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.