Christmas

Why hello
I am currently in MicroCare even though it is my holidays...well anwar is here anyway with his outrage at having no holidays he has decided we deserve a car which should be great, i bought a tape(yep an actual tape!!!) i decided on a classic,Westlife's greatest hits, its what you have to drive to on KLA as we now call it or Kampsie as iam starting to call it.
Christmas was in Kisiizi and was rather strange, i have hundreds of photos as you expect but i havent got my camera with me currently so they will have to be uploaded at a later date.
I spit roasted a pig which was an experience and a half and i feel i took alot from it...such as burns and singed hair...but other than those things it was a great day and tasted great. I went to a Church service which we left after about an hour and a half as we didnt understand a word and we had been up preparing the pig since 4am. The service contiuned for 5hours.....
On boxing day the boys went on a quest, quoating lord of the rings with our walking sticks and large strides i soon nearly died but luckily had my inhaler with me so all was gewd.
We desnded into a valley and Jeff supplied us with a wonderfull quote "its always great to watch birds of prey from above". We arrived at the bottom of the valley where we meet a small river and a wonderfull waterfall which legend has it is where they would kill ladies who did bad things....we however enjoyed the ice cold thud of the water due to our unatural sweating.
I soon climed the water fall to see what was above and due to it being about 4metres tall this was hardly strenues. I reached the top and there was a beautiful flat stone right for the sunbathing....there was also a lovely pile of mud and being the skin cleansing curious types me and abe soon had oursleves covered in mud....these photos are on Jeff's camera and i hope to get them off him.....we then walked down the river and had a plentyfull of falls and wetness.
I am now back in kampala and had a lovely shopping spreee...i bought myself some glorious air nikes, a beautiful bob marley belt, a pair of topguntastic aviators and a lovely T-all for about 7 squid.
As i have to get a new visa to stay in the country i am going to be leaving the mighty Uganda for a while and spread my wings to Kenya and if the lovely boarder gaurds..i do so hope they read my blog....allow it i shall enter somalia....the wonderfull thing is i can do it all for free....not only do the other boys have to pay to leave Uganda and enter Kenya they have to pay to get back in aswell so it costs them $100 on crossing invisible lines...where as it costs me $0 which means i shall be buying the champagne on the train to mobassa.
I am still unsure upon the dates at which i shall be leaving etc but i shall try and keep you all informed.
Hope christmas was great for you all
Love from
Guy

Last few weeks

Well sorry for a lack of blogging....
I have been very busy and i could write you one of my super long blogs giving you great detail and information, i know you would greatly enjoy that but i currently am stressing with UCAS so i am going to put a load of photos up and give you a small run down of what happened

On Tuesday 11th it was the Microcare Christmas party so they had some live acts one of them was this guy above, we called him one legged Rasta, i feel that isnt his real name.

This is me and Francis's daughter Gabi

This is another live act, Bobi Wine, he is famous over here and has a really popular song

Me dancing with gabi

Me and roddy left the party and went up the road to the mural on the wall where i found hitler and we had a chat about why he was in Uganda

And roddy helped the economy by pushing a lorry through customs.
During this night Roddy and i decided to go with the rest of Project Trust to the sese islands for a wee bit of a break.


The large boats transporting wood.

Us all getting onto the ferry

An old sally rat dog in the sese islands

Hitchhiking a lift in a pick up i took this photo of the bay infront of our hotel

This is the main village and jeff

We went to the local pool shack for a few games

We went for lunch and walked into the forest a little where we saw lots of monkeys

Jeff and roddy on the pier, we were meant to be fishing but the fella turned up an hour late with no rods.

We sat on the pier with beers and watched the sunset instead

Rather Beautiful as we watched the fishermen in their dugouts come in

Roddy climbed out to pose


Polos!

Moi,Jeffery and abe

Roddy and I came home on the Friday morning and got the 7am ferry at about 9am.
We came home on friday because we were invited to the Irish Ambassadors Party. We of course dressed for the occasion in Smart Casual, Jackets but no ties....we looked quite the part and fitted in rather well even though i do say so myself. It also happened to have a Samuel Beckett exibition because of anniversary etc etc so was rather intersting. As the night wore on it turned into a bit of Kareokee with many randomers going forward....during a lule in the singing me and roddy were pushed to the front and shouts of go on westlife insued so as to not let down our begging crowd we sang a hidden gem in the wild rover...(the scottish version of course due to roderick)...we got many compliments and we may be booked for a wedding in the near future



me reading the irish times in the Irish Embassy with Beckett exibition

We went to the Sheraton Hotel and ended up going to look at the Gym. Its rather nice.

