Easter Weekend

The guesthouse I live in these days is jam-packed at the moment, full of interesting and lovely people. We decided to spend the Easter weekend together in Jinja (which has long been my favourite weekend getaway spot). On a good day, Jinja is about 1-2 hours drive from Kampala, but it took us 6 hours on Good Friday – clearly everyone had the same idea! The town itself hasn’t got much to offer, but the reason all Kampala folk, tourists and overland trucks flock to Jinja is for the Nile, and the sports offered in and around the river. In essence, Jinja is the adventure capital of East Africa – bungee jumps, grade 5 water rafting, kayaking, jet-boating, quad-biking, mountain biking, horse riding etc. – you name it, they got it.

All these activities and more are offered by numerous competing companies; each with equally beautiful campsites overlooking the river, along a stretch of the Nile called ‘Bujagali Falls’. Confusingly though, there are no longer any waterfalls at Bujagali Falls - they were submerged in 2011 with the construction of the new Bujagli Dam. There seems to be real heartache, particularly amongst locals, about the ecological damage and the destruction of what was believed to be their sacred place. Tourism doesn’t seem to have been effected as the companies were quick to adapt... the extreme sports that require rapids have moved downstream, and Bujagli (no)Falls welcomes flat water kayaking, paddle-boarding, fishing, swimming and other chilled out activities.

View of Bujagli (no)Falls from Nile River Explorers Camp

There is real unease once again though (lots of petitions flying about!), as the Ugandan government have already put plans in place to build another dam which, at worst, could flood all the remaining rapids here on the Nile. Whereas the Bujagli Dam did seem to address an ‘acute energy crisis’ in Uganda, there is concern that the construction of another larger dam will do more damage than good. It threatens to ruin Jinja’s tourist industry (and the livelihoods of all who depend on it), harm Lake Victoria (the world’s largest tropical lake), and it is rumoured that the energy created will in no way benefit locals but instead be sold to neighbouring countries, for personal gain.

For now, though, Jinja is still a major holiday destination and we spent the loveliest Easter weekend there. Our group consisted of 2 student teachers, 2 NGO workers, 4 doctors (who were, by the way, probably the least responsible), 1 gap year student, and me. We stayed in Bujagali at Nile River Camp, near enough to the neighbouring party camp of Nile River Explorers for beers and dancing, if the mood took us, but far away enough for us to sleep soundly! Our days were full of sun-bathing, watching monkeys and birds, eating too much, playing on the rope swing, and swimming (although I was more tentative than on previous occasions, given the recent news headlines of a croc killing 5 people in the Nile at Jinja!) Since I’ve only got 6 weeks left in Uganda, I knew this would probably be my last trip to Jinja, so I was particularly sad to leave this time.

A Bujagali sunet (not to be confused with a well known local drink)

In other news:

• One of my favourite outreach programmes – at St Mary Kevin Orphanage Motherhood – has resumed after a long break, and most exciting of all, KMS has found funding to pay one of my students to shadow my group teaching, so that he can hopefully continue the project when I leave

• Many of my students are working very hard now that ABRSM exams are just around the corner. In the lead up to the examiners arrival (26^th May) we are carrying out weekly string performance evenings, which are proving very useful!

• I went to see the ‘Mackay Troup’ last week, a youth group that perform traditional music and dancing, to raise funds to support their school. My friend Jenny works for the NGO that is running this pilot programme (‘Teach a man to fish’, weirdly based in Finsbury Park!) The group were incredibly talented and put on a brilliant show

• Rainy season is still in full swing and we have been having some spectacularly scary thunderstorms in the nights. Each time, when I am woken in the early hours by the experience of another Ugandan storm, I am genuinely convinced ‘this is it, apocalypse now’. I have resorted to putting my earphones in and listening to loud music, with my hands over my ears, a pillow over my head, and then a blanket tucked over the top... and yet the thunder still seems to roar louder than ever and shake the whole house. After some subtle consulting with fellow foreigners, I am relieved to have discovered I am not the only one who is feeling (and behaving) like a terrified 5-year old in such nights

• I am extremely excited about what’s in store when my chapter at Kampala Music School draws to a close. I recently applied to be a student on an international summer chamber music camp in New Hampshire, USA; a course that has been highly recommended to me on more than one occasion. My application has just been accepted, and they have offered me a scholarship! Although it is only for 2 weeks, I’ve recently developed a real hunger for learning more about music-making, so it will be such a joy to be a student again. I would also love to explore some of Eastern America after the course – since I’ll have already travelled all that way - but I will be on a very tight budget after not earning in such a long while. If anyone can offer budget travel advice, transport, a place to stay, or ‘knows people’ (not in the mafia sense though) in the East coast region, during July, I would be eternally grateful for your help!

