Construction in Uganda

As you move around Uganda you see large brick stacks everywhere either under construction, covered with clay, smoking as they are fired or being dismantled for use.

The clay is dug, shaped and left out to dry for about three days and then stacked .The stack is covered with mud and then fired for approximately 2 days. The clay is usually dug on the plot where the bricks are to be used but you also see stacks by the side of the main roads to be taken and used elsewhere.  It’s a very sustainable way of making bricks as the misshapen and under fired bricks are used as fill or just slowly disintegrate back into the ground. The only non-sustainable bit is the large logs of hardwood used for the firing.

                                                                     

Once the walls are built, effectively for free if its on your plot and you make the bricks, you have to get money to buy materials for the roof windows flooring and plastering. This is where   many of the building projects appear to falter both domestically and in the colleges we have visited.  A roof and a metal door to make the building secure are in many cases enough and the building is used for many years in this condition

.

In all the colleges we have visited many of the buildings are constructed by the students ,bricklaying and concrete practice (BCP) doing the walls, welding or carpentry and joinery (C and J) doing the roof trusses and doors and painting and decorating ( P and D) students doing the internal and external walls and glazing . Classrooms are all to a standard design and dimensions as specified by the Ministry of Education and Sport.

                                                                      

Bamboo is also a favoured building material for small shops and outside sheds and privies. It can be put up quickly. There is even a 2 storey bar made out of bamboo that has been there for a number of years.

                                                                     

Letting the Grass Grow

The Compound 1

We have let the grass grow in our compound, it encourages the butterflies, bees, frogs and crickets.

The Compound with Butterfly 1

To us it is rather attractive, to our Ugandan colleagues this is very bad behaviour, we have let the garden grow ‘bushy’ i.e. return to the original bush from which it came.

The Compound with Butterfly 2

They have told us off soundly; our post-Romantic sensibilities find the long grass, the flowers, the lack of order very appealing, to Ugandans it shows laziness and moral turpitude.

We have seen something of this on our visits, for example on a recent trip to a college at Nile Valley.

Proposed Fish Farm Site, Nile Valley

We were shown a vast and beautiful swampy area, full of wildlife, flowers and interest. You can see me standing with the Village Elders, the Director of the College and his Principal.

With The Elders, Principal and Directors, Nile Valley.

Notice the blue folder one of them is holding in his hand. This is a proposal to turn the swamp into a 10 hectare fish farm, it will bring vital employment, training and income to a very deprived locality. Even if the proposal foundered, all of the people here agreed that the land was currently a mess and needed clearing. They (like many country dwellers I have met the world over) found our enthusing over its disorder and beauty rather puzzling, and couldn’t really understand why we wanted to know the names of the birds that were calling across the wild.

In common with our garden, the swamp needed slashing. This is when a youth with a three and a half foot long sword/ machete with a right angle turn at the end swings the blade across the vegetation to cut it back to the quick. He will of course be wearing safety flip flops.

Mary’s Vegetable Garden (there is some order in our world).

Another Green World

Map of Uganda

We have been on our travels again, down to Kampala, across to Lira, down to Amolatar which is right on Lake Kyoga and then back to the Nile.

Collecting Water, Early Evening Lake Kyoga.

The lake is rich in huge fish (Tilapia) and beautiful, but poor and isolated in everything else. The college principal put us up for the night, ‘real village life’ as he called it. It was a privilege to spend the night with him and his wife and daughter although, as always, some of the protocol was slightly baffling. I still can’t quite cope with the women kneeling to greet me when I enter a room, nor the woman of the house getting to her knees to wash your hands before a meal either. Later, washing (alone this time)   under the stars and watching the fireflies dance as you clean your teeth was another, rather special, first as well.

Early Evening, Lake Kyoga.

We have already been down to the Nile for a day, to a very fancy ‘Lodge’ where we spotted a herd of Elephants.

Elephants at Chobe Lodge.

Over Easter we travelled further south to Murchison Falls with some friends from Juba, South Sudan. They had intended to fill their cars with produce from Gulu for their return. After some discussion we realised that all the good stuff already makes it way across the border to Juba anyway, where it can fetch twice the price or more. They feast on Ugandan cauliflower, leeks and other exotic vegetables up there, whilst we make do with tomatoes and onions; the operations of the market distort all our lives.

Murchison is the biggest wildlife park in Uganda; exciting scenery. On our trip up the Nile to the fabled waterfall, we saw many more elephants.

Elephants on the Nile 1

Sadly the guide told us that several had short trunks, the ends having been caught in poachers snares, but they survive reasonably well.

Elephant on the Nile

Also many Nile Crocodiles; evil looking things.

How doth the … etc

You can get rather blasé about elephants after a while, perhaps not about the babies. But Hippos are different, there are hundreds of them slowly rising up through the water.

Hippos on the Nile 1

They make wonderful grunting noises and have a fearsome reputation,

Hippos on the Nile 2

but from a suitable distance seem rather splendid.

Hippos on the Nile 3

From below the Falls are appealing,

Murchison Falls from the boat

but from above, especially from the southern bank they are truly impressive,

Murchison Falls from the North

huge amounts of water forced through such a small gap.

Murchison Falls from the South

You can see why Sir Samuel Baker (the Nile explorer who ‘discovered’ them) and later Victorian explorers got so excited.

Murchison Falls from the South, at River Level.

It is always a good idea to keep your donors happy, so he named them after the President of the Royal Geographical Society. Probably no chance of finding an equivalent water feature to name the DFID Falls.

On our game drive the next day ((which is exactly what it says, driving around looking for ‘Game’) we came across more giraffes than were really necessary.

Giraffe at Murchison Falls 1

As the cliché goes, they are super models of the big game world, beautiful and elegant creatures batting their huge eyelashes at the world and appearing to do everything in slow motion.

Giraffe at Murchison Falls 2

It has been rather hard to come back from such a green and pleasant world

The View Down the Nile, Early Evening.

to dusty, busy, noisy Gulu. We are not lulled to sleep here by frogs and crickets and curious bird calls, as we were from our lodge by the river.

Down the Nile to Alexandria

The wildlife parks are definitely somewhere we will return to many times I think. Although those Victorian explorer tales (Burton, Baker, Livingstone, Speke et al) of hardship, disease, violence and the ravages caused by the Arab slave traders contrast rather strongly with the luxury of our accommodation and the frivolousness of ‘Game Drives’ and eating fancy suppers as the Nile slips by into the night. More evidence of the unexpected effects of the market I suppose. Time to go and see the market ‘ladies’ and start bargaining over tomatoes and onions.

Monkeys at Breakfast Time