture when we look back on our Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics experience:

GO CANADA!!!!!

Obama

Earlier this week we had the opportunity to attend a small function at the US Embassy in Kampala. Our project was chosen to receive a grant from the US Mission and so we were invited, along with the other recipients, to visit the embassy, sign the documents and pose for a few photos. It was an interesting experience having to go through the tight security and then, upon entering the building, feeling like you’d stepped into America.

In the lobby where we waited to be escorted to the meeting room, there were official portraits of Obama, Biden and Clinton. It made a lot of sense that on the wall of an embassy, you’d find the portraits of the Head of State and key government officials of that country. However, regarding this particular Head of State, one sees his image in all kinds of unlikely contexts around Uganda, so it was almost strange to see this portrait hanging in its proper place.

Yes, Obama is very popular here—or at least his image and name are very popular here. I’ve seen an Obama Restaurant and an Obama hair salon; a portrait painter in Kampala has used Obama’s face on the sign outside his shop; people wear Obama t-shirts and sport his image on the all-purpose kanga cloths women use as shawls, baby carriers, and head-coverings; the teachers at Kibaale Secondary School keep track of the date on a calendar poster covered with photos of the First Family. He's everywhere!

I don’t know if Obama has any plans to visit this region, but if he does, he’d be assured of a very warm welcome! People don’t seem to care much about the politics; he’s a US President whose father came from East Africa, and that is enough to have hair salons named in his honour! This t-shirt was hanging in the Kibaale village market. It reads:"Barack Obama: Two centuries ago, a band of patriots signed a document in Philedelphia. Now he's bringing it home."

Kanga cloths for sale