Snap Back to Reality

Well, it's a hot Sunday in Kampala and I am ploughing through emails, trying to clear up a fraction of the hanging work before heading north again tomorrow. This is my least favourite time of year here - in the middle of the dry season the weather is hot and the air is dusty, in the north they are burning the grass and it is brown. This usually lush and green country is far less attractive, although just one or two rainstorms also makes an amazing difference.

I am well into the year again - Christmas seems like a distant memory. I think I will subtitle my trip home over Christmas the "you have to join facebook" promotional tour, as I was extolled the facebook virtues by just about everyone (John even giving me a demonstration of their excellent facilities, which I think was an excuse for "look at all my holiday pictures from America"!) The only dissenting voice is Mum who read an article about it being co-owned by a senior CIA official and thinks it is being used for information gathering purposes (she is probably right, although I do pity the poor person who has to wade through all of that to try to ascertain any useful intelligence!!) I think the masses have prevailed and it is jut a matter of time (and me being willing to allocate a few hours to this) and then I will really join the noughties (is that what they're called?)

Apart from that, Christmas holiday was awesome, but unremarkable. There was home. It rocked. End of story really!! Lots of Mum-cooking, dog-walking, sleeping, catching up, adoring the wonderful Melbourne roads (and my zoomy little car!) and the ease of life in Melbourne. Spending time with friends reminded me how lucky I am to have so many great ones, and made me feel guilty that work has superceded contact with them so much in the last year...but no more! I will do better...

Travelling back delivered a nice surprise - I was upgraded to First Class (I feel that deserves capital letters) for the Melbourne-Dubai leg, which rocked the house fairly sublimely. My own little bed (that they made up with sheets and pillows and a doona!) and pyjamas, a full wine list, with Moet & Chandon Dom Perignon Champagne (!), a la carte dining, a massaging chair, the list goes on and on. I was totally in love with First Class, and then had to shuttle back to economy (undeserving of capital letters) for the Dubai-Entebbe leg, which just about killed me. Also, I ran out of time at the airport and all my planned Duty Free shopping wound up producing one tall latte with an extra shot :( Not quite what I was looking for (and then we sat at the gate for an hour and a half...I was tempted to ask if I could just duck back into the terminal to finish my shopping, while they sorted out whatever problem they had - after all, they could page me, right?!?!) Anyway...

So - back to work, back to real life. We have a new Department Director (finally - after a year of waiting) so are all waiting to see what life is like under the new regime. Apart from that, I am vaguely attempting to get a life, instead of working 24/7 - I'll keep you posted on the progress...

I have been trying to upload more pictures but the internet here is not so interested in cooperating - I will keep trying. Seems to be unable to even load one picture lately... Guess them's the breaks...

(This is) My December...

...This is my time of the year.

Well - being a total Christmas nut, I am in heaven right now - Christmas is only a couple of weeks away and I leave for home in a week...home! With family and friends and good coffee and my DOG! Of course, I just have to survive long enough to make it there - the work has certainly not abated since I came back from Europe - if possible, it is even greater. I am desperately longing for home - and holidays.

I am still intending to post about my Europe trip - other holidays this year (skiing in Europe in Feb, Zanzibar at Easter, Safari in Tanzania) have not ever made it onto this blog, but this last trip was amazing and I really want to post about it. Sadly, I have realised that it will probably have to wait until Christmas and holidays in order to be posted - I just do not have the time to do it right now.

I thought, however, that in the meantime I could post some pictures and give a bit more of a glimpse of everyday life here in Kampala for me, and include some of my coworkers - put a face to the names I mention to many people in emails/phone calls etc...

So - without further ado:

Hmm - it's pretty small - hope I can identify everyone!! This is most of our key team at the team retreat about six months ago. Some of these guys have gone and we have some new ones, but it's a start

L-R Isaac (Finance), Wycliffee (Operations), Julius (at back - Security), Ekra (Commodities), Me, Bob (Grants Manager), Godfrey (Monitoring and Evaluation), Simba (at far back - Commodities), Bettina (mostly hidden - Program Officer like me), Wise (Finance) and seated - Amos (Operations Manager)

It has taken a couple of hours to load one picture, so that's all you're getting for now. I'm sick of this and want to go home! Will post more later...

