Another New Room, Another New Door

Wow, two entries in two days – I'm spoiling you.

It's been quite a long couple of weeks. For reasons that I won't bore you with I had to leave my first room (the one with the door that didn't open) and temporarily move back to the parish while I looked for another room. As hospitable as the priests were, it was difficult to settle there. I'm not very good at being a guest (probably a control thing!) and on top of that I was back to square one with the rats-weeing-from-ceiling scenario. I cannot describe my relief when I finally moved into my new room this week. The new room is just behind the KISS office and right next to the KISS site – location, location, location. It took a little while to get it ready – it came complete with a number of squatters... More cockroaches than I dare to mention and a very sizeable family of rats. When I picked up the straw mat that the rats were hiding under, no less than seven of them ran underneath the interlocking door into my neighbours house. Whoops. I do admit to laughing quite a lot . My conscience eventually got the better of me and I had to go and inform my neighbour that she had visitors. But when I told her that there were seven rats in her room she looked at me, laughed and said, “oh, you only saw seven? There are usually twenty.” Pleased that I had hit the jackpot with chilled out, animal loving neighbours, I returned to my cleaning. Knowing that my neighbour was so well acquainted with the rats, I called a carpenter to come and nail a massive plank of wood to the bottom of the interlocking door – I thought it was best that the rats stayed the other side of it, where they were clearly quite welcome!

The group of students that were with me at the beginning of the trip did a lot of painting while they were here, and left a bit of paint behind them. Unfortunately there wasn't quite enough of any one colour to paint a whole room, so I went with the “anything goes” approach. My new room is a pleasant mixture of white, blue and green with a hint of black, red and yellow. It boasts a large sunshine (complete with smiley face and sunglasses) and a giant red flower (also with smiley face and glasses). The floor is covered with a stylish 'granite effect' lino and, to cover the bit where I ran out of lino, a pink and purple straw mat. Nothing beats making a place your own!
As with the last room, I had to put a new door on this one too. Again I went with the hefty metal variety. The problem with this one isn't so much that it takes ten minutes to open (it only takes five), but when you open it, without fail, a large amount of concrete cascades onto your head. I've developed a knack of opening it from arms length, but it's a little embarrassing when visitors get an unexpected covering. I've been practising my “gosh, that's never happened before” face.

The building hasn't got any electricity in it yet, but we're working on it. There is an electricity pole nearby, so it's simply a case of getting an electrician to put a wire from the post into the building. He came to wire up all the light switches and sockets yesterday (we're doing the KISS office at the same time as my room). When he came to the socket in my room he told me that he would have to move the socket from where it was (next to my bed) to a new location behind the door. When I enquired as to why that would be necessary, he replied “so that you can do your ironing.” I can only assume that that one was lost in translation. Either that, or everyone in Uganda does their ironing behind the door.

I'm sat typing this up in town. I'm at the house of the local chairman (who is responsible for resolving local disputes) and there are two ladies sat outside the door arguing because one of them went into the other's house and smashed up all her cups and mugs because the other lady's husband bought a goat kebab for another woman... It's never dull here! (And it rarely makes sense!)

Will leave it there. I don't have immediate access to internet at the moment as the access I had was via a priest's laptop – and he lent his laptop to a crazy German guy who has gone to meet the king... Hoping to get myself a mobile internet connection, but until then you'll have to forgive my slightly sporadic communication!

I PROMISE to start updating this more regularly...

Yet again its been ages – and I can't even blame Richard, our cameraman friend, as he's already been and gone! I think his time here was fruitful; he got lots of great footage (despite the numerous cows that wondered into shot) to make a bit of a promo DVD, which will help KISS massively. It'll hopefully give everyone a much clearer idea of what KISS actually does out here (provided he leaves out the chunk of footage of me trying to explain things – cos that'll probably do the complete reverse!)

We turned Richard's trip to the airport into a bit of an exciting day out! We hired a car and, together with Julius and Mary (our two employees in Kasambya), took 6 kids on an excursion to Kampala and Entebbe. The kids came dressed in their very best clothes – some of the dresses were quite spectacular (I feel that they might be similar to the dresses that put me off going to Birthday parties when I was 5 – but my Mum will probably deny it). None of the kids had ever been that far before (most of them had never even been in a car before) and we all had an incredible amount of very simple fun! The first moment of complete wonder and awe came as we stopped at traffic lights in Kampala... TRAFFIC LIGHTS! How completely exciting! We've recently acquired a wooden train set at the office, complete with its own set of wooden traffic lights, which are exciting enough in themselves – but to see them in real life? Amazing! The wonder continued as we drove through the busy centre of Kampala – high rise buildings, so many people, so many cars, so much noise! As we continued up the busy road between Kampala and Entebbe, the new sights and sounds kept the kids totally transfixed. It seems the most exciting noise was the swooshing of cars as they drove past at speed – before long every mouth in the car made a “swoooosh” sound every time a car passed (I'm not gonna lie, it did get a tiny bit annoying after an hour or so...)

