Xmas Plans & News
This is a quick news update.
Firstly, I’m not sending any christmas cards this year, but since I have decorated this site, let me wish you all Happy Christmas and a wonderful new year. I hope to be able to talk (and dance!) with many of you in the new year and I hope that will make up for my miserable lack of greetings this season!
Secondly, here are my plans for the season: I’m leaving Kenya for Uganda with my good friend Jackson this afternoon. Jackson is another VSO volunteer who is from Uganda himself. I’ll spend christmas with him and his family and, I hope, get to see something of Africa which isn’t Kenya. From what I have seen, I think it would be unfair to judge the whole continent by Kenya alone. (a few days in Uganda don’t make much difference, I know, but at leat it’s a start).
I plan to return to Kenya on 27th and then immediately set out on a flight to Lamu on the Kenyan coast to spend New Yerar doing as little as possible with Katie and some other Peace Corps volunteers.
I get back to Tala on about the 4th or 5th January by which time I will have only one month left of this placement.
I had a wonderful opportunity, on Saturday, to attend the wedding of my colleague here at the college. She was married in Nairobi in a Baptist church and there was a celebaration afterwards. My observations on this will also have to wait for other story-telling opportunitites, but I want to say thanks to Betty and Francis for the invitation and opportunity to share in that very special occasion.
Mark Says:
OK I’m here in Kampala; borrowing a Ugandan mobile phone, +25675303561 should reach me until 26th December.
I should be able to use the old phone which is operated by a company called Celtel who operate in East Africa. When I got to the border I recieved two SMS messages, one welcoming me to Uganda and listing the benefits of continuing to use my Celtel line, and another immediately afterwards welcoming me back to Kenya. Since then the old SIM doesn’t show any signs of having detected a signal in this country.
Anyway, in case anyone needs or wishes to contact me until 26th, use the number above and please say who you are because my old phone book is on the other SIM.
December 21st, 2005 at 3:01 amMark Says:
When we arrived here we took boda boda to get to the place where we’re staying. In kenya boda boda are bycicle taxis, here they are mopeds. Jackson and i had three: one each plus one for his humungous suitcase — something like a recreational vehicle — my driver insisted on trying to arrange a wife from me from his country and for me to do likewise from mine (!) he was so distracted by this line of conversation that he failed to see where the other bikes had gone and we had to swing round and head up a road against the flow of traffic.
The motorcycle taxis have rules of their own. At one point we were gummed up with traffic jam; my driver hobbled us over to the side of the road where the first yard or so of road was taken up by a line of boda boda motorcycles moored against the curb facing out into the flow. At a word from my driver their owners appeared and hauled and twisted their bikes aside and out of our way. As we passed they returned to re-create the blockage. A special boda boda traffic management system.
A few blocks further on we were gummed up once again but this time there were no fellow boda boda drivers to come to our aid. We bumped up onto the pavement (sidewalk) and weaved and dodged between pedestrians, kioksk and other street furniture for a few hundred yards before bumping back onto the road. All this, of course, without crash helmets (which is probably enough to get me sent home prematurely by VSO but I’m nearly through in any case…) it was just like that bit in The Blues Brothers where they take the Blues Mobile into a Mall and crash through several storefronts. Except, of course, that we were on a motorcycle and we didn’t actually hit anything. And nobody was playing Peter Gunn.
December 21st, 2005 at 3:13 amMark Says:
Last night we went to a bar down the road from Jackson’s home in Kampala. The entertainment was what I can best describe as lipsynching thogh it was nowhere near as glamorous as Priscilla Queen of the Desert. There were, however, girls in Britneyesque school-girl miniskirts which I enjoyed very much (at one point it even looked as if there were signs of a choreography informing their movements), two, erm, whats the politically correct term for very small people so as not to upset anyone by calling them midgets or dwarfs, they were better dancers and put up a very funny self-mocking show. And theree were several guys who were generally medeocre but at one point turned up with matching costumes and a really slick Hip-Hop choreography that they had clearly practised and were the highlight of the show.
But the funniest bit of the evening came just after a power black-out had interrupted one of the scantily dressed girls doing some madonna song or other. Bits and pieces of equipment came back on line in no aparent order. Once the PA was up the MC announced that the music would be back shortly. A moment after that through the impressive PA came the unmistakable sound of Microsoft Windows starting up!
December 21st, 2005 at 3:22 amMark Says:
Hi again
The moped taxi story developes. I have now seen a 100cc moped carrying:
December 24th, 2005 at 6:55 am- a mattress rolled up and stood up on end
- a sofa, tied on sideways to the back with bits of inner-tube rubber (Africa’s answer to Duct Tape, without it the whole continent would fall apart
- Jackson and me! (plus the driver) out in the sticks we took one boda boda between us and trundled over paths barely wide enough to walk through.
