Saint Paul's, Peel

In the grounds of Kuluva Hospital is a marvellous variety of trees. Eucalyptus can be found in quantity throughout this part of Uganda because they grow quickly and provide a sustainable source of timber and fuel. Others can also be found including mahogany, and these hardwoods are usually used for making furniture. Even the most ordinary pieces of furniture, chests of drawers, tables, plain chairs, etc. are usually made of solid mahogany and weigh a ton.

My dad, who was a master cabinet maker, would have loved it here with so much quality timber on hand. When he retired he had two or three garages filled with pieces of timber he was saving for some indeterminate job in the future, but there was nothing in those garages to compare with what is available here in West Nile.

Kuluva Parish is in the process of constructing a new Church building. It is an ambitious project, but the congregation has been working hard on it, and our home parish in Leicester at St Denys has been supporting them in the venture. In the present building the congregation sit on solid cement/mud benches (which are not too good if you suffer from piles!), so they are planning hardwood furniture for the new church.

The present church stands at the entrance to the site of Kuluva Hospital. Behind the church are several rows of terraced houses occupied by hospital staff, and surrounding them many trees, some small and shrubby, but others, truly venerable and majestic.

One night earlier in the year the area was buffeted by high winds. One especially strong gust of wind brought two of the biggest trees crashing to the ground. Miraculously they fell in such a way as to miss both the church and the houses and nobody was hurt. In fact they fell in about the only direction they could have done with causing very significant damage.

The church the following week echoed to songs and prayers of thanks to God for preserving both life and property in what could otherwise have had devastating and possibly tragic consequences. What was more, the church leaders realised that these trees would provide much of the timber they needed to construct the church furniture they required. Jehovah Jireh! Indeed, there was much rejoicing, and the following Saturday a team of church workers cut up the tree into manageable chunks.

They discovered, however, that there was not quite sufficient timber to make all the furniture, and so decided to fell another of the big trees to make up the shortfall. The work was carried out on a Thursday morning, the men cutting away at the base of the trunk, careful to ensure that it fell safely. But just as the tree was about to fall, a small breeze blew (or so I am told) which nudged it slightly to the right causing it to fall elegantly, but very heavily - on to the back of the church, demolishing half of the roof and one corner of the building! Nobody was hurt and the Pastor remained cheerful, but there was a degree of embarrassment at the irony of the situation.

Anne and I went away on a trip the following day wondering what they would do – the church did look pretty bad. But returning a week later, we found the back of the church reconstructed, the newly felled tree cut into pieces, and everything back to normal.

I can’t play cricket. Anyone who knows me well knows that. At school I was no good with a bat and usually managed to be out first ball which, to be fair, didn’t give me much chance to improve. I also remember the experience of attempting to catch a cricket ball. Instead of nestling neatly in the palms of my hands it hit the end of my index finger. In this way I discovered that cricket balls are dangerously hard, and concluded that they are best avoided. Such cowardice was not an attitude best suited to becoming an effective cricketer.

But even if I can’t play cricket, I do enjoy watching it and remember several sun-soaked days relishing the contest as it played out on the cricket pitch before me. But too often I also recall ominous dark clouds gathering and large spots of rain beginning to fall, such as happened at the Anglican Clergy v. Imams of Leicester match Anne and I attended in Leicester shortly before coming to Uganda. On that occasion, the match was played to its (bitter for the Anglicans) conclusion, but “rain stopped play” becomes the epitaph of too many cricket matches because, for some reason, in Britain, the arrival of the Cricket Season seems to herald the coming of rain.

But if in Britain the coming of the cricket season signifies the coming of rain, here in Uganda it’s the other way round as the welcome sound of thunder and the opening of the floodgates of heaven marks the coming of the crickets.

Crickets are wonderful creatures with shiny, leathery, brown bodies. They come in many different sizes ranging from the size of a pea to just a little smaller than a golf ball. They have the most incredible ability to leap and spring and bound great distances. Their trajectory is hard to predict which can be a little alarming as they explore the living room, but when you get used to them they are strangely endearing.

Unfortunately, my first encounter with a cricket was in the ‘shower’. I was washing my hair (the little of it that I possess), my eyes closed to protect them from the shampoo. Suddenly I felt something jump up my leg. Quickly washing the shampoo suds from my eyes, I looked down, and saw this thing (I didn’t know what it was at the time) clinging on to me for dear life trying to escape the pools of water accumulating on the floor. I have to confess that the shock forced me to consign the poor, harmless creature to a watery grave. Having now grown more fond of them, I feel frequent pangs of guilt as think back to this summary execution.

But crickets aren’t the only creatures that show up with the coming of the rain. Moths, beetles, appear in profusion, as do white ants which emerge from termite mounds in their thousands, and after dark fly around outside our window attracted by the light. By the morning the verandah looks like a graveyard, littered with the wings and bodies of countless ants.

Our Ugandan friends wonder why we don’t collect them, after all they will lie in wait by termite mounds ready to catch them when they emerge. They cook them to eat mixed with beans, or grind them into a sort of paste from which they make ‘cakes’, which actually look a little like meatballs. We have eaten both forms, but there are more appetising delicacies to our taste (like Bendicks Bittermints). However white ants do provide extra protein which the local diet often lacks. Folks here are so fond of them that they preserve termite mounds, even though they are home to the termites which gobble up their houses (quite literally), in order to maintain this source of extra nourishment.
“How many are your works, O Lord!
In wisdom you made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.” (Ps 104.24)

Indeed, the world is home to a fascinating variety of living creatures, insects, peoples and customs! And what a privilege to be a part of it all!

"A firm fondant very strongly flavoured with peppermint oil, enrobed with intensely bitter chocolate.”

These words scarcely do justice to the amazing experience of eating a Bendicks Bittermint. For many years they have been my (Allan’s) Christmas treat. At times I had been tempted to buy them out of season, but the discipline of keeping them as a luxury limited to only one season, something to be looked forward to with anticipation from year to year, always enhanced the experience of biting into this most exclusive of mints - silky textured and outrageously delicious but with the ‘bite’ of real peppermint.

Coming to Uganda and abandoning Bendicks Bittermints was a sacrifice in itself, but through the kindness of friends and relatives, Christmas 2007 saw two boxes of this exclusive confectionary turn up in Arua Post Office. But Christmas 2008 was another story – not one box appeared.

In desperation we made an appeal to any visitors coming out to see us. At Christmas we may have been bereft, but a whole year without another Bendicks ‘fix’ would have been unthinkable.

A visit to the Post Office in April, however, was rewarded with a parcel, and wonder of wonders, it contained one box of the thick, dark chocolate-covered peppermint bombs. The parcel had been posted in November! The mints were still in excellent condition, a real testimony to their ability to travel thousands of miles in sometimes extreme conditions without adverse effect. Our spirits rose as were able to acknowledge that someone had thought of us.

Just a few days later we travelled to Kampala and Entebbe to meet our visitors. Richard and Helen presented us with two boxes, and Anne’s sisters Cathy and Kathy (don’t ask!) another two. Five boxes in one year was little less than a miracle and we rejoiced!!

Returning to Arua with the two C(K)athys, we stopped off at Paraa Lodge in Murchison Park for a game drive and a Nile River Launch. Because Anne and I had done the river trip several times we saw our visitors off and returned to our room taking with us one box of Bendicks we had retrieved from the Paraa fridge. Our intention was to enjoy them together with our visitors after dinner that