hey all!
not that much to tell today, a lot of people have left the lodge and i'm now alone in my room, which is nice on one level but crap on another level.
yesterday we attended a bit marriage ceremony which was held in the school playing fileds. its was beautiful and very posh. there were twelve wedding cakes! the family were clearly quite well off. there were fairy lights everywhere, and a bubble machine, and a dj. all of that was running off a very small generator! there were also several entertainers who were hilariously crap. there was a gospel choir (who mimed to a CD), two different solo singers (who mimed to CD's) and an 'acrobat' who was good but ran out of material after about 5 minutes.
the food was great, the 3 cows seemed so good after 5 weeks of not eating meat! there was not cutlery though, and it is considered rude to eat with both hands, you use your right hand for eating and your left hand for 'other things'. eating rice and mea and stuff with just one hand is hard work. perhaps the most difficult item were the chappatis, which needed to be torn into smaller bit and could then be used as a scoop for the rice. try tearing a piece of paper with one hand. its bloody impossible. had to use a sneaky finger on my left hand for that one, but i eventually got the hang of it.
they also served the disgusting millet drink that i had a georges engagement party, and some of the volunteers accepted a glass without knowing what it was. it was hilarious. there were a couple of hundred people at the wedding, so we didnt really have to worry about people noticing us daring eachother to drink it.
the little girl i took to hospital the other day is home now, after 2 nights on the childrens ward. one of the boys has been to visit her while i was seeing the gorillas and reported she seemed loads better which is good, and also brian's parents took him to hospital for an HIV test. i dont know the results, but i geuss it's not my business anymore.
yesterday at the wedding one of the girls brought me a child with a huge gash on his leg and asked me to take a look. he said he'd got it a week ago but it was still open and really looked like it needed stitches. it turns out he's the son of a member of staff at the lodge, but i doubt he'll ever get treatment for it. he's not a student at school, so he's not in my care, and so i have no right to take him for treatment. i find that sort of thing immensely frustrating. i'm told that here ilness is still sometimes thought to be the work of the devil, or may be a punishment for sins, so people are reluctant to seek treatment, fearing gods wrath. they also may relate it to witchcraft which is so ridiculous, but is still a crime here and is serverely punished. i'm told a child with HIV may be cast out of the family because they are blamed for bringing the disease on the family, despite the fact they would have caught it form the mother.
the summer programme at school starts today, so were arent allowed to use the blackboards (its illegal to educate the children during the holidays), or get them to write anything. it doesnt start till 1pm though, so we have a our mornings free from now on.
oh and the title... the local mad man turned up at the wedding. it was tragically funny.
love, Lucy xx
Showing posts with label engagement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label engagement. Show all posts
Monday, 15 August 2011
Saturday, 13 August 2011
backhanders and beestings....
so yesterday we went to see the gorillas. actually seeing them was absolutely breathtaking, but the trip wasn't without its problems.
we stayed the night at gift of nature lodge which was absolutely lovely. we were so pleased to have proper pillows and real scrambled egg in the morning!
it turns out we dint have permits (i dont think) but our trip was a 'special arrangement' between denis and his friends. having compared notes with someone else at the lodge who went last week, it definitely sounds like we got the rugged version. rosie and ross (who went last week) said they had a guide, and a man at the front and another at the back with guns, and the guide had a machete that he used to cut a path through the vines. we had one man who had nothing more than a stick to steady himself on the wet ground. not a gun or machete in sight! of course at the time we had no idea that we were SUPPOSED to have a guide with a gun, so we werent too woried.
the trek was very tough going, at high altitude its very difficult to breathe properly and the terrain wasnt easy to get through. you don't take paths, you follow where the gorillas have been, and when your guide can't cut the vines, you find yourself entangled and falling ungracefully on your arse really quite often. we trekked for about 6 hours in total, during which time we all got stung and bitten by an array of tropical insects.
finding the gorillas was an absolute joy, and such a relief to stop climbing. we saw the rare sight of two families crossing eachothers path, which mean that they were making aggressive sounds to warn eachother off. i would have appreciated a man with a rifle at that point! the first gorilla we saw was a big silverback male who had been extradited from his group. he was very funny and spent a lot of time with his middle finger stuck up at us! i have some great photos of that. we later saw a female who was only about 3m away from us, which was absolutely amazing/terrifying.
