How to Help Animals in Kampala?

 In the past week, we've had some interesting animal moments.

It was one evening last week when the first encounter happened. We were all inside, at a dark 8pm, when we heard the sharp, sudden sound of a wooden pole being thrashed against the stone floor outside our back door. 

Alarmed, we rushed into the kitchen and peered through the mosquito netting. 

Standing near our back door was our night-guard, brandishing a long pole. At his feet lay a still-wriggling, half dead snake, struggling for life after our night-guard had leapt into action and thrashed it with the pole, hoping to kill it swiftly.

Unfortunately, the poor creature was writhing around, presumably in pain. We stepped outside, Ben rushing forward to identify the species of snake. It was a harmless house snake. It seemed such a waste to know that it was about to die. We would have let it be, knowing that it hunts and rids our garden of my dreaded enemy, the rats of Kampala.

Andrew decided to put it quickly out of its misery - as the photo can attest...

This weekend, we had some more interesting animal moments. I decided to take Harry to the vet, since he has had a limp and clearly was having some trouble with his back leg. 

Harry rarely goes in the car, so he was quite amazed at the start of our journey, sitting upright in the rear of our car, staring at the multitude of Kampala motorbikes as they whizzed past our window on the 40 minute car journey. He was quite happy to arrive at the vet's, intrigued by his outing to a new place:

Once at the vet's, Harry was sedated while the vet examined his sore leg. 

The vet recommended an X-ray.... but since the clinic has no X-ray machine, the vet phoned the nearby medical clinic where we would normally go ourselves if we are unwell!

The clinic reported that all was quiet at that particular moment... so the vet's assistant drove with me to the medical centre, where we rushed in the back door with the sedated dog, hoping not to meet any invalid people who may be alarmed at the sight of a dog using their medical facilities!!

Harry was taken to the X-ray room and laid on the table for his X-ray. 

Sadly, the X-ray showed that Harry's back, right knee had been broken and had mended itself wrongly, which was now causing his limp. He needs pins put in to help him regain mobility in his leg, but no-one is sure whether a suitably qualified veterinary surgeon could be found in Kampala.

I felt sad having to drive a groggy Harry back home without having a clear answer about how to help him. He's the best pet dog we could have hoped for and it's sad to see him limping at just 3 years old. I will do some research, but here in Uganda, there are not so many options for surgery for animals. 

The boys took turns to sit in the back of the car with Harry as we navigated back home through traffic that had turned into long traffic jams during our 5 and a half hour outing.

For now, we will try painkillers and calcium tablets, but I'd love to see my dog fully active without pain in his leg... I'll keep you posted if we find any leads on helping him.

Back to the 1980s

Two weeks ago, Uganda prepared herself for the 2021 General Election. For 5 days around the election period, internet was completely switched off- and we remembered two things.

1. What life was like before the internet was invented

2. How reliant we have become on the worldwide web- this facet of modern daily life!

For those few days, we found ourselves back in the world of my childhood- the good old 1980s! Here are my musings from those few days of plunging back into a pre-internet world:

- no instant means to contact family or friends abroad- how did we communicate from overseas before Skype, What's app, Face-time or Zoom?? 

It reminded me of my back-packing days, when I used to buy a pre-paid phone card with the local currency, whichever country I was in, then phone the home landline, hoping that someone would be in and available to talk at the time I happened to call. 

How times have changed for us all, whether in lockdown or far across the world, with internet giving us the means to easy communication!

I did give my mum a hurried call on the phone to reassure her that everyone here was doing well, but it was simply a few rushed sentences because of the expense of an overseas phone call. I won't be taking internet communication and video calls for granted again!

A photo sent by my sister-in-law last year, showing Mum talking to us on what's app video on her 80th birthday- what a gift the internet gives us for staying in touch!

- no more asking Google the inane questions that come to mind on an average day: a simple recipe for a homemade food, the name of a film we have forgotten, information about how to best care for our limping dog or what may be wrong with his leg. 

