Electrifying Experiences

The best advice when it comes to electricity in Africa is ‘leave well alone’. This is because our experience in Tanzania as well as here is usually the wiring has been botched together with poor quality components. The common way of connecting wires is by twisting the ends together – this avoids the cost of buying junction boxes but does make crawling around lofts a bit more challenging.

The second best advice is, if you want something done well, do it yourself. (Also known as ‘Fools rush in…..’) and this is Malcolm’s approach. There is nothing he likes more than crawling into dark places and getting absolutely filthy. His first tasks were to replace with ceiling roses all the light-holders dangling through the ceiling from ends of electrical cable, and then to put in proper junction boxes to replace the botched wire connections. So having visited the town’s only specialist electrical component shop, and buying their entire stock (and therefore Kisoro’s entire stock?) of ceiling roses (4) and junction boxes (5), he borrowed the Diocese’s ‘ladder’ (made from off-cuts of 3x2) and went into the loft. Apart from being concerned about how large the African spiders might be as he destroyed their enormous webs, his discoveries included:

- the earth is the least important wire in Africa – most being cut short and not always connected to anything.

- however, this isn’t a problem as the earth of the main wire from the meter to the fuse box wasn’t connected to earth anyway, which explains why we’ve been getting small electric shocks from our laptop and electric cooker

- the lights in the lounge are connected to the power circuit, not to the fuse for the lights – as Malcolm discovered when (having carefully disconnected the lighting circuit) he was trying to install a junction box and there was a loud bang and a big spark. Fortunately he wasn’t touching the wire – and for the record, the 20 amp fuse didn’t blow either, which rather defeats its purpose.

After several attempts he emerged from the loft more or less in one piece and we now have better lighting in our lounge – next week he hopes to install lights in the hall way which currently has none which makes it interesting when you walk around in bare feet at night. This is especially so as we have been warned that soon it will be the time when we may find Nairobi Flies near or in the house. These have the interesting feature that their body acid will badly burn your skin when they are crushed..

Other events of the week include:

- leaving Jenny to care for some sick babies we enjoyed lunch and Sunday afternoon with her children, Hannah and Joseph and Izzie.

- part of the excitement with her children was the arrival that day from Kampala of 4 of the ‘Big 5’. This is not the safari Big 5 animals you might hope to see ( Lion, Leopard, Rhinoceros, Elephant and Buffalo ) but:
- gas cooker, fridge, toilet seat and kitchen sink

- the missing item, the water heater was received later in the week and is desperately needed for the shower.

- Malcolm went shopping and was a bit puzzled when he bought from the market some spinach for 1000 shillings, and the stall holder seemed terribly pleased. When he got home Alan (the lady who cooks and cleans the Diocese ‘Guesthouse’) explained she would have paid no more than 200 shillings. Trust a man!!! However, this is not too serious a matter as 1000 shillings for 2 lbs of spinach is about 15p a pound.

- A pair of birds have built a nest just outside our office door, and immediately above the place Malcolm likes to sit to work (see photo in blog dated 17th September 2010). We will let you know if anything happens!


The sign this week is from Chihe Primary school whose mission is ‘to provide a conducive environment for better learning’. But it’s the sign in the lawn that caught Malcolm’s attention.



In case you think it is a bit explicit for a Primary school, we understand that children up to the age of 16 attend as they all receive education at the ‘Primary’ school level. Aids is a serious problem in Uganda with at one point the country having the highest incidence in the world estimated at 20% of the population carrying the virus, down to 6.7% now. There was a recent item on the BBC news web-site about some of the explicit literature used in Ugandan schools, in which the country’s President is quoted as saying “When a lion enters your village, you must raise the alarm loudly."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/9117296.stm


A new idea which we are copying from friends from University, Jeremy and Jerica Davies, who are now CMS Mission Partners in Kitui, Kenya, is a series entitled ‘You know you live in Africa when…..’. Our first item is in fact copied from them, but happens here too and so proves how true the statements are (including this week when Irene needed hand-outs for her students).


You know you live in Africa when….

... nobody can use the photocopier in the office because the person who keeps the key to that room has gone into town (or has the day off).

… you are not surprised to realise that the electric cable that emerges outside from the attic of your house, is connected to another cable by twisting the bare wire-ends together and left exposed to the weather and then returns into the house, is in fact the mains cable from the light switch to your lounge light

… part way through the lesson you are giving students a young goat comes into the room to escape the thunderstorm – it ws just another kid joining the class!

I don't want to be a lawn mower when I grow up!

One of Malcolm’s least favourite jobs in England is cutting the lawn. Its not that its difficult, especially with a hover mower – its just so tedious and when you think you've finished the grass just keeps growing again.



Here, the same problem is that the grass seems to grow very fast – but there are no hover mowers. This week a couple of men came with long machetes and spent several hours cutting (harvesting) the grass outside our house with too and fro sweeps of their knives – and by the end it was probably better than Malcolm would have done with a mower.

