School garden glamour shot

Learning! Fruits! Beans! (Passionfruit, cape gooseberries--possibly the world's most delicious berry, and a bean whose English name if any we have yet to find but is called entendigwa here and apparently tastes like peas.)

Puppies!

We visited friends in Kampala last week. They have a promiscuous dog who has learned to open the gate herself to go on dates. A couple of years ago this produced two of the lodge dogs, and a few weeks ago they got some younger half (we assume) siblings. Too, too, cute, and I don't even like dogs. The one year old in their house is adorably terrified of them. I mean, makes sense, from his perspective they are giant (to get their actual size, see splayed barbie for comparison.) I was a little obsessed.

My office today

Sybil thinks she is my secretary.

Day in the life 3

It is a school day, so I set an alarm just in case, but wake up comfortably before it. I scope out the breakfast table, and decide to join rather than hide in the bar area (my normal wont) as the guests seated are ones I met and liked over dinner last night, an expat couple one of whom works for a French relief org in Kampala and an older couple doing church funded (but interesting!) development projects in a northern district and their visiting daughter and son in law. Or son and daughter in law? Never quite got that straight. Lord of the lodge joins as well and we all chat as I hurriedly down black tea with ginger and eat my plate of fruit (and my seconds on fruit) while dodging curiosity about my rice, avocado, fresh chili, and a condiment that shall not be named here that has been my breakfast solution. I know, I know, odd, but as it is the only meal of the day I get to choose anything about, I try to make it as healthy as possible while making it as easy on the kitchen as possible, and this is the simplest cooking-free/mostly cheap ingredients solution.
Defensiveness about food choices done for today, I dash to print a sheet from Livestrong.com on vitamins in amaranth greens (called dodo here, grows like a weed; and no, I don't feel bad about using a commercial dieting/fitness website as my scientific source for African children who don't know any better...). The solar starts screeching at me that it is almost out of power before I even turn on the printer, so I race against the clock to get my information out.
Keeping my fingers crossed all the while that no guests will ask for a tour of the vanilla farm next door so Stephen will be free of guiding duties can come show us how to transplant the dodo in our school garden (and absolve me thereby of coming up with something else to do.) Stephen is our sage guide and gardener, who always seems to surprise you with a new field od expertise-birds, trees, lecturing at a local university, starting a school, preaching at a church, you name it.
I come back up to find not only has the otherwise nice couple taken Stephen(but at least they arer distracting the dogs from following us), bur the mother has even taken my translator who is also the lodge's spa trainee to give her a facial, so I hike towards school with my skeleton team of local secondary students who have been helpers while school is on holiday.
Stickers go to the four kids who are on time and we play with an inflatable globe I found in town while we wait half an hour for the other 35.

As the kids trickle in and I struggle to take attendance, BB John, the lodge's mad but amazingly dedicated and energetic tree guru appears out of nowhere. Hurrah! We sing what we've learned of "The Garden Song" (just a perfect song for this club's purposes, and totally adorable) and head up to the garden. BB lectures (at some length) in the local language about saving seeds, eating fruits and veg, self reliance,starting a business, his history of making his own living by raising and selling seedlings as taught, avoiding chips and muchomo (french fries and fried meat kebabs, neither of which these kids have probably had) blood pressure, (he is impossible to stop once he gets going, but makes a good bootstrapping/conservationist rolemodel) and demonstrates planting passionfruit, a local bean whose english name we cannot figure out, and cape gooseberries-yum! My favorite. (You can buy them dried as incaberries at wholefoods.)

Kids look a bit hot and bored after an hour so I gently steer us back down to the shady clearing for final instructions and we part till Thursday.
BB and I hike back, my helpers opt for motorbike taxis back laden with cassava they have been allowed to gather from the garden. (Not my planting; cassava is pretty nutritionally void, not to mention incredibly dry and equally tasteless, but for some reason it is a treat.)
BB likes to recount his (crazy) 100k walks and daily runs, but I am able to best him in number of the 185 steps (Mr Lodge counted) up to the lodge run (me:100; BB:96).
Return shinyeyed and energetic after a successful class and rattle on to the lady of the lodge about possible projects before we head to fish and chips lunch. I try to fill up on guac appetizer and dodo side dish.
As lunch concludes it is nearly three when I am meant to be out of my cottage as the lodge is full tonight, so I jump to pack up my things for lugging to the spare room in the owner's house. I've gotten the process down to a little over half an hour, enhanced by motivational music through my spiffy new mini speaker.
After packing, consult and chat with Stephen for a while, take a bath, play some pretend backgammon (neither of us remembers the rules) with Lala, the very sweet daughter of the lodge manager, who was born near here and has been with the lodge for its whole existence, which means she must have started as a kid.
Get a bit chilled and need to distract myself from hunger waiting for the lord and lady to finish meditating and then rubbing elbows with guests before their dinner so I pop down for a quick sauna.
Do a few emails and chat projects over dinner then we retire to the house to finish pirated Season 5 of Weeds over a glass of wine and a pot of lemongrass ginger tea. I don't care what anyone says, it has definitely not gone downhill after the first two seasons.
Just have to roll towards the guestroom, fortunately, as I am fully dozy by the last episode, dose myself with benadryl against the feather pillows and fall happily if a tad wheezily to sleep.
*Note: Sorry to dig at churches, all in good fun. They do plenty of good work here of various kinds

