Home, Sweet Home

The verandah of our home in Kuluva looks across a valley dotted with small settlements of round grass roofed mud houses. Beyond, the land rises to a tree-edged skyline marking the border of Uganda with DR Congo. Our vantage point means that we often have the benefit of breezes which blow up quite suddenly, cooling the midday heat and, quite often, heralding a thunderstorm - as today. In the evening the wind can be more of a nuisance, blowing the curtains such that they wrap themselves around the head of anyone unfortunate enough to be sitting on the chair next to the window. Clipping the curtains to the louvered glass windows with bulldog clips is quite effective at controlling them - and keeping our friends.

We are delighted with our little house which gradually we’re making more homely. We’ve decorated the walls with photographs of family and friends, batiks, maps, ‘welcome to your new home’ cards and a poster we’ve constructed of our link churches to remind us regularly to thank God for their support and to pray for them.

Some of the furniture was already at the house when we arrived, including the ‘easy’ chairs which leave marks on your bottom if you sit on them for too long. (We really must get some new foam for them – soon!) In addition we have bought a second-hand dresser and even had some ‘bespoke’ furniture we designed made for us in Arua – more about that in a later blog, perhaps.

We have pretty reliable electricity from a hydro scheme, running (cold) water (most of the time) and an inside toilet and ‘shower room’. Actually it’s a ‘pour’ room as showers consist of standing in a bowl and pouring water over oneself from another bowl using a redundant margarine container (Allan is thinking through some more advanced technology). But really, we do feel blessed. An AIM missionary couple we’ve got to know who live half-an-hour’s walk away have to depend on inadequate solar power, a pump for water which they have to collect and an outside toilet whose dimensions suggest it was designed for someone with extremely long legs (not to mention every other part of the anatomy!).

Loneliness isn’t something we experience here. Monkeys continue to visit and entertain us, whilst goats and hens are also prepared to climb the hill to greet us; cockerels too, but they come much too early. We have had a frog in the house, several geckos, a one-legged grasshopper (not hopping very well), and a few nights ago we were awoken by scrabbling noises in the ceiling. We can’t be certain of the provenance of the scrabbling, but the best suggestion to date is a galago (a sort of bush baby) – Anne thinks she got a sighting the other day.

Incidentally, we are still waging war on the ants, so Doom shares continue to be a good investment tip!

Close to the Margins - Update

Hear on the World Service this morning that the Ugandan Government estimates that as a result of the flood, around a quarter of the Ugandan population will be in need of extra food. An appeal has been made to the UN World Food Programme.

Another measure of the impact events like this can have close to the margins.

Close to the Margins

Shortly before leaving the UK for Uganda, significant areas of Britain experienced serious flooding. Thousands of householders found their homes inundated by floodwater, farmers’ crops were ruined, and we all woke up to the vulnerability of water and electricity supplies in the face of the forces of nature, even in the so-called developed world.

Arriving here in Uganda towards the end of the dry season, we were fully expecting to be basking in sunshine. Instead we were greeted by unseasonably heavy rain and thunderstorms, and discovered to our amazement that we needed to use our duvet to keep warm in bed at night. We’d really only included the duvet in our air freight (which, incidentally, all arrived intact) to provide packing for more vulnerable items of luggage.

In fact, apart from making some of the roads extremely muddy, the weather hasn’t been so bad here in the Arua district. But over the past few weeks much of Africa, including northern and eastern Uganda, has experienced its heaviest rain for a generation. The consequences have been devastating. Mud and wattle huts have collapsed in the face of the torrential waters making over 50,000 people homeless. Twenty-five districts have been cut off from the rest of the country, and the crops that haven’t been washed away are now rotting in gardens. More than 47 people have died and a state of emergency has been declared in the flooded regions.

The consequences of flooding in Britain are terrible for those involved, but when you live so close to the margins, as many do in Uganda, the consequences are so much worse; no clean water to drink (no bowsers here); the growing danger of water-borne diseases threatening the hungry and homeless; no insurance and no social security.

But the challenges go wider than that. In south west Congo there has been an outbreak of the deadly ebola virus. We are all hoping and praying that it will be contained and limited, but naturally there is deep anxiety in neighbouring south-east Uganda. Closer to home, following an outbreak earlier in the year, there has been a further outbreak of meningitis in the Arua district, a cause of great concern at the hospital here at Kuluva where there has been at least one fatality so far. Back in the UK, such an outbreak would be accompanied by the vaccination of vulnerable groups, but here, vaccination is not routinely available, even to student nurses working in the hospital.

In our living and our praying don’t let us forget the millions of people who constantly live their lives ‘close to the margins’.

An Appointment with the Nurses Council

To work as a nurse tutor in Uganda you must register with the Nurses Council. Fair enough. Shouldn’t be a problem, I thought. I have more years than I care to mention of experience working in nurse education, pieces of paper from various universities, proof of my UK registration, and a recommendation from Kuluva School of Enrolled Comprehensive Nursing where I am expecting to work.

