Brushing my teeth in Africa

I have learned from experience that you should never go anywhere...

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 13:00:06 +0300

I have learned from experience that you should never go anywhere in Africa without an e-book reader or something else to entertain yourself with. It is a real life-saver when you find yourself arriving at a wedding one hour after it was supposed to start, but still need to wait three hours before the other people arrive.

We were traveling to Soroti to visit the home of a friend. The...

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 12:29:37 +0300

Toilet break

The journey was long.

We are stuck!

Some engine problems...

Mud hole

Another mud hole

We were traveling to Soroti to visit the home of a friend. The road to Soroti is very nice with a speed limit of 100km/h almost all the way (which means that people usually drive at about 120km/h). We expected the trip to take 1-2 hours.

The only problem was that we were too many people in the taxi, so the driver was afraid of meeting the traffic police. To be on the safe side, he chose an alternative route. Thus, the simple 1-2-hour trip turned into an interesting 4,5 hour journey with lots of bumps, pushing and mudholes.

Bathing in warm water

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 12:24:05 +0300

This is how we do our bathing (/showering) in Lira. We use our hands to splash some water from a basin which is placed in a bathtub.

It works great, but there is one problem: The water is really cold, which is not at all comfortable in the morning.
We could heat the water on the charcoal stove, but charcoal production is an environmental problem, so I don’t really want to do that.

Leaving a jerrycan (a common type of water container) in the sun will heat the water in it, but it takes many hours so it would not be ready until the afternoon - and we need the warm water in the morning.

How about if we place the jerrycan in a reflective funnel? (Made from aluminum foil and cardboard.)
This helps. Now the water gets warm in about 1-2 hours. Not too bad, but we still don’t want to wait 1-2 hours from getting up until we bathe.

Luckily, we brought some nice and warm clothes from norway.

Finally, we can take a nice and warm bath in the morning with the heat from yesterdays sun!

(There is still room for improvement, like painting the jerrycan black or making the reflective funnel bigger.)

Juliet the rat

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 14:56:32 +0300

Let me introduce you to a rat named Juliet - for she is a woman rat. Juliet is from the town of Lira, in Northern Uganda.

One day, Juliet decides that it is time for her to move away from her partents and find her own place to live. She starts looking, and finds a storage room in a house where some white people are staying together with a Ugandan family. This place is perfect! She finds a nice and warm storage basket where she builds her home. The storage basket has some really tasty shoes, and even a bible with some tasteful paper. Just outside the house, juliet finds a trash can where she can collect more food leftovers, so she never gets hungry.

Juliet meets Romeo - a very handsome rat-man. They do the traditional rat-marriage, and Juliet becomes pregnant. After some time, she gives birth to many small and cute rat-babies. Life is good!

But now comes the terrible day that somebody wants something from the storage basket where Juliet lives. This is unfortunately the day when Juliets happy family ends. :(

I was just going to get some stuff from my room when I suddenly...

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 14:30:05 +0300

I was just going to get some stuff from my room when I suddenly heard a constant loud mosquito-humming. Wondering what on earth had happened, I grabbed Eivinds camera and flashed into the darkness (power had gone off, so the room was dark). Lo and behold, there they were, mosquitoes circling all around the backpack. Luckily they went away after removing the plastic foil from the outer pocket (maybe it contained some food leftovers that they liked or something).

Becoming and early riser

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 14:30:06 +0300

If it weren’t for the daily rythm of our host family and the student fellowships in the evenings, it would have been very tempting to adjust my sleeping rythm to sunset and sunrise.

We live close to the equator, so it gets dark very quickly after sunset. Power is often gone, so it is fairly dark inside the house as well, making it very tempting to go to bed.
Because of the heat, there is no way we can sleep with curtains in front of the windows. Therefore, our room is filled with the morning light, making it hard to sleep after sunrise.
Due to culture stress/culture shock, I get very tired after a long day of interaction with Ugandans, making it easy to go to sleep early.

Washing forever

Sat, 22 Oct 2011 14:30:06 +0300

The Ugandan phones that Eivind and I bought came with this silly game called “copter”. Eivind had the “great” idea that the last person to reach 1000 points would wash ALL our clothes the next time we washed. Unfortunately, I agreed…

Actually, it was not all that bad to wash clothes for 3-4 hours. It is mentally exhausting to be thrown into a completely new culture. You always wonder how to behave, and try to observe what other people do, feeling like a little child. It is called culture shock, and we learned a lot about it at the school before travelling out. In the middle of this, it is very refreshing to just do simple physical work where you don’t have to think.