We went to Spurs for Dinner which was delightfull steak....mother will be so proud of my manners in this one but it is fast food so it is ok :D


Hope that is informative enough

Guy
X

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Ebola

As i am sure you have all being hearing about CHOGM in the news and how much Gordan Brown and queenie enjoyed their tax payers money spend. Well now that the dust has been allowed to settle (literally due to the countless road sweepers out on their hands and knees every morning)
we see quite a more PreCHOGM Uganda as i now have electricity rarely and have no water thank you musevini.
Well the main point of this entry is to shed some light upon the lovely Ebola virus that if you do not know already is where you bleed out of every oraphis in your body and there is no cure and your 80% likely to die, well this lovely virus has just arrived in Uganda just right after CHOGM you say with a swipe of the brow and a sigh of relief as queenie is ok and can do that thing she does with the corgi's and Gordan can get back to the british public who need him so much oh no wait let me just see has Ebola not been killing hundred in the DRC for about five months now....hmmm and people have been dieing on the boarder areas of Uganda such as Bundibugyo now let me think would an out break of Ebola in Uganda just before CHOGM mean that a lot of CHOGM people would not come to Uganda? Would it indeed be better for Uganda to cover up this Ebola outbreak and keep it under the carpet as it spreads slowly in a CHOGMtastic Uganda. I feel a great sense of suspicion.
Well its about time now that you did get worried because there are now suspected outbreaks in Kampala, when i they say suspected they mean people are dieing of Ebola in Kampala but we do not want to freak people out, i am going to be on red alert i feel i should probably stay in bed all of this week.
This weekend as you may recall i was going to be going to Fort Portal and Kasese which now both are on high alert as they have large populations and Ebola is broken out all around them, for some reason i have decided i am washing my hair this weekend so that trip is off!!
Be safe in the knowledge that its nowhere near you :D
Have a fun flu filled winter
Guy

Three Months

Well its already upon me, i have now been living in Uganda for three months and it only seems like yesterday i was getting onto that plane in Belfast. Time seems to be just flying past me and i should surely be getting more sorted and prepared for the year ahead but alas i cannot figure out what i want to do with my life.
I now have only five months left, i am certain they will fly past as quickly as the first three so it wont be long till i am back to the wet bogs of Fermanagh.
If you feel like informing me how you are...me@guyphenix.tk
Guy