Gulu

Northern Uganda and its people have been attacked throughout recent history, by the National Resistance Army (1986), the Lord’s Resistance Army (1990s), and by the Ugandan Government - in their setting up of ‘concentration camps’ or so called Internally Displaced Person camps (1996-2009). It was not until 2007 that Northern Uganda became relatively peaceful, but even still, the LRA continued to terrorise, killing 39 people in 2012.

Roadside boxing practice in Gulu

Two weekends ago, when a friend invited me to tag along on her all-expenses-paid work trip to Gulu, the capital city of Northern Uganda, I jumped at the opportunity to escape Kampala and visit what I knew would be a very different and interesting part of Uganda. I’ll have to be honest though, I didn’t really have a clue what the weekend would entail... I knew my friend worked for a contemporary visual arts project and that I was accompanying her as project assistant, but any further information kind of passed me by (sorry Laura – the excitement of a weekend away thoroughly distracted me in our conversation about my role in the project!) I did take note, however, of key instructions such as ‘bring you camera’ and ‘the bus leaves at 7am, be at the departure point for 6:30’.

Wall art, Gulu

That Friday, I awoke bright and early (well actually, it was still dark), to the distinctive early-morning sounds of Kampala – ‘call to prayer’ voices  from various surrounding mosques, clashing against super loud Luga flow music blaring out from the clubs (yes, still going even at 5:30am on a Friday morning!). As I waited for my boda-boda driver on the roadside, 6:30am getting ever closer, I began to feel somewhat anxious that I would not make the bus’ 7am departure... but then I remembered the African time rule - add an hour, or more if you fancy, and then set off. Funnily enough, or not so funny (at the time anyway), out of about 20 Ugandans, absolutely everyone was early and the bus was ready to depart at 6:50am. Except one person was missing – the project assistant, who didn’t even know what the project was - was still whizzing down the highway on a boda-boda at a terrifying (and probably illegal) speed. So for once, it was the idiot mzungu (yours truly) who was late and held everything up.

Luckily for me, Gulu is approximately 200 miles from Kampala, so I had plenty of time to catch my breath, calm down, and find out why we were all going there. Turns out Laura’s art project was part of a bigger music & arts festival - one that is very well known and popular in East Africa – Bayimba. I was already familiar with Bayimba Festival because back in September, on my 2^nd night in Uganda, I was taken out to enjoy the final night of Bayimba Kampala. So Laura, her two co-workers and I were on the way to Bayimba Gulu to facilitate a 2-day visual art workshop with the local artists of Gulu.

TAKS Art Centre, site for Bayimba Gulu

It was a long old journey, but it was quite nice to stare out the window for 6 hours and day-dream. The further away from Kampala we drove, the worse the potholes became, and for a prolonged stretch of particularly bad road, I couldn’t hear my ipod (or anything else for that matter) above the sounds of the bus juddering. We had one stop at Uganda’s answer to a service station – where a swarm of street-food sellers dressed in blue overalls come sprinting to your vehicle, shoving pork on a stick and smoked bananas through your windows, next to a few foul-smelling large bushes littered with toilet tissue.

Once we arrived in Gulu, I was struck by how un-City-ish it felt. In fact compared to Kampala, it felt like we were in a very small town. Most buildings looked rather run down, the streets were fairly deserted, and although it didn’t actually rain that much over the weekend, there was almost constant thunder and lighting, and strong winds picking up dust form the streets. Someone quite rightly likened it to the set of a Wild West horror film. 

We stayed in what most reviewers on Trip Advisor describe as ‘Upcountry at its finest!’ and ‘hands down the best hotel in Gulu’, which – as Laura inspected some blood stains on her sheets - did make me wonder what the bad hotels in Gulu are like... To be fair, apart from the dubious-looking sheets and lack of electricity, the hotel was basic but had a nice vibe, especially since most of the Bayimba crew were also staying there.

Visual art workshops at the Bayimba Festival

The visual art workshops themselves were a roaring success. The first day was more of an introduction; we met some of the locals (called the Acholi), discussed the struggles of being an artist in Gulu and Uganda, and explored the workshop theme of ‘unmapped’. Most attendees got stuck in and almost immediately started sketching plans for their main piece of work, of which 6 would be selected, mounted on to boda-bodas, and paraded around Gulu! The second workshop, on day 2 of the festival, was much more practical. We set up outside, under a mango tree, and spread out a mass of paints, canvas, glue, wire, fabric etc. The workshop welcomed not only bona fide artists, but anyone who wanted to get involved... we even attracted a group of police officers!

In fact the whole festival attracted a diverse array of people... Ancholi youths, artists and musicians, families, volunteers, NGO workers, tourists, and even a few real life Canadian hippies who I think must have got lost on their way to Woodstock.

