Would these three land me in the Ugandan slammer?

I had nearly reached my local boda stage. There was just over 100 meters to go but as I walked past the local swimming pool – the same one where I’d been called a mermaid a few months ago, where rumour had it you could become pregnant just by doing breaststroke and where there was “guns and knives are not allowed inside” painted on the concrete near the entrance – a voice called out.

“Madam, Madam, the bottles!” shouted a Ugandan man, stopping me in my tracks.

I realised he was referring to the three drinks I’d bought at the pool’s bar one night about a week ago before leaving Kampala on my Hoima trip. There was bitter Krest (my favourite drink in Africa), Alvaro (second fave – a non-alcoholic fizzy beverage that came in pear or pineapple flavours) and Tusker (beer) that all came in glass bottles. The Krest was to consume with a bottle or two of Waragi (aka “wargin”), the local gin.

To be honest, I would have preferred to drink Diet Coke or orange juice, but they both seemed to be pretty rare in Uganda, especially old OJ unless you frequented places like the Serena Hotel. On one occasion that I did track down OJ, I was asked “Would you like it orange or green?”

I didn’t know what to say. To be honest, I felt that the clue was in the title.

Ugandans loved nothing more than an empty glass bottle though, as I’d discovered soon after landing in the country, mainly because they apparently received a deposit for every glass bottle that they returned.

Apparently if one went to Owino market in Old Kampala (one was dying to go as she’d heard a lot about the clothes), you could see workers melting down the aluminum to craft jewellery and any other item they could think of to hawk at the market stalls.

But constantly being followed down the road in the ‘Pearl of Africa’ and harassed for my empty glass bottles was starting to slightly exasperate me – as much as the constant stapling of the daily newspapers.

In Uganda, the pages of most newspapers it seemed were stapled together everyday, preventing one from opening them up to feast one’s eyes on page three headlines such as TEEN SEX EXPLOSION. SHOCKING! Tragic youngsters smoke, guzzle bottles of beer, openly having lewd sex.

Hang on. Was I in the UK or was I in Uganda? Was I reading the Blighty version of the Sun, or Kampala’s? The Red Pepper, Uganda’s version of the Screws (News of the World), was full of even more tawdry events.

By the time I normally got to headlines like TEEN SEX EXPLOSION, I’d probably broken about three nails, causing myself to ask again, was it really necessary to staple the newspapers together?

“It helps you get to the best pages, though, that is the sport,” someone (not living in Uganda) said when I expressed my incessant frustration with it.

The constant stapling of the newspapers felt a bit rich.

I wondered which lucky people had the job of doing this every day? Would Murdoch steal their idea in the future?

As much as this annoyed me however, Uganda’s preoccupation with empty glass bottles infuriated me even more.

I’d once been having brunch in Dorman’s at Garden City when the waiter had tried to snatch away a Fanta bottle that was completely full.

I’d in fact only been allowed to leave the pool with the receptacles after promising at the time of purchase that I’d return to the premises with them the next morning.

Epic fail. They were now empty and standing on our kitchen cabinet at home.

As I stared the man in the eye I knew that he knew this, and a pang of guilt washed over me, just like a wave of water had the last time a Ugandan had dive-bombed directly on top of me in the pool.

“Madam, the bottles,” he pleaded.

“You bring me my bottles.

“I need the bottles. I want the bottles.”

I felt a sense of deja vu.

Today wasn’t the first time I’d been chased in Uganda for returning something.

The video shop in Garden City had chased me about a DVD only two days after I’d excitedly become a member, bombarding me with texts warning me to return it ASAP.

Now that I was Kampala’s number one bottle bandit, I wondered if I would face a fate hairier than Julian Assange.

Would the pool sic Interpol, the Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF) or the Black Mamba on me?

I also felt terribly selfish as I now wondered whether some Ugandans’ next meal depended on me swallowing my pride and just giving my bottles up?

These feelings though weren’t strong enough to make me return home and get the items that the pool manager so desperately wanted.

Instead I “vowed” to “Sebo” (Sir) to finally return my bottles the next morning, hailed William and drove off into town on a boda.

When I reached Garden City I bought the papers, unstapled them (only breaking two nails, which I’d had painted at Sparkles salon a couple of weeks earlier), sat down and read them. There were some good stories around.

A “deadly terrorist” had snuck into “K’la” from Kenya (I thought terrorists were deadly enough without the use of the word deadly, but perhaps they weren’t.)

Meanwhile the Ghostbusters squad was needed in central Uganda.

“The Ministry of Finance is investigating 300 teachers in Kayunga District suspected to be ghosts,” another story read.

Another article was headlined “When weddings turn into marriages…”. Fancy that.

There were some strange occurrences taking place in Uganda.

The “deadly terrorists”, “ghosts” and weddings turning into marriages took my mind completely off the empty glass bottles, until I was making my way home that afternoon and saw a bus parked in a service station.

On the front was the word HONEST.

HONEST.

The bus was called HONEST.

It was an HONEST bus.

I realised that if even buses in Uganda could be honest, then I had a duty to be honest in return, starting with the small act of returning my three empty glass bottles.

The next morning, bright-eyed and bushy tailed, I turned up at the pool with the Krest, Alvaro and the Tusker.

I’d never seen anyone beam more than the pool staff on that morning. I felt like I was Bill Gates handing over funding for the rotavirus vaccine.

For pics of the HONEST bus and more see my Daily Life in Uganda pinterest board

The black lips jumpsuit or the hot pink power suit? Tough choice.

By now the novelty of the Amy Childs dress in Uganda was wearing off. Every mzungu in the country had borrowed it at one time to have a go. I had spotted a very similar, no doubt cheaper version from the back of the boda at a roadside boutique as William was driving me one morning, but couldn’t be bothered risking my life trying to get to it. Oh how I’d changed.

No, not really, as when my two friends Lucy and Sue suggested that we go to Owino Market, aka St Balikuddembe, apparently Uganda’s largest market in Old Kampala, one Saturday morning I jumped nearly as high as Mt Elgon.

The Kampala high street wasn’t the same as the UK high street. A makeshift store on a busy dusty road was worlds apart from Whistles Hampstead Heath.

When you did browse inside a highway store most of the time you were faced with a choice between a pink power suit or a black jumpsuit with bright pairs of lips emblazoned on it, which was the nightmare I found myself in one day.

If you did see something that you liked, you’d have to get your driver to slam on the brakes pretty quickly, otherwise you’d probably never see it again.

Twice I’d attempted to buy a new dress. Once was on the way to Speke Resort at Munyonyo (which was also when the aforementioned iPad smashing incident happened, which led to the whole shopping expedition to be aborted). Another was at Wandegeya in town. Both displayed cute Roland Mouret style galaxy numbers and shifts. I’d even spotted a Breton Zara dress at Wandegeya.

Both times I’d gone in optimistically, not minding that much stripping in a makeshift changing room on the roadside that didn’t do anything to shield my modesty, as scores of Ugandans drove past.

Both times I left empty-handed and disappointed. Nothing ever ended up fitting properly, no matter how many times it was taken in or let out.

There was Alma and Amy Boutique around the back of Ham Towers near Makerere University. On one side of the sign someone (not me, I’d swear on the bible) had ripped off the ‘Alma’ so it was now only Amy Boutique. I’d tried on the green polka dot V-neck dress in the window but that didn’t even work.

I’d heard a few bad things about Owino, from both Ugandans and fellow mzungus. Namely that it was crawling with pickpockets. One friend claimed she’d been groped by one seller who also pinched her on the bum, while another hawker put her hand down her top in an attempt to try and pull her notes out.

