Weekend in Kinkiisi

This has been my first free weekend in Kinkiisi. Hamlet and Kellen have returned to Kampala; but I am not entirely alone in the house. Besides their own four children, who are all away at school or College, they have semi-adopted three girls in straitened circumstances, all in their late teens or early twenties. One, Eilen, has gone with them to Kampala but the other two are here. Justine teaches at Kirima School but is still studying for better qualifications and Novias, a relation of Kellen's, is a student at the College. They earn their college fees and keep by doing jobs around the house, laundry, caring for the hens and so on. It is nice to have their company and they are gradually becoming less shy, even making hesitant attempts at conversation from time to time. I am gradually learning more about them: Justine's father died when she was young, leaving her mother to raise their four children; and not long after Justine's mother was herself was bitten by a snake whilst working in the fields and had to have her leg amputated. Justine left school to look after the family but her determination to be a teacher eventually led her, when circumstances allowed, to walk the many miles from her home to Kinkiisi to beg Hamlet for a place at the College. She is clearly an excellent teacher and has more than fulfilled the faith that was put in her. She and I share the English teaching in P1 and P2 so a good deal of lesson-planning takes place over the tea-table…

On Saturday I decide that I must maintain the habit of a lifetime - and go shopping. Kinkiisi itself does not have a shop as such but, walking around the village this week, I have gradually realized that several of the humble corrugated-iron-roofed houses that front the street have a small stall just inside their doorway selling items of produce. One house has a neat line of tomatoes displayed; another a few bunches of bananas; a third some potatoes. There are one or two more ambitious projects, probably funded by a micro-finance company such as the one that CHIFCOD operates. One man works away at a sewing machine; and I promise myself that, before I leave here, I will knock on the door of the shabby house that bears a small painted board saying 'Fine Times Hair Design Salon' in uneven blue letters and see what they can do for me. But the enterprise that has already won me as a regular customer is the internet – well, not 'café' exactly, but 'place'. The face of the young lady who runs it lights up when she sees me: I suspect that she thinks that her business success is assured now that I have arrived in the village and spend long periods using her one, ancient computer. "I have air-time today!" she assures me enthusiastically "And power too!". Neither of these is guaranteed and to have both simultaneously is nothing short of miraculous. The power goes off for hours, sometimes the entire day, quite regularly; and the internet 'air-time' has to be purchased in the nearest town, Kanungu, in the form of scratch-card vouchers with numbers that are fed into the computer modem's sim card via a mobile phone. Broadband exists only in some far-distant parallel universe. The internet lady also has an unusual retail sideline – in sanitary towels, stacks of which line the shelves above the computer. Sadly, my feeble attempts at jokes about her'high tech pad' seem only to cause puzzlement….

Novias insists on coming to Kanungu with me on Saturday morning as she is convinced that the shopkeepers will overcharge me if I go on my own. Normally she spends Saturdays working on the Student Agricultural Scheme – a CHIFCOD project to enable students to raise the money for their college fees by growing and selling produce; but she has a day off today. It is a steep 45 minute walk to the town in growing heat but I am looking forward to seeing the market which takes place every Saturday here.

Kanungu was briefly famous, or infamous, as the headquarters of an extreme doomsday cult called The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God who on 17 March 2000 sealed themselves in their chapel and set themselves alight with sulphuric acid – or were set alight, for the jury is still out as to whether this was a mass suicide or a mass murder by the cult's insane leaders. Five hundred people died in the ensuing explosion but forest graves containing other bodies were found elsewhere in the area casting suspicion on the theory that this was in fact suicide. Still scarred by the event, Kanungu is now a subdued little town whose redeeming feature is that it boasts the sole petrol pump for miles around - and a hand-cranked one at that. It regularly runs out of fuel when the tanker is due and the town then fills up with stranded motorists who have no alternative but to wait for the next delivery – bad for them but no doubt good for business in this otherwise unremarkable place.

The shops in Kanungu bear no resemblance to ours, of course. They have no electric power so I have to peer about in semi-darkness to make out what is on the chaotically arranged shelves of the tiny food shop we enter. Besides the sacks of flour and dried beans there are a few luxury items –some lurid cans of jam, two jars (only) of peanut butter (which is rapidly becoming a staple source of protein for me so I buy them both), longlife milk, and, I note with interest – a dusty bottle labelled 'Communion Wine'. I shall know where to come if I get desperate…

There is a shoemaker, a hardware shop selling everyday essentials like cooking pots and kerosene, a stationery shop full of school exercise books (parents have to provide these) and a shop selling fruit and vegetables – or rather bananas, pineapples and tomatoes. I cannot stomach buying anything from the butcher's shop despite Novias' entreaties to look at an unidentifiable half-animal lying on the floor at the back of this hot fly-ridden place, which she tells me is 'very special good meat'. We go on to the tiny market, where there are a few stalls selling mostly – yes! pineapples, bananas and tomatoes…though also small onions, some cassava and sweet potatoes. There is also a clothes market on a grassy site adjoining the site where a huge array of second-hand clothes and shoes are set out by different stall-holders. Many of these are European or American clothes which have arrived here via charity shops and sell for the equivalent of about 50p an item. People dress quite formally in Uganda and it is not uncommon to see men in suits even in the most remote villages – and almost always in a smart shirt and trousers. Women too dress in a colourful and creative mix of their traditional dress with western-style clothes – though never trousers, which are regarded as 'not quite proper' for women, particularly in the more traditional rural areas. I wish I had brought more skirts with me now!

On Sunday I am woken by a knock on the door at 7.00am. Jenna, the school bursar, has come to collect me for Church, an arrangement entirely of her own devising but one that, once over the surprise and her overzealous punctuality, I am more than happy to go along with. I want to see the local church, which everyone refers to as 'the cathedral' though I am unsure whether this is an official title or a deferential one. The English service is at 8.30am and is followed by the local-language one at 10.00am: church-going is almost universal here and people dress up to the nines for what is clearly regarded as a very important occasion. The church is full of local school children in uniform and their families, and the service, as expected, is a lively affair. Familiar Anglican hymns are delivered, effortlessly syncopated, to the accompaniment only of drumming and clapping, often with three or four complex rhythms going on at once and instinctive harmonies. The singing is wonderfully uplifting and joyful. The priest, however, no doubt mindful of his church's elevated status, clutches to his mouth an ancient microphone for the spoken parts of the service which distorts his diction so much that it is impossible to hear what language he is speaking let alone his words. It is only when he is in the pulpit that I can finally make out anything he is saying. He has chosen as his text Psalm 23 and, addressing the rows of children fervently tells them, several times over, that if they are worried they MUST NOT COMMIT SUICIDE! Perhaps the dreadful happenings just up the road in Kanungu a few years ago have left an indelible impression on him….

In the afternoon Novias, who has been feeling increasingly poorly, decides that she needs a malaria test so I manage to organize a lift to Kanungu where while-you-wait malaria tests are carried out in a pharmacy for 1,000 Ugandan shillings – about 30p. The technician tries to persuade her that she needs a typhoid and brucellosis test too but Novias is having none of it – he just wants her money, she confides in me; she knows she hasn't got brucellosis because she always boils her milk, and has had typhoid fever and knows the symptoms. A few minutes later, triumphant at the accuracy of her own diagnosis and at having got one up on the technician, she leaves the shop clutching her malaria treatment, telling me that she may have to have a day off college tomorrow but will wait and see how she is. Illness is an expensive inconvenience here - but nothing to make a fuss about. I, selfishly, have enjoyed being a proxy mum to the invalid – in an environment where so much is new, it is something of a relief to have a familiar and easy role to slip into…