By 5pm, the TAKS Art Centre site had completely transformed, and a huge stage fit for Glastonbury had been erected. The evening’s entertainment consisted of comedy, poetry, fashion parades, fire-dancing, film-screenings, break-dancing, and to conclude, some very popular local musicians. It was a fantastic evening that really celebrated the talents of Northern Uganda, and a very enjoyable weekend. Thank you Laura.

Boda-boda art parade

 

Evening entertainment

The Rain Returns

This month kicked off with a ‘Connoisseurs Festival’ fundraiser for Kampala Music School - an afternoon of wine tasting and live music hosted in the Sheraton Hotel Gardens.  Apart from a little bit of drizzle (so it’s not just England where the rain likes to try and spoil these things!), it was a truly lovely day. There were performances from a range of KMS ensembles, including the jazz band, Sauti Ya Africa, and the symphony orchestra. M-Lisada brass band also came to join us for the day, along with Sylvia - the yogi supreme. Sylvia is an ex-street child who I am currently teaching violin to, who is also practising yoga and has become quite famous in Kampala for her elastic backbone.

Sylvia performing at a different concert a week previous to Connoisseurs

It’s an unusual act that the M-Lisada organizers have put together, but entertaining all the same – the brass band play ‘What A Wonderful World’ whilst a very zen Sylvia contorts herself in to some weird and wonderful shapes for the audience to admire.

I found out last week that there are still numerous children at M-Lisada who are without sponsors, and thus cannot attend school. So in the morning, when most the children get their uniforms on and head off for a day of learning, there are 17 children who get left behind and spend the day waiting for their comrades to arrive back from school. What is most heartbreaking is that school fees for one of these children costs in the region of just £150 for a year! M-Lisada have a further 150 children on their books that they care for, but who are not currently residing at their home, who are also not in school. If anyone is interested in sponsoring one of the M-Lisada ex-street kids, either a resident or visiting child, then please let me know so that I can forward you the list of children and their profiles.

All the ladies of Kampala are now wandering around with plastic bags tied over their head, which marks the start of rainy season, of course. Yes I was confused too, but all has been revealed; African hair, when grown out, is very hard to manage and is therefore either chemically straightened or braided. This is not a cheap procedure, nor quick, but at least both style options are fairly long-lasting (normally a quarterly trip to the salon is sufficient) ... unless ones hair gets wet. To the Ugandan lady who was explaining this all to me, I pointed out that - on the plus side - she must save a lot on shampoo costs. Oh, on the subject of hair, Nicholas the Head of Strings at Kampala Music School was just the other day showing off the uses of his:

The natural pencil holder

Backup arrives

Six weeks in to the new year - after a somewhat miserable January, moving house once again (yes, that’s the 4^th time in 5 months), plus being knocked off a boda-boda* - I had become rather run down with a serious case of feeling-sorry-for-myself-itus, so I couldn’t have been more pleased to welcome my parents here. A perfectly timed visit! A friend who is also volunteering here in Kampala described the experience of her parents visiting as a relief – that her day-to-day business no longer felt like ‘me versus the world’, which I can definitely relate to.

 

Mum and dad enjoying a Ugandan sunset at Jinja

On day 1 of the holiday with my folks, I had hired a car and driver to take us on a trip to Sipi Falls. The driver was 2 hours late to pick us up and, despite my paying for his car to be serviced a few days before departure, 2 of us were seatbeltless (which wouldn’t have been quite so worrying had we not been stopped by police for speeding, twice) and the car breaks weren’t really breaking (which, aside from being a death-trap, also meant an impromptu, time-consuming detour to find a garage). I can only assume that our driver paid himself to service his car, and that this involved putting his key in the ignition to check the car would start. The frustrating dealings we had with this chap/ opportunist continued throughout our 3-day trip, and for me, the whole situation was all too familiar. What was different this time, though, was having two like-minded people on Team Phoebe, with whom to roll eyes, laugh, or (almost) cry with.

Mum, me, and dad at the beautiful Sipi Falls

Following the Sipi Falls trip, and before heading off to Kenya with the parents to see the sea, I returned to work for a few days with a much improved morale. I even managed to see the funny side when, whilst changing a student’s unravelling violin strings, a cockroach crawled out of his peg box and on to me. I especially liked my pupil's response - ‘is that a bad sign?’  

On a side note, thank you to Stringers, Deborah, Cecily, Richard and Sam for your donations of shoulder rests, sponges, strings, and music. And thanks to my mum and dad for transporting it all here! The shoulder rests/ sponges are improving the posture of many KMS violinists, and the new strings are not only helping to develop nice tones, but also seem to discourage insects from setting up homes in my pupils’ instruments.

Dining with friends from UK who are now living in Kenya

So then last week my parents and I went to stay with some friends in their home on the coast of Kenya. And, as if a white-sand beach holiday on the coast of Africa wasn’t enough, their daughter – one of my best friends - flew out from UK to join us as a surprise! 