“Best time to go are morning hours,” my friends at Guide2Uganda advised.

“Dress simple, take care of your purse. Watch out for petty pickpockets. Ask a friend to accompany.”

I wondered what they meant by “simple” dress. I was wearing a lot of Mr Price, the Ugandan version of Primark which boasted that good times were guaranteed, these days. Would that do?

“Don’t wear short skirts, wear a pair of closed shoes,” Guide2Uganda elaborated.

Another Ugandan friend warned me to “be ready to push and be pushed in those narrow paths”.

“Mind your bag,” they said.

“If you visit during a sunny day, the air is stuffy with some kind of dust flying.

“But pray that the rain doesn’t find you there.”

With all the dirt, I imagined if the rain did find me there things may end up like Glasto.

The tips flooded in.

“It’s best you don’t go alone. Avoid having large denominations, break them down,” another Ugandan said. I wasn’t exactly planning on staging the running of the bulls in Owino, but I’d take his advice.

I had however also heard some good things about the market.

My boda driver William had been sporting a blue pinstripe shirt one morning which he said he’d picked up there, and he looked “smart” as the Ugandans said. I’d told him so.

According to the Lonely Planet, Owino was known for its “wide range of second-hand clothes from Europe, Asia and the USA.”

One friend had purchased several nice vintage pieces.

And a friend of a friend had, to the amazement of the entire female mzungu population of Uganda, snapped up a Marcs Jacob skirt there for about 4 GBP, or so she’d boasted.

“They don’t know what they’re selling!” she’d exclaimed hysterically.

Once I’d heard that my mind had been made up. To Owino I would go.

I would happily put up with a bit of bum pinching for a 4 GBP Marc Jacobs skirt.

At worst, I’d end up with a gomesi. I was actually now dreaming of picking up a green gomesi to wear to the Royal Ascot Goat Races, one of the highlights of Uganda’s social calendar.

To build up some energy for our shopping trip I went to the Mengo Backpackers for lunch just before it that Saturday.

I’d never actually stayed there, so couldn’t rate it accommodation wise but was dying to see the dorms though to see if I could compare it to the Red Chilli Backpackers out of town, which my hero Jane Bussmann had mentioned in her bestselling book The Worst Date Ever.

“The Red Chilli was perfect. Nothing about it said, ‘You must be broke and rubbish’,” she’d written in one chapter while staying there.

I didn’t know if anything about the Mengo Backpackers said you were rubbish. However when you’d never stayed a night there but the bar staff knew you by name because you were constantly showing up for dinner, I guess you could be considered broke or at least cheapish.

I was still really keen to try the vegetable quiche and pizza although I hadn’t once been there when it had been available (despite remaining on the menu) and this day was no exception.

“It’s the power,” the woman behind the bar explained.

But there was only so long you could use the power as an excuse for in Uganda, especially when it came to a vegetable quiche.

After finishing my salad I got a boda to CafeJavas Mego, another favourite haunt, where I was meeting Sue and Lucy.

I’d had a second minor boda accident the afternoon before, again when the motorbike was stationary. Why did this keep on happening?

William had picked me up from home and driven to his boda stage before stopping and going to get his jacket left at a kiosk, leaving me stitting on the bike on the side of the road.

I had turned my head to the right and was mid-sentence in a conversation with Vianni, his friend and probably the mzungu’s second most preferred driver, when a concerned look swept over his face.

Suddenly I’d stacked it on the boda while the boda wasn’t moving and I still had my helmet on, much to the amusement of ten or so boda drivers who’d seen me along with people piling into matatus on the roadside.  Luckily though my leg wasn’t trapped.

“Sorry, sorry,” William said, sheepishly, rushing over to me and standing the bike up.

It was as equally embarrassing as puling someone down on top of me while trying to get on a boda, but it didn’t stop me from recounting the entire ordeal to Sue now that we were trying to hail one to take us and Lucy to Owino.

“Amy,” she said slowly before pausing. I knew she was going to tell me how clumsy I was.

“You’re so resilient on a boda.”

I was stoked. It was one of the nicest things anyone had ever said.

Unfortunately I wasn’t as good as negotiating fares and getting the three of us to Owino market that day ended up involving more organising than the D-day landings. The fact that Uganda was playing Senegal in the soccer at Namboole Stadium on home turf, which was rare I’d been told by a local, made it even busier. The streets were full of boda drivers blowing vuvuzelas and flying the national flag.

By the time we eventually reached Owino, on two separate bikes, I was more than ready for some retail therapy.

If only I’d had a crystal ball though and been able to see into the future, well just the next day, when the Sunday Monitor would print a story titled “Tricks to lure the customer; Inside the mind of a trader” for which they’d sent a reporter to Owino. (Of course though even if I’d had a crystal ball, it would have been highly unlikely that the power was off). Below I’ve listed what the Monitor said might happen on a trip to Owino, and what actually happened in my case:

What the Monitor said – “It’s common for sellers to use words such as ‘saizi yang’ and even the ‘outrightly sexy’. It’s not clear whether this is to entice buyers over or to simply make fun of them.”

What actually happened – I didn’t know what ‘saizi yang’ meant with to begin with. When I asked a Ugandan friend (male), he told me that it was a “gross term lol. Whoever said it to you meant you’re his size. He finds you cute, he fancies you, wants you! Lol.” I wasn’t called ‘saizi yange’ at Owino, but as I entered the market from Nakivubo Road a hawker yelled out, “Hello my wife-to-be”.  Yes really. Why does this always happen in the wrong country?

What the Monitor said – “You cannot anticipate a given price. That is like betting on the weather on Lake Victoria shores where the sun can burn the smile out of you one minute, then, next minute it is thunderstorms with lightning, completely unpredictable.”

What actually happened – Understatement of the year. The price of a fluro blue boy-leg 1950s swimsuit went down quicker than a led balloon, all the way from 50,000 Shs to just 15, 000 Shs within a matter of seconds, no doubt as it had been ridiculously inflated in the first place. Shame it was about six sizes too big.

What the Monitor said – “Soon you will feel a hand tap your arm. Then you will feel another, and another, and many others. This is simply ‘showing the customer what you have got,’ says Joseph Okello, a trader within the market, who sells radios, torches and open shoes. No, he does not think it is the rude act of invading a complete stranger’s personal space that you probably think it is.”

What actually happened – M7’s (Museveni’s) entourage has nothing on this lot. I was grabbed and pulled, not just by a man but also by my own sex, after I said no to the oversized swimsuit, until I broke free.

What the Monitor said –  “In and around Owino market, there are many often-colourful dramatisations used while touting. Some traders repeat their shouts all over again, making an attempt at poetry as they form a rhyme. It almost becomes a song, in a funny awkward way, thanks especially to a twisted intonation. Some record these chants on a CD or audio tape and play them over and over again. The touting usually comes with catchphrases designed to hook the ear. A trader could ring out words like ‘Shirts cost 2,000 Boona Bambaale, Boona Bambaale’ or another could say, ‘Shirts cost Shs 2,000, I do not want any doctors’ meaning he does not want customers who only check the products but do not buy, like doctors do.”

What actually happened – I did not hear the words “Boona Bambaale” or anything about a medic. Rather, all I heard was “It fits”. This applied to whether I was struggling to get the item of clothing over my head, or whether I could also fit most of Dadaab in it.

