Power out!

From our trip to Mbale, which is a big city 100 km away from Soroti. We went there to get our visa extended, but the immigration officer was nowhere to be seen. A whole day wasted, but at least we got some Indian food. And we bought an enormous beef fillet (more on that later).

Harpa is unbelivable excited about growing our own crops like the locals, mostly spices and foreign stuff. But first we have to cultivate the land. Our next door neighbours were so surprised to see a white man doing this kind of labour, that they stopped whatever they were doing just to see the Mzungu work!

We are teaching the teachers how to use a computer in Lalle (even though there is no electricity there.) This can be quite challenging given the fact that most of them have never used a computer before.

Here you can see the pizza mentioned in the previous post.

We brought some water colors for art class the other day, the kids were ecstatic. We only had three sets so they just piled up on top of each other to see what was going on.

The next generation of Ugandan artists.

There is an album by the age old post-punk band Wire (a personal favourite) which is called "Chairs Missing" Now we know why.

Harpa preparing for class.

The classrooms in Lalle can be quite crowded, some 130 kids in one class is not uncommon.

The power has been out in Soroti town for almost a week, which was pretty bad considering that we just bought an enourmous slab of beef in Mbale, to be saved for a special occasion. We had been trying to save it until the power came back, but were eating all the meat we could. Spaghetti bolognese for breakfast, hamburgers for lunch, an then when dinner time came there was no other option than bringing out the barbeque. We used literally everything we had in the fridge 2 kilos of meat, enourmous amounts of cheese, cream potatoes, vegetables, and it was delicious. But as fate would have it, the power came back on when we had just started eating.

Our daily live in Soroti

Soroti is treating us fine. We have marked our spots; found the club, the local bar, the local shop, the supermarket, the take away place, the best beer brand, the internet cafÈ, the fresh food market... Well, for most of you guys that¥s everythnig you need, right? For those who know me that is ALMOST everything I need.

So, where is the pizza? (Or pizaaa like they pronounce it here in black Africa)

Firstly, I was shocked they don't have Pizza Hut here. No Pizza Hut? Like most of you know, my week routine always involved one delivery from Pizza Hut (ok, Martine, 4 deliveries a week is maybe more accurate…;/) Secondly, I had noticed that in Kampala they had indeed desent pizzas, even a Dominos!

Here in Soroti there's another story…We have already made three attempts to go out for Pizza. First, the waiter at the restaurant told us that we had to wait for 1 hour and a half for the pizza. We didn't have time, unfortunately, but decided to come another time. That time the oven was “spoiled” and for the third time they suddenly didn't have any pizza!

But, wait a minute. This traged story has a happy ending! Because my Vignir sure knows how to bake a pizzabread! So we rushed to our supermarket, bought frozen minched meat, frozen cheddar cheese, weat flour, vegatable oil and a pizza sauce (yes, they even had a pizza sauce at this remarkable market!) and made THE best pizaaa in the world. Lucky for me, but not so lucky for Vignir, because now he has to make pizaaa for me 4 times a week! (I'm pretending I haven¥t learned it yet….;/)

Yours pizaaa lover,
Harps

What are we even doing here in Uganda?

We get the feeling that some of our dedicated readers have no idea whatsoever as to what we are doing here in Soroti. First of all, we are here representing a Belgian NGO (godgerdarsamtok) called International Friendship for Development (IFD.) The NGO is relatively new and still very small. IFD is headed by Pamela Anoyti, who is originally from Soroti. IFD has two main operations in Soroti and surrounding areas; Lalle Primary School and Chili Production. We are involved in both these projects as follows:



Lalle Primary School: We are teaching there as volunteers. We are however not teaching in the conventional sense, as the school already has a number of teachers. What we are trying to do is introduce new methods for both the teachers and the students. We will be having special groups for different topics with the agenda to fish out the individual talents and interests of the kids. As the school has some 1000 children and only 16 teachers, there hasn’t been much room for the individual, which we wish to change.



The Chili Production: IFD, in co-operation with another company, has been supplying loans to local farmers in Soroti to finance chili production. The situation for farmers here is pretty desperate, they have no money to cultivate the land properly, no money to buy proper equipment, no money for fertilizers, they have little or no access to external markets and most of their labor is spent on growing their own food. IFD has and will supply money (interest free) for plowing, growing and harvesting and will buy the chili back from the farmers. This process is, however, plagued with many difficulties and needs to be supervised constantly. The people have been burnt on many occasions by NGO’s with good intentions and bad management and "NGO money" has therefore been turned into "free money" in the minds of many. Our job is to monitor the farmers and encourage them to continue with the project.


Here are some pictures from the school:

The classrooms.
The children playing a game we introduced. The kids were so excited, but initially failed to grasp the concept of the game, so there was a lot of running around in the beginning.
Harpa managed to get things going and before we knew they got it. They were singing, clapping and yelling during the entire thing (even though I suspect some had no idea why.)
The kids are very dutiful and lower the flag after school every day.

