The Story So Far ...

We said farewell to our work friends at the RSPCA and BBC on 14 September, farewell to our families on 3 October, and set off for Africa to save cheetahs, decorate school buildings, and look around a bit. After a trip home for Christmas, we headed for South East Asia on 6 January -- where we were stunned by Qatar and Cambodia, taught novice monks in Laos, and acted as security guards at an Elephant Festival. It was back home for four weeks to look after John's dad, before we tangoed our way through five South American countries in fifteen days. We then snooped our way through New Zealand, dipped our toes into Fiji, drove-thru California and were home from home with family in Vancouver.

Now, we are home itself. Fulfilled, happy, and ready to earn the respect of our friends and family by knuckling down and earning some money once again ...

Tuesday, 30 November 2010

A Lazy Lunch on Lake Victoria

Catching Sunday lunch

From Mondays to Saturdays, Henry and I have been roughing it.  Hostels where the curtains don't quite meet and you keep your fingers crossed for hot water; that sort of thing.  So on Sundays, we treat ourselves.  And last Sunday, we jumped aboard a tuc-tuc bound for the lakeside Kiboko Bay Resort Hotel for lunch -- and an experience in African table service that I had barely imagined possible.

Five minutes after taking our seats, I finally attracted the attention of a waiter.  We might try wine, we thought, could we see the wine-list?  It would be brought.  Five minutes later, I caught the eye of another waiter.  "The wine-list?"  "I'll bring it over," came the reply.  Time passed, no wine-list.  "Just as I thought ..." I mumbled to myself, to Henry's disapproval.  And then, from the edge of the pool, I spotted him: our waiter, weighed down by a tray of seven bottles: three red, one bubbly, three chilled.  The wine-list was with another diner, I was told, so the waiter had brought its entire contents for us to choose from.  A winning act to trump an impatient Brit.  Africa 1, John 0.

I ordered Fish Meuniere.  "Chipped, mashed or roast potatoes, sir?"  I longed for chips, drew the line at mashed, so ordered roast.   Henry chose a tortilla and salad.  Ten minutes passed.  Our lunch appeared -- Henry's as requested, and, for me, fish with chips, not a roast potato to be seen.  Yet another African cock-up, I grinned to myself, but one I was very happy to leave uncorrected.

I had just enough time to take a couple of bites when I saw in the corner of my eye our same waiter, darting back from the kitchen, a troubling sight balanced on the palm of his hand.  "Excuse me, sir, I am so sorry," he said. In an instant, the fish and chips was removed, a fresh plate of fish and roast potatoes in its place.  "My humblest apologies!"  And with that, he was gone.  Africa 2, John 0, and only one of us truly humbled.

John

Sunday, 28 November 2010

Miracle workers

Geraldine and Geoff




We've just finished our fortnight in Kabubbu. Along with our fellow volunteers (see photo below) we've taken part in a wonderful range of activities. While mornings have focussed mainly on hard work, sanding and painting a new dormitory for the Secondary School, we've also had chance to use any specialist skills to maximum effect.
So while John and I ran a journalism session for schoolchildren and helped encourage a community newsletter, fellow volunteer and thespian Judith Kinnison-Bourke has been holding history lessons about the Titanic, dressed in full Edwardian gown while playing the part of a 22-year-old survivor.

We've also handed out Christmas presents to all the children, and on Sunday we took part in the most lively church service I have been to in years. It was a cross between Mass, a keep-fit class and a nightclub.
The two of us even helped lead a craft session in the primary school. One small classroom, 60 schoolchildren, glue, scissors, paper and glitter, and with John and I in charge.  Bedlam, pure bedlam.