Day in the life 2 continued

Staff party was a hoot. Three minibuses full of lodge empoyees barrelled into town where we found a lovely outdoor tent and buffet. After dinner and dark the bossman and bosslady toured the kitchen as an educational tour for their cooks and I joined the rest of the party which was drawn out of the tent round the lovely and very fire hazardous bonfire to dance to a very global mix of poptunes. Had to give the stinkeye to a kitchen assistant working up some of our very cute and very underage local interns. Fun to see everyone dolle
d up (there was at least one wig in attendance) and festive. Demands to have pictures with me, I felt like Mickey, until the memory card filled.
The buses then headed to a local club (except the one with the interns which was sternly sent home). We stayed and drank brandy with the hilarious gregarious generously portioned german owner and his snippy ugandan wife, then tried to meet up with the staff but failed and went home to throw together very late night omelets.

Next morning I peeled myself up and dragged cranky hungover helpers to teach our promised class session. Spirits started off low, but One Fish Two Fish was a big hit with the little kids (one of my helpers said it was "very interesting." I think/hope they use that word a bit differently in uganda.) And so were the acting out of vitamin a fighting off disease and vitamin c protecting the heart that I imperiously imposed (with a smile, bien entendu), though I should have predicted the former would get a bit physical--more of a problem when you consider many of these kids are way more buff than me. And a really should have assigned someone larger and less disabled to be the attackee. Live and learn.
Came back to find the lord and lady of the lodge sipping rose cava by the pool and nibbling the last of the parma ham from kampala. Joined them and dipped tired feet. (See gratuitous adorable dog shot. Do not see omitted image of baby skink who Mr. Lodge befriended mirthfully and squashed accidentally.)

Fish and chips and epic nap, then a visit to the bossman's god-codger in fort portal for dinner and the night(he has satellite tv, and newly food network = big draw).Beautiful day today, reading over looking his huge lovely yard over tea, successful meeting at nearby hospital, crossword while the commonwealthers watched cricket, and a beautiful afternoon of speedy internet and very amateur lawn tennis at a friends lodge whose he pretends not to care about. Ah, que la vie est belle.

Day in the life 2

Woke up, took a New Year's resolution fueled run escorted by Polly (one of the younger dogs), 15 minutes out and back feels arduous and gets me an embarassingly short distance. Excuses: Altitude, hills, rocky road, time off running due to injury. Reality: This is my third run in...as I type I realize it is like 10 months. Um, let's move on.

We are guest-free today so I can take my breakfast at the main table without fear of being roped into an hour and a half polite chat with my morning meal (I often hide in the bar area with my avocado and toast) and since I'm feeling the need for protein post-run I treat myself to the full poached egg, avocado, greens, and fruits plus black tea with ginger meal. Oh man, mangoes (miyembe) are in season right now and sweet lord are they delicious. Party in your mouth for reals.

Get inspired to be productive with my energetic start to the day and send off some emails, including to the American lawyer who has dropped in like an angel to solve our NGO registration issues, then set to organizing my things which have been sitting in the various bags I've stored here or brought from home. This is mostly an exercise for the sake of it since I'll be packing it all back up in a week when we are full again and I relocate to the spare room, but it's therapeutic anyway and pretty fun to salsa my way through it to Buena Vista Social Club on my spiffy new ultra portable battery powered speaker. (Yes, I brought a ridiculous variety of electronics back with me to a place with no electricity.)

Chatted with the hosts for a bit when they came up for breakfast, now they are having an unpleasant meeting with their manager about not berating the staff whilst drunk, and I am working on crafting a grant application over the rest of my teapot. And the rest of their teapot. Why let it go to waste, right? I really hope ginger is good for you, because I am basically pickling in it internally about half of my waking hours.

This afternoon I hope to get some of this grant stuff done, then meet with an obliging doctor who is head of a local hospital in order to pick his brain about what the real health issues are here (everyone always says they have malaria--possible, sure, but probably not once a month--and typhoid--not possible. No typhoid here.) on the way to a staff party at another (less idyllic, of course) local lodge. Overheard possibility of disco later? Will report after.