Oh Uganda…

It’s been an interesting trip to Uganda this time round. I was due to return in mid-April but a job opportunity peeked above the parapet back home that coincided with the job I was doing in Kampala ducking back down and taking cover so I suddenly find myself back in Blighty looking back at the past few months like a distant memory.

Making TV in Uganda has proved very problematic due in part to the total lack of budgets and the fact that you have to cater for many ‘hidden extras’ (bribes) if you want to get a programme away. Persuading people that your show is a good one isn’t a problem but getting them to pay is and the conversation usually follows the following pattern; the budget is too much – we reduce the budget – the budget is too much – we reduce the budget further – that is a good budget – excellent – now you add X million – but that will increase the budget? – you don’t include it in the budget – ahh…

On the plus side, the lack of making any bonafide TV or Ads has given me time to shoot and edit a few VTs for the www.childs-i-foundation.org and I’m currently editing a couple for another charity which were great fun to shoot. We visited two projects in the slum areas that run programs for women who make clothing that fund the projects and sponsor kids and work in the community. It’s a tough, tough life for many people but the community spirit, humanity and general cheerfulness is very humbling. I’ll post the finished VTs here when they’re done.

I also visited a street-kids project and hope to film with them when I’m back, again, incredible stories and never any sense of bitterness or injustice, for many it’s simply a case of survival in what for a majority of the population is an extremely harsh environment with little to no help from the Government or ruling classes. It does beg the question what would happen if all the NGOs pulled out? Would the powers that be step up to the plate or allow even more people to die? Who knows – there are many good charitable local people who I’m sure would answer the call and maybe there’s a case that so many NGOs reduce the need for local communities to help themselves. It’s an interesting dilemma and I certainly don’t know the answer but it’s worth a thought.

So – I’m back in the land of running water and switches that turn lights on when flicked. The night time sounds of Africa; fighting dogs, cockerels, pigs, pounding power ballads and constant sweeping are once again far behind me and my next adventure starts in Belfast very shortly.

Will I be returning to Uganda? Of course- it gets under your skin and I’m already missing the many good friends I have there. Watch this space…

There’s been very little rain here over the past few months resulting in major water shortages but the weather has gone some distance to counteract this as, at the time of writing, its bucketing it down – its raining cats and dogs, mice and men and lions and tigers! Hilariously, I dashed the 10 yards from flat to car to make the journey to work this morning sustaining only minor dampness but safe in the confines of the increasingly clapped out Shogun when halfway to the office, it started to rain INSIDE THE CAR! Water was pouring in through the sunroof and top of the window screen considerably harder than the pathetic shower I’d had at the flat when I got up this morning. Consequently it became rather cold and the window screen fogged up in an instant so I did something I’ve never had to do out here before, I whacked the heater up to FULL and hit the fan to MAX  – big mistake. I was instantly blasted with a cloud of dust from every vent that was only too grateful to hurl itself gratefully at the wet, soggy clothed driver. I stepped out of the car looking like I’d done a day on a building site. TIA – This is Africa! So – that was this morning….

Last week a few of us negotiated the many and varied potholes and rumble strips and drove the 80Ks out of Kampala to straddle the Equator where they’ve gone to the effort of constructing a couple of circles and signs for dumb tourists to take pictures whilst the monster trucks, buses, taxis, bodas, cattle and the like continue to trundle down the main road that separates the two circles. Was it worth the journey? Actually it was, just for the obligatory pictures, even if we did all feel mildly embarrassed about taking them on the grounds that ‘we’re not tourists we live here and we’re doing this ironically so please don’t judge us’.

I’m not convinced this argument holds up given that we followed the photo shoot with lunch in the adjacent coffee house surrounded by fellow Muzungus but hey. It probably didn’t help either that in true Brit saucy-postcard-seaside-style fashion I couldn’t resist the urge to kneel behind a painting and have my picture taken as a fat naked women, but then which perfectly well balanced British guy wouldn’t jump at such an opportunity?

Maybe its my feminine side emerging but the next day I also succumbed to a pedicure at a salon called ‘Sparkles’. I only went there for a haircut but the girls persuaded me that having a pedicure is an entirely macho thing to do provided I didn’t go the whole hog and have my nails painted too which was a shame as they had a wide and colourful palette to choose from and I was a bit jealous of the girl’s shiny blue and pink toes. There was lots of scrubbing, massaging, exfoliating, scrapping and filing and it was great!!!  My trotters had never been so soft and clean even though it was a short-lived novelty in a country where nothing short of full length waders will ensure that the dirt and grime stay away. It was worth the mild sense of humiliation.

