Marooned
on Thea's Blog (Uganda), 23/Sep/2009 14:14, 34 days ago
It’s going home time but I am currently marooned in the office because there is a terrifying thunderstorm going on outside. A minute ago a heart-stopping bolt of forked lightning struck just about exactly where our house is. I hope I’m not going to go home to find Esther sitting on a pile of smoking rubble. The rain is now pelting in proper equatorial fashion. There’s no messing around with this rainy season business.The radio phone whatsit that we use for the internet says‘do not use in a thunderstorm’. The funny thing is the more time I spend here, the less I find myself – a pathological worrier – worrying about these kind of things. I guess it has something to do with the fact that danger, or the perception of danger, seems to lurk in every corner. As a result you kind of build up an immunity to it. Dodgy wiring, dodgy drinking water, insane matatu drivers, malarial mosquitos, sitting on the back of a boda, have all pretty quickly become facts of life. Not to mention the occasional earthquake and riot. Without really trying, you kind of adopt the norms of the people around you and Ugandan casualness about any form of danger is pretty breathtaking. Four helmet-less children squeezed on to the back of a boda is a very normal sight. Exposed live wires under leaking pipes is also another I've seen a few times. If I allowed my natural worry-ability full reign, it'd be a full time occupation. Luckily I have naturally morphed to a more Ugandan frame of mind.