Oh dear
on Thea's Blog (Uganda), 15/Feb/2010 18:46, 34 days ago
Well at risk of sullying the portrait of a worldly-wise, cool-headed and in-control volunteer I have been striving to project over the last eight months, I feel I have to get a few things off my chest. Sometimes a blog is a handy therapeutic/confessional tool in the absence of a priest or psychotherapist. Although admittedly a slightly more public arena than either, it does have the distinct advantage of not talking back.So here we go. To cut a long, mortifying story short, I seem to have single-handedly started the Ugandan (or at least Fort Portal) chapter of that well known international campaign to propagate the stereotype of British girls as the drunken piss-artists of the world. The sole redeeming factor about my fall from grace was that is was witnessed only by my Irish colleagues at MMU, some chivalrous lads from the Peace Corps and one surprisingly sympathetic boda driver who was apparently prepared to suspend his disbelief and accept that madam (smelling suspiciously of vomit and mumbling incoherently) was just‘very tired’ after a long evening. I’d like to say that this was an isolated event, but there have been one or two other marginally less cringe-worthy occasions in recent months that would seem to indicate an unfortunate and rapid regression to my late teenage/early student years.That’s probably enough public self-flagellation for now. I don’t think there’s any need to sign up to AA just yet. I’m secretly hoping that behind these embarrassing experiences actually lies something a bit more positive to do with me shedding my control-freakishness of recent years and loosening up a bit (I was actually having a lot of fun until the third glass of Bond 7 - an evil, evil drink - did something to my ability to walk, talk and hold down my dinner). I suppose I could also use the pretty lame excuse that I was only doing what the Romans (or in this case the long-term residentmazungus, particularly those of an Anglo-Saxon extraction) do, but then that doesn’t make me look any less of a tit really.