What the Monitor actually said – “The most common place where a customer’s looks are a determinant on how a trader will approach a customer are shoe stalls. A trader at one such stall agrees that the kind of shoes a buyer wears determines how he treats them, but only so that he knows what kind of shoe to suggest for them. ‘I look at the shoes you are wearing and see if I can sell you something similar,’ he says. That alone is an indication that a customer’s appearance means a lot in Owino market. If you buy a pair of trousers while dressed in jeans and a t-shirt at Shs 20,000, do not return in a Valentino designed suit, even within an hour, expecting to buy it at the same price.”

What actually happened – I left my Valentino at home, but was wearing a pair of Mr Price flats. The soles were falling apart. I was not asked to buy any shoes, even when standing near several shoe stalls. Funny that.

VERDICT: There were no Marc Jacobs pieces and I went home empty-handed. Shopping at Owino market was a lot different to shopping at Banana Republic, I’d discovered. It took a lot of patience. Spotting something that you liked, having it fished down by a trader (as most of the time items were displayed up high on the racks), then trying it on either over top the clothes you were already wearing or with half of Kampala peaking through a makeshift change room took a lot of time and effort and was frustrating. And it didn’t matter whether what you were modeling for the sellers was six sizes too big or six sizes too small, you’d always be told “It fits.”

Despite my disappointment though I vowed to return to Owino soon. I was determined to crack the Kampala high street.

Crikey. Can’t believe I came all the way to Kampala to find this.

Postscript

Always one for a challenge, I returned to Owino a week later.

Besides being told, “You look like Gaddafi” (some Ugandans had a strange sense of humour), I was shocked at some of the items on sale at Owino, mainly:

*A Valley Girl top (hadn’t seen this Australian label for years)

* A Tar-get top

* An ACDC shirt. In fact, several of them.

* An Australian Cricket Board (ACB) jersey.

* An Australian cricket backpack with the Milo logo on it.

* A Foster’s backpack.

* But my favourite was, wait for it… A ripped Fitness First backpack.

Fitness First, as one of my friends had said several years ago, was like the McDonalds of the Australian fitness industry. They were everywhere, and so were their backpacks. I knew scores of Aussies who had signed up at Fitness First (possibly to only get the free backpack that came with the membership) at one time or another, many giving up soon after.

But to send your Fitness First backpack to Uganda because you didn’t want it….?

I was absolutely horrified. Or were Australians just thinking of Africa? And moreover, did Africa really need Fitness First?

Where were the Ugandan getting these things from? Had someone at Tweed City shopping centre done a collection for Africa? It was like an outside, muddy version of a St Vinnies op shop back home.

Needless to say, I went home empty-handed. Again.

But also needless to say, Dad was gonna have a field day at Owino market in Kampala.

Kampala candlelit dinner for two.

I had agreed to cook dinner (read: cooking lesson) for my friend Lucy M, a TV producer (aka Biccy), the next Wednesday night after she’d been shocked at my lack of hearty meals. The things you signed up to in wild Africa.

Tuna pasta, to be more precise. It was her specialty. The ingredients:

Pasta (duh)

Tuna

Olives

Tomato paste

Tomatoes

Green pepper

Red onion

Garlic

Green beans

I went to Uchumi Supermarket in Garden City that afternoon to buy the ingredients, somehow managing to get two heavy bags of shopping back home on a boda.

By the time I walked through the door I was exhausted. I wondered – not wishful thinking or anything and not that I wanted my friend to starve of course – if there would be a power cut? Ashamedly wondered.

There hadn’t been one at home for weeks and Museveni had recently vowed that loadshedding was history, although this wasn’t the first time that he’d promised this. The bugger. Didn’t he know that a good old power cut could come in handy just when you were about to accidentally poison your friends to death?

The instructions for the tuna pasta went like this:

Fry the onion and garlic. Add tomato paste. Chop the tomatoes, green peppers and olives. Add to pan with a bit of water and make a paste. Boil pasta. Chop green beans and add them to the pasta.  Drain water from tuna by pressing down on opened lid (God, the things you did learn in Africa) then add to paste and heat through. Put paste on top of pasta and add grated cheese. Bon Appetit.

This was no Jamie Oliver special, though. This was Cooking with Mzunugus in Uganda.

I managed to start frying both the onion and garlic. I’d also proudly chopped the tomatoes, green peppers and olives and was told by my culinary superior that I was going well.

Just as I was about to start boiling the pasta however there was total darkness. It was followed by total silence.

It was the first power cut in weeks. I couldn’t believe it.

Although I never got that excited at the thought of slaving over a hot stove, I was now gutted that I wouldn’t be able to cook for my good friend. Or was this fate’s way of sparing her life?

After trying to go on in the dark (not a good idea with an 8 inch Ugandan blade in my hand) Lucy and I lit some candles and attempted to continue, only to discover that the gas had now also run out.

I had often thought that I was not a woman who was meant to be in the kitchen. Never before in my life than now did I feel this was true. This tuna pasta, me in the kitchen. None of this was meant to be.

“We’re going to end up having a salad at the Mengo Backpackers,” I groaned to Biccy.

One part of me was upset (I actually felt on the verge of tears, I’m not making this up) that my tuna pasta would never happen and that I was a complete failure. But the other part of me was slightly relieved, as not only would it save my embarrassment but it could also mean that my friend would live to see another day.

Biccy had been a very good friend in Uganda. On this occasion she wasn’t letting me down either, providing me with the encouragement that I needed to go on with my cooking, as much as I hated it and had two kind of legitimate excuses for giving up.

“We’ll go to the neighbors,” she said triumphantly.

Carrying the frying pan, pot and chopping board, we went and knocked on the door opposite us and explained to them that we were experiencing a few technical glitches with making our dinner.

Sheowanesh aka Shewa, who we discovered was Eritrean, was delighted to let us use her gas. By this time, of course the power had gone off again in the entire building, so we continued preparing our food in the semi-darkness.

When the pasta had boiled we thanked her and went back into our flat, lighting some candles and trying to eat as fast as possible.

Eating in the dark was harder than it looked, especially when it was spirally pasta and your candles weren’t that great. At the end of my meal I looked like I’d been in a food fight.

The power did return, just as we were about to watch our ‘dodgy DVD’ of the week, Wanderlust, which the guy at the Garden City video shop had burnt for me earlier in the week for 5,000 Ugandan shillings ($2USD). I’d though it was a bargain, but when Lucy told me she’d had seven burnt for 15,000 Shs ($6) I realised how ripped off I’d been.

We were both excited about a rom com, what with the fast pace of life in Uganda, although hadn’t been able to get through Bridesmaids the previous week, what with the characters’ lips movement coming about half an hour after the dialogue.

When we put Wanderlust into the DVD though we were both very disappointed to actually discover the disk had Big Miracle, the story of a a campaign to save a family of gray whales trapped by rapidly forming ice in the Arctic Circle. Although we’d pulled of a miracle (i.e. dinner) itself, I wasn’t in the mood for it. II’d be having a word in the ear of my dodgy DVD man.

Now completely giving up on the night, I went to bed.

One good thing had perhaps emerged from the night though – a future slot for Biccy and I on Cooking with Mzunugs in Uganda. I’m still trying to convince my TV producer friend we should do it.

Postscript

I went over to Sheowanesh’s to thank her the next day. She was busy cooking popcorn but was delighted that our dinner had turned out in the end. She not only gave me her details but her family’s in Eritrea (they even have a PO Box) and told us to call in any time we were there. I can’t wait.

Amy at the Shanti Uganda Birth House. Photo by Anne Ackermann see www.anneackermann.com

As she cradled her baby, just a few hours old, on the bed opposite me at the birth centre Natooro told me Kikome, her new daughter’s name, meant ‘cloudy’ in Luganda, Uganda’s main language.