I broke my camera

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 14:30:05 +0300

Going to the toilet in the evening, I am welcomed by two gigantic beetles that are mating on the wall. “Wow, I need a picture of this,” I think, and grab my camera. I press the power button and wait. Nothing.

Trying to figure out what the problem is, I manage to destroy the sensor that checks whether the cover to the battery tray is open. So now my camera has two problems: it does not respond at all and even if it did it would have refused to start because of the sensor I broke. I guess it is game over for this camera.

We still have Eivinds small point-and-shoot camera, but it does not take the best pictures and it lacks a manual mode. Sooo, I guess I will be looking out for another camera. It would be great if there were a Ugandan finn.no.

Being visitors

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 14:30:05 +0300

Three days in a row we have attended different parties/meetings. Being white “visitors” and having a host father who is a pastor and a “big” person, we are of course seated in front, on the stage, facing everyone else! The meetings usually last for 4-5 hours and much of it is hard to understand both because of the language and because of cultural differences. However, everyone is looking at us, so we need to be careful about our facial expressions even when we are getting tired.

Don’t get me wrong — I know this is how the Ugandans show their hospitality. They really treat their visitors with respect and honor, and I do appreciate it. Still, I am hoping to become more of a peer than a visitor during my stay here in Uganda.

Welcome to Africa…

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 14:30:05 +0300

Cows in roundabouts

Chicken in spare tires

Welcome to Africa…

Meeting our neighbours pt. 2

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 14:00:00 +0300

I was in my room hanging up some pictures as three girls showed up outside our window. After greeting them through the window, they asked me to come out, “and bring your camera!”.

Afterwards, I heard from the STEM worker living with us that those girls had been walking around our house since lunch time. Maybe the boys from the other day told them about the two mzungus living here…

“Mzungu!! Take a picture!!”

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 14:00:05 +0300

“Mzungu!! Take a picture!!”

Meeting our neighbours

Sun, 16 Oct 2011 14:00:05 +0300

Some boys were playing next to our house, so I decided to say hello.
— My name is Håkon. What is your name?
— Nyinga Rogers
— Your name is Nyingarogers?
— Nooo!! hahahahaha!

This strange mzungo/munu (=white person) didn’t even know that “nyinga” means “my name is”…

We had a great time despite the language problems, and they asked me to come back some other day.

Taking the boda-boda

Sat, 15 Oct 2011 14:23:06 +0300

— Boda! Do you know where Sankofa Cafe is?
— Yes, we will take you there
— How much?
— 1000

A boda-boda is a bicycle/motorcycle taxi. It is a really relaxing way of getting around town — as long as the riders know where they are supposed to take you.

We get on to the boda-bodas and the boda-boda-riders start pedalling. They take us to a building that says “Lira Radio Station”, telling us that this is Sankofa Cafe. It doesn’t seem quite right, so we ask some people in the building, and they give the boda-boda-boys new directions. They take us a bit further and stop outside another building, but still not the correct one. Again, we ask the people in that building and they give the boda-boda-boys new directions. Finally, on the third try, they take us to the real Sankofa Cafe. We pay them 500 extra for the inconvenience, even though it really was their fault.

Finally, we could relax at Sankofa, also called the Mzungu Joint.

The Toilet

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 14:00:06 +0300

For the next 6 months, our toilet will look like this:

It is very easy to call it “primitive”, but is it really?

You save a lot of water since you don’t have to flush. Normal toilets consume way too much water.
The toilet requires no plumbing and will last for years. When it is finally full, a truck can come and empty it for you.
It is very easy to wash: Just pour soap-water on the floor and brush a little. Our Norwegian toilets take forever to wash (I had toilet washing duties at Hald, so I know).
And, finally: You get strong legs.

My name

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 14:07:05 +0300

— I am Håkon
— you are WHO???? hahaha

— I am Håkon
— Akon, the singer??? hahaha

— My name is Håkon
— Nice meeting you hagon!

I think I need a Ugandan name…