Hair raising stuff. Luckily I dont have too much hair to raise.
Mark Says:
Yesterday we went to Entebbe Zoo. A plesant experience. Sadly the management have decided that what little funds they have available should be spent on new offices and have allowed several of the animal enclosures to become run down and to close. What happened to their former residents is moot. (but you should have seen jackson dart across the room when the room when he realised that the thick branch in front of the glass was, in fact, a big python — pictures to follow)
December 24th, 2005 at 6:57 amChris Says:
Quite a way to spend xmas, eh?
How are you blogging this?
C
December 24th, 2005 at 2:21 pmMark Says:
Thanks Chris, yes its been a great christmas so far. Christmas day we spent with Jackson’s parents and 7 brothers and sisters and their families at a village somewhere in the interior of Uganda. They gave me to understand it was a very traditional christmas: chicken, beef, matoke (gren banannas steamed in a parcel of bananna leaves) potatoes and other goodies.
The men sat around a table at one end of the room while women sat on rush mats on the floor at the other (apart from when some of them got up, now and then, to get more food for the men’s table). There is quite a strong culture around this gender separation from what I can tell, though I was not there anywhere long enough to really understand what was behind what I saw. Women (and children) are expected to kneel while greeting their superiors (elders, members — either sex — of the husband’s family, men in general) I found it very strange because, of course, its so different from my native culture and also becuse it’s so different from what I have experienced in Kenya.
The differences between Ugandan and Kenyan traditions and daily life are an impotant part o the reason I wanted to visit another African country before I leave: it would be grossly unfair of me to judge the continent by Kenya alone. I have managed only a brief glimpse of another African country, but have had the chance to see that there certainly are big differences between neighbouring E. African countries.
In the morning of my last day (yesterday) we visited the traditional burial place of the kings of Buganda. The young man who showed us around was very knowledgeable — he wants to prepare a website covering the history of the people and the place — he told us of the kings of history, how the institution of regional kings impacted political life during the British colonisation and also during and around the rule of Idi Amin. The many clans of the Buganda people had various roles to play in the administration of the kingship. For examle one clan was specifically responsible for ‘crowning’ new kings. Members of this clan were not required to kneel when greeting the king. Meanwhile the king would take many wives from various clans. His sons would take their mothers’ clans (usually children belong to their father’s clans) to prevent a monopoly of kingship from any single clan. Eldest sons were not elligible to become king but kings were chosen from the available pool of younger sons by a group of elders. The king was, however, prohibited from marrying into the clan who have responsibility of choosing and crowning kings, once again, as a safeguard gainst such abuses of power as sometimes occur today when rulers arrange for their sons to gain power.
There’s so much more to this than I can write here, and so much more, even, than I have heard, but I wanted to capture some of the insights that made me sit and wonder in that thatched mausoleum.
December 26th, 2005 at 11:48 pmMark Says:
How am I blogging this? I visited a cybercafe a couple of times in Kampala and today, In Nairobi. Its easier and quicker to leave comments here than new entries, and besides which they show up as new activity on the home page.
Right now Im (not very) fresh off the bus from Kampala. The bus in question was a shitty old clockwork rustbucket of a vehicle owned by ‘Akamba’ bus company (avoid them!) which must have been upholstered by a carpenter or, possibly, a blacksmith. I’d booked so far in advance I was the first passenger to be allocated a seat. The man at the desk told me he’d chosen a good seat for me when I told him of the problems of being 6′4″ tall. Turns out I was in the second row, not the first, for some reason, the bloke who got the seat I wanted wasn’t particularly tall. The coachwork was so bad that:-
a) his seat kept wobbling about after he reclined it so that if my knees came near it — which they did — he would clobber them
b) my seat couldn’t be reclined at all
c) my seat had no armrest
Armrests become supprisingly important when you’re driving for 16 hours (!) over unmaintained roads so bumpy that the idea of sleeping becomes comical (for a few hours, anyway). The roads were once tarmacked but since then potholes have developed and grown deeper and more severe. Some of them are so vast that the views across them are starting to attrat more vistors than the Great Rift Valley itself. The effect on passengers of a shity old Akamba bus, with shock absorbers made of knicker elastic, is much
like being a bit of wet lettuce in a sieve while someone shakes the dropps off. If you don’t have an armrest you might get tossed off (the seat!). The armrest gives an alternative anchor point. Since there is nothing to brace one’s feet against the only options for remaining seated for the duration are:-
a) active balancing (which requires very strong buttock muscles)
b) moving to another seat with an armrest (which I eventually did)
Sorry if this turned into a rant, but Im writing what I feel and, right now, I feel it in my bum!
