Reflections on living

We’ve been here over a third of our time now. Time to reflect a little.

When we first arrived we were incredibly aware of the differences in just about everything. Just looking around everything is different. I glanced out of the window this morning and just noticed what we now count as normal. Two young women were walking away from us with yellow jerry cans full of water on their heads, they were walking alongside what we might call ‘mud huts’ (the majority of people live in these - buildings with grass/thatch roofs and mud brick walls) and a pile of mud bricks drying in the sun. One sight that struck us when we arrived was the sight of these buildings with a wire leading a large satellite dish alongside, slightly incongruous!

 

The other big difference was, obviously, just living (sorry if we’ve said this before!):

• No running water (apart from some from a large rain water tank that fills our loo cistern – having a loo is an incredible bonus! – even if it does take 20 mins to fill),
 
• No electricity – we have a solar panel which charges a battery for lighting and which we can charge computers etc with. The original battery was not up to the job so we had to buy a new, more powerful one (in the picture the black one is the new battery, the red one, now unused, is the old one).
 
• Cooking, our main meal is prepared for us (beans and rice, beans and potatoes, beans and plantain). We cook our evening meal, and heat water for hot drinks etc., using paraffin stoves, which is not something we have done before.
• Having staff (someone has said in the UK we employ electricity, here we employ people). Having people wandering in and out of the house most of the day takes some getting used to. We don’t get to be by ourselves until the evening.

Initially, we thought we were missing the ‘luxuries’ of home but we realised that, actually, we have got used to this fairly quickly. What we have found we are missing are the things we enjoy but are not able to do, things such as going away in our motorhome, seeing our friends and relatives, having a nice coffee and cake. It isn’t that we necessarily do these things very often but knowing we can’t do them makes us miss them.

So, what is a typical day like. Monday to Friday follow a similar pattern. We get up with the sun at about 6am (our night watchman brushes the dust from the mud path outside our bedroom window at around 5:30am…) and have a leisurely breakfast (Weetabix or porridge, Gill doesn’t like porridge but it’s cheap and available!). We often do email at this time as it tends to be more reliable and faster early on, though still very slow, it does tend to work! We also pray together at this time.

There is diocesan prayer at 8am, which we are expected to attend (and do). This consists of singing some songs (usually in French, some translated British ones), someone talking for 10 mins on the Bible and then one person praying for whatever has been asked for.

Gill then returns home to meet Priscilla, the cuisiniere (cook) and sort whatever needs sorting. Monday is washing day, on Tuesday Priscilla goes to the market and shops for us, Wednesday Yakani (the ‘gardener’) does the ironing (charcoal iron). Gill usually works at home in the morning – currently she is:

• developing a database for the nursing school library
• translating a document from French to English for a bid for money for developing clean water provision, and water hygiene, in rural areas
• translating and adapting some British Bible Study material

After prayers Pete goes to the BDD office. Pete’s work is, currently:

• Developing improved financial management for the programme – there is reasonable bookkeeping but there is no effective budget monitoring or forward financial planning, particularly tricky when the funding they receive arrives at different times of the year.
• Developing a risk management workshop to help planning generally
• Translating a bid that has already been translated from French into English by someone whose command of English is not good! This bid is for money for the incredibly important work of reconciliation with ex-rebels and where there are disputes over land. These are not polite, legal, arguments between solicitors but can result if people being killed.

Lunch (main meal) happens after midday, Priscilla does not have a watch and timings are not precise! Lunch is, again, leisurely. Priscilla leaves at 14:00 and Yakani is meant to be here before she goes but cannot be relied on. Amongst other things this can cause complications with the key. Peter returns to the office after lunch and Gill continues her work, sometimes using the office as well as there is electricity from a generator there.

Two afternoons a week both of us are doing IT training for people who want to improve their skills in Office applications. This is something of a challenge as different people have different version of Word. We have:

• Word 2003 in English
• Word 2003 in French
• Word 2007 (very different to Word 2003) in French

We are delivering the training in French but finding the right technical term, and sometimes finding the correct menu etc. in French, is hard work, but their excitement when a table of contents magically appears is reward in itself!

We are also using Gill’s translated and adapted Bible study material one evening a week with an existing group and, next week, will be doing the same with a second group. The first group appear to be enjoying it and are keen to reciprocate by introducing us to their approach to Bible Study later on.

Normally, the working day finishes around 16:00. Gill sometimes has a choir practice (one of the choirs that sings in the cathedral, they sing in Swahili so she has no idea what is being sung! Gill has not yet, and probably never will, sung in the cathedral).

We have our evening meal sometime after 18:00. We have exciting things for tea, such as bread and sardines, bread and cheese (if we have got it), pasta and cheese sauce, soup (nearly run out, not available locally). It goes dark around 18:00 and there is nothing to do, no TV etc. we read or play exciting games, such as Rummikub or Boggle.

We go to bed at around 21:00 but no evening is complete without cockroach patrol. These very beautiful creatures are apparently totally harmless but cause great squeals from Gill. About once every other evening we spot a cockroach, somewhere, often in the bathroom (you imagine standing stark naked in a bowl with a cockroach scooting around!). These are dispatched and disposed of outside – once we left a dead one in the bathroom only to discover ants very busy, all over it, later in the night. Lovely.

When we arrived it was incredibly hot but, now that the rainy season is in full swing, it is really quite pleasant, a good 5 or 6 degrees cooler overall and a positively chilly 20 degrees some mornings.

 

 

For both of us, health now appears to be good. Gill has had no more fainting and Pete’s labrynthitis seems to have cleared up (since writing this Gill has developed a cold!). We have realised that the slightest twinge, that you would ignore in the UK, makes you just that bit anxious about whether it will develop into something nasty, because you are aware that health care here is very poor (“inadequate” is another word). If we needed proper treatment we would have to get ourselves to Kampala.

Pete’s birthday weekend (20^th/21^st) was spent on a very relaxing and enjoyable weekend in Arua with the couple we stayed with on our way over. We even had a little time in a swimming pool.

Enough rambling (sorry, let us know if you’re bored!). Next blog will try to describe some of the reality of life for people who live here and who are not going back to the UK in a few months. Very different.