The Jinja Three
7.00am. Thunder, lightning, torrential rain. A reddish-brown river in full flow down the hill from our hotel block to the restaurant building below, making rapid progress to conjoin with its Mother Lode the Nile. This was no quick shower. We had been told by locals that it always rains on Tuesdays and Wednesdays (how does “it” know?). This was Wednesday. (One out of one to the locals).
Three hours later and we are sitting in an empty stand at the ground with an almost entirely waterlogged pitch, shades of New Road, Worcester. The local assertion that rain storms are generally over in 45 minutes had gone out the window this time (so, one out of two to the locals.)
Four girls had turned up, wet and shivering – it’s actually quite cold for the Equator, we mused. Sally gave them sweaters and taught them the “Mango Song”, in four parts – is there no end to our Project Leader’s talents? Apparently not. Later, as the rain continued, she taught them a gyratory, twerk-inspired, mash-potato-like dance of which there is a bootleg video that will be illegally up-loaded to a celebrity exposé website at some point in the future – because Sally and her two partners in crime are going to become celebrities. (More later…)
A local told us that the still continuing torrents falling from the sky – it’s now 11am – represented “a slightly exaggerated normal weather pattern”. (Two out of three to the locals). We therefore took the opportunity to visit the Mehta hospital to see what it was like (or in my case to track down Lillian, Catherine, Janet and Joy). Doctor Mishra who runs the hospital, and who has been such an excellent host on this leg of the project, gave us a very informative description of the hospital’s history and its work and also gave us some enlightening insights into the spread of HIV/AIDS in Uganda and the Government’s attempts to control it.
Steve Wells took the opportunity that the rain provided to interview the two teachers who had arrived, Omandi and Rashid, who had plenty of interesting thoughts to offer into how ABCs and HIV education is taught in schools. Steve has recorded the interview and hopes to continue it tomorrow.
The Mehta Guest House provided Tutor Steve Williams with his usual extensive and sumptuous lunch and the other eleven of us were grateful to be able feed off the crumbs he left. (42 chapatis today – I kid you not: that’s 42 out of 50 to Steve).
By lunch, with the rain continuing, play was abandoned for the day. We stopped by the ground on the way home just in case but although the rain had eased the ground was pretty much under water still and the wellie-clad groundsman pronounced it unfit for play.
We drove back to the hotel after some of us had waited for 45 minutes in a bank to change some currency. Paul having established, after a rather frantic exchange with a teller, that we were being offered the Euro rate for Sterling, we left the bank with our wallets and pockets bulging with notes in exchange for our hundred quid.
And then the real drama began. Three of our number, who for security reasons shall remain nameless, strayed onto a footbridge near the dam on the Nile and did something they should not have been doing. I’ve got you thinking there, haven’t I? But I, again, can’t divulge what they were up to for those pesky security reasons. (Suffice it to say they tried to hide their ‘phones). Enter two burly uniformed soldiers, complete with AK 47s, who immediately arrested them.
So where are they now, our intrepid photographers strayersrs-onto-footbridges? In handcuffs? In leg-irons? In JAIL???
I’m afraid I have run out of space so you will have to wait until the next edition of this blog to find out. I also have to see if I can rustle up some bread and water. And a file.
Peter Yates
10/1.10.14
This has been the first Official Cliff-hanger Ending to the Uganda14 Blog.