The necessary documentation duly delivered whilst in Kampala, we departed for Arua, 250 miles to the north. After all, nothing happens quickly in Africa.
But one week later, a phonecall. ‘You have an interview with the Nurses Council in Kampala. In two days time’ Ridiculous – £100 return by air, and the bus takes too long. But wise Ugandans said I should jump when they said jump.

Arrived in Kampala, the interview was not in two days time, but in three. They would need $10 to cover the cost of the interview – in dollars, not local currency. The Nurses Council had no physical address. No taxi driver was likely to be able to find it ……. The Uganda Protestant Medical Bureau arranged me a driver, eventually.

Arriving at the Council at 10am, none of the interviewing panel (how many were there to be??) had yet arrived. Ten or so other candidates gradually arrived. Those (most) who didn’t know about the $10 fee, had to go back into Kampala and change Ugandan shillings into US dollars – a traffic-laden journey that took about an hour. Benefiting from their unpreparedness, I was ushered into the first interview. The secretary indicated I should go outside and in again at the next door. She went through a connecting internal door. This is Uganda!

Seated behind a vast desk, I dimly saw the chairwoman of the panel at the far end of the room, the secretary at her left. One other member of the panel arrived halfway through my interview. They noted that I had failed to provide a transcript of the subjects I had studied in my initial nurse training (completed 1975). I was congratulated on my achievements since. It was ‘beautiful’ that I was coming to Uganda for three years. However, I must complete one month’s observation at a hospital in Kampala before being fully registered. Argument on my part that I could do this in Arua was met with passive resistance.

My British pride a little wounded, I reminded myself that I am a guest in a country that may seem to be slow and inefficient, but does have some appropriate regulation of nursing, with which I need to comply.

Travel Instructions

“If you want to vomit please make use of a newspaper or bag which we can provide. Please do not remain quiet if you want to relieve yourselves. We can help you. Animals are not permitted on the bus, so when we get to Kigumba chickens cannot be brought on board, and you are not allowed to buy fish at Pachwach.

Our lives are given to us so that we can glorify God, and so would someone offer to pray for travelling mercies?”

It was a heartfelt, practical and altogether sincere start to our journey with the excellent GaaGaa Bus Company, from Kampala to Arua. The journey is about 250 miles, but whilst the final stretch is on well-made and well-marked roads, the first part is seriously pot-holed, bone-shaking and, if you’re that way inclined, vomit-inducing. Nevertheless, 6¼ hours later at 12.45 pm, our prayers answered - God is faithful - we were safely off-loaded at Kuluva, together with five of our six items of luggage where we were met by Paul, the the Kuluva School of Nursing driver. Two of our three cases were coated with a slightly damp white fluid which had clearly oozed from some companion baggage. We still don’t know what it is, but the cases now look truly well-travelled and I think that, in time, we could become quite fond of their unique markings. It’ll certainly make them more identifiable on airport carousels and ensure that no-one wants to steal them.

Kuluva Hospital is 9km outside Arua, and we have been given a little 2-bedroom house where we’ll be living for the next three years. Wildlife is in evidence, with Tantalus Monkeys to entertain us on our veranda, stunningly beautiful butterflies, but all accompanied by a constant battle against armies of ants which besiege the house. We are waging war on them with Doom Fast-Kill Insect Killer. At present we seem to be winning, but somehow I doubt whether we will in the long run!

“Look to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise!” (Proverbs 6.6)

Farewell Kampala (2)

Travelling is one of the most fascinating and stimulating aspects of living in a foreign country, and Uganda doesn’t disappoint. The GaaGaa Bus Company terminus in Kampala is located on the opposite side of the road to the lorry ‘park’ where lorries are loaded for journeys east to Kenya, north to Sudan as well as through the length and breadth of Uganda. At 5.00 pm, the atmosphere there is thick with dust, diesel and petrol fumes. Chaos reigns. On the roadside are piled boxes of every shape and size, crates of bottles, hundreds of rolled up foam mattresses, steel rods for reinforced concrete, sacks bulging with goodness-knows what, and much other totally unidentifiable baggage.

Soon after 5.30 pm our 3 cardboard boxes and 3 cases were taking their full and unscripted part in the chaos - 5,000Ush* for the boxes and 8,000Ush for each of the cases to go on the bus with us the following morning. But the three air-freight barrels wouldn’t fit into the bus so, over the road into the melee of the lorry park. Richard, our Ugandan transport advisor negotiated the lorry driver down from 100,000Ush for each barrel to 200,000Ush the lot. Allan was outraged ‘It’s only 20,000Ush for a bus to carry me to Arua!’ He managed to negotiate down to 120,000Ush for all 3 barrels. It felt like a bit of a triumph, but it’s salutary to discover a barrel is worth 6x more than you are! But the most important issue of all – will they actually get to their rightful destination?

*about £1.50