Although the sun was shining outside the traditional banda hut and the new mother was beaming, for me the name conjured up images of stormy weather, of trouble.

“Was it a cloudy day when you gave birth?” I asked gently.

“It was maybe the pain, because the baby was not coming so soon, so the midwives had to intervene,” explained the 19-year-old, her proud husband Moses looking over the pair proudly.

Last time, during the birth of her son Muswingwa, Natooro, 19, nearly died from (primary postpartum hemorrhage) PPH.

The childbirth-related complication is the leading cause of maternal mortality in Uganda, said midwife Sister Mary Namusisi, who delivered Kikome.

“Whens someone’s dying of a hemorrhage she doesn’t yell, she doesn’t scream she’s just like somebody going to sleep,” she told me in the examination room of the centre run by Shanti Uganda, which aims to improve infant and maternal health, provide safe women-centred care and support the well-being of women with HIV/AIDS.

“The blood comes and comes and then there is no pain anywhere and they just sleep,” Sister Mary explained.

“If you’re lucky they’ll (medical staff) find you unconscious and intervene but if they don’t find you at that stage then…”

Unbelievably, in Uganda 16 women die every day from PPH, antepartum hemorrhage (APH) and other childbirth-related complications.

According to Robinah Kaitiritimba, the National Coordinator of the Uganda National Health Consumers’ Organisation (UNHCO), “these are just the ones we know about”.

The situation is now so dire that the country’s Center for Health Human Rights & Development (CEHURD), the husbands of two women who tragically died while giving birth and a professor have taken the Ugandan government to court in a bid to force them to allocate more resources for maternal health and prevent the deaths. The Constitutional Court threw the case out in early June, saying the petition would have forced judges to wade into a political issue outside their jurisdiction. The parties say they’ll appeal to the Supreme Court.

I discovered Shanti Uganda, which was founded by Canadian Natalie Angell-Besseling and began working in Uganda with HIV-positive women in 2008, through Twitter.

The women completed a jewellery skills training program which included business and finance skills.

“Our members needed a place to work and the women in the community wanted a place to birth their babies that felt like home,” says Natalie.

“The Shanti Uganda Birth House is staffed entirely by our Ugandan midwives and a Traditional Birth Attendant (used largely in rural communities).

“The women who come pay a very small fee which we set up to encourage them to have ownership in their health and the birth of their babies.”

They’re also provided with everything they need to give birth and receive access to all educational workshops and classes on site. Many women who deliver at the government hospitals are unable to afford the supplies they are required to bring with them.

When my friend Anne and I arrived at the Shanti Uganda Birth House in Luweero district, about an hour-and-half outside the capital Kampala, for a visit one Thursday morning recently we were greeted with two lines of black writing painted on the wall of their waiting room.

“Sister Mary will translate what it means for you,” Shanti’s project coordinator Sadie, also from Canada, told us.

The midwife, who has 34 years of experience and estimates she’s helped bring about 3,000 babies into the world, happily obliged.

“There is a secret in our culture and it is not that birth is painful, but that women are strong,” Sister Mary said, reciting the words of writer US writer Laura Stavoe Harm.

The Ugandan midwife, who had three grown children of her own and says her first time in labour was difficult, has also worked in public hospitals in Uganda where there are “too many mothers” and not enough staff.

It’s not uncommon to have 20 deliveries a day with just two midwives in some centres,” she said.

Transport is also a problem in rural villages, and if women go into labour at night getting to a hospital is often impossible.

Men are being encourage to play a part in their partners’ pregnancies, like Moses, but in some cases are forced to use wheelbarrows as ambulances to rush their wives to hospital.

If a mother and baby survive, diseases such as polio are a threat unless the child is immunized. Recently Uganda’s Ministry of Health conducted a mass immunization against polio, measles and River Blindness.

After Anne and I say goodbye to Natooro and her husband Moses, the family getting a boda, a motorbike taxi, home (“We like them to stick around but they’re keen to get home,” said Sadie), we met Maureen.

The 19-year-old had brought her daughter Primer, wearing a bright green traditional dress, to the Shanti Uganda Birth House to be vaccinated against polio, whooping cough, diphtheria, tetanus, Hepatitis B and Haemophilus influenzae type b with just one jab.

“Sorry baby,” said Sarah the same midwife who had delivered the ten-week-old and was now giving her the needle.

Outside we found three woman stretching on colourful mats under a hut with Shanti intern Domanique who was leading a prenatal yoga class. Around them another group of women, all HIV-positive we were informed, sat at sewing machines making colourful bags from traditional fabric, which would then be sold.

“You must remember everyday to focus on your breathing. It is good for your babies,” Domanique told them.

“And the stretches and the exercises that we did today will help your labour and it will help you sleep better.”

Nawume, 18, was six months pregnant with her first baby and attending her third yoga session.

“I have gained fitness and after doing yoga I feel much better and feel that the baby is okay,” she said.

Afterwards her instructor told Anne and I that working with the local women had made her realize how body-obsessed their western counterparts were.

“It’s shocking, I realize coming from Toronto, how much time we spend on ourselves. The women here don’t spend any time on themselves,” Domanique said.

“And for me to be able to say that Shanti’s assisting and connecting itself to labour, and to say that when they give birth it might be a little bit easier for them because they took the time to take the class, is just amazing.”

Shanti Uganda are holding a doula training this fall and leading a 10 day yoga, service and fundraising retreat, Celebrate Uganda 2013, in January.

For more information and to find out about their Birth Partners Program see http://www.shantiuganda.org

With the great Gatwech Kulang on my last day in Juba.

In the past week, I’ve realised how truly caring, compassionate and tolerant Australia can be towards people from other countries when we want to. I only had to go to South Sudan, thousands of miles away from home and the world’s newest nation, to have this reinforced. I already knew that we were capable of these qualities. But after nearly six years away from home and reading recent stories about boats heading towards Australia, I needed a good reminder.

For the past nine days I’ve had the experience of a lifetime in Juba, being hosted by the wonderful Southern Sudanese Australian community there. Never before have people – all strangers at first –been so kind to me. In the capital of the country, being built from scratch but developing rapidly, I discovered a home away from home. There was even a restaurant called Home and Away, quite fitting when you consider the links between Australia and South Sudan.

According to 2006 Census statistics, there were just under 20,000 Sudanese citizens in Australia. A large number came to our country as refugees during the 1990s, then from 2000 onwards. In the lead up to the January 2011 Independence referendum, set out in a 2005 peace agreement after a two-decades-long war between South Sudan and the north, many have returned to their place of birth. Following the secession, a year ago this week, more have returned to South Sudan.

Gatwech Kulang, a towering figure in more ways than one who met me at Juba airport, estimates there could now be as many as 500 Southern Sudanese Australians in South Sudan, the majority of them holding key positions with the government, the private sector or NGOs. Gatwech, now Director of NGO Affairs at the country’s Relief and Rehabilitation Commission (RRC), is one of them.

Born in Nyangore village in Upper Nile State, he is a former ‘lost boy’ who spent a large part of his youth and early adulthood in refugee camps before going to Australia and settling in Clayton, Melbourne. His wife later followed.

Gatwech, who set up NGO South Sudan Development Agency International (SSUDA), was a community leader in Australia who earned a reputation for taking his fellow Sudanese, particularly young people, under his wing. In Victoria he went to “college after college”, worked hard at different jobs and taught Australians about Africa. Through the support of Aussies, SSUDA built The Friendship Primary School in Ulang County, an impoverished part of the country, in 2008.

