After work

(Not much different from home so this is a blog you can miss out)
Most of the staff work until about 2 or 3 pm and we usually work without a break, so we have time in the afternoon for lunch and to relax. Somehow the time flies by.
It is a pleasure to have the time to talk together. We keep up-to-date (albeit 3 weeks later) with the Guardian Weekly and the British Medical Journal.
The usual reading (there is an active trade of good books amongst expatriates) and crosswords are disrupted by duties such as hand washing clothes in buckets and by Annie making bread. (Mostly edible!) or Christmas cakes as in photo.Hair needs to be cut and Annie even let Rupert cut her hair (once!). Nicola also had a go. (once!) We are running basic computer skill sessions twice a week and are still trying to master KiSwahili.

Gardening has produced a good crop of carrots ( the stunted ones in photo were transplanted when thinning!) and tomatoes and some runner beans as well as chives and basil. Lettuce (we shared 6 leaves for lunch the other day) and parsley is not so successful.

Picked my first pumpkin today and we have pawpaws coming ripe. We also have avocados from a young tree. The palmoil tree yields a fruit we find inedible but loved by our neighbours. We may not be here long enough to taste the fruits of the passion fruit vine, sadly.

In the evening we walk down to some rocks about half a mile away to watch the sunset over the valley and the Ngoni swamp at about 6.45 pm.

In the evenings it is attempting to access the internet through a lousy connection via the phone (maybe 30 minutes to send and receive one email, sometimes even then it does not go) and cooking supper.

Then a game of Scrabble, read a book or watch a DVD in the laptop of some period drama or longer film. DVDs of varying quality are readily available containing 40 James Bond films (?!) and other fantastic claims. Some are useless, some worthwhile.
Time passes remarkably quickly, many things are not done and there’s never a dull moment.
It is pretty quiet and rural here. We hear our neighbours who are not noisy (though their festering cockerel’s days are numbered!) and the occasional passer-by. The crickets/cicadas sing at night and the frogs sing loudly after rain. We hear the birds in the daytime as we are blessed with a huge variety in this area.
We love it here. We are made to feel welcome and part of the community and mostly people are kind, cheerful and helpful.

Our House

We live in the nurses line about 300 yards from the hospital down a dirt road, which has plenty of pedestrians and cyclists but little traffic.

We are in a semidetached bungalow and our neighbours TaKasoba (Celestin, Mr.) and MaKasoba (Jonesia, Mrs) are both nurses. Their children have either left home or are at boarding school but their home is always full and there is always a friendly face or six next door.
Our house is like a simple holiday home in Wales circa nineteen seventies without the lino or formica. We have a living room with table and six chairs and five comfy chairs with sideboard and bookshelf. We have 2 bedrooms.

Behind is an enclosed courtyard which gives us some privacy and which we decorate with plants in various pots and tins.

Opposite, in the courtyard, are the kitchen, shower (actually we bucket wash as no hot water in the shower) and loo. We brush our teeth in the basin in the corner of the courtyard and I shave there unless it is pouring with rain. In the evening after dark we are met by a splendid view of the moon and a full African starry sky every time we go to the kitchen. It is wonderful to brush our teeth under the stars every night.

Electricity works most of the time (power cuts about once every 3 weeks) and water is from a borehole until the pump was hit by lightening. It has just cost about £5000 to replace the pump and clean up the borehole. During this time we collected water off the roof for washing clothes and flushing the loo. Despite heavy rain in Kagera few houses have gutters.
We look east out of the front door and see the sun rise at 6.45 over long grass and eucalyptus trees. We have a small garden besides the house and behind we have a pawpaw tree and rough ground overgrown with exuberant plants. We could have a huge plantation if we wanted! Banana trees are everywhere, growing plantain - cooking bananas.

Entebbe

Whilst Annie was enjoying Florence Nightingale day, Nicola and I spent the day in Entebbe before flying back to England.
Entebbe is a delightful place, the old colonial headquarters for Uganda. It is still green and leafy with bungalows amid large plots and rather faded grand old hotels with Government House on top of the hill.

The highlight is the splendid Botanical gardens with palms soaring in to the sky and the largest bougainvillea I have ever seen.
There is a special part left untouched, about 200 yards wide, that is pure tropical rainforest and is apparently used for a number of Tarzan films.

(I had hoped to add photos but two of the cybercafes are not handling photos and the other has no connection! Things may change but don't hold your breath.)