on the way back the climb was really hard, and i found myself having a panic attack because i felt like i couldn't breathe. i've never had one before and it was pretty bloody terrifying. one of our group as well, steve, was vomiting though he claimed it was just from the exertion of walking. when we finally got back to the car it was a very different story.
when we got to the top, we were all breathless, but steve didnt regain composure like the rest of us, and continued to struggle to breathe. he said he had felt fine until he was stung on the head by a wasp. getting in the car, it quickly became apparent that he was having a pretty servere allergic reaction to the sting. his lips turned blue, and he said he couldn't feel his arms or face. the serisouness of the situation was aparent to us, but the african road seriously hindered us in getting to hospital quickly. when we eventually arrived at the hospital they were so chilled out it was annoying, and they didn't seem too bothered. thankfully steve seemed to have manufactured enough of his own adrenaline by then to be slowly recovering.
thats about all i have to tell you at this point, its been a miserable rainy day here and i have a rotten cold, but tomorrow we are heading out to a wedding party of the sister of one of the staff at the lodge. they have kiled 3 cows for the occaision!
Love, Lucy xx
we stayed the night at gift of nature lodge which was absolutely lovely. we were so pleased to have proper pillows and real scrambled egg in the morning!
it turns out we dint have permits (i dont think) but our trip was a 'special arrangement' between denis and his friends. having compared notes with someone else at the lodge who went last week, it definitely sounds like we got the rugged version. rosie and ross (who went last week) said they had a guide, and a man at the front and another at the back with guns, and the guide had a machete that he used to cut a path through the vines. we had one man who had nothing more than a stick to steady himself on the wet ground. not a gun or machete in sight! of course at the time we had no idea that we were SUPPOSED to have a guide with a gun, so we werent too woried.
the trek was very tough going, at high altitude its very difficult to breathe properly and the terrain wasnt easy to get through. you don't take paths, you follow where the gorillas have been, and when your guide can't cut the vines, you find yourself entangled and falling ungracefully on your arse really quite often. we trekked for about 6 hours in total, during which time we all got stung and bitten by an array of tropical insects.
finding the gorillas was an absolute joy, and such a relief to stop climbing. we saw the rare sight of two families crossing eachothers path, which mean that they were making aggressive sounds to warn eachother off. i would have appreciated a man with a rifle at that point! the first gorilla we saw was a big silverback male who had been extradited from his group. he was very funny and spent a lot of time with his middle finger stuck up at us! i have some great photos of that. we later saw a female who was only about 3m away from us, which was absolutely amazing/terrifying.
on the way back the climb was really hard, and i found myself having a panic attack because i felt like i couldn't breathe. i've never had one before and it was pretty bloody terrifying. one of our group as well, steve, was vomiting though he claimed it was just from the exertion of walking. when we finally got back to the car it was a very different story.
when we got to the top, we were all breathless, but steve didnt regain composure like the rest of us, and continued to struggle to breathe. he said he had felt fine until he was stung on the head by a wasp. getting in the car, it quickly became apparent that he was having a pretty servere allergic reaction to the sting. his lips turned blue, and he said he couldn't feel his arms or face. the serisouness of the situation was aparent to us, but the african road seriously hindered us in getting to hospital quickly. when we eventually arrived at the hospital they were so chilled out it was annoying, and they didn't seem too bothered. thankfully steve seemed to have manufactured enough of his own adrenaline by then to be slowly recovering.
thats about all i have to tell you at this point, its been a miserable rainy day here and i have a rotten cold, but tomorrow we are heading out to a wedding party of the sister of one of the staff at the lodge. they have kiled 3 cows for the occaision!
Love, Lucy xx
Sunday, 7 August 2011
Drinking and dowries...
Hey guys! It’s been such a good couple of days, I think this is going to be a long one. As already mentioned in my last post, we did white water rafting and had a night out the previous day.