There and Back Again

So much to say, but so little reader-attention-span to not abuse!! I must be succinct (you can all stop rolling your eyes now!) here and see if I can fit it all in.

So – it’s February already, which is truly terrifying – where is the year going? Where is my life going? I turn 30 in a couple of weeks and as far as I’m concerned, that is officially OLD. So I’m bracing myself. My plan was to be skiing on my birthday, but due to our organization being audited, and my presence being required (my project is one of those being audited) I have to stick around and will have my birthday in Kampala. However, a few days later I am heading to Chamonix to ski and then spend another week rocking around Europe so I’m pretty excited about that. I just booked my flights and am making arrangements – can’t wait. Mum and Dad are currently skiing (well – Dad is skiing, Mum is nursing a broken arm) in Aspen with a bunch of friends. They have terrible weather and I think they are only getting to ski half the days, but the thought of them out on the slopes has given me itchy feet and I can’t wait to get back onto skis.

In the meantime though, I have plenty of work to occupy my time! I don’t do New Year’s Resolutions any more, but I did vow to try to work less this year. However – I think we can put that under the heading of ‘pipe dream’ at this stage.

Home leave continued to be brilliant. My parents had a party for my 30th while I was still home which was totally awesome and I got to go to the first day of the Australia Open (love me some tennis) which rocked (thank you Mike!) Other than that, the time was filled with usual things – lots of eating out, seeing friends, trying to stay cool in the heat. I seem to have improved at poker – I won a few games (pity we don’t play for money, hey?) and adored getting quality time with Phoebe, who has to be the naughtiest dog alive (Mum is making noises about boot camp – if only there were such a thing for recalcitrant dogs!) I also got up to Queensland for a week – a few days in Brisbane, running around madly seeing people, then Noosa for a few days, to say a final farewell to the house as my parents are planning to sell it. Sadly, the weather in Brisbane was insanely hot and humid – real Brisbane summer, and then there were storms and rain the whole time at Noosa – I got one quick run on the beach in between the rain and enough of a break for Kara and I to check out Hastings St., but it wasn’t a great goodbye to a house that I have adored for over ten years. There are so many happy memories in that house, so many people have visited, so many great times – it has been a haven many times, for me to escape to when everything was too much. So I am really sad to part with it…

Emirates put on its usual production of debacles (which reminds me that I haven’t written my nasty letter yet – I need to get on to that!) for my return, so it was delayed by a couple of days while they tried to get their act into gear. When I finally did get away, my flight from Melbourne was delayed by three hours (gave me time to buy a watch in duty free, which was a birthday pressie from the paternal family) so by the time we landed in Dubai, my connection to Entebbe had already left. More lack of customer service ensued, and finally, I was rebooked onto a flight leaving Dubai that night at 18.00 and going via Nairobi (there’s only one flight per day to Uganda). Luckily, before I got on the flight, eventually some bright spark at the airport noticed that they had scheduled me to arrive in Nairobi twenty minutes AFTER the connecting flight to Entebbe took off. Not such a good plan after all. So I wound up spending the night in Dubai and flying out to Entebbe the following morning. That was okay – I got to see Gabriele (known to us all as Mama) from the Afghanistan office, who was in Dubai (and meet the new National Director too). I haven’t seen Mama since I left so that was all kinds of awesome and I loved catching up on the news. And then I finally made it back to Kampala – two days late!

So now I’m up in the north again – Kitgum today (up close to the Sudanese border). I have a week or so traveling around monitoring the landmines project (plus a little School Feeding in Pader) before heading to Soroti to check on the flood response. I can’t wait to get to Soroti – my friend Eli has relocated there from Gulu so she has a house I can stay in, and I can’t wait to see her. No more Soroti Hotel and two hours wait for dinner for me!

And on that note – I think it’s lunchtime….