Masaka

I had another busy weekend with me traveling to Masaka for a project trust birthday.
On Friday night I went with James to a leaving party for Jane and Bob who are a retired couple who have been living out in Uganda for 18months, he has been working as a music teacher and she has been I think just generally living it up, joining various clubs such as the gardening and book clubs including many womans club’s aswell, they are both very friendly and from Devon, England. I had an enjoyable night at Gweniths house where they have been staying, Gwenith is engaged to my neighbor Simon. I chated to a lot of people and mainly discussed the usual, where I am from, why I am here, what I am hoping to do at University.
I got up at 7:30am so that I wasn’t rushing to get the bus to masaka and that I could have a shower, got up to find the electricity was off so had a lovely cold shower and off I headed. I got into a mytatu and headed off into town, after a while I noticed we werent taking the normal root, I soon realized we were heading through the pretty much ghetto if there could be such a thing in Kampala as we passed houses and the farm yards with cows I finally arrived in Kampala after about 20minutes extra of a journey, I then headed to shoprite to get myself some breakfast which was of course some lovely apple donuts.
I then headed past the old taxi park to some of the many mobile phone shops scatterd all across Kampala and Uganda for that matter, I was on the hunt for a new phone as my lovely old nokia has decided it decides when it switches off or receives calls. After looking at a variety of very strange chinese imports I decided I wasn’t going to have any dice so headed over to the new taxi park to find a bus to masaka. I paid my 4500shs and on I popped bought some Fanta and started reading my viciously deep book on Gurdjieff.
It was now about 10:00 and the bus started to fill up, there was a lady outside peeling matoke, its rather calming watching somebody do it.
The bus finally fills up and its about 10:30, suddenly though everybody stands up and starts running off the bus I unsurprisingly am totally and utterly lost as to what is happening as anything that may have been announced was in Lugandan, I turn to they guy beside me and ask whats happening, he explains that we all have to get off and onto another bus. I eventually get off and I am informed that the bus currently driving through the taxi park is the one I have to get on, I run after the bus with about 4 other Ugandans as we try to get in, I manage to get on first as it starts to leave and realize this bus is a lot smaller than the last one and there are no seats left. I head to the back where I manage to get a two seater to share with three. The ticket man soon came along to collect but the lady across the isle from me wasn’t trusting the bus and so wouldn’t pay until she arrived in Masaka, what followed was a 2hour Lugandan argument which I understood didle about but which ended up involving pretty much everybody around me who wanted to stick their 2cents into the argument. Somebody finally got off and I got myself a proper seat well I had to share a two seater with three kids but they took up little space so I was in comfort.
All the while during this kurfuffle of arguments and awkward seating they had “night of the living dead” being played on the TV in Lugandan which was quite disturbing due to the amount of kids and rather annoying due to the Lugandan translator showing off his voice acting skills and taking it slightly too far.
I soon arrived in Masaka well in the middle of a field pretty much with a large amount of rubbish dumped into it and no sign of Callum who was suppose to be meeting me off the bus. After declining lifts from pretty much everybody around I phoned Callum to find out firstly where I was and secondly where he was. After we realized neither of us knew where I was I headed to whet seemed like a main road, I soon meet Callum and we headed off to the hotel we were staying at, I got a lovely little room with a sort of bed in between single and double and I even had a lovely balcony to look out over Masaka’s main road. Roddy and I headed off to the local market and shops to have a look for some interesting buys. Roddy got himself a fetching shirt and tie and a rat trap for the mice that annoy him in the night and I got a nice pale blue t-shirt.
That night we went to a restaurant called 10 Tables where we had a room to ourselves for the birthday celebrations, there was 9 of us in total. We had green soup for starters, chicken and sausage kebabs with swahili rice and what seemed to be corn flour and water which was some sort of dip. The girls also got a massive chocolate cake made as you can see below. During the whole meal we had been pounded with loud music which when we went outside after the meal we realized was a Uganda Telecom concert. We decided we just had to go so we headed towards the music and headed in, what we experienced was rather strange, there was about a thousand people there all standing in rows except there wernt any rows to stand in as it was in a football pitch. Roddy and I soon were up the front showing them how to dance but alas our silky moves were a bit to much for them to handle and we headed back to the rest of the group at the back.
We stayed till the very end which was quite late and managed to get some free Ugandan Telecom caps which was a great souvenir.
The next day Roddy and i headed to the bakery to get breakfast and then headed to the market again as I had seen a lovely Star Wars bed set but hadn't purchased the day before, unfortunately somebody had bought it and I left disappointed and empty handed but was rather close to buying a small spear.
The journey home was rather quick and I had a seat the whole way, I considered going to watch the Bolton V’s Liverpool game but I am rather pleased I wasn’t in the mood as a 4-0 defeat wouldn’t have been easy viewing.
Matt is heading away on Friday to attend two wedding’s of friends and wont be back till the 19th so I will have a free house.
Hope the temperature is getting lower and the Christmas push is getting to you as I sit in sunshine and haven't watched TV in 3months.
Regards
Guy