On Friday when I got back to pauls and I decided to stay, it was pretty apparent that we would be going out (it was a Friday night, after all, and I was missing a night at Sals.) we first headed out to mediteraneo, the Italian restaurant where I met up with paul for lunch on Wednesday. There we met up with a couple of friends of paul and tarik, including a Serbian guy called George. We had a few drinks and some of us had dinner (I had fresh ravioli, DIVINE), and I found out that George was getting engaged the following day, so he had to travel to rukingiri where the girls family lives. He invited me along for the ride, so I decided to go.
After mediteraneo we moved on to a shisha bar called casa blanca which was a real hole, but we sat outside and after much waiting and arguing they produced a pipe for us, which was enjoyable. George used to be a barman (in a very classy bar, I imagine) and makes amazing cocktails. He has an amazing command over people, and eveyr place we went he would just nip behind the bar and mix up something amazing, so even in this crappy bar we had great drinks.
After the shisha George decided that he needed to go home and rest, but we stayed on in town and went back to the same irish pub we went to on Wednesday, but it was packed so we didn’t stay long, before moving on to a place called cayenne, which pauls friend ron got us into for free. Apparently there are a lot of rich Indians around in kampala and they don’t pay to get in anywhere. Cayenne was really nice and I actually bumped into one of the girls who was rafting on the same day as me and we had travelled on the same bus to jinja. We had some great cocktails there as well, despite the fact that George had left!
We eventually went home and slept for a couple of hours before getting up at six to set off for rukinjiri. We travelled up in a car that George had just bought but it was pretty much falling apart. We stopped on the way for samosas which were really nice and we finally arrived at the hotel at about 2 o’clock. After showering and getting changed we had to drive to the village that is home to the bride, Helens family. The engagement thing was really interesting, there were a lot of very strict rules we had to follow. When we came into the house we had to walk in a straight, single file line. We were taken into a room where we were given this absolutely vile drink made form ground millet. I only managed on sip and I heaved 3 times before I could even swallow it. Most of the others managed most of a glass, but I have no idea how they did it. George managed a glass and a half. I was really worried about appearing rude by not drinking it, but I figured it would have been ruder to throw up everywhere than to leave it in the glass. After the drink we had to walk in a line again to this makeshift marquee that had been set up, and we had to sit facing all of the family and village elders but we weren’t allowed to greet them, we had to wait for them to come to us, which they didn’t.
One of the elders made a speech and we listened, but it didn’t make a lot of sense. The general gist was (I think) that they were happy we were there, despite the fact they didn’t look the slightest bit happy. Then we went off to a separate room where they fed us for 2 hours. They had this really nice chicken which was cooked wrapped in banana leaves, and there was a parcel for each of us. Georges parcel contained a whole chicken that he wasn’t allowed to share!
After the food we went back and we all had to speak and say who we were. Then they asked us why we were there and I was dreading having to answer that but there was an adjudicator type of person and he answered for us. Then all of the daughters of the family came out and they had to give a flower to the man they wanted to marry. It all seemed a bit odd because they clearly already knew who was getting engaged to who, but thats the way it was. After that basically they had to negociate about the dowry price, even though we had brought loda of stuff with us, they require a lot from the man. He had been told to buy 20kg of sugar, 10kg of salt, lots of waragi, bread, butter, biscuits, soap, and bottled water. On top of that they asked for 10 ankole cows, with the biggest horns, but to show his gratitude he offered 12. That would cost about 12million shillings, which is about £3000. After that it got a lot more relaxed and we basically danced and partied. They wanted us to stay there which I think would have been fun but George was a bit snobby about it and was like ‘I don’t want to sleep on the fucking floor, it’s like Auschwitz in there’ even though they had mattresses and stuff, I think it looked fine, but we went back to the hotel, where the Serbians (along with paul and tarik) drank for hours. Me and the Brazilian girl I shared a room with went to be quite early as we were so knackered form the night before!