I was surprised to note how impatient I have become, wanting instant answers to the questions that pop into my head! In my childhood, I would have been more patient- looking things up in a recipe book, finding that bulky encyclopedia and flicking through pages to find what I wanted to know, perhaps even going to the library to find information and accepting that this delayed response was perfectly normal. 

- a strange sense of not knowing what was going on in the outside world or even within Uganda. I have become so used to having world news at my fingertips with the click of a computer key. 

We don't have TV and don't miss it- but we missed it for those few days! Instead of knowing what was going on, we were dependent on the snippets of news in conversations with neighbours. We tried tuning in to local radio, but with very little Luganda, we could not understand most of the radio stations, so were reliant on our night-guard to translate for us.

-when the power went off for a few hours (a fairly normal occurrence) we could not send a what's app to the local electricity company like we normally do to inform them of our location and the outage.

 Neither could we send the usual what's app messages to neighbours to ascertain who else had no power, to try and work out where the power-fault might be. We never know when power will come back, but being able to communicate with the electricity company does help me feel a little more in control, so I missed that wonderful service which they happily provide when internet is on!

- I missed access to YouTube music. I love to switch on energising music, choosing from the vast variety offered by this seemingly infinite online service. 💃

We dusted off our old CDs instead, but whilst I sang along to the good old songs, my teenagers looked on disparagingly! 

This next point was a very positive one, as far as I was concerned :-) 😃

- no internet meant no access to much of my schoolwork, which is mostly online these days. This afforded me a few guilt-free days! I did not need to feel the usual pressure to work on Google-docs, Google-classroom updates, Google-sheets planning outlines. 

Time with family and the odd cup of tea with a friend took precedence over the job. Wonderful!

Internet is now restored, as you can see if you're reading this blog-post. Work has resumed full-pelt and we are back in the 2020s, thankful for the gift of communication, information, local and international news, music and work tools, while also missing the slower pace of life and family time that no internet offers. 

Although, as an extra nod to the past, Esther celebrated her 15th birthday with a 1980s theme! Great fun to dress up in 80s colours: a nostalgic throwback to my childhood!

 I'm not sure if she or I had the most fun... :-) 

Made up for the '80s... 😄

Still in Kampala: an overdue update from Uganda

 It's been the longest time since starting my blog in 2009 that I have been unable to post updates. Since starting my fulltime teaching post at the beginning of August, life has taken on a new kind of activity level and time for blogging is hard to find!

However, we are still in East Africa and still finding excitement and drama in the everyday occurences of life, right in the midst of the global Covid-19 pandemic.

Just to give you a glimpse into recent life as a MAF family in Uganda, here are a few photographs from the last few months. Enjoy the update! 

AUGUST 2020

Time for a new academic year and a new job for Liz! School in Uganda was still online, right up until the end of half term in mid-October. 

Nevertheless, I prepared my new classroom and was required to be on campus every day, in my class, for normal school hours and for Zoom meetings with my Year 2 students and video lessons.

Happily, Esther, Ben and Joel were allowed to accompany me to school and do their own online schoolwork on campus while I was at work in my classroom. I was relieved that I did not have to leave them at home to fend for themselves with online lessons, but could be close by to help them if needed. 

My classroom has a different kind of classroom set-up, with partitions to ensure social distance for the time when students would eventually return to school:

One morning, Joel helped me by courageously ridding my classroom of an unwelcome visitor, placing him safely outside in the stream that flows through our campus:

There was excitement when a stone from a lawn-mower on campus flew forcefully out of the machine and smashed our car window! Thankfully, insurance covered the cost of repairs and we were able to drive home safely once a handy mechanic arrived and replaced the window.

Driving backwards and forwards between school and home everyday is always a bit of an unknown in Kampala. Most journeys are smooth and uneventful, but sometimes road-works, heavy rain or traffic diversions down narrow, unpaved side-streets create competition for a way through and add a bit of colour to our drive. Then we experience some added tension as we wonder how much longer than the normal 20 minutes our journey may actually take!