Behind all this organised mayhem, is the Quicken Trust (www.quickentrust.com), set up just over 10 years ago by Geoff and Geraldine Booker, a middle-aged couple from deepest Sussex. They were brought to Uganda by a friend to see some of the challenges faced in this country, known as the Pearl of Africa.
They stumbled on Kabbubu, "the forgotten village", a small collection of mostly mud homes only an hour from the capital Kampala, but which for all the world might as well have been 500 miles from anywhere. This community of about 6,000 people was ravaged by abject poverty, AIDS and many other problems.
Confronted by hundreds of desperate people standing in the dirt and begging for help, most of us would have run for the hills, overwhelmed by the scale of the task ahead.

But Geoff and Geraldine quietly went away and worked out how they could help. It wasn't very much to start with, but someone had to start somewhere. And although the village wanted help urgently, its wise elders asked specifically for education and health to be the top priorities, so that the next generation didn't face the same struggle they had.

So year after year since then, and backed by a growing number of supporters in Britain and elsewhere, Geoff and Geraldine, have begun a small miracle in Kabubbu.
There is now a top-notch health centre, as well as primary and secondary schools (both of which are so popular that people now want to move into the area). More than 120 houses have been built, nine waterholes sunk, and 500 children and 100 grandparents in Kabubbu have sponsors back in the UK.

Geoff and Geraldine, as well as Quicken Trust staff and volunteers, haven't saved the world. But through passion, resourcefulness, determination and faith, they have saved part of it.



Henry






  


 


Joy



 


 




We and our fellow volunteers have just been to meet the people we all sponsor in Kabubbu village. I am hard-pushed to think of a more rewarding experience.
Andrew and Gillian, a lovely couple from Eastbourne, visited Evelyn the teenage girl they've sponsored for more than 10 years but have never had the chance to meet.  After a moment's hesitation when she saw them, Evelyn burst through her front doorway, pushed past her family and gave her English visitors one of the biggest and most tender hugs I have ever seen.

John and I got the chance to meet Maria Kevin, a 74-year-old grandmother who we support. She lives with, and raises, one of her grandsons in their two-room home, works the crops in her fields come rain or shine, and when we called on her she was actually busy helping someone else prepare for a party.
When she reached us, she burst through the palm trees and greenery, calling out deliriously. She spent the next five minutes dancing and singing in thanks to God, and the Quicken Trust, for arranging our meeting.

Watching the Kabubbu primary school children at the 8am morning assembly is a similarly moving experience. Their innocence, respect and broad, broad smiles are the best wake-up call around.
And as John has already mentioned, the local awards ceremony was full of laughter and cheer as the villagers celebrated those among them who had gone the extra mile to make a difference.

Yes, just as in England there are many sullen faces in Uganda as well, and given some of the hardships people face here I'm surprised anyone can manage to smile sometimes.

But the exuberance of Kabubbu and its people is astonishing. I know I can speak for both John and I when I say that we have been absolutely humbled by their faith, their hope, and their joy.


Henry

 


 


Thursday, 25 November 2010

The Smile of God

Hopes & Fears

It was forty five minutes of our lives, a lifetime of theirs.  Let me list what Henry and I saw.

We were sitting in a mud hovel, on a mean foam mattress.  The air stank of sweat, stale.  The sunlight through the gashes in the tin roof danced upon the dusty floor.  Chaos in all corners: a broken hoe, a spade, a bottle for paraffin, scraps of paper.  No pictures, no chairs, no table, no toys, no flowers, no water, no electricity.

We asked the man and his wife about their lives.  Four children, no steady job, one pig, one chicken, a vegetable garden, firewood for the stove outside, a hole in the ground for their faeces.

We asked about their fears and happiness.  Greatest fear: death by HIV, leaving the children behind.  We urged them to be tested at the charity's clinic, to obtain the free drugs.  Greatest happiness: Christmas and Easter, when they may receive new clothes, and extra meat.

It was time to depart, a silent relief for us as sweet as the late afternoon air we gulped down at their door.  They didn't know, but probably sensed, that we'd be back quite soon, with items chosen by us in the market and paid for by the Quicken Trust.  Caressed by shock, I found myself smiling.  And then, most shattering of all, as we said farewell, the woman fell to her knees at my feet and smiled in return.

