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.)

Soroti, soroti

Well… well…

At last we were on our way into dark Africa. On Tuesday morning we packed our things, went to the store with Pamela and bought all the neccessities we could think of to survive in the bush. And off we went!... to Soroti…

Soroti… where nobody we knew had ever been to…

Soroti… where boda-bodas are bicycles, not motos…

Soroti… the only part in Uganda with no wild live…

Soroti… which has only two streets, main street and market street…

Soroti… grotty Soroti…

On our way we noticed how the road condition, the condition of the houses and live standards in general got worse. The futher we drove from Kampala, the capital, the worse it got.

After one hour of driving we got to Jinja, which is considered to be the next biggest town in Uganda. Well, to explain the term "considered to be", the truth is that nobody knows exactly what is the exact population of any town in Uganda, and for me it seems that the population of the country itself is also unknown! This might have something to do with the constant influx of rural refugees, settling in the towns, especially in the north, with towns like Lira and Gulu, where population has trebled for the past decade.

The town Jinja can consider itself relatively "lucky", because there you can find the source of Nile. Therefore many tourists pass through Jinja and to get a close look at the source you "only" pay 7 dollars! And like the true tourists we are we went to get a close look at the source of Nile. It was a great and glorius feeling standing in the same shoes as Mr. Speke, who was the first European to discover this giant lake and find the source of Nile, the world¥s longest river.
After that we went on to Mbale, which is pretty much the last drop of civilisation you can find before going further north to Soroti. We walked around and tried to memorize the most important places, the pub and the restaurant.

We went on north, with only one hour to go. After Mbale the geographical climate changed, from plantations to Savannah. The scenery was beautiful. Everywhere you looked you could see savannah, with one huge tree here and there, like cut out from the "little house on the praerie".

That was the only thing you could see… for miles… almost…

If you looked closely you could see a grasstop here and there inside the savannah. And if you looked even closer you could see these where houses. Grass-thatched-houses.

It was absolutely beautiful. The houses fell completely into the landscape and filled you with excitement… this you had only read about and maybe seen once or twice on CNN, but hello!
After 10 minutes of a remarkable feeling it began to rain. That¥s when you realised that no matter how "cute" the houses were, people actually lived in them! The walls are made of dirt and the floors as well. Their only hope when it rains like that is that the grass roofs would hold the water so their floors or walls would not be washed away. My exitement turned to sadness immediatly…

After a silent one hour ride in the rain we arrived in Soroti. Soroti town was crowded with smiling faces, people, kids and boda-bodas (which are bicycles by the way;). We went straight to Pamela¥s house and were welcomed by her sister, brother and friends. Her house here is amazing and we are so grateful of the welcoming and hospitality that she and everybody has shown us.

Well, I could keep on writing forever, because the last 4 days here in Soroti have been very eventful, but that has to wait better times. Yeah, yeah… I know you must be excited, but be patient!!! Yesterday, for example, the internet was out in the whole district!;;)

Cheers,

Harps

Some pictures from Kampala and others:

David showing off his lovely cows.
We found some Icelanders (of course) in Kampala. Kristjan and Karl from ICEMARK, and they knew how to play Bridge!
...we played well into the night...

A busy street in Kampala.
Here are Harpa and Pamela at the source of the river Nile.
(the time sequene of the pictures is a bit out of order). Kampala again.
David in his humble abode.

David and Vignir at the equator, where the water flows both ways.
Harpa and one of David's cow.
Kampala.
..again Kampala.

The restaurant where Harpas sister used to go to when she and her husband lived near Kampala.
The busy, infamous, taxi park. Belive it or not, this is where to get a cab.
Here we are at Kitetika primary school.
David helping with cleaning the peas.