SEPTEMBER 2020

September saw Andrew set off on a flight to DR Congo to assist in a medical flight to bring patients from remote corners of the country to a specialist clinic in Panzi. Andrew was gone for 5 days and when he returned, he had to quarantine by himself in a location a few streets away from our home. One evening, we dropped off his dinner and maintained our social distance, with our masks in place.

I also dropped off a bag full of clean clothes for Andrew to wear after his trip. Since I was the one packing his bag, I amused myself by packing a T-shirt for Andrew which I discovered on display outside a second-hand clothes shop when I was driving down a Kampala street one day! I made sure it had pride of place on top of all his other clothes :-) 

OCTOBER 2020

Getting used to filming myself for video lessons in class:

We also drove one day down a newly-paved road and discovered this church. I was so struck by its novel name that I snapped a photograph!

NOVEMBER 2020

The students finally come back to school towards mid-October and in November, I introduced them to some English Celebrations for our Topic work on Celebrations Around the World. They loved learning about Bonfire Night and drew some spectacular firework pictures. It was so wonderful to actually have the children back in class and see their creativity first hand! Here is our display:

November also saw the visit of some cheeky monkeys to my classroom (and no, I don't mean children, I mean actual monkeys!!). Thankfully, they didn't manage to get into the classroom, but it was fun to see their antics as they passed through the playground, leapt over the roof and departed again, disappearing into the leafy treetops.

I was lucky one sunny weekend morning to grab a fruity drink and a pancake with Joel at a quiet cafe in a Kampala side-street:

It was a lovely outing and even more appreciated when violence suddenly broke out on the streets of Kampala on Tuesday 17th. Political tensions overflowed in the lead-up to Uganda's General Election (due to take place next week). School was shut early one afternoon and all students and staff sent home, amidst rising concern about riots in the city centre, protest fires being burnt in the streets, shootings, tear-gas response and general unrest. 

That afternoon, I drove home tentatively, but it was thankfully calm on the streets at the time I drove home with my children. Although there was a clear military presence to maintain order, we only drove past the remains of one very small, smouldering street fire.

The next day, school went back online.

Happily, peace was quickly restored to Kampala and all has remained calm since Friday 20th November. We were pleased to resume classes in school on the following Monday. 

We had a tad of family drama this term, when Esther cut her knee open at school! Since she required stitches, we made our way from school to Kampala's International Hospital, where Esther received wonderfully efficient treatment.

I was grateful that the staff allowed Ben and I to stay nearby, albeit socially distanced, and was impressed by their swift service and careful observation of SOPs as the hospital cares for Covid-19 patients in a different hospital wing. Esther was so inspired, she is now considering nursing as a possible future option!

DECEMBER 2020

December is a month of significant dates for our family. 

Ben has his birthday in December and this December he turned 13. To celebrate, he camped outside with a few friends in our garden, then the next morning, they went paintballing. Ben may have caught a harsh bullet on his unprotected neck, but he didn't seem to mind once he got over the initial pain! It's one way to mark the initial foray into teenage years !!!

Campsite in the garden and moonlight city view from the tent doors!

Muddy paintballing venue after the rain a few days earlier, as noted by Joel:

Paintballing outdoors at the fun Adonai Paintball centre, near Entebbe:

 

OUCH!

Birthday Cake:

Next in December comes our wedding anniversary.  To mark the occasion, Andrew made this beautiful box out of local wood and found a local engraver's who cut the beautiful design, showing the 5 African nations where we have lived and worked together since our marriage in London all those years ago. I had no idea back then of the journey we would travel. Life is full of unexpected events!

After the anniversary comes Christmas. The tree came out, Joel made some Christmas cookies and even Harry the dog got into the Christmas spirit:

The garden produced some pretty Christmas flowers, in grateful response to the rainy season:

To conclude this blog update, we send you our best wishes from Kampala and warm greetings as you look at these lovely flowers, which have bloomed despite the bizarre year and changes we have all known in 2020. Wherever you are as you read this, we hope that, despite the strange events of 2020, that you will know peace and joy in 2021... XXXXX