It didn’t matter that I’d only had a quick cup of coffee with Gatwech in Uganda, where I’m now living, before my Juba visit. With his friend David Kueth, who has family in Melbourne (“the best place in the world, even better than the USA”), Gatwech looked after me my entire time in South Sudan, introducing me to scores of friendly locals who have also returned from Down Under.

His colleague, James Major Ater Gurke, now director of general of administration and finance of RRC, lived in Blacktown, Sydney, from 2000 after arriving as a refugee from Khartoum, the capital of Sudan.

“We like it because it’s black and it’s a town,” he joked with me of the suburb after inviting me into his office at the government ministries last week.

During his time in Australia James, aged in his 50s, was an Arabic translator. His unofficial role was as the “tour guide” for many Sudanese people who had also fled to Australia.

“Australians are very hospitable. They receive refugees,” he told me.

“Freedom is good (in Australia). You can express yourself. I like the fact that people are treated equally.”

Yar Paul Kuol, 44, who I was introduced to, lived in Blacktown for nearly nine years. She invited me into her office at the South Sudan Urban Water Corporation (SSUWC) where she’s Deputy Managing Director, to show me an aqua Sydney Aquarium cube taking pride of place on her desk.

Yar went to Australia to give her children a “better education” after her husband, a prisoner of war, was killed in 2002. She came back to South Sudan just one month before the 2011 referendum as she had “many duties here”.

“It was an opportunity to bring back home what I learnt in Australia,” Yar said.

She joked that now whenever she’s travelling she can always “get a feeling about who is Australian by the way they’re walking”.

“There’s something different about them, their character.”

I didn’t have to be introduced to Australians to bump into them in South Sudan, where half of the population are living under the poverty line, some large families on just 75 South Sudanese Pounds (about $16) a month.

Strolling around Juba Town market, where Independence flags and pins were being sold, was like being in the Athens of Africa. Every second person had a brother or cousin living in Australia.

In Juba the days were boiling, which also reminded me of home. Then it would bucket it down in the afternoon. One day I faced getting drenched on a boda (motorbike taxi) on the way back to my hotel, when a man in a shop called me a car instead. The driver Gabier and I were making polite chitchat when he caught me by surprise.  “I’m Australian!” he exclaimed, explaining that he was back in his birth country for three months from Melbourne to see what the place was like.

At the celebrations at John Garang Mausoleum to mark the nation’s first birthday on Monday, I met Gabriel. He was sporting a loved-heart shaped badge on his suit with the South Sudanese flag on it, but proudly whipped an Australian passport out of his bag as soon as he heard my accent.

“See that woman,” he said, pointing to a female in a traditional dress waving a flag and dancing for the crowd of cheering thousands. “She’s from Canberra.”

When I told Gatwech Kulang later, he said her name was Aguer Deachut Deng, and she had indeed also called Australia home at one stage.

“That woman will  never stop dancing,” he remarked, smiling.

Aguer’s not the only Southern Sudanese Australian in the country’s spotlight. The Honorable Gatwech Lam Pouch, MP for Nasir County, who was a humanitarian entrant into Australia and lived in Dandenong, Melbourne, between 2000 and 2008, says there’s now several Southern Sudanese Australians in the national Parliament.

“They’re reliable people, they don’t cheat,” he replied when I asked him what he thought of Aussies.

His return, like Gatwech Kulang’s and James’, is bittersweet. Despite the self-satisfaction in knowing they’re contributing to their country, they’ve left their wives in Australia along with their children, so they can complete their schooling because they value Australian education.

Matata Frank, 29, who spent nearly two years in Adelaide misses his partner, who has become an Australian citizen, along with swimming at Henley Beach.

“But during the war some of us went for over ten years without seeing our families,” he pointed out.

There were more mentions of Australia. The recent title of SHE magazine, South Sudan’s first title for women, carried stories on the Miss South Sudan Australia pageant. This is held annually in Melbourne.

In Juba, the Southern Sudanese Australian community have in the past staged their own Australia Day celebrations, with up to 200 people joining in the festivities.

The generosity of the Southern Sudanese Australian community in Juba towards me blew me away. I’ve been lucky enough to travel extensively around the world and I’ve been to some places which have impacted on me greatly, especially in Africa. But I can’t remember the last time a place has had such a lasting impression on me like this country has.

When I commented on this to Gatwech, he insisted modestly, “We’ve hosted many Australians.

“Australia was so good to me. I was honoured to be part of their society and I wanted to give back. They are the ones supporting me, trusting me, saying go and do it, build that school.

“So relax, you are at home.”

I couldn’t help welling up at this.

Becoming a new country, South Sudan had a lot of expectations but faces immense challenges.

At the local maternity hospital I was shocked to learn there are just 15 qualified midwives for the whole country. According to the country’s Household Health Survey 2010, the country has the world’s highest fertility rate, with almost seven children per woman. But four per cent of women aged 14 to 49 aren’t practicing any form of contraceptive or birth control. Yet the midwives the hospital does have, being supported by UNFPA, with funding coming from AusAID, are doing a great job.

Only three out of every 10 people in South Sudan are able to read and write.

And if Australia thinks it has a problem with boats heading their way, get this. Last week the UN said more than 200,000 people had been displaced into neighboring South Sudan and Ethiopia as a result of the conflict in Sudan’s Blue Nile and South Kordofan. This is expected to worsen.

Despite all of this, the people I met are optimistic about the future of their country.

Australian may get a kicking over its treatment of refugees at times. But in South Sudan I met scores of hardworking, friendly men and women who all went to Australia for humanitarian reasons and told me how much they’d benefitted from our education system, fair way of life and multicultural society.

Over my past nine days in the world’s newest nation I couldn’t help feeling slightly proud – and I’m embarrassed to say a little bit teary – thinking that Australia may have had even just a tiny part in shaping these amazing people, my new friends, who are now contributing to their birth country.

The chickens that became bus passengers then Easter Sunday lunch.

“And now, I’d like us to pray for the journey ahead,” said the conductor standing in the aisle of the bus, his eyes searching the crammed, stationary vehicle for any takers.

You have to hand it to Ugandans. They sure know how to make you feel safe and comfortable ahead of a five-hour journey.

I’d boarded the Post Bus, which not only delivers mail but people to various parts of the country, in Kampala at 8am that morning at…The Post Office.

I was bound for Gulu, northern Uganda. But with the prayer session, during which a male passenger asked God on everyone’s behalf to keep an eye on the “good mechanical condition of the bus” and the talk on “last-minute passengers” who came on the vehicle “just to rob people”, I could have been forgiven for doubting whether I’d make it to my destination in one piece with my backpack.

Luckily I’d travelled on my maiden journey to Gulu town on the Post Bus, and had lived to tell the tale.

That trip had been interesting. I’d arrived late to The Post Office that April morning. Result? A seat up the front behind the driver.

I was very excited. Would I see the postcard to Mum that I’d dispatched earlier in the week? I was quite curious, given the scores of times I’d been accosted by locals, complete strangers, on the street or had random phone calls requesting pen pals from overseas, about how many deliveries I would get to see. The Ugandans obviously loved to write. I’d received a huge request for pen pals while in the country (the number two request was probably pens. Well, it did make sense).

At one stage I’d contemplated whether I should launch my own pen friend scheme. My friends and I had gone through a pen friend craze when I was in year six, signing up to an international people-finding service. Once we’d taken advantage of a special offer – ‘buy four friends and get the fifth for free’.

After my first journey on the Post Bus to Gulu, I decided my plan might work. The bus seemed to stop off at every village along the way up north.

