"…but you can call me Stu."

 

Malcolm has been meeting a lot of new friends this week.

Easter is a traditional time for Christenings in Uganda. On Easter Sunday Sasha,the granddaughter of Medius, a Theatre Assistant, was Christened at the Hospital chapel.

Malcolm met another 6 day old baby, Faith, daughter of Abraham and Prima who are a Radiology Assistant and a nurse at the Hospital. The delivery was by Caesarean Section the previous Monday and Prima invited Malcolm for Sunday lunch just 6 days later! Amazing. Many women whose family depend on food grown on their small plot of land to survive will return to work on the land soon after having a baby. (Nothing like a bit of digging to get those stomach muscles back into condition!)

At the start of his morning walk Malcolm passes the girl’s hostel of the hospital’s School of Nursing. A routine is that every morning some of the students are tasked with sweeping the dust off the ‘pavement’ outside the hostel –a challenging job as with mud roads and paths there is dust everywhere.

This week on his walk Malcolm got into discussion with a group of children about what they eat for Easter (vegetables as their families can’t afford meat), Continents and how far the UK is from Uganda. The ambition of many children is to travel to countries such as England even though their parents usually struggle to pay their school fees of a couple of hundred pounds a year.

 

You don’t see people taking dogs for a walk here – but you do see them walking with goats and cows. Malcolm decided this one was called Stewart (Stu for short) brother of Cassie, Meatloaf, Wellington and Lunch.

Traditional butchers here do not have the hygiene standards expected in England. Cows may be butchered on a bench by the road and joints carried off strapped to the back of motorbikes or bicycles to various small shops or kiosks. Unlike the UK where meat is ‘hung’ in a cold room for several days to soften, here meat is sold and cooked the same day – absolutely necessary in a warm country where people do not own fridges, but it results in a lot tougher meat to eat.