Movies and motorbikes
on Thea's Blog (Uganda), 12/Apr/2010 17:17, 34 days ago
I can’t believe a whole seven weeks have passed since I last updated my blog. And I can’t believe even less - if that’s English which I don’t think it is - that I’m only a couple of months shy of being here a whole year. It’s somehow ironic that time is flying despite the fact that I feel I spend so much time waiting for things to happen (for people to turn up for meetings, for buses to fill up so they can leave, for the beans to cook, for someone to answer my question etc.). I have got quite good at filling my time with manic multi-tasking. I find if you have 10 things on the go at once, you can convince yourself you are making overall progress even if it is through broken, scattered mini-steps.The last 7 weeks have been a total blur. Late Feb, Duncs came to FP to very generously make a promotional film for MMU. For 3 weeks I ran around carrying the tripod and pretending to be a film director. I helped with planning the script, coaxing our interviewees (who, luckily for us, needed virtually no encouragement to give us the juicy soundbites we were after) and offering (somewhat reluctantly received) editorial input. It was a surprising amount of work but fun a lot of the time, and the end result was pretty good. Plus it helped me score an all-important brownie point with the executive. It was also a mutually insightful exercise for Duncan and I– he got to see where I work and who I work with, and I got to see what I nightmare it is doing TV. We also had a useful lesson in the perils of spending every waking and sleeping hour with each other for 3 solid weeks. We survived.I then had a hilarious time in Kampala learning to ride a motorbike. The training ground was a piece of wasteland belonging to the Buganda king, and our instructor was apparently one of the Kabaka’s courtiers turned muzungu motorbike trainer. We had a total of 3 hours training over two days, which involved going round and round the field trying to dodge the learner drivers and, more challengingly, the rally car whizzing up and down at 100k/hr creating huge dust clouds with its screeching handbrake turns. At the end of the first day – after just 1 and a half hours of training – our instructor took us in the full flood of Kampala traffic. This was quite an adrenaline-filled excursion particularly when, on the way back, I momentarily forgot where the footbrake was and skidded undaintily in to the path of a speeding truck. I also survived this experience. And I even passed the test. This was not very difficult if I’m honest. All I had to do was tell the examiner I’d had 3 weeks of training (not 3 hours), laugh at his jokes, and name four road signs. The bikes, to my immenserelief, stayed on the back of the pick-up.So many other things to mention. I will summarise. After the training D and I had a lovely 24hrs in Jinja stuffing our faces with such rare treats as baked potatoes, hummus and falafel. Easter weekend I joined 5 other VSOs on a mammoth trek over the top of the Rwenzori mountains to Bundibugyo. 4 hours of steep descent did my toes and knees in, but the pain was at least partly eased by the completely breath-taking views of the Semliki river and the eerily empty forests of Congo. I’ve been boosting my knowledge of indigenous Uganda trees from proof-editing a book for some French friends. I’m about to plant FP's largest plantation of lettuces.