The first blog from Uganda!

As I'm writing this blog, Marthe and I are sitting in the living room in our new apartment in Mbale. It's a good thing my fabulous computer has such a good battery, because the electricity has disappeared for the second time since we came last night. But it's all good; we've got matches and paraffin-lamps. And it's not like the temperature drops drastically as it would have in Norway.

I've been in Uganda for four days now, and I'm left with many impressions and experiences. It would take a long time to write them all, but I'll let you in on a couple of them.

African time
Of course I've had some experiences with the African perception of time. Already on the first day, this was portrayed quite clearly. We were supposed to leave our hotel at eight o'clock to go to Jinja and spend the day there. When almost all of us were ready at about ten past eight, the last person came to join us, we thought. And that would really not have been such a big deal, ten minutes isn't too much. But she wasn't coming to join us; she was calmly going to have breakfast! Fascinating :)

Feeling lost
Where am I? Something is tight around my neck, I can hardly move, everything is a white blur... What on earth is going on? Help!
It usually takes a bit longer for my logical sense to wake up than it takes for my physical senses. This resulted in a bit of panic before I managed to awake my reasonable side. Due to loud music from a club nearby, I had put on my iPod the night before and I'd obviously managed to twirl the chord around my neck, during the night I'd also twisted my sleeping-bag to form a sort of stray-jacket and the white blur was simply mine and Kaia's wonderful mosquito-net-castle. Puh!



The people

The hospitality and kindness is striking. Even when it's a more official meeting, like at the head quarters of Stromme, people are still so warm and welcoming. They greet you with a smile and ask how you're doing and they sincerely seem to be happy to meet you. The African perception enables people to take the time to be nice to each other. It’s a very good side-effect that we could really learn from in Norway!