Despite all the interruptions the trip was comfortable, if not largely uneventful, apart from the offerings on the side of the road. These were mainly ‘meat on a stick’ (pieces of meat on barbeque skewers) and plantain (a staple food in Uganda which looked like banana but was longer, thicker and starchier) wrapped up in notebook paper.

My time up north on Palm Sunday was anything but dull. On the way back from visiting a family in a village I was offered ”edible rat” . No sooner had I turned it down when our vehicle got a flat tyre, just as a storm was also brewing. I wished I hadn’t declined the local dish.

When our driver unsuccessfully failed to call us a lift back to Gulu town, we were forced (DISCLAIMER: Mum do not read this) to grab a ride with some strangers, locals, one of them called David, in a van, squatting on large sacks in the back. To this day I don’t know what they contained.

I didn’t get to know David that much. I didn’t get to know David’s Sister at all, but that hasn’t stopped her from phoning me every other day, coincidentally asking for pen pals. Memo to self: always give a fake number to randoms, especially those who pick you up on the side of the road. I’m thankful for the lift, though.

The trip back to Kampala from Gulu was just as joyful. Many of the passengers I was sitting near had feathers and wings.

Some chickens were bought by bus passengers just as we were leaving Gulu. Others were purchased along the route to the Ugandan capital. At one stage a chook went soaring over my head as it was passed in from the roadside through the window to a woman on the back seat in a black plastic bag.

“That’s a nice pet you have,” I said to the lady. She gave me a knowing look which said that the animal might end up as Easter Sunday lunch.

Possibly aware of its fate, it sat there for most of the journey on its best behaviour, until the end when it broke free and walked over to my foot where it stayed for the remainder of the trip.

Sadly, I didn’t meet any friendly fowls on my second trip to Gulu from Kampala.

I did however bump into some friendly locals and mzungus (white people) later in the Coffee Hut, which appeared to be the expat’s number one choice of café in the town.

One American girl studying at Columbia University who had been in Gulu working with NGOs enlightened me about her world, helping me pass time during a ferocious thunderstorm on the Friday afternoon after I’d arrived.

“There’s the ones who come in (at Coffee Hut) and sit down… and do spreadsheets… and you can tell their starting them up (NGOs),” she explained.

“They’re the MONGOS, the ones who have their own NGOs. My Own NGO.”

I hadn’t heard of this term before, but was later informed by a former work colleague there was a book about aid work which contained a “fair amount on MONGOS”.

After my brief introduction to the NGO world I decided to take a break, check out the Ugandan high street and indulge in some window-shopping. Only there weren’t any windows. Many of the clothes were being sold on the side of the road on long, thick wooden racks.

There was the ubiquitous Obama plastic bag on sale for 3,000 Ugandan shillings ($1.21USD) Despite it being an election year, no one had snapped it up. In another shop I was ecstatic to discover a pair of Michael Kors heels on sale for 15,000 shillings (about $6.04 USD). They appeared to be genuine.

Just as I was wondering how all these treasures got to Africa and what else there was, I saw it. Further down the road on the bottom shelf, along with scores of other t-shirts and opposite local tailors sewing on machines, was a purple t-shirt with the image of the world’s most famous teenager emblazoned on the front. The asking price was 3,000 Ugandan shillings.

“Do you know who that man is?” asked the female seller, a completely bewildered look on her face, pointing towards Justin Bieber’s face.

“No idea,” I replied quickly, certain I was pulling off acting skills worthy of an Oscar.

I’d been told that the people of Gulu had their fair share of MONGOs. Should I introduce them to Justin Bieber?

Da da dum dum…

It was a sunny Saturday morning in Kampala and I was at the local City Oil service station trying to top up my airtime on my mobile phone.

Anytime in Uganda was airtime, it seemed, for anywhere you looked there was someone selling a top-up card. It was either this or a “nice time”, which the Ugandans were constantly saying.

“Nice time,” they’d say, when bidding you farewell. I hadn’t yet established whether this meant they’d had a nice time seeing you, or whether they wanted you to have a nice time wherever you were going. But it was up there with their favourite catchphrases, along with “you have been lost” (read: I haven’t seen you for a while; I always answered, “but now I am found, in manner of Amazing Grace). Then there was “you are smart” (read: you look stylish today, not that you’re the next Hawking), and “I’m not getting you well” (read: I cant understand your funny accent).

This Saturday morning, however, was one of the few occasions in Uganda when it wasn’t airtime, due to there being a technical glitch with MTN, one of the local phone networks, preventing me from topping up my phone.

Damn. This was really going to throw my social life in Kampala into a tailspin. I had lunch with one friend scheduled, followed by a coffee with another.

After getting a boda home I sat at the kitchen table and pondered whether it would just be easier to send a message via a Ugandan Crested Crane to my friends I was meeting, rather than go online (the internet had been slow this morning) and email them.

When my friend Lucy M however rang and reminded me about My Big Fat Ugandan Muslim Wedding, I realised I wouldn’t be going out to lunch of having a latte anywhere.

I’d forgotten about My Big Fat Ugandan Muslim Wedding. Apparently I’d RSVPd ‘yes’ to the event, to be held at Kibuli Mosque, while distracted.

I wish I’d been paying attention, because I had nothing to wear to My Big Fat Ugandan Muslim Wedding – I was currently sporting a tight off-the-shoulder, above-the-knee leopard print dress I’d had the local tailor working underneath 1,000 Cups coffee on Buganda Road  make – unless I started playing around with the tea towels in the kitchen.

“Oh I’ll just pop down to the local markets,” I told her over the phone. The Kampala high street wasn’t exactly like its UK counterpart, but I was sure I’d find something.

“Amy,” she said, “It’s in an hour. We’ll be at yours in ten. Lucy (Lucy B – there were a lot of Lucy’s in Kampala) needs to use your power to do her hair as there’s none at ours.”

“Right,” I said, looking down at what I was wearing.

Did I really care that much, though? After all, I didn’t know the groom from a bar of soap.

He didn’t seem to care about this though either. He had apparently requested some mzungus (foreigners) at his nuptials for “that sort of image”, my friends informed me after they’d arrived at mine, one Lucy B toting her curling wand.

“The more mzungus the merrier,” said Liam, Lucy B’s boyfriend, as he sat in the lounge room and waited for us to get ready.

“It’s like rent a mzungu,” I remarked. “Should we start up a rent-a-mzungu service for Ugandans?”

“I’m going to dash their hopes but actually telling them that I’m an Albino,” Liam joked.

Fearing that part of him might actually be serious, we all gave him a stern talking to.

In the end, I ended up borrowing Lucy B’s Warehouse skirt and teamed it with a Breton top from Whistles (yes, the same one I wore to the celebration of the Ugandan airfield). The others were much more glamorous, with Lucy B even picking up a long, flowing frock in lemon from a roadside shack at Wandegeya. I was impressed, not to mention a bit jealous as I’d been there several times and had come home empty-handed.

They’d all brought headscarves, too. I’d forgotten it was BYO headscarf. Lucy B kindly loaned me a purple one.

When we stepped out of the car at the mosque a man with a tux on waved at me while another pointed a video camera in my direction.

“That’s the groom,” Lucy M whispered.

“I don’t know anyone here and I’m being filmed,” I hissed back.

“Just go along with it,” she said.

Happy to play the role of the ‘rented mzungu’ we each gave the proud groom a congratulations kiss on the cheek, before making our way into the mosque grounds to wait for My Big Fat Ugandan Muslim Bride.