I thought Kampala was hot, but nothing could have prepared us for the surge of all-encompassing humid heat that greeted us off the plane at Mombasa airport. Luckily, there was a slight sea breeze and our friends were well-equipped with electric fans. Still though, it was far too hot to do anything. We were forced to just sunbathe, swim and read books for 7 days straight. Poor us.

Working hard in Mombasa...

Lastly, Uganda has been in the press a lot recently concerning ridiculous and harsh laws against homosexuality... I am told it is now illegal to even have a discussion about homosexuality, unless you are damning it. Another fantastically crap law that was almost signed would have made it illegal for women to wear anything above the knee (its 30 degrees for goodness sake!) or ‘dress provocatively’. Worryingly, although the law was not passed, there is still widespread support from the general male public to implement anyway. For example, some hooligans have started publicly shaming ladies they deem to be inappropriately dressed, by ripping their clothes off. Thank goodness these awful men are being arrested, but still, I've become a little paranoid about my wardrobe. I feel a shopping spree coming on.

*Boda-bodas are the motorcycle taxis that swarm Kampala. When there are traffic jams here, which is all the time, boda-bodas are the only way of getting from A to B. By law, boda-boda drivers must wear a helmet and only carry one passenger at a time. There are some hilarious interpretations of a ‘motorbike helmet’ – I’ve seen everything from horse riding caps to builders hats – and in terms of passengers, most bodas tend to carry at least 1 family (with babies tucked under arms), a couple of chickens, plus a cluster of bananas tied to the back.

January Blues

I’ve always found January to be a hard month – in Britain the days seem darker and colder than ever, the Christmas parties are over, you’ve eaten and drunk way too much so now all your clothes feel tight, it’s only a few weeks in to the New Year and you’ve already broken all your life-changing resolutions (the self-loathing is unbearable – ‘will I ever change?’), and the next holiday seems decades away. But I was so convinced that this January would be different - I’m fulfilling a life-long dream for goodness sake! I’m living in Africa, voluntarily helping the needful, in a beautiful country alive with music (especially Reggaeton beats), and the sun is shining bright and strong... but yet the January blues have still engulfed me!

I had the most wonderful Christmas and New Year break. As well as a safari, and a trip up-country to see the mighty Murchison Falls, Immy and I went to Jinja ‘the adventure capital of East Africa’. There we partook in a mixture of extreme sports, and extreme perfect-the-art-of-doing-nothing-ing. We camped in a safari tent on the banks of the river Nile, spent 2 lovely days on a paradise island actually in the Nile, and - although now neither of us can actually believe it happened – Christmas Eve was enjoyed rafting on grade 5 rapids (well, actually, not that much time was spent in the raft as such - more out and sometimes under).

Yes, that's actually Immy and me in there!

 So with the holiday over, Immy’s departure, plus my closest friend since I arrived here in Uganda also gone (home to the USA), I came back to earth with a real thump. Also, as a friend quite rightly pointed out, it is about the 4 month mark that people living/working abroad start to really question what they are doing and wondering why. Honeymoon period over. 

So January has been spent trying my very best to concentrate entirely on work (the classic ‘if I work 24/7 then I won’t have time to think about why I am upset’). I have taken on more students, plus another school, and – ridiculous though it sounds - I’m writing weekly plans and reports on all my students. Invaluable for keeping track of everyone’s progress and it has revealed numerous ‘coasting’ students, i.e. non-practisers! This Monday gone was probably my lowest day yet here... After a Sunday evening spent looking through all my notes, I arrived at KMS grumpier than I thought I could ever be (armed with my OCD-like progress-tracking file) ready to question ‘the coasters’. Instead of sleeping, Sunday night had been spent winding myself up, feeling like a victim. I wanted to ask them:

‘Why should I live thousands of miles from home, away from my family and comforts, and put up with being approached on the street everyday either for marriage or money? And have to turn down social events and weekends away because I’m a volunteer and therefore don’t have expendable income? And work my socks off (drawing particular attention to my exhausting 12-hour Monday) only to return to a small, dusty abode where - more often than not - there is no water to wash with? When you are not even bothering to practise for just 20 minutes a day!?’

I didn’t mention any of this, of course. Instead, I bottled it all up, had a good cry, and then asked the students kindly to put more effort in. That Monday got me thinking though. Whenever I had a hard day in UK, I used to think ‘I wish I was in Africa’. And here I am, so now what do I wish for when I feel life isn’t going my way? Thus this January I’ve had eureka moment (or maybe more of a confirmation of previous suspicions):

For all our complaints about our lives - whether it be our standard of living, financial status, job, location in the world, relationship woes, unrealised dreams etc. - we are actually all responsible for our own present happiness. So let’s all stop feeling so hard done by, and instead think of what we can give thanks for. Positive Mental Attitude.

Here’s to February!