John

www.quickentrust.com

Wednesday, 24 November 2010

Spelling it Out Over Scones

And the winner is
Had I stepped onto the set of  a Merchant Ivory film?  The marquees sighed  in a warm breeze, guests murmured, black mingling with white as the gold, red and green of the Ugandan flag fluttered on its pole.  The scones were fresh from the oven, the cream whipped, with dainty sandwiches on the side.  It was as British as Dame Judi Dench's corset.

This was prize giving afternoon in Kabubbu.  Not for the school-children, but the adults who had best embraced the work that this charity, the Quicken Trust, has done for this village over the past ten years.  But it was to be a most un-British ceremony after all.



Trifle to follow


First up, a prize for the woman who'd made the most profit from her poultry farm.  The citation pointed out that she'd won because, unlike one or two others, she really looked after her animals.  Next, a prize for keeping tidy the house the charity had built -- unlike some, the man with the mic reminded us, who left the place in a right state.  There was a prize for being honest about what was needed and what was not -- "she'll tell us if she's got enough", we were informed -- and a prize for taking medicine regularly, rather than wasting the drugs that had been given.

No, this was a most Ugandan affair after all.  Like Britain, there was failure.  But unlike Britain, it was spelt out, not implied, and the success was celebrated with shrieks and screams and delight.


John

Monday, 22 November 2010

Losing Patience in Kampala

Welcome to Uganda


I came to Africa to learn to be more patient.  In Uganda, like Uganda, I have failed.

How can I be patient with the politicians who have created a state that has failed like this?  The President's election poster smirks his request for a sixth five year term.  It promises prosperity, on a fetid wall, beneath a broken streetlamp, with a beggar slumped at its crumbling base.

How can I be patient in a country where even the international airport is so lethargic you struggle to find out how much the entry visa costs?  Where the average primary class size boasted by the government is 60 -- but the reality, I'm told, is closer to 100?   Where the tourist brochures promise a nation of smiles, but most of the people I see in the capital seem sullen?  Where, it's reported, the hospitals offer some help to those able to pay, and leave those that cannot lying on the floor?

Blame Britain?  Uganda's been independent since 1960.  Blame the west?  We've only recently stopped the loans.  Blame Ugandans?  They've grown up in schools that barely function.  There's only one person I suggest should shoulder the blame, and His Excellency President Museveni is still asking for votes from that poster.  

NB:  this entry typed peering at the screen during the latest mid-evening powercut. 


John

Coming to our senses

Up until our recent stopover in Cape Town, we've been camping it up for four weeks - living under canvas, that is. So other than a couple of nights in a hostel or B&B, we've been sleeping on floormats in tents, or even in the powder-dry red dust of the hide.
But at the ripe old age of 39, this and the climate have taken their toll: back aches, insect bites, muscular twinges and the occasional heat rash.
At various times we've been roasting hot to the point of collapse, shivering with cold first thing in the morning, nursing sore and stinging cuts and scratches, sunburnt or just exhausted and aching.

So, we've both finally come to our senses - and by that, I mean we've rediscovered them. Because however you feel in Africa, you feel.
Apologies to anyone who may be reading this while in an office, but what's struck me is how our modern lives seek to actually limit feeling as much as possible.
We drive in comfortable cars from our centrally-heated homes to an air-conditioned workplace where the slightest discomfort can be the source of complaint, or the smallest injury should immediately be recorded in the accident book. (This isn't turning into a rant about Health and Safety because I think that usually well-intentioned and has its place.)

But by trying to make our lives so comfortable, I think we actually deprive ourselves of life-affirming sensory experiences. Much as life's joys would mean nothing if we didn't have to face the disappointments as well, the physical highs and lows are just as vital.

I won't quickly forget the relief of sinking into a mattress after night after night on an unyielding ground mat, the relief of a cool breeze in the midst of a sweaty morning's work, or even the pleasure of realising that mossie bite has finally stopped itching. And at the end of a long, dry, hot and dusty day, words simply cannot describe the pleasure of stepping into a refreshing cool shower and washing yourself really clean.