Eventually she appeared in a big white dress with embroidered flowers, complete with veil and a bouquet or orange roses. The bridesmaids were radiant in fuchsia. They looked like Iman, while the men in the bridal party had yellow flowers pinned on their tux. They all walked up the aisle together with the guests, dancing to drummers playing as they moved.

One may have been forgiven for naming the event Gomesi Galore or the 2012 Shoulder Pad Convention, with all of the female guests sporting gomesis, the multicolored long traditional dress with long, giant sashes tied around the waist nearly dragging on the ground and shoulder pads the height of the Eiffel Tower. There were so many women wearing so many stunning headscarves; at one point I thought I saw Mrs Mugabe. I also spotted my dream gomesi – a lime green dress featuring a flower print with a wide brown sash in the middle.

I felt underdressed in comparison, until we got into the church.

“You look like Mother Mary,” said Lucy M as we sat on the floor and listened to the service, of which we couldn’t understand a single word.

“I think I look like a cancer patient,” I replied, holding up an eye shadow palette and looking into its mirror.

After the mosque service there was a short interval for lunch, before the reception began. The mzungus decided to grab something to eat beforehand to tide them over at a nearby restaurant, where I discovered I must have dropped my house key in the grounds of the mosque.

Once I’d eaten I said goodbye to the others and rushed off to look for it, not sure I’d be back in time for the reception. After searching unsuccessfully, I ended up having to go and meet the cleaner (the only other person who had another key). It ended up being a hassle, but after being informed the next day that the others were suffering from food poisoning, which they’d almost certainly contracted at My Big Fat Ugandan Muslim Wedding, realised this was just a small price to pay for being a ‘rent-a-mzungu’ guest.

Would I marry a Ugandan after eating a few slices of marble cake???

As a belated birthday present my good friend Martha had insisted she wanted to take me to high tea at the Serena Hotel, the only place in Kampala, I believe, that put on the spread for guzzling mzungus like myself.

It didn’t take much convincing. I’d been to high tea in more hotels around the world than I’d had hot dinners (and just to point out, the Serena also served hot treats, too). In my original homeland, Australia, The Observatory Hotel in The Rocks, Sydney. In Hong Kong, The Empress. In my former adopted country, Britain, The Dorechester, The Ritz, The Orangery at Kensington Palace (a favourite), Bakeaboo at West Hampstead and Harrods (the latter two both plenty of times). In Canada, of which I’m a citizen, to be honest I can’t remember the name of the hotel, but I ate up. In Cape Town, The Mount Nelson Hotel (another favourite – cheap as chips). In Zimbabwe, The Vic Falls Hotel. “I love how wherever you go around the world you find high tea,” my Australian friend Tamera recently congratulated me.

Martha and I had already been to the Serena for afternoon tea on her last visit to Kampala at Easter. We’d been very excited about the occasion and booked ahead to ensure we’d get in. Yet when we arrived at the premises, dressed up, we found a slew of staff all standing around doing nothing, and not one other customer.

The Serena also did a big breakfast. In fact it was at a breakfast at the hotel that we’d had the famous OJ discussion.

Waiter: “How would you like your orange juice? Orange or green?

Martha: “The clue’s in the title.”

Besides a glass of champagne, there Serena high tea boasted everything from the mandatory scones and egg sandwiches to pizza slices, samosas and several types of cake: marble, black forest and chocolate mud. Although they didn’t have the three-tier plates, my friend and I both departed the premises saying the words that probably many other Africans have often uttered or at least thought, “I won’t eat for another week”. We’d just consumed an all-you-can-eat buffet for about 45,000 Ugandan shillings 11 GBP. I hadn’t been feeling that satisfied about getting my value for money since my days mixing things up at the Sizzler salad and dessert bar.

So after al of this, I looking forward to having afternoon tea at the Serena the second time round.

“Do you think we should book?” asked Martha, concerned we wouldn’t get in.

I told her that given the fact that the staff were seen eating the leftover chicken wings, no.

On the Friday afternoon just before we treated ourselves I was at Café Kawa, my regular haunt and nearest coffee shop, where I often went to work. It was popular with other mzungus.

After it started raining I tried to make a run for it, but it was too late. Now nearly 4am, the time we’d made our precious booking for, I decided I’d just have to brave the wild weather and started walking along potholed Tank Hill Road trying to hail a boda.

When a Ugandan woman pulled up in a Jeep and told me, “get in”, I looked in the back and spotted a baby seat before doing what she’d suggested.

Despite it being pouring, I’d just accepted a lift from a stranger. Although she was female and came with a baby car seat, I knew my parents would still have a fit.

Actually, hang on. Recalling Dad’s policy with the scones at the Harrods Georgian Restaurant  - “eat as many as possible and if you can put one in your handbag” – they probably wouldn’t have a fit at all. Mum, given her reaction to my announcement that I was going to do an aid work course, would probably say, “Quick, hurry up and get there”.

“Whenever I see someone walking along the side of the road I give them a lift,” said the Ugandan lady with long plaits, driving the Jeep with the baby seat.

“It’s very nice of you,” I replied, really wondering if I’d end up in a shallow grave.

“I’m going to the Serena,” I added, not wanting to mention what I was doing there. After all this woman was skinny. Not Dadaab skinny, but possibly lighter than you’re average Ugandan.

I told her to just “drop me off anywhere”.

“Oh no,” she said. “I’m going into town to get my nails done. I’ll take you right there.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. I knew the frustration of a woman desperate for a manicure. This woman wouldn’t have time to lay a chipped fingernail on me, let alone kill me.

As we drove into town we chatted more. She told me she was a singer at a well-known hotel and that she had a mzungu boyfriend, which led us onto a controversial subject – the differences between foreign males and Africans.

“I can’t get anywhere with African men,” she sighed. “They don’t like skinny women.

“Unless you’re prepared to eat a lot and make yourself fat, you won’t get anywhere.”

There was silence. I was embarrassed to tell her I was on my way to the Serena Hotel to devour 25 mini samosas.

Would she think I was a Ugandan hunter?

I thought back to the way a Ugandan friend, Mamerito, had greeted me several months earlier. Yes, even though vegetable quiche and pizza still hadn’t been sighted at the Mengo backpackers, he’d congratulated me on my recent weight gain.

“Wow, you are growing fat,” he exclaimed excitedly, as if I’d just won Euromillions, plainly impressed with the small amount of weight I’d put on in the months he’d last seen me.

To be fair, I’d been wearing a low-cut halterneck dress at the time, so it could have been my cleavage, now on show, that led to his reaction.

I’d been told several times – I should stress only by mzungus however – that Africans viewed a bit of flab as a sign of wealth (I had to laugh, as I had only about 25,000 Ugandan shillings to my name) – and that I should take this as a compliment.

After all, President Museveni certainly liked his food. At a breakfast for Uganda’s new golden boy, athlete Stephen Kiprotich, who clinched the first Olympic Gold medal for the country in 40 years, he was seen first in line for the toast, in a photo published in the Daily Monitor. Obviously bringing in gold for your country would bring in the bacon, so to speak (along with promises of a million shillings and a home for your family), but it wouldn’t bump you up in the line for the pancakes.

My apparent and newfound battle with the bulge was mentioned when another Ugandan, this time a woman who I’d supposedly met a year ago on my first trip here (I couldn’t remember her from a bar of soap) also informed me, very matter-of-factly, that I was “growing nice and fat”, despite being three times the size of me.

It’d tried not to be too offended as I hadn’t wanted to let them know they’d hurt my feelings, but both times my self-esteem had been almost irretrievably damaged and I had to be talked out of eating only matoke by my friends for a month.

