Agricultural Show

It has perhaps taken longer than it should to realise that time-keeping in Uganda is – how do I put it – an elastic affair.  We departed two hours later than planned for the Agricultural Show this morning because the bus didn’t arrive.  Our return was also two hours late.  Nobody gets irritated.  Nothing can be done about it.  And no harsh words are exchanged between bus driver and the clients.

The Agricultural Show was indescribably awful.  I’m sorry to be negative about it, but I truly am unable to find one redeeming moment of the SEVEN hours we spent there.  The Show sprawled across a space of about 10 acres.  There were tens of thousands of people.  We were 4 teachers looking after 122 children from as young as 4 years old.  With their little bit of money in hand from home, they all wanted to spend and constantly scattered with wild abandon.  All the feet kicked up the dust I have become so sorely acquainted with over the past weeks and a permanent red fog hung amid us, blending painfully with the deafening beat of pumping music from the dance floor and a putrid stench.  The sun was scorching.  There was no breeze.

I can confirm that Ugandan crops grow much bigger than ours back home.  I saw super-size eggplant, tomatoes, beetroot, radishes, marrows, cucumbers, carrots, cauliflower, kale, chard and onions.  The cabbages, also, would quite frankly not look too out of place as garden shrubs let alone something to boil in a pan.  The Muslim children with us were horrified to be taken into the piggery by Teacher Francis.  We spent nearly an hour listening to a chicken-fanatic talk to us about his livestock.  I was almost clucking and laying eggs by the time he finished.  I caught Joseph feeding the mother hen the page on Reproduction from his Science exercise book.

I was harassed by aggressive men, selling their wares (second-hand bras, plastic bags of suspect water, half-packets of biscuits) and shouting Mzungu at me with flailing arms when I politely declined.  They didn’t feel like the kind of people I have been meeting around Jinja and I suspect they may have been traders coming from Kampala, just to make a dishonest quick buck.  I also had to pay double price to enter because I was white.  They pulled the same stunt on me when I went to the Source of the Nile.  I asked what they would charge my black friend from England and they said, “It would be normal.”  Smiling, I said that they might perhaps have a think about that.

With little children who haven’t yet been educated, I don’t mind really, but with grown adults I would like to think that they wouldn’t discriminate so blatantly.  I think I am tired which makes it tougher, but I do find it increasingly offensive.  And, however hard I try, I just cannot control this natural shudder when it happens time and time again.

I am ready to come home soon.  My thoughts and excitement are now so wrapped up with the Olympics and my loved ones who I miss beyond belief.  I cannot wait to be back and to feel the buzz and big cuddles.