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….

Highway to Hell

So – I leave tomorrow to fly home for Christmas, and I really don’t think there are words in the English language (certainly not in my vocabulary) to describe how excited I am about this – it has been just about the only thing getting me through the last week or two – the thought that “you’ll be home in two weeks, ten days, one week etc” has gotten me out of bed in the morning, and through the day. I really don’t think I have ever been this tired before in my life – a bone-deep weariness that just dogs you around. I have warned my parents that I may sleep through much of my home leave, although my mother may take drastic action on that matter – it usually involves being woken by Phoebe (see picture below) who licks you into submission. But who I just can't resist...


I left Soroti on Sunday and drove back to Kampala – this is the first time I have actually driven myself across the country – I drive around the cities etc, but for around Uganda, we use the drivers. However, we didn’t have any spare drivers in Soroti, and we also had a spare car (through reasons much too boring and complicated to explain, my Prado wound up there for my last week in town, which was lovely to drive around – more so than the twin cab which had been my mode of transportation for the past 2.5 months). But I was a wee bit nervous about driving across the country – many prayers were sent up through the trip! Ugandans are completely crazy drivers – I have driven in some mad places, and I really think they are the worst – they are very reckless, and also very selfish on the roads – there’s no sense of working together to solve a traffic jam, it’s just “oooh – there’s a three inch spot I can try to squeeze into – ahead of the 15 other cars that precede me” etc. And they also have a predilection for…as my Grandad used to say “they only want half the road – the middle half” – which is wicked scary as they barrel down the center of the road towards you and won’t budge over. I have seen any number of wrecks here – really bad ones – they often involve the boda bodas (motorcyclists who take passengers on the back and weave in and out without ever looking over their shoulder – they have a low life expectancy) and matatus (the vans that serve as buses around and between cities – also mad as hatters on the road and the cause of many accidents).


So I was reasonably nervous getting out on the roads, and had warned Geoffrey (the water engineer) that I would be taking longer than our drivers, as I was not going to do 150km/h like they do! The trip was mostly okay – we drove through quite a long stretch of roadworks, stuck behind a never-ending line of trucks (this highway is the main road from Kenya to Uganda so full of trucks) which meant that dust was kicked up so thick that I literally could not see the road in front of me at all – I couldn’t see a thing. Which was pretty scary – I just had to drive straight and pray… We also passed a dead pedestrian in the road – obviously knocked by a car in one of the villages (again – not a great deal of care exhibited when walking/cycling/crossing the road) and that was pretty awful – he was lying at a strange angle in the road with blood running from his head – I looked away pretty fast! Apart from that, we made it okay – which I felt very triumphant about.


Seeing as I was driving on Sunday, I took it pretty easy at the Christmas party on Saturday night (not ours – a German guy in Soroti had a party at his place). I spoke to Florian on Friday night and he said “the staff are bringing the food for the party. So today, they brought the food – it is tied up outside, eating the grass” I was devastated (seriously – goats are so cute – how can you?) and didn’t go out back to the BBQ area at all (I think it is easier to deal with when it comes in a plastic box etc – but my vegetarianism is re-affirmed!) But it was a fun night – the remaining flood response people all got together for one last night – although I didn’t follow them to the local disco afterwards, as I had to drive the next day (which I think was a good thing, looking at Brett the next morning!) The local disco is pretty hilarious – bad music and a dance floor lined with mirrors – people dance in front of the mirrors, just watching themselves – it definitely provides for a novel night out, although being a small group of non-Ugandans there means you get a fair bit of attention…


Anyway – I am back in Kampala and packing up to go home. Cannot wait – quivering with excitement and all of that. My home list includes many things – often food related! I will also get up to the beach house in Queensland for a few days to say goodbye to the place – my parents intend to sell it and I am devastated – I adore that house.


So – in case I don’t write again beforehand – Merry Christmas to you all…

Let the Countdown Begin

So – I’m starting to get very very excited about going home at Christmas – less than two months to go and I cannot WAIT. I have a mental list of things to check out – I want to look at the program for the Moonlight Cinema while I am there, Anna is checking out concerts during my stay, I will need some new clothes and most of all, I need to see how much my puppy has grown.


For those of you unfortunate never to have met her, this is Phoebe – our little schnitzel (schnauzer-shitsu cross) – a non-stop bundle of energy who can wriggle like nothing else and never seems to calm down. And I miss her so much and cannot wait to see her again…

Life out here in Soroti continues on – the Ukrainian helicopter pilots cooked dinner the other night, which gave quite a few of us unpleasant lingering after-effects! We also had a dummy spit when the restaurant at the hotel put the prices up by about 30% - Giovanni, the UN OCHA head of office here went and threatened that we’d all check out, so they caved and returned to the original prices – power to the people!


Anyway – continuing with my theme of being too tired/busy/lazy to really write much, I thought I’d give you some pictures of food being airdropped in Pader – due to the inaccessibility of the area, the food is dropped from planes and we meet it on the ground. Just try not to be underneath it when it lands!