By far the biggest excitement of the day came when we passed Lake Victoria – water as far as the eye can see! When the biggest expanse of water you have ever seen is the garden pond-sized damn that fills with water when it rains, that's pretty incredible! We stopped for lunch at a hotel by the lake and got the chance to see the water close up – and, for the brave few, to remove all clothing and jump right in! Lunch itself was a journey of great discovery – sausages?! Too bizarre for most to stomach, unfortunately – but the chips went down a treat! More excitement ensued after lunch with the discovery of swings and slides and then the trip to the airport itself. Once we'd said goodbye to Richard and waited to see a plane take off, we headed for one final burst of over excitement and found ourselves at the zoo! I won't go into too much detail – needless to say it was all rather exciting – but a personal highlight was catching the kids poke a massive plastic chimp with a stick, trying to discover whether or not it was real...

We eventually returned 6 very tired, but very happy kids to Kasambya. Only one hour of the four hour journey home was taken up with the “swoooooooshing” game – they slept the rest of the way (I won't pretend that I wasn't grateful for that). It was a top notch day – and aside from being a lot of fun, it did have its wider purposes. Two of the kids we took are carers to their disabled siblings and we wanted to give them a bit of respite and a bit of attention. We're also trying hard to strengthen our pastoral outreach to the wider community; none of the kids we took are directly supported by KISS financially, and we wanted to give a treat to some of the many many kids who have been turning up to weekend activities and send a wider message that despite the fact that they don't receive school fees from us, they are still very much a part of our community. I think the message got there! Hope to do a re-run next time someone is coming from the airport.... It could be you!

Sorry for the slight delay...

Well, its been a little longer than I'd hoped it would be between blogging sessions! I've had a group of 13 students and teachers from back home with me for the past 2 weeks and time has just disappeared. I've had a great time with them though. It's really refreshing to be reminded of what it is like to experience KISS for the first time; the highs of the incredible welcomes and endless smiling children, the hilarity of the way things work (or, more often than not don't work) in Uganda, and the lows of witnessing situations that leave you feeling utterly hopeless. Obviously those things never go away, however long you stay here – but, out of necessity, they become a part of daily life. It's nice to be reminded of the things that first awoke my own love for KISS; I hope the group has gone home similarly smitten!

Sylvia has been turning up for all of our KISS activities in Kasambya and she's quite a hit! She plays what I believe to be a truly fantastic game which involves asking for coins, going away, buying cakes, bringing them back and feeding me! Think I might ask her to move in! She's recently devised a new (slightly less useful) game which involves trying to lick my face – I'm doing what I can to encourage her to revert to the previous game! Word travels very fast in Kasambya and within days of us visiting Sylvia's family two other families turned up at the office with children with similar difficulties and they've also started coming to the activities. We escorted one of them home one evening and she told everyone she came across on the way, in an exceptionally loud and excited voice, what a wonderful time she had had playing with a ball – I've not witnessed such pure joy in a long time – beautiful!

Coincidentally we've just employed someone to work with us in Kasambya who has a lot of experience working with kids with disability. Her main remit is to help strengthen the pastoral provision that KISS offers – and hopefully with her experience we will be able to offer something extra for children like Sylvia who aren't able to attend school – the future is looking quite exciting!

We've been on a bit of a renovation drive with the visitors these past two weeks, and amongst many other paint related endeavours we've relocated and painted the KISS office. It started off very simply with blue sky, white fluffy clouds and a big rainbow.... but as the fumes increased and slight delirium crept in, we decided to paint some child friendly bugs on the walls as well... I was eventually banished after attempts a painting a grasshopper were misinterpreted as being a giant walking aubergine. Art was never my forte.

Right, best leave it there. Hoping to be able to update much more regularly from now on. One of the students has stayed behind and will be with me for another 9 days, so if I don't update you can blame him! He's a broadcast journalism student shooting some promotional footage for KISS – watch this space for the results!