In a bid to reestablish my manhood we followed the pedicure with a game of bowling where I was confident that the ladies fear of breaking a nail (they had manicures too) would give me the edge only to be right-royally beaten by a bunch of girls – my World has been turned up-side-down.

Right I’m off to watch football, drink beer and start a fight…

Ninja Turtles

So here I am back in Uganda for my 3^rd stint in a year – another 3 months of ups and downs, sun, fun, tubing, and potholes beckons.

Previously on ‘Oh Uganda’…

Stint 1 – worked as the media volunteer for the Child’s-i-Foundation, a charity set up by the formidable Lucy Buck to combat the problem of child abandonment in Uganda. Amazing, worthy and fulfilling.

http://www.childsifoundation.org/

Stint 2 – worked for a TV indie in Kampala as the Country Manager, yep – I manage a whole country. Aim of the game to drum up business in a country where only 16% of the population own a TV, no-one has any money and the general standard of TV output is a 1000 degrees south of Jeremy Kyle. Shallow and deeply frustrating.

Stint 3 – continuing to manage the country but with the added momentum to pull off a project that I believe in and could actually make a difference to the people involved if it comes off  – more on this in future installments. Potentially exciting and fraught with difficulties.

It truly baffles me that I’m back. The only indication that I’ve been away is the growth rate of the babies at CiF and the revelation that the pot hole ridden ‘road of death’ has been resurfaced in my absence. It can still take an hour to travel the 200 yards up and down it but at least your bones aren’t bruised at the end.

Grown to the size of an Elephant

Unbelievable – another 3 months have whizzed by and once again I find myself heading back to Blighty!

Previously, life here in Uganda was a totally different experience as I was working for the Child’s-i-Foundation and was looked after, feed and watered. This time round I’ve had to fend for myself which basically translates as I’ve eaten out loads. Chinese, Thai, Indian, Italian, African, British, American – you name it – I’ve eaten it…

There’s so much I’ve meant to write about but haven’t quite got round to – hey, there’s always the next time. The current plan is to return here early in the new year, in the meantime here’s a few passing contradictions on my second stint here in Kampala: hot, humid, wet, cold, friendly, scary, dangerous, fun, polluted, fresh, painful, frustrating, relaxing, carefree, smelly, delicious, surprising, spontaneous, dark, bright, cheap, expensive, fast, slow, dusty, noisy, peaceful, tragic, complicated, simple, uplifting, brown, red, green, and very, very, very bumpy…

This is Africa!

So – it was the weekend and all was fine and dandy. The sun was shining, I had plans to watch football followed by a big night out and I’d had a haircut experience at Sparkles – everything was shaping up nicely. Until…

Bec and I were driving back to Mengo when out of nowhere the biggest storm hit. Within minutes the streets were a torrent of gushing water and golf ball sized hailstones were smashing into the car and threatening to break the window screen. Chatting was a futile exercise as we had to shout at each other to be heard over the noise. We continued back at a snail’s pace. Bizarrely, as we ploughed through the rising water there wasn’t another vehicle or person to be seen – it was very strange, like we were the last people on a very wet Earth, where everyone disappeared to remains a mystery.

The road down to the Childs-i-Foundation’s Malaika Babies Home was like a grade 5 rapid but nothing compared to the deluge that was gushing out of the heavy broken gate that was hanging off its hinges. It turns out that the pressure of the flood water cascading down through the open gutters had taken out the entire brick wall that use to run down the side of the home, crashing through one of the bedroom windows and flooding the entire house in mud and shit in the process. In short – it was total carnage.

No-one was hurt and all the babies were safely moved and looked after in the nursing station without a care in the World – oblivious to the huge clean up effort that was going on outside and – oh, what a clean up effort it turned out to be. It really was a case of shoveling shit, moving rubble and debris, washing a variety of things that were caught in the carnage and capturing it all on camera for a cheeky little peek into another day in the continuing saga that is life here in Uganda (I hope to post the VT here soon – its being cut by someone as I type).

Actually, aside from the damage, it was a truly inspiring day and apart from the lack of wall and pile of rubble in the garden and down the side of the building you’d never know anything untoward had happened in the home thanks to everyone’s efforts to get the place ship-shape again. As we drove away from the home the mixed sounds of laughter and tantrums suggested that nothing unusual had happened – the babies were making some noise too.

It’s sobering to think that this minor catastrophe, this light rain shower, is nothing in comparison to the flooding in Pakistan and if the environmental cynics and Governments continue to stick their bloated, pompous, corrupt, greedy heads in the sand and don’t try and curb the effects of global warming soon, then, quite frankly – we’re all fucked…

So – I’ve been back out here in Uganda for 6 weeks now and already the time is flying and I’m still continually amazed, surprised, delighted and disturbed by everything the country throws at you. Not a day goes by that doesn’t bring an unexpected experience that simply wouldn’t happen at home but is all part of the joy and pain of life here in Africa.