But now I was sitting in a car with a Ugandan woman telling me that the country’s men wouldn’t actually like me even if I did look like Courtney Cox while she was, unbeknown to her, driving me off to afternoon tea.

As I looked out the window I wondered was this ironic? But there was a more important question in my head now: would I be in with a chance?

Because I was still ashamed of why she was actually taking me to the Serena, I changed the subject back to nails – again I didn’t want to end up in that shallow grave, but as she herself had pointed out she was quite skinny so she probably wouldn’t be able to hold me down for too long. I wondered if she was going to Sparkles and if she’d have the same beautician who tended to me, the one who felt like a terrorist.

My new friend told me no, she was going to our manicure man on the street. I wondered if this was the same man who I’d met lurking outside our house - I can’t imagine why he’d wait outside my joint -  on a Friday afternoon recently?

She told me there were several nail men roaming the streets of Kampala, looking for clients, much to my delight.

I kept the dialogue flowing. What colour nail polish was she going to get? Red, she thought.

Was she going to get a topcoat? Probably? Pedicure, too? Not sure, if the nail man had time.

I made it to the gates of the Serena safely, although by that time the heavens had opened up even more. There was no way I was going to get across the road without getting drenched.

After giving her my card and telling her to call me, I wanted to return the favour for dropping me off by taking her out to lunch, I attempted to cross the road faster than Kiprotich.

Epic fail. By the time I reached the security guards and the watchman on the other side I looked like I’d just come from Wet ‘N’ Wild. My new blue leopard print top – I always tried not to be too much of a try-hard mzungu in Africa  – was sopping wet.

A kind security guard escorted me to the main entrance of the Serena. When I finally reached Martha, sitting on a lounge chair in the tea section of the hotel desperately waiting for a glass of bubbly, and the slew of staff standing around doing nothing, they all gasped. My friend immediately rushed me into the ladies’ and pushed my chest underneath the hand dryer, to no avail.

“You won’t believe how I got here,” I told her, recalling my new acquaintance and the conversation we’d had about African men.

We decided to eat up, given the verdict this woman had just handed down to me on Ugandan men, and also because we were starving. First we tried the sandwiches, pizza slices and samosas, washed down with a glass of champagne, then some more of the same and then the cakes, as if we’d never seen food before, as the amazed staff watched on.

We resisted all temptation to break through the doors of the Pearl of Africa, opposite the high tea buffet, whatever it was. With silver doors resembling a disco, I’d always wondered whether it was actually a nightclub or a restaurant? Uganda always had a way of surprising you. Martha and I decided to save it for next time.

“I think I’ll be in with a good chance now,” I said referring to my conversation with my new friend on the way out of the hotel to hail a boda, my stomach hanging over my trousers.

I thought of my new Ugandan friend on the way home. I was curious as to whether I would be in with a good chance after my buffet. But I was worried that my already fragile self-esteem wouldn’t be able to take another African congratulating me for “growing nice and fat”.

Love your fashion but stop calling me day and night.

I had a new stalker. Imran Boda, as he was now known in my phone. He wasn’t as bad as the ones I’d saved in my phone under Pain and Random Pain, but I could see there was potential.

You’d think that nine months after arriving in Uganda I would have learned not to give my number to strange boda drivers, but I still hadn’t. To be fair though I had taken his photo because I liked his look. As Random Pain had also pointed you, “You did take my photo.” But Imran was “ever so smart”, as the Ugandans say. He’d been wearing a pink shirt with a polo logo on it, leather (they may have been fake) trousers, an orange scarf and a NYC baseball cap, when he’d picked me up on the side of the road near the Wine Garage sign near Cafe Kawa, one of my favorite haunts. Very cool.

He’d only phone me three times so far. Once on Sunday night at 19.53, less than 24 hours after meeting (whoever said that men wait three days to call? This rule certainly didn’t apply to boda drivers). I was looking in the Bata shoe shop at Garden City, on the way to top up the dongle. Why did it always seem that my life in Uganda consisted of two things only: 1. Taking calls from randoms? 2. Topping up the dongle?

I’d actually answered because I’d thought if I was receptive now he might not phone back in the future. The conversation hadn’t been that great.

Imran: Hello Emmy (there still wasn’t a Ugandan anywhere who could understand me). It is Imran, you gave me your number. I picked you up yesterday.

Me: Hello Imran.

Imran: I just wanted to say good morning, Emmy.

Me: Good morning Imran.

Imran: Okay Emmy.

Me: Okay Imran.

Imran: Bye Emmy.

Me: Bye Imran.

He phoned back two more times after that, a day later, so my new approach obviously wasn’t working. I didn’t answer the phone. I’d have to go back to my playing hard to get tactics. Or maybe, for the thousandth time, I should just make a memo to myself: do not give. Numbers out to boda drivers. Ever.

I’d met Imran the Saturday after I’d rushed into Café Kawa, having realized I’d left my iPhone there the night before. I’d woken up in a panic, suddenly wondering where it was, and searched my room high and low to no avail. I knew it had to be at Kawa but as it was now midday, I knew there was a good chance that someone had taken it. But it could also be at Café Pap at Garden City, where I’d been before Café Kawa. Did I mention my life consisted of a third activity? Sitting in coffee shops. Dammn. This was the same phone that had my collection of 265 boda pics on it, the reason I was now getting so many strange calls. I loved life in Uganda. Everything and everyone was connected in some way.

I was quite upset with myself about losing my phone and planning on putting out an alert on Twitter, offering a reward bigger than the one for Kony. But after rushing into Kawa via boda driver John (the only one in the whole country who didn’t want my number) and seeing the reaction of one of the female staff members at the counter, I knew they had it.

“What sort of iPhone?” she said playing dumb, the normal Kawa crowd watching us as we had this conversation.

“An iPhone,” I said, becoming slightly annoyed. There weren’t that many around in Uganda.

I could tell from the way she was being very coy that she didn’t want to hand it over. But to be fair she would have to mortgage her house to buy a charger for it, they were about 400 k from the Apple retailer at Garden City. I was also paying her wages in hot chocolates and tuna melt sandwiches, so it was in her best interest to give it back.

“Oooh you’ve got it!” I cried, trying to flatter her into giving it up.

“Let’s go outside.” I was going to make something of this.

We both walked outside the shop and stood near the entrance. I don’t know why, as the rest of the normal crowd still continued to watch us.

“Here’s 50 k!” I said, thrusting a dirty note into her hand. I felt a bit dirty. Technically, this was the first time I’d ever bribed someone in Uganda but I was getting back what was mine. My American flatmates later told me that giving her this amount was too extravagant.

But I was so relieved to have my phone back, with all my photos and interviews saved on it. Had it been lost, that would have meant a few stories I was working on down the wide Ugandan drain.

My friend immediately put the phone in my palm, along with my headphones. I’d forgotten I’d even had them. They were my Jubilee head phones that I’d purchased with Martha on Independence day for 10k along with my official Golden Jubilee sun visor. I was happy to have them back to as they were a nice memento which would always make me think of 50 years of Uganda whenever listed to my music.

I couldn’t believe my luck in getting my phone back. Some people had been saying that Uganda had stolen four million euros worth of aid money from Ireland, and more from other countries. An Amy Farrell in Uganda, whoever she was, had been helping with the story. Some people were saying they didn’t like their chances of getting a Guinness. I didn’t know whether to believe these claims following my phone incident. But if they were true, maybe the staff of Café Kawa should be working in the Office of the Prime Minister?

Love your fashion but please stop calling me.