Earth to earth

 When Malcolm takes a morning walk along the main road from the Hospital to the neighbouring village there are often interesting things to see. Main road? Heavy lorries use the road but it is made of earth and stones (murran) which dries to a rough, hard surface. However, when it gets very wet it turns to mud.

Just by the Hospital a heavy lorry  got stuck in a muddy patch of road and almost toppled over. The only 'rescue services' are anyone who happens to be nearby. In this case another lorry offered to tow the trapped lorry out of the hole.

 

As for the road, don’t expect the Highways department to repair the potholes. Either traffic will smooth out the ruts, or it will gradually dry out and become a series of road humps to slow down the traffic.

The road may have been made wet by the water from a stream which runs near the road. The water is relatively clean - the spring that feeds the stream further up the hill also provides water for the hospital – boiled before drunk! The stream is also useful for washing clothes – and your children!

One of the shops nearby is a coffin makers. Death is much more common here (the life expectancy is mid 40's) and there is less taboo about coffins than in the UK. Coffin manufacturers display their products openly and you often see them transported on the back of a motorbike or a car – possibly not empty! (Photo taken in Kampala a few years ago)

Along the local road you often see piles of bricks. The soil here is ideal for making mud bricks. There are no big brick companies. It’s a cottage industry and owners of several houses cut into the hillside to quarry the soil and cut it into brick shaped lumps. (This process has the added benefit of converting the slope into a building plot.)

The bricks are then allowed to dry in the sun.

For a longer lasting brick huge pyramid kilns of dried bricks are built with a space for a wood fire in the centre. When the pyramid is complete the fire is allowed to burn for several days in order to bake the bricks. When cooled down, the pile then become a stock of bricks ready to be sold or built into a house by the owner