Here are a couple of recent car related gems:

I’m currently the proud owner of a slightly shabby Shogun 4×4 that, traffic and driving chaos aside (that’s a whole other story), has certainly made life here slightly more flexible. However, I’m lucky that the car, and indeed I, am still in one piece following a trip to a strip of dirt road dedicated to a collection of greasy, overall clad guys vying for business of the mechanical variety.

On someone’s recommendation I bunny-hoped down there to have the dashboard lights, rear door and battery warning light fixed. Within seconds of stopping the car was swarming with wiry mechanics stripping the car – there was a guy under the bonnet pulling out the alternator, one in the back dismantling the back door and one inside tearing out a variety of wires from behind the dashboard – in short – it was bloody chaos!

After much negotiation and the promise that the whole nightmare would be over in 20 minutes, when I would have a fully functional car, I took a step back to try my damnedest to keep an eye on the carnage when a fight broke out against the side of the car. While this did cause a few passers-by to turn a head it didn’t deter the frenzied activity all around the car and fortunately petered out before a panel beater was also required.

After an hour I eventually managed to get a price for all the work that ‘apparently’ needed doing and it amounted to a small fortune. This included 12 mini bulbs for the dashboard that ‘apparently’ needed replacing at a cost of 10,000 shillings (£3.50) each! By this time I’m starting to get very annoyed ‘apparently’ and my foe is getting equally disgruntled. We did however share one moment of amazement when I pointed out that the price of the bulbs alone amounted to 120,000 shillings and this was way, way too much. He looked surprised, “120,000 shillings”, he exclaimed, “Are you a mathematician?” He then proceeded to check my maths using the calculator on his mobile and confirm to all his mechanic mates that I must be a professor because I did this complicated sum in my head.

Another hour of heated debate and continual dismantling followed and then I finally lost the plot and literally shouted, “Everyone. Down tools. NOW!” Several bemused mechanics heads appeared above and around the sides of the vehicle like Meerkats. “I want this car put back together exactly as it arrived and I want it done NOW!”

There are moments in life when you have to question the sensibilities of your actions and as they all stared blankly at me I thought this was indeed one of those moments and the chance of my car ever working again was slim. However, after what felt like an age, as one, they all picked up their tools and went into reverse mode – the alternator was reluctantly re-fitted, the back door reluctantly reassembled and the dashboard reluctantly bashed back into place – a tad too violently I felt but I’m not one to complain… Yeah, yeah, yeah – so I am one to complain – I was being ironic.

So – 3 hours in the hot sun and 40,000 shillings ‘labour charge’ later I drove away with the car in exactly the same state as when I arrived – marvelous!

On a slightly shorter car related note – just a few days later, driving to watch the Liverpool/Arsenal game complete with a car load of girls who didn’t share my enthusiasm for the footie but did want a beer, I got a bit confused and ran a red light. I was immediately pulled over by a traffic cop who wanted to give me an on the spot fine of 48,000 shillings! The police here are notorious for ‘on the spot fines’ and there’s no denying that I was in the wrong but after telling him that I run the light because I’m stupid he told me not to put myself down then I noticed he had an Arsenal fob on his key ring and I explained that a) I’m a fellow Gooner and b) I could prove it for a ‘fine’ discount. I proceeded to show him the Arsenal badge screen saver on my mobile and we shook hands and he let me off with a Gentleman’s agreement! Remarkable.

TIA – this is Africa!

Well – here I am back in Uganda…

As it happens I’ve already been here for 3 weeks but got sidetracked from blogging due to the fact that I’ve basically been on a 3 week jolly boys outing because me ol’ mate the Kevsta O’Brien has been out here prior to heading off to climb Kilimanjaro for the Child’s i Foundation. Safaris, White-Water-Knuckle-Rides and Beers have been the order of the day until now.

Please check out how ChildsiKlimb are fairing as they prepare for the final push up Africa’s highest peak and perhaps throw a few coins in their direction to help them on their way. It will be greatly appreciated and your cash will go straight to the charity: http://www.childsiklimb.org/

Anyway – enough about them – this is all about me!

So – following on from my 3 month stint out here as CiF’s media volunteer I now find myself back here as the grandly titled Country Manager of an independent production house in Kampala. I’m still not totally sure how this has come to pass but hey, it has, so – in for a penny, in for a pound and all that.

I have so much to write about I don’t know where to begin so I’m not going to bother right now, this minute, for my blog is indeed forever delayed.

More soon. In the meantime here’s a sideways picture of the cutest baby in the World…