There was a lot of activity at our house this week The mason arrived and installed a new steel door and window and built a wall, so what used to be an outside porch, with 3 doors to lock, is now a corridor with just one door to lock. The door is not very pretty, but hopefully it will be very secure and should look better painted.



We also had some unwelcome visitors. On a couple of evenings, when it was raining, the flying ants decided to swarm, and thought the best place would be our lounge. And these are not wimpy, European flying ants. These are mighty, African ants with wingspan of about 6 cm – which can be quite daunting when a dozen or so are flying around your head. By the morning all the wings had fallen off and the ants had disappeared, meaning we had a floor carpeted with discarded wings. Fortunately a small lizard also visited, maybe with the intention of helping to clear up the ants.


For the past 2 weeks the Diocese has had a team of visitors from Switzerland, England and Zambia. Most were here to run two 4 day ‘train the trainers‘ discipleship courses ‘Rooted in Jesus’. (www.alisonmorgan.co.uk)One of them, Sarah came to help at Potter’s Village. As well has making musical instruments and posters she spent time teaching the carer’s how to play. There is not a culture of games here and it was a shock to her to realise that even adults were struggling to do a jigsaw puzzle designed for a toddler (e.g. trying to force the large pieces together without looking at the picture) or to blow soap bubbles.

Irene gave her second lesson on running a business this week – and even more students, about 36 out of a college of 38, turned up. On Thursday she was invited to have tea with the Bishop’s wife and the coordinator of the Mother’s Union. Whilst there they explained the work of the MU and suggested Irene goes with them sometime to visit one of the outlying parishes and maybe teach some of the young mothers basic sewing skills.

We are not sure what happens next week. Malcolm wants to sort out some of the lights in the house and we will need to clear up when the building work is finished.


This weeks sign is from a Secretarial services shop n Kisoro.

A toilet seat - a luxury not a necessity?

We surprised ourselves when we realised a new toilet seat, to replace the broken one we now have, is not our top shopping priority. In previous blogs we’ve said how 2 toilet seats have broken within a week of being bought. The problem is that those available in Kisoro are of such low quality that they break very easily (and is nothing to do with the weight of the users!!!!).

We can purchase stronger ones in Kampala, and next week the manager of Potter’s Village, Ezra, is going there in a pick-up! So we have given him the following shopping list – but the toilet seat is not the top priority which means it will not be bought if the money we’ve given is not enough:

1. A fridge – we get fresh milk every day but it goes off within 24 hours. We are also concerned that other perishable food is not keeping very well in the open
2. A calor gas cooker / oven
3. A kitchen sink
4. A hot water boiler (for showers and the kitchen)
5. A toilet seat
6. A doormat

An added confusion is that a ‘toilet seat’ means something different here. When Malcolm asked for the price of a toilet seat at the local hardware store he was surprised at the high price quoted of about £30, and being asked whether he wanted all the fittings. And the store manager was surprised that Malcolm had broken one by sitting on it. What we call the seat, Ugandans call ‘the lid’ – they call the ceramic base ‘the seat’ which is rather understandable especially for those not used to using one as the bowl does look like a seat. We await with interest to see what is brought from Kampala.

We are getting into a regular routine, and Saturday morning is ‘burning’ day. There is no weekly, or even fortnightly refuse collection here and our waste at present is about a carrier bag full a week. Vegetable and fruit peelings are given to the calf at Potter’s Village using an orange ‘slop’ bucket – everything else is either found a new use for (such as tins) or burnt – and Saturday morning is when Malcolm burns other waste. Last Saturday saw the 2 broken toilet seats being ‘sacrificed’ on the pyre – and they burnt very well though we are not to sure about the toxicity of the fumes. Just as well Irene hadn’t put any washing out to dry.

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On Sunday we visited one of the local Parish churches for the first time – All Saints Church in Busamba. Although most of the service was in Bufembera, they kindly translated it for us. They also apologised, with no need, for the music. They were very proud that they had recently been given a new electronic keyboard. However, the new road works had meant electricity had been cut off for several weeks. The young people therefore accompanied the hymns by beating traditional Uganda drums. For us the use of traditional music was most enjoyable, and better than a keyboard. For them we guess drums are boring and a keyboard ‘modern’.


Irene gave her first training session on running a business last Wednesday. She first asked the students what they were expecting from the course. Some said to be given money, others ‘mechanics’ (meaning how to tailor). The session took longer than Irene had expected as she wanted to make it interactive and she had forgotten that students are used to just being lectured to and not to being interactive in classes – the opening warm-up ‘getting to know you’ exercise, which she thought would take 10 minutes actually took about an hour.

We have noticed there are many signs in the town which look a bit strange to western eyes. Out of interest we may include some of these in future blogs. The first is painted on the wall of the school next to our house. Most of the schools have some sort of Mission statement or other sign outside – this is an example, and a rather tame one too.



