The Giddy Heights of Kampala!

There have been some exciting outings around here recently... enough to make any girl giddy!

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!

 

The varied flavours of Kampala

There is so much to take in as we learn about life in a new country!

Here are some random photos, in no particular order, to give a flavour of our new life in Kampala....

The car:
We bought a used car from another MAF family, ready for our arrival in Kampala. It's such a good car to drive- I really enjoy driving it! It can fit all the kids in when I do school runs that often involve up to 4 other MAF kids in addition to my own 3 children. It's been fab having a car with 8 seats!!

It also seemed to be great at coping with the varying road surfaces and steep hills of Kampala... but its age is starting to show! Over the past 2 months, we have had some very expensive problems with the car. I seem to be spending quite a lot of time calling mechanics and having the bonnet pinned open!

The garden:
Our garden is brilliant! We love the space- and it has lots of fruit which we can enjoy! Bananas and avocados have been in season recently:

We also found a hive of bees down by the garden wall- and when we investigated further, we found the honey they had made!

The shops:
There are lots of small shops, wooden huts and small African-style "duka" (or shops) and markets all over Kampala. I can find much more here than I could in Juba.

There are also some shiny western-style supermarkets, with loyalty cards to encourage me to shop there. In one of the flashy supermarkets, I was a little taken aback by the meat in display in the freezer- giving me the option to vary my minced beef with a packet of frozen minced goat!! That gave an African twist to my shopping experience- I've never seen minced goat for sale in Tesco!

The hair-dressers:
I may be in a capital city, but when it came to requesting hi-lights for my hair, I was very amused by the old-style system the hair-dresser used to put colour in my hair! I looked like I'd put my fingers in an electric socket!! Fortunately, the result was quite pleasing, but the actual process was rather funny!

Ice-cream:
We've gone from living in a place where ice-cream was rare, to a place where we can buy it in many cafes, restaurants and shops! It is still a novelty for us, so we are making the most of it! Joel and I often head out for ice-cream on our special afternoons together:

Poverty next to wealth:
Like most cities, particularly in developing nations, we can see debilitating poverty existing side by side next to great wealth.

The neighbourhood where we live is green and lush, full of private houses shut behind large gates. It is mostly sheltered from the poverty that others face on a daily basis in this city.

However, a short walk of 15 minutes can take us to the outskirts of the slums. I joined a lady from our church to walk down to visit a women's project she had been leading. It seemed rude- and unwise- to take pictures, so I chose not to get the camera out. I stepped into a different world, with over-crowded housing, filthy streams of dirty waste water running down the muddy streets, layer upon layer of litter where goats and chickens scratch around for scraps and ragged children run in and out of narrow alley-ways. Vendors sell their wares out of small wooden shops, with their goods spilling out onto the side of the streets. They shout to one another in the local language of Luganda, competing with the roar of motor-bike engines as boda-bodas screech up and down the road.

The building where the women's project takes place was run-down, crowded and dark. I entered the room to find several ladies sitting on the floor breast-feeding their babies. Despite the obvious poverty, the ladies provide strong support for one another. Inspirational individuals are doing their best to give local women a refuge outside of their own small homes and also empower them with the opportunity of making candles and weaving baskets. These goods are then sold to raise an income for the women involved. It was encouraging to see the initiative if these ladies and the people behind the project.

The ladies make basic candles which they sell at a low price to their neighbours in an area where people do not have access to electricity in their homes. They also make larger candles scented with citronella, which helps to keep mosquitoes and nasty flying bugs at bay.
The candle-making machine:

The goods for sale:

The ladies involved in the project:

I came away with a bag full of citronella candles- and a little more understanding of life in Kampala for the majority of its residents.

Adapting to a life with school all day and homework in the evenings:
It is one thing to adapt to life in a new school- but our children find it much harder to accept that they now have to do home-work! Tears and tantrums aplenty have taken place under our roof since January whenever instructions are given for homework to be done!

One strategy that seems to help is when our children's friends visit and the children can be encouraged to sit down together to do their homework before they are allowed out to play!

When Andrew is away:
It is a fact if life for a pilot's wife that our husbands will often be away overnight. Strangely, all kinds of things seem to go hay-wire whenever Andrew is away! The car might break down, children often get ill and the electricity or water might decide to stop working...

 On one of Andrew's latest trips when he was away for 5 nights, I dealt with a couple of milder issues: a sick and vomiting kitten with diarrheoa, children with head-lice- and a door which got jammed shut! It was the door which leads from the lounge through to the bed-rooms and bathrooms. If I failed to get it open again, I envisaged a night of camping on the lounge floor and sending the children to school the next morning in their same dirty clothes, unwashed and smelly- not to mention alive with head-lice!

I located Andrew's tool-box and attempted to somehow unscrew the door handle. My pathetic attempt was useless!

Our children and their friends attempted to smash the door down- also useless against the stuck door!

In the end, I called on our MAF neighbours who live about a 5 minute drive down the road. One of the MAF engineers kindly came with his mega-toolbox and succeeded in breaking the door open!! Horray! Bits of wood splintered all over the place and the door was a mess- but at least we could all shower and change our clothes!

I waited until Andrew was home before I called in a carpenter to fix the damage. I think Andrew must sometimes dread coming home- we always seem to have some damaged piece of something and some drama to relate to him on his return!

Old world meets the modern world:
Last weekend I took Esther and a couple of her class-mates across town to the cinema. Bizarrely, all films here are shown in 3D! The girls looked ready for anything in their 3D glasses!

In stark contrast to the modern cinema with its 3D films, the sign in the cinema bathroom brought home to me the kind of city we are living in. Some people may come in to the city from outside of town to watch a film at the cinema- but they don't actually know how to use a western toilet. This sign demonstrates not just how to use a toilet- but that Uganda is still very much a developing country where many do not have access to the simple utility of a proper toilet.