When we return home next month, I know we won't be sleeping on the floor and washing ourselves in the sea off Brighton beach - but I hope that I'll be more discerning about our home comforts, and more grateful in the shower when I'm able to choose between hot and cold.


Henry

Tuesday, 16 November 2010

The yolk's on you...

Of course what John's not really showing you is the full effect of his headshave. (I told him that he could end up looking like an egghead, but would he listen?)

Anyway, despite the inherent and insidious dangers of frontline reportage (including that John doesn't know I'm doing this blog entry), thankfully there are still some cameramen prepared to show the harsh reality of travel.


One of these is an ostrich egg...


PS. Any other captions would strongly be welcomed !


Henry

A Close Shave in Cape Town

Before
During


After.  You don't mess with Matty. 

For a journalist, I can be pretty slow with words sometimes.  The sign in the barber's window was in perfectly large print.  It stated clearly:  "Scalp Shave: 100 Rand".

The clue, I discovered, was to be in the words "scalp" and "shave".  I'd had in mind for some time going edgy with a "number one" clipper trim David Beckham look, and this was my moment.  I took the plunge.  After about ninety seconds in the barber's chair, my lap was cluttered with clumps of mousey hair, and Matty the 70 year old Portuguese barber was tidying away his clippers.  Hmm, quite expensive for a few moments work, I thought, but looking up, I was pretty pleased.  Yes, I did look a bit Beckhamy.  It had been worth the risk!

Matty looked confused as I got up to go, at the same moment he reached for the cut-throat razor.  Henry just smirked.  "You've paid for a scalp shave, not a mere number one clipper trim!!!" Matty informed me gleefully, "and you're going to get what you paid for!!!  Your head's going to look like your bottom the day you were born!!!"  And yes, there were multiple exclamation marks in his tone.

Thirty minutes of soap suds and sheer shaving later, I acknowledged he had earned his money.  My head gleamed like a freshly laid egg, leaving me to count the hours until the stubble delivered me the look I'd been actually been aiming for.   Memo to self: read the large print when getting a close shave.

John

Monday, 15 November 2010

Flight of Fancy

Whatever can they have been thinking?  We'd just boarded our Air Namibia flight to Cape Town.  After five weeks in Namibia, I'd concluded that the country was a pretty modern, first world kind of place.  But I'm sorry, it's now perfectly clear that little Namibia still has a lot to learn from the West when it comes to modern business practice.

The first clue came when, on our two-hour Air Namibia midday flight, we were told there'd be a hot lunch.  This was preceded by the pre-lunch drink (we chose tomato juice, served with ice, a little stirrer and sachets of salt and pepper.)   The chicken meal itself tasted rather like chicken, with crisp vegetables and a spicy sauce, and a dainty salad on the side.  There was a small creamy cake to follow, and a glistening chocolate truffle in the coffee cup.  We drank Coca-cola that came in a proper 330ml can, although wine and beer was on offer.  The cabin crew were smiling and interested, handing out the drinks for all the world as if they were hosting a party.

I cast my mind back to our two-hour British Airways flight to Italy last July.  I think we got a sandwich.  Our ten-hour BA flight to Johannesburg had yielded  far meaner fare than this 120-minute hop.  Yes, if Namibia really wants to catch up with us in the west, I'm afraid it's going to have to find a much more cutting edge way of treating its visitors.

John

Sunday, 14 November 2010

Etosha - Henry's Big Five

We've just left Etosha National Park, and there's way too much to blather on about, so here's our top five:

1.   Elephants, animals of such grace, whether dusted a silvery white by the salt pan, slipping soothed and satisfied into a cooling waterhole, or even in the enchanting form of a baby elephant trying to cross the road while its anxious mother looked on.