December 27th, 2005 at 12:02 amMark Says:
The border crossing was interesting. Land border crossings are always interestingly different from flying ones. The bus stops in country A, you get out, queue up, fight off swarms of money-changers who like to refer to you as ‘boss’, ‘my boss’, ‘my new boss’ or (my favourite) ‘my new son’!
“Yes boss!”.
I turn to look at him blankly.
“I feel as if you are my new son!”.
Some other travelers turn to look at him too, possibly for the sport.
“I don’t know why you feel that”, I reply blankly. The other travellers laugh.
The money-changer laughs too and introduces himself to me by name. Some elaborate multi-syllable old-testament name. He tells me he is saved and that his own father (or was it boss?) is working in the Vatican (I think; I was concentrating on looking blank).
I introduce myself; we shake hands. I smile; he’s been grinning at me the whole time.
“Now change some little money with me, my boss”.
My blank look returns, “No thankyou”.
But this isn’t the bit I wanted to tell you about. There was a long-ish queue at the Ugandan Immigration office last night, and I mentioned it to the woman who had been sitting next to me on the park-bench near the front of the coach for the first part of the journey. (She’s here in Nairobi today to buy clothes, returning overnight tonight on the same Akamba bone-shaker, to start selling them before the 1st Jan)
“There might be a shorter queue on the Kenyan side”, she offered, “because they aren’t using the computers”.
I did a double take: the Ugandan office had an array of bright new-looking black and silver Dell computers fitted with Passport Scanners. Surely all this tech was supposed to make the process quicker?
After getting stamped out of Uganda, we wandered over a few hundred yards of dark no-mans-land to the Kenyan Immigration desk. I didn’t see my co-traveller but she soon appeared from the gloom and asked to borrow my pen to fill in the forms. Then she used her familiar position to assume the place in front of me in the queue as if I’d been saving it for her.
I didn’t complain; I asked her about the queue. It was shorter than on the Ugandan side.
“Maybe because there were only two of them working”, she offered.
“But there are only two of them working here!”, I protested.
“But there they’re using the computers”, she explained, “here it’s just stamp-and-go”.
Before I stamped and went, I wished the immigration officer a happy new year. On my immigration form I’d ticked the “returning resident” box for purpose of visit. She looked a bit puzzled and leafed through my passport to find the resident’s re-entry pass stamped there, then she visibly relaxed.
“You’re a resident”, she smiled.
“For the time being”, I said
“What’s your work”, She asked
“I’m a volunteer, working at a technical college teaching computers and IT”, my standard answer
She smiled again and looked me straight in the eye (an unusual gesture for a Kenyan lady, in my experience, and virtually unheard of for an Immigration officer: they can even scrutinise your face for deviations from your passport photograph without actually catching your eye), “Let me say Good For Kenya!”, she said.
I melted. “Thank you, I hope so. I hope it is of some good for Kenya that I’m here”
December 27th, 2005 at 12:22 amChristine Says:
Oooh it is Mark! Good that you are there that is. Probably most good for you but good for a few Kenyans too.
Interesting to here your impressions of Uganda. You know we took Akamba bus to Uganda and it was great. Of course, we paid extra for the fancy bus and I’m wondering if you took the budget version…Regardless pole for your bone rattling safari. Does make for good stories though!
Enjoy Lamu! Do drink gallons of lime juice and scramble the sand dunes by Shela beach for me.
Am chilly in Canada. Surviving Christmas consumerism, hibernating at my sisters and playing with my nieces. Coming to terms with the fact I am nolonger in Kenya.
Love to you, C
December 27th, 2005 at 12:54 pmjan Says:
Oh My god I dojt know where xams went and I have not really wished yo anything more than a fleeting merry xmas I will tell you about mine some time when I am a bit nore time and can say what I think ..
January 4th, 2006 at 6:09 pmbut I am a bit better now and hope you are having a really good break…ots of love markxxxx Jan and Steve xxxx
Tyg Says:
HUGS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
When you coming BACK??!!??!!
xxxTyg
January 5th, 2006 at 3:00 amMark Says:
Now, I’m sitting back at the Server at Holy Rosary College. Didn’t write much from Lamu. Though there is alledgedly Internet at the Posta there, I was too busy being on holiday to drop in and write to you all. but I do wish you all a very happy new year.
Lamu was lovely, one of my best experiences of Kenya and a good choice to do near the end of the stay. I have much more to say and some nice photos to stick up here but I’ll do it in another entry starting tomorrow when I have had a chance to prepare the pics for uploading.
I took the cheap Akamba bus. And therein lies the tale. I won’t do that again.
And now Im back in Tala, with just under a month to do what little ‘good’ might be possible or appropriate.
January 5th, 2006 at 6:10 am