This morning I came back to ruhanga, which was on their way home so they dropped me off, which was nice. Now that I’m back it feels a little weird but it’s nice that I feel I’ve come home, and I’ve surprised myself with how pleased I was to be back!
love, lucy xx
On Friday when I got back to pauls and I decided to stay, it was pretty apparent that we would be going out (it was a Friday night, after all, and I was missing a night at Sals.) we first headed out to mediteraneo, the Italian restaurant where I met up with paul for lunch on Wednesday. There we met up with a couple of friends of paul and tarik, including a Serbian guy called George. We had a few drinks and some of us had dinner (I had fresh ravioli, DIVINE), and I found out that George was getting engaged the following day, so he had to travel to rukingiri where the girls family lives. He invited me along for the ride, so I decided to go.
After mediteraneo we moved on to a shisha bar called casa blanca which was a real hole, but we sat outside and after much waiting and arguing they produced a pipe for us, which was enjoyable. George used to be a barman (in a very classy bar, I imagine) and makes amazing cocktails. He has an amazing command over people, and eveyr place we went he would just nip behind the bar and mix up something amazing, so even in this crappy bar we had great drinks.
After the shisha George decided that he needed to go home and rest, but we stayed on in town and went back to the same irish pub we went to on Wednesday, but it was packed so we didn’t stay long, before moving on to a place called cayenne, which pauls friend ron got us into for free. Apparently there are a lot of rich Indians around in kampala and they don’t pay to get in anywhere. Cayenne was really nice and I actually bumped into one of the girls who was rafting on the same day as me and we had travelled on the same bus to jinja. We had some great cocktails there as well, despite the fact that George had left!
We eventually went home and slept for a couple of hours before getting up at six to set off for rukinjiri. We travelled up in a car that George had just bought but it was pretty much falling apart. We stopped on the way for samosas which were really nice and we finally arrived at the hotel at about 2 o’clock. After showering and getting changed we had to drive to the village that is home to the bride, Helens family. The engagement thing was really interesting, there were a lot of very strict rules we had to follow. When we came into the house we had to walk in a straight, single file line. We were taken into a room where we were given this absolutely vile drink made form ground millet. I only managed on sip and I heaved 3 times before I could even swallow it. Most of the others managed most of a glass, but I have no idea how they did it. George managed a glass and a half. I was really worried about appearing rude by not drinking it, but I figured it would have been ruder to throw up everywhere than to leave it in the glass. After the drink we had to walk in a line again to this makeshift marquee that had been set up, and we had to sit facing all of the family and village elders but we weren’t allowed to greet them, we had to wait for them to come to us, which they didn’t.
One of the elders made a speech and we listened, but it didn’t make a lot of sense. The general gist was (I think) that they were happy we were there, despite the fact they didn’t look the slightest bit happy. Then we went off to a separate room where they fed us for 2 hours. They had this really nice chicken which was cooked wrapped in banana leaves, and there was a parcel for each of us. Georges parcel contained a whole chicken that he wasn’t allowed to share!
After the food we went back and we all had to speak and say who we were. Then they asked us why we were there and I was dreading having to answer that but there was an adjudicator type of person and he answered for us. Then all of the daughters of the family came out and they had to give a flower to the man they wanted to marry. It all seemed a bit odd because they clearly already knew who was getting engaged to who, but thats the way it was. After that basically they had to negociate about the dowry price, even though we had brought loda of stuff with us, they require a lot from the man. He had been told to buy 20kg of sugar, 10kg of salt, lots of waragi, bread, butter, biscuits, soap, and bottled water. On top of that they asked for 10 ankole cows, with the biggest horns, but to show his gratitude he offered 12. That would cost about 12million shillings, which is about £3000. After that it got a lot more relaxed and we basically danced and partied. They wanted us to stay there which I think would have been fun but George was a bit snobby about it and was like ‘I don’t want to sleep on the fucking floor, it’s like Auschwitz in there’ even though they had mattresses and stuff, I think it looked fine, but we went back to the hotel, where the Serbians (along with paul and tarik) drank for hours. Me and the Brazilian girl I shared a room with went to be quite early as we were so knackered form the night before!
This morning I came back to ruhanga, which was on their way home so they dropped me off, which was nice. Now that I’m back it feels a little weird but it’s nice that I feel I’ve come home, and I’ve surprised myself with how pleased I was to be back!
love, lucy xx
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