Firstly, we had fabulous friends to visit us a couple of weeks ago. They came for a week from their home in Nairobi. Our families have been friends since we moved to Nairobi in 2014. Their three children and our children are similar ages and get on well. It was so refreshing to have friends here who we know well. When you are in transition, it can take energy getting to know new people. It felt so relaxing being with friends who already know us!
On one of the evenings, Susie and I left the men in charge at home to put the 6 children to bed...and escaped for a ladies night out :-)
I booked us a table at Kampala's one and only revolving restaurant! It was great to have an evening out at such a fantastic venue! It was a strange sensation ordering dinner as we glided through the Kampala skies, admiring the amazing views. It was almost as high as being in a MAF plane- but far more luxurious! I've never been able to order dinner from a smartly dressed waiter on a MAF plane! And as the resident restaurant pianist jingled his tunes on the piano, any illusion of being on a light aircraft disappeared- I've never been serenaded by a piano player on a MAF plane :-)
Just the fact that I can take a friend out in the evening without any curfew and that I can drive through the city without feeling unsafe was exciting for me... such a massive change after Juba! This in itself was enough to make me giddy with a heady sense of freedom, never mind the fact that I was revolving through the clouds as we dined on steak!
I wanted a picture of the restaurant tower with a person in the foreground to show my children how tall the restaurant is. We couldn't fit ourselves and the tower into a photo from the ground- but the car roof provided the perfect vantage point to demonstrate the size of the tower!
During the week, we took the children on a short drive to visit Speke Resort on the edge of Lake Victoria. A beautiful venue!
Half way through the week I drove to the International School of Uganda to watch Esther taking part in a Kampala Schools Choir Festival. I felt so proud of her as she stood up to sing with her school choir!
At the end of the event, all the schools combined: 280 children sang a lively piece of music together and raised the roof! I was overwhelmed with the knowledge that this time last year I was sitting in Juba with my 2 children in a container and that was school, but now my daughter was taking part in opportunities we could only dream about a year ago. What a difference. Enough to make me giddy with gratitude that we now have these opportunities...
That weekend, after our guests had left, I heard that there would be an Easter concert at the Anglican cathedral in Kampala. Esther and I got together with some friends and took a taxi up the hill to the heights where Namirembe cathedral is situated. What a stunning building!
We had a few giddy girly moments, posing for pictures before the concert started...
This random stranger kept accidentally appearing in our photo shoots, making us all laugh- including her!!
The concert by the Kampala Singers was beautifully delivered. I enjoyed every note sung and I loved the atmosphere of the cathedral. It's a long time since I have attended an event in a cathedral- and this was probably Esther's first ever concert attendance. She and her friends did really well appreciating the music at such young ages, sitting right up at the front!
There were a few pieces where we, the audience, were invited to join in- and a couple of energetic pieces towards the end of the concert where we enthusiastically asked if we could join in and were welcomed to do so by the friendly conductor and choir :-)
A couple of days after the event we heard that we had all been in the newspaper!! I finally got hold of a copy of the newspaper today, to bear testament to our moment of fame in the Kampala spotlight!
And there are still some more giddy moments to record on this blog-post!
Last weekend we were invited to celebrate the birthday of one of Ben's school/ MAF friends. To mark the special occasion we all went to Kampala's one-of-a-kind "Wonderworld" theme park!!
What a funny place!! The kids had a great time on dubious rides which were creaking and groaning and which would clearly fail any rigorous health-and-safety checks!!
Since Esther and her friends went on the wild Octopus ride pictured below, I have heard rumours of nasty accidents that previously occurred... but thankfully everyone had a safe trip last Saturday. It was so popular, Esther and her friends had the thrill of riding it a couple of times! I was a bit sad that I was too old to be allowed on myself!!
The roller-coaster also proved to be popular. As the kids all zoomed around on the caterpillar roller-coaster, I was half amused and half concerned when a friend pointed out the ambulance parked underneath the ride...!!! I thought it was best not to dwell on why it might be parked there, as my children whizzed past my head at top speed on a rickety, rattling, garishly-painted caterpillar!!
There were some water slides to enjoy too... they were very HIGH!! I went up to supervise the older children from the top of the water slides. but can honestly say that climbing the stairs themselves was enough to give me a head-rush. Many of the metal stairs were so rusty that they had worn through and holes were appearing! I dreaded to tread on half of them in case I went through the thin metal and plunged to my downfall in some dramatic fall! I held tightly to the hand-rail and hoped for the best!
Once up at the top, I started to feel a bit jealous of the children all squealing with delight as they slipped into the water-stream and had a refreshing ride down into a cool plunge pool... I waited up on the high platform a long time in the hot sun, ensuring that the children spaced their rides safely and didn't all crowd on top of each other. Finally I could not resist being part of the fun... and anything was better than braving those rusty stairs again, so I joined Esther and her friend and jumped onto the water-slide for an exhilarating ride down, down, down and a splash into the pool! It didn't seem to matter that I was fully clothed...
And finally...
This week, Andrew's brother is visiting from America. Today, we were told that we could get some great views from the heights of the tower at Kampala's central mosque. While Andrew was busy flying and the kids were busy at school, I got busy as a tour guide and took Tim to see what people meant. We got some great views of Uganda's capital city from the top of this tower:
The spiral staircase had the potential to make us dizzy... but thankfully the railing was firmly in place and the climb was worth the views of this new city we call home, with all of its amazing new places to discover!