The matoke peeling lady at the bus park

The Birth Day cake


Roddy at 10 tables reading the pictures

Roddy posing in his new shirt tie combo with nifty waist coat and lovely belt

What a great name for a shop

Kisoro trip

Well I have had a weekend and a half
I wish I could just like take you all to the places I have seen and do the things I have and just let you go wow because even though I took 500 photos it still dose not do justice to how beautiful or immense the things I have seen are.
Well I got up at 6am on Thursday morning as the plan was I would be picked up at 7am at the bottom of my road and of course in Ugandan and Fermanagh style well back wards sort of places time and I got picked up at about 8:30am. So I bundle into the back of the Hilux which is a pickup white with large microcare logo’s on it all a little UN style. The trip from Kampala to Kisiizi isnt that interesting, I got some goat meat on a stick which took me about 2hours to chew my way through and we stopped in Masaka to get lunch where I watched the Queen on Tv doing well whatever the Queen does. We arrived at Kisiizi at about 2pm which was quite impressive as it took us two days to do it the last time. We had phoned ahead and ordered ourselves some lunch at Datu’s which is the local pub/restaurant where Roddy and Callum hang out with the locals. Callum, Wilbrod(our driver) and I headed to Datu’s as Roddy had to teach a class and Anwer cant eat pork so he went to the Guest house to get some chicken. We arrived in Datu’s and headed through to the “VIP” lounge which is just the smelly back room of datu’s that has some some chairs and a sofa, soon a bucket full of 4kg of pork arrived for the 3 of us and about 20 matoke arrive, which is a ridiculous amount of food trust me! We slowly munched our way through all the food with plenty of salt to be able to stomach the Matoke. We were pretty full after all the food and poor Roddy was very jealous as all he got to eat was some chapatis. We headed back to the office as Callum had to teach a class and so me and Roddy headed to check out Pickens the pig and the chickens. I have some very nice photos of Pickens. We then spent some time at the office checking email and sorting any problems there might be and also I made myself a nice computer from all the bits and pieces the boys had about the office. We then headed to the Guest house for dinner, we sat down with two of the medical staff staying at the guest house who the boys call Commys due to their lack of humour and strict no fun policy. I also got to meet this old man David who is from the Uk,Northern Ireland, Fermanagh, Enniskillen, just so happened to attend Portora and of course asked me the question I so didn’t want to hear “did you row?” ahh the rowing club. He is an engineer here which is rather strange as the only engineering is done by another guy but ahh well rather strange to meet an Old Portoran in a small village in Uganda.
After lunch we headed back to the Round house which is a lovely little house with 2bedrooms which you can book for 30,000shs so about £8.50, it’s the same place we stayed before. Had a nice cold nights sleep as it is always freezing down here. We headed off nice and early so were up at 5.30 to leave at 7. I had a lovely breakfast of pancakes and pineapple and banana, very filling. Callum and Roddy decided to come with us to Kisoro as we were possible going to pop into one of the national parks. The journey from Kisiizi to Kabale was actually quite nice and the road is mostly tar which made for an enjoyable 1hour trip. Kabale was a lot smaller than I expected but was nice non the less and we called into a local supermarket run by Indian’s of course to buy some snacks for the journey to Kisoro. We set off and from the go we knew it was going to be a killer of a journey. The mountains looked so beautiful as you can see in the photos but the camera can not capture the true feeling of awe. After some amazing views and scary moments we made out way through the bamboo forest and into the Kisoro valley. We decended in and as we got closer Wilbrod tells us that on our left there is a UN Congolese refugee camp, all we saw was two big white tents with UN on the side and we thought “sure” then as we got past the UN tents we look past and see an endless wall of white as far as we can see and it was so sad to see all the people standing around in what seems like the middle of nowhere. We arrived in Kisoro which is a big enough village, it has a large green in the middle and on the day we arrived it just so happened to be the grasshopper day which of course is a Ugandan delicisey so there were about 200 kids running around the green chasing after these poor grasshoppers. We stayed there for a while as Anwer had to fix some problems with the computers and as he didn’t need me we went for a walk around Kisoro. Off we headed back to Kabale for the night, the journey was terrible as it rained and we had to bring in our bags, a broken computer and a printer so they didn’t get soaked. We stopped at the top of the hill and I took the photo of the refugee camp so beautiful and so sad.
We stayed in the London image hotel which was a bit of a tip but it was cheap and about the best in Kabale. We went to a place called the ritz as you can see in the photo, it had some ok food cheap as usual and only had one power cut the whole time we were there.
Due to financial issues regarding Callum and Roddy I had to share a double bed with Roddy( it was done on the flip of a coin not choice).
We got up nice and early hoping that we could go to one of the national parks but the Queen Victoria park where we had intended on going to was a bit busy with the queens arrival so we decided against it and instead headed back to Kampala with Roddy and Callum. On the way home we stopped at one of the many small stalls at the side of the road, our driver Wilbrod bought about 7 bunches of matoke I also bought some produce in the form of 4 bunches of banana’s and a Jack fruit as you can see in the photos, I even cut it all up by myself and soon realized I had way to much so I gave some to my cleaner.
We headed to Garden City on that Saturday night to get some proper food and to go to the cinema. We headed to the food court and I got some lovely pork noodles and Roddy got something very exotic in Lasange. We then went to see beowolf or something along those lines just to relax. We had a gewd night and had a gewd rest untill the boys were up at 8.30 to go and sort things before leaving on the bus back to Kisiizi.
I had a nice relaxing Sunday.
I managed to miss CHOGM which was great but I would have enjoyed protesting. I shall try and post a large number of photos but as I took 576 itl be hard to choose. I am also currently growing a mustache which mum will be glad to hear :D
Love to all
X



















A mytatu, local taxi's with 14-24 people crammed inside







































These are the kinda things i pass as we travel along the roads.



















Callum pretending to work at Datu's


















What was left of out mighty 4kg of pork and matoke



Ishmale and christine(She is their boss and he is her husband)

Wilbrod and Anwer


The glorious view from Datu's pub,Main road in Kisiizi


Me and Pickens


Roddy with chicken


Crane's in the Kisiizi football pitch


The three amigo's in Kabale










Various scenery on the way to Kisoro

In the middle of the picture you can see a large mass of white, that is the refugee camp

Me and roddy sleepy

Standing on top of the Hilux we must be cool

The microcare centre in Kisoro and roddy beside the microcare Hilux


Kids chasing after grasshopers in the green


Back in Kabale with a dirty Microcare Hilux and Wilbrod

The Little Ritz where we ate in Kabale


Kabale during day light

Kabale during the day


No clues for where we stopped


Jackie my jack fruit



Anybody have a clue what this is about? Saw it in Kampala