2.   Quelia, in the biggest flock of birds I have ever seen, and one that completely entranced us as it danced back and forth across a twilight sky above Namutoni waterhole. The respectful silence from the few onlookers present was filled only by the sound of 300,000 wingbeats from flocks that twisted, turned and swayed like shoals in the dusky orange sunset.


3.   Lions - After spotting three young cubs visit a waterhole under the protective gaze of their mother, we thought we'd had our fair share of panthera leo. But two days later, while on a solo late-afternoon game drive, two large lions decided my parked truck was a great place to hang around, and treated me to 20 wonderful, and unnerving, minutes of their time.


4.   Rhinos - we were lucky enough to see rhino mothers with young calves, both black rhino and the rarer white variety. But our most abiding memory is a full-on clash-of-the-titans battle at midnight - a bloody encounter which left one of the bruisers with two deep and dripping scars on his head.



5   The Pan - Etosha's shimmering white heart - a vast, bleached salt flat that stretches to the horizon and beyond, broken only by the writhing heat haze and the occasion black dot of an ostrich taking it's own hot and dusty path across the pan.




Namibia has been breathtaking, beguiling and bewitching in equal measure. We owe a big thank you two friends, Mary Askew and Andrew Forsyth, for their advice (and guide books) but more importantly being a very large part of the inspiration for this trip.


Henry

Sunday, 7 November 2010

Fresh Coffee on the Moon


On the map, it looked a good distance.  On the road, it wasn't.

Terrace Bay is one of those places that's out there.  The signpost  north leaving Swakopmund (a jolly seaside resort, Brighton or Worthing depending on the weather) read "Terrace Bay - 366km."   Converting it into miles in our heads made the figure more comforting.  There would be a nice spot for lunch, watching the seals, about a third of the way up.  The road was still tarmac, and we had a full tank of fuel.

The road then turned to gravel.  Other vehicles started to vanish.  The sand dunes loomed larger, the rocks a little darker, a lunar landscape.  We drove and drove and drove and drove, and whenever we saw a road turning off to the right (always the right, as the Atlantic was always crashing against the shore immediately on our left) we felt like stopping to dance a little jig, such was our excitement at something new to observe.  We then drove and drove and drove a bit more, before driving further still, towards the Angolan border.

Dinner that night in our Namibian destination lodge (no camping allowed) was four course: butternut soup, smoked salmon, oryx steak with gem squash and glazed beetroot, a cream tart.  Breakfast: cereals, fruit, the best eggs I have had this year, bacon, sausage, toast and hot, fresh, strong coffee.  For company, the jolliest group of German tourists I have ever overheard, one of whom merrily chatted to me about the gang's fishing expedition the day before.  We asked the manager how they kept all this up, when the nearest shop was five hours' drive away.  The gist of his answer, with a smile: "we get our act together".  Something for me to think about next time I potter back from the Co-Op having forgotten the pint of milk I went out to buy.

Note to slightly anxious relatives: we had full mobile signal all the way, contact with guide, and the Namibian Tourist Authority are so organised that they count every group in and count every group out of this remote, remarkable park.  


John

Friday, 5 November 2010

A Breath of Fresh Air

I'd just sat down to order eggs, sausages and fresh coffee, our first hot breakfast in three weeks.   Henry was skipping the sausages.  And then I sniffed it in the air.  That grey, raucous, unmistakeable whisp, drifting in from the next table along.

Someone had lit up.  A Boer man, I think, wearing a khaki baseball cap and speaking Afrikaans to his friend.  Nasty moustache.  And I thought to myself -- good for you, mate.

It was a breath of fresh air.  Just when Namibia was becoming a little too much like home, a reminder that this wasn't.  We'd found Colgate Toothpaste and my favourite brand of shaving foam in the chemists, oyster mushrooms and Worcester Sauce in the supermarket.  Yes, yes, yes, I know all the arguments about passive smoking and why it's of course a good thing to ban it, but for this one guilty moment I breathed long and deep, and felt I was living a little dangerously once again.

John