Music club was interesting, the teacher spent most of the time tuning the thumb pianos, but we mangaed to jam to the chords of Neil Young's "Helpless" way past schooltime. After some time I expect to hear a choir of children singing: :"And leave us helpless, helpless, heeeeelpless."

The kids find us very interesting and crowd around us at all times. Not strange given the fact that one of the teachers said that the last time a Mzungu (white person) was seen in Lalle was in the 70's.

Photos from our new home

Pictures from our new home in Soroti with directors commentary (Vignir):

We bought another chicken the other day, no ordinary chicken, mind you! The chicken has taken to sitting on the windowsill outside our living room and stares incessantly into our lives. And no ordinary stare, not the mindless stare you'd expect from a chicken, no!, this is something much more dark and sinister. It is as if the chicken is the devil incarnate. I've decided to call him Beelzebird, Lucifowl or for you Icelanders: Djofuglinn. I'm not even sure if we dare to kill it when it comes to making a stew, do we dare kill the devil himself? Will we go to heaven or to hell? How would that work? I'm not sure we're willing to take the chance, I guess we'll just have to get used to that infernal chicken following our every move.

Here is our very live-in-able living room. The kitchen is still being constructed, but very nice, nonetheless.

The backporch, where I intend to sit and smoke my pipe and play my guitar.
The outside sink (of course!)
All the washing has to be done by hand, which is quite a daunting task.

Our dining room.
Bedroom and mosquito-net.


This badboy is ours! and it's called TVS Star. I found the name somewhat lacking masculinity wise so I've dubbed it DEATH STAR. Harps wasn't very fond of it and bought the not so masculine basket.

A blog about food (because Im very hungry, waiting for us to go to the market)

FOOD!
What a surprise, I tell you. The food here in Uganda is amazing! I really thought I was going to loose weight, but no…

For me being a huge connasseur, the first thing I do when I arrive at exotic places, is to find out what are their food specialities.

And what a discovery here in Soroti!

Me and Vignir have been fortunate enough to eat local food, cooked by locals, every single day since we came to Soroti. Pamela¥s sister and friend have been kind enough to cook for us and line up the local specialities, the next one being better than the last.

Pamela is leaving today, so that means me and Vignir are going to the market today by ourselfs to buy some goods! (Woohoo!) The market here is a gourmet, with fish, vegetables, fruits, beans, corn, meat etc. It¥s really difficult to decide on what to buy each time, because you simply want to buy everything! If we can cook something out of it on coals… that is a different matter…

My favourite food here is samosa, which is minched meat or vegatable fried in an orly triangle. The variety of fish here is also some, but we have only tried the tilapia, which is white soft fish and tastes very good. Matoki are the green bananas, which tastes just like potatoes.

Vignirs¥faourite is Mandas, which is just like icelandic "kleinur"

Well, enough about food…

Till next time.. taka care,
Harps

p.s. promise to post pictures of the school and the house next time. Were starting in the school tomorrow.

Pictures from the what? Uganda.

The meeting with the chilli farmers. The project entails funding from International Friendship for Development (IFD) to farmers to cultivate their land for chilli production and export the chilli to Europe.
Children in school uniforms.

Vignir in the field
Harpa and Pamela in the field
Harpa getting on with the locals... locals style.. sitting under a tree

An african child.
We walked past a school in our visit. Mzungu! Mzungu! Mzungu! they shouted. ( which means "white person")

We went for a short visit to Lalle Primary School, where we will be teaching. The kids were so happy to see us, and sang and sang and followed us around.
Here they are standing proud next to the water pump, which IFD funded recently.

Pamela, Harpa, me and my moustache travelled to Lake Kyoga, which is huge and unspoiled.

The vast savannah's are quite impressive. You can see the tiny huts in the background.
This is the nightwatchman's shed. (We'll post pictures of the house later.)
Although the fauna in Uganda is mostly restricted to the national parks, that doesn't mean the occasional hedge-hodge doesn't get in the way of construction, or lizards in the bathroom and golfball sized beetles in the sink for that matter.

Harpa was very impressed with the girls' ability to carry objects of almost any nature on their heads.
This is Soroti rock in the background, which is in the centre of town, which we intend to climb one day.

The "fancy" suburbs of Soroti

The families at the chili sites where happy to see us and gave us oranges, aubergines and a live chicken! As it is considered rude not to accept a gift, we of course took it, even though, you know...

...then we naturally had to get the chicken home, Harpa was less than keen to share the backseat with it, the chicken was not so happy either and raised some objections with its travelling companion.
This is a cleaning facility, very cost-effective, as the chicken are apparantly used as labour as well.

...then the unavoidable demise of the chicken. (Even though I did suggest keeping it as a pet.)