Congratulations! And celebrations!

It’s been a week of celebrations.

Just a month after our son’s wedding in England we were pleased to attend the wedding in the Cathedral of the former Diocese Treasurer, the Revd Habert, to Immaculate. Although entirely in Rufumbira, many aspects of the service were familiar.

However, a couple of major differences were:

- the bride arrived about 50 minutes late, but this was before most of the guests, and she walked up the aisle to an almost empty church.

- Malcolm noted, having been ‘official’ video man at his son’s wedding, that there seemed to be no restrictions on the number of photographers at the service, and how intrusive they were. At one point there were 6 clustered around the Bishop as the couple made their vows – something that would not have been permitted at David and Sarah’s (or any British?) wedding!!!!

The reception also had a distinctive flavour:

- It was outdoors, but fortunately under awnings for guests as just before the arrival of the wedding party there was a major rain storm.

- First all the guests ate.

- Then the wedding party arrived, Having paraded around the town they processed into the reception area accompanied by a band.

- There was entertainment from Ugandan dancers and choirs,

- Many people gave speeches

- Not just one tier of cakes - there were lots and lots of wedding cakes

- The most popular drink was Bushera, made from Sorghum and served from a large oil barrel. It looks like chocolate, is non-alcoholic and is an acquired taste much enjoyed by the locals. (There is an alcoholic version which is available in town and is the cause of some problems from excess drinking) The contents of the barrel, and several jerry cans, were drunk dry by the guests. We kept to Fanta Orange!

Having celebrated a new marriage at the start of the week, at the end of the week we celebrated our own wedding anniversary by having dinner at the Travellers Rest hotel, and were delighted to be given a bottle of bubbly by the manager. As a special present Malcolm has ordered for Irene an ironing board from a local shop – he is trying his luck!!!!

The other celebration this week was by the supporters of President Museveni who was re-elected despite claims of vote rigging from his opponents. He was so pleased to be re-elected that both of us (along with many Ugandans) have received text messages from him thanking us for voting for him!!!! (We are still waiting for similar messages for our votes in the UK last May!!!) Although the national elections were largely peaceful and international observers have reported that it was fair there have been problems this week in Kampala as local elections for the mayor were cancelled. This was because falsified voting papers supporting the NRM candidate (the President’s party) were discovered, ready to be ‘stuffed’ into ballot boxes. This has added some weight to the opposition party claims that the national elections were rigged.

Vive le President!

It’s election day in Uganda, and therefore a public holiday. It’s a chance for citizens to elect a new President and their MPs for national Parliament. This is only the second time in more than 30 years that multi-party elections had been held. If he wins it will be the 4th term of elected office for President Museveni, although he has been in power since 1986 when he led the military overthrow of the dictator, Obote. Museveni is credited with rebuilding the country, bringing peace, stability, economic growth and reintroducing multi-party elections following the violence and extremes of Obote, and his predecessor, Idi Amin.



Although many aspects of the elections are familiar to us, the arrangements of the polling stations are a bit different to the UK. Firstly, those near us are out of doors, with the one behind our house being in the middle of the local football pitch. Perhaps because the purchase of polling booths would be expensive, it appears a bowl is provided in which voters can place and then mark their ballot papers with some privacy. Their are many candidates for President, and some form of Alternative Vote system must be used but we do not know the details – perhaps it is something that the UK government could consider in the current debate at home, though I don’t suggest moving out of doors to vote!!!!!!

The results of the Presidential election are expected to be announced on Sunday

There are also more visitors here. In addition to Chris from Chesham that we mentioned last week, two paediatric doctors from Manchester, Chris and Rosie, are also visiting Potter’s Village babies home for a couple of weeks. On Monday we were all invited for dinner at the Bishop’s house which was most enjoyable.








We are looking forward to going to the wedding tomorrow of the former Diocese Treasurer, Revd Habert. He is now the vicar at the cathedral which is where the wedding service will be held. This will be followed by a reception at a local school.

