Cricket Season

I can’t play cricket. Anyone who knows me well knows that. At school I was no good with a bat and usually managed to be out first ball which, to be fair, didn’t give me much chance to improve. I also remember the experience of attempting to catch a cricket ball. Instead of nestling neatly in the palms of my hands it hit the end of my index finger. In this way I discovered that cricket balls are dangerously hard, and concluded that they are best avoided. Such cowardice was not an attitude best suited to becoming an effective cricketer.

But even if I can’t play cricket, I do enjoy watching it and remember several sun-soaked days relishing the contest as it played out on the cricket pitch before me. But too often I also recall ominous dark clouds gathering and large spots of rain beginning to fall, such as happened at the Anglican Clergy v. Imams of Leicester match Anne and I attended in Leicester shortly before coming to Uganda. On that occasion, the match was played to its (bitter for the Anglicans) conclusion, but “rain stopped play” becomes the epitaph of too many cricket matches because, for some reason, in Britain, the arrival of the Cricket Season seems to herald the coming of rain.

But if in Britain the coming of the cricket season signifies the coming of rain, here in Uganda it’s the other way round as the welcome sound of thunder and the opening of the floodgates of heaven marks the coming of the crickets.

Crickets are wonderful creatures with shiny, leathery, brown bodies. They come in many different sizes ranging from the size of a pea to just a little smaller than a golf ball. They have the most incredible ability to leap and spring and bound great distances. Their trajectory is hard to predict which can be a little alarming as they explore the living room, but when you get used to them they are strangely endearing.

Unfortunately, my first encounter with a cricket was in the ‘shower’. I was washing my hair (the little of it that I possess), my eyes closed to protect them from the shampoo. Suddenly I felt something jump up my leg. Quickly washing the shampoo suds from my eyes, I looked down, and saw this thing (I didn’t know what it was at the time) clinging on to me for dear life trying to escape the pools of water accumulating on the floor. I have to confess that the shock forced me to consign the poor, harmless creature to a watery grave. Having now grown more fond of them, I feel frequent pangs of guilt as think back to this summary execution.

But crickets aren’t the only creatures that show up with the coming of the rain. Moths, beetles, appear in profusion, as do white ants which emerge from termite mounds in their thousands, and after dark fly around outside our window attracted by the light. By the morning the verandah looks like a graveyard, littered with the wings and bodies of countless ants.

Our Ugandan friends wonder why we don’t collect them, after all they will lie in wait by termite mounds ready to catch them when they emerge. They cook them to eat mixed with beans, or grind them into a sort of paste from which they make ‘cakes’, which actually look a little like meatballs. We have eaten both forms, but there are more appetising delicacies to our taste (like Bendicks Bittermints). However white ants do provide extra protein which the local diet often lacks. Folks here are so fond of them that they preserve termite mounds, even though they are home to the termites which gobble up their houses (quite literally), in order to maintain this source of extra nourishment.
“How many are your works, O Lord!
In wisdom you made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.” (Ps 104.24)

Indeed, the world is home to a fascinating variety of living creatures, insects, peoples and customs! And what a privilege to be a part of it all!

Bendicks Bonanza and Baboon Bandits - A Bittermint Tale

"A firm fondant very strongly flavoured with peppermint oil, enrobed with intensely bitter chocolate.”

These words scarcely do justice to the amazing experience of eating a Bendicks Bittermint. For many years they have been my (Allan’s) Christmas treat. At times I had been tempted to buy them out of season, but the discipline of keeping them as a luxury limited to only one season, something to be looked forward to with anticipation from year to year, always enhanced the experience of biting into this most exclusive of mints - silky textured and outrageously delicious but with the ‘bite’ of real peppermint.

Coming to Uganda and abandoning Bendicks Bittermints was a sacrifice in itself, but through the kindness of friends and relatives, Christmas 2007 saw two boxes of this exclusive confectionary turn up in Arua Post Office. But Christmas 2008 was another story – not one box appeared.

In desperation we made an appeal to any visitors coming out to see us. At Christmas we may have been bereft, but a whole year without another Bendicks ‘fix’ would have been unthinkable.

A visit to the Post Office in April, however, was rewarded with a parcel, and wonder of wonders, it contained one box of the thick, dark chocolate-covered peppermint bombs. The parcel had been posted in November! The mints were still in excellent condition, a real testimony to their ability to travel thousands of miles in sometimes extreme conditions without adverse effect. Our spirits rose as were able to acknowledge that someone had thought of us.

Just a few days later we travelled to Kampala and Entebbe to meet our visitors. Richard and Helen presented us with two boxes, and Anne’s sisters Cathy and Kathy (don’t ask!) another two. Five boxes in one year was little less than a miracle and we rejoiced!!

Returning to Arua with the two C(K)athys, we stopped off at Paraa Lodge in Murchison Park for a game drive and a Nile River Launch. Because Anne and I had done the river trip several times we saw our visitors off and returned to our room taking with us one box of Bendicks we had retrieved from the Paraa fridge. Our intention was to enjoy them together with our visitors after dinner that evening.

Leaving the box in our room we went downstairs for an afternoon cup of tea and a snack. After a short while Anne went to collect her sisters from their river-trip to the Falls, whilst I returned to the room.

At first sight everything looked normal, unchanged from when we had left it. But then my eyes fell on a quantity of green and gold silver foil lying on the floor. A short distance beyond lay the box of Bendicks Bittermints, its top gouged open by some wild and voracious beast and empty (apart from 3) of its original contents! It lay before the open door to the balcony of our first-floor room.

Then I remembered a previous visit to Paraa when I had chased two opportunistic baboons from the balcony. This time they had returned, but on this occasion with greater success and to their greater benefit. Amazingly, nothing else in the room, laptop, camera binoculars or anything else had been disturbed.

But now, we are looking forward to encountering a new and more classy breed of baboon at Paraa; baboons who have begun to appreciate the finer things of life, and whose eating habits will more reflect the refined character of the food they have now tasted. The alternative, of course, is that they will be driven into a wild frenzy (like me) in their search for more of these glorious mints, very few of which can ever have made their way to Murchison Park, and will rarely ever do so again.

Certainly we will be much more careful in future!