Next week we are hoping that a new front door and hallway will be added to our house, At present there are 3 separate entrance doors for the lounge, kitchen and sleeping area. A new front door will mean we will no longer keep on having to unlock doors to get to different parts of the house – which can be a drag when you have to go from the kitchen to the bathroom and back again just to fill up the kettle for a cup of tea – especially when its raining!

The Best Laid Plans.......

The last time Malcolm laid some vinyl is was some nice, thick, ‘Cushion floor’ – a quality floor covering that was comfortable to walk on, particularly on cold mornings. So what has he put down in the lounge here? The best vinyl money can buy in Kisoro. Something that is little more than wallpaper for floors – not much stronger than a vinyl table cloth. It has a square pattern, except the squares aren’t exactly squares, and the parallel lines aren’t exactly parallel (as he found out when trying to match up the joins). However, it does have a couple of key advantages:

- it is warmer on the feet than bare concrete
- at £1 a square metre it is about 1/16th of the price of ‘Cushion floor’ in the UK
- and it only has to last us 2 years

It has been an exciting week for the Diocese. One of the promises made by Uganda’s President was that he would buy all Bishop’s in the country a new car, and last week the Bishop went to pick it up from Kampala. Although a car is a luxury item here with few Ugandans being able to afford one, it is an essential item for the Bishop. The Diocese is extensive with many of the roads mountain tracks, and already he has had to make a return trip to Kampala (over 600 miles return) for a meeting to select a Bishop for a neighbouring Diocese. When the Bishop arrived with the car there was a reception and food for special guests from the Local Council and Diocese.

Malcolm has continued to investigate the payments made to the Diocese by individual parishes, with a view to doing some training for church treasurers on basic book-keeping. Irene has been spending most of her time meeting the Vocational Training Centre students, and is planning to start some basic business training for them next week. She has also been spending some time at the Potter’s Village orphanage doing some ‘tailoring’ (sewing mattress covers etc).

The weather continues to be ’changeable’ – one minute being bright and fresh, to be quickly followed by a thunder storm. A couple of weeks ago we had hail storms with quite large stones – although we understand they were mere pebbles compared to some storms here.


Postscript on earlier blogs:
1. Egg box. Following the catastrophe with eggs mentioned on 3rd September, an emergency relief parcel was received from our son of our very own ‘Happy Eggs’ egg box – this made Irene very happy.
2. Cake. Despite the disastrous coffee cake made by Malcolm (17th September) he has had another go. This time, a Fruit Cake using dried fruit left for us by Jodie (24th September) and eggs carried home in the new ‘Happy Eggs’ egg box. It was intended for tea when the Mother’s Union coordinator and Bishop’s wife planned to see Irene. The bad news is the tea had to be postponed – the good news is more cake for us!!!!!
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" Give me money!"

One of the noticeable things walking around Kisoro is that whenever you meet children they often say ‘Mzungu. Give me money!”. (Alternatively “Give me pens” or “Give me sweets”) We think it is because many white tourists visit the area who feel able to respond to such a demand, and are happy to give small change. As a result the children associate a white face as someone from whom you can demand money. This may seem OK to tourists, but is wearing when you are living here, and worrying if it encourages young Ugandans to think it is easier to get money by begging from white people rather than working.



Malcolm is still working out how to respond. In part he is tempted to say “Its rude not to say ‘Please’”, but fears that a bit of Education might only encourage them further. Its harder to resist "Please give me money" - (though it never gets Irene very far!!!!!) Instead he simply replies “I don’t give money” in the hope that over time they will learn that it’s not worth pestering this particular Mzunga.

And yet, when you might expect an adult to ask for money as a reward, they don’t.

As an example, last weekend Malcolm went out for one of his ‘little’ walks. We had seen Lake Mutanda from the top of a local hill some weeks ago, so Malcolm decided he would try and find it. The only problem is that to get there you have to first climb, and descend, a rather steep range of hills. And the shortest route is little more than a winding, mountain goat path. Twice Malcolm got lost, and twice two men (Julius and Peter) escorted him to put him on the right path, or he could still be wandering around the hills (which would be apt as we understand ‘Mzungu’ means a man who wanders). And in neither case was there any hint that they expected a reward – but were pleased with his gratitude.

The walk did prove how beautiful the countryside is, and how much work the residents put in to growing crops. No matter how steep the slopes, every inch seemed to be terraced, with people digging the ground and sowing seeds. Malcolm walked along narrow paths to the lake through a ‘forest’ of tall banana trees, which made it very difficult to see which direction he was heading. Almost every child he met said ”Mzungu. Give me money”. But some were happy just to have their photo taken.

And having arrived at the lake, and learning that it used to be a home for crocodiles and hippos, he turned around and had to walk back over the hills again.

Next week – new vinyl for the lounge!