Visitations from 'above'

As Malcolm was walking under a tree across the open land in the centre of Kisoro town centre he felt something land on his head and drop to the ground. He looked down and seeing some kind of seed he breathed a sigh of relief – it could have been a lot messier!!!

The open land has what remains of what must have been a substantial wood. Over the years many trees have been cut down to make way for shops and roads, and what remains is at risk – several have already gone in our few months here and there are plans to build a new bank on part of the site.

For the time being the trees are the home for a flock of large cranes. These are fairly common here, and whilst the crested crane is a protected species, being the emblem of Uganda, these birds are not so lucky as one by one their homes are cut down.

The open land is also used for a range of rallies and events. It is just one week until the national and president elections. Some weeks ago the long standing President, Museveni, held a rally here. Today the supporters of the main opposition candidate, Busigye, also held a rally. Unfortunately in previous years there has been violent demonstrations in parts of the country during the elections – we don’t expect such problems here.

The open space is also the site of the only communal waste skip we are aware of. There is no collection of waste in Uganda, and we burn our own rubbish. However there is one skip in the town centre which gets emptied occasionally. It is also used by some cattle owners as an additional source of nutrients for their herd. Maybe this is a recycling scheme that could be adopted in Britain, although we are not sure this would

be welcome in many towns?

In town you can also see other sights not usual to the UK. On his way back from buying chips from our favourite chip shop Malcolm almost tripped over a new coffin left on the pavement outsider a joiners. He could tell it was new – in the lid is a window for viewing purposes and the coffin was unoccupied!!

There are a number of visitors from the UK at Potter’s Village this week. One, Chris, is a retired Community Health nurse. The coincidence is that she lives in Chesham, and 2 weeks ago when we were being sent off by our church, Emmanuel, she was being sent off by her church, Kings. And she lives just round the corner from where we were staying in Chesham. She is most welcome at Jenny’s house helping to care for the two pre-mature orphans, Joshua and Esther.

Kisoro - Our Return

It’s been a busy 3 weeks back in England. The main ‘features’ were:

1. The ‘stag do’ for our eldest son, David. This included Malcolm’s first attempt at skiing, and he had the dubious honour of being the only person in the class to fail the first, beginners’ lesson – something to do with not doing a ‘ploughshare’. He doesn’t know if he will resit (although he insists he did some ‘resitting’ during the lesson.). He also managed to make up for this by achieving at least one strike whilst 10 pin bowling

2. The dedication of two of our grandsons at their Baptist Church in Cambridge


3. The wedding of David to Sarah.



Whilst in England we managed to stock up on a range of items, including a microwave oven, a laser printer and 6 cartridges, an electric drill and a jar of Branston’s pickle. We carried so much that we had to repack our bags at the airport and carry several items in our coat pockets as our luggage weighed too much!!

We returned to the relative warmth of Kisoro on Tuesday.

We also returned to a bit of a crisis at the Potters Village home for abandoned and vulnerable children. On the day before our flight 3 babies had been admitted. Joshua (one month old) could not be cared for by his mother due to her mental illness and his grandmother had been found drunk in the streets having left Joshua alone at night. Esther’s mother had died soon after giving birth, and the baby weighed just 1.4kg. Emmanuel had acquired AID’s at birth and was dieing from pneumonia. The hospital did not have the facilities to staff to help him and due to his weakness had not been possible to insert a canula to provide strong enough anti-biotics. Unfortunately he died on Wednesday in Irene’s arms.



For more details about the work of Potter's Village:

http://www.pottersvillage.org.uk/

We also returned to some of the same challenges we left. So far we have had one major power cut with no electricity for more than 24 hours. The shame is the more you rely on modern conveniences (e.g. microwave, laser printer, the Internet) the more you miss electricity.

The ‘sign’ this week is from Potter’s village, being part of a large mural painted by a previous volunteer on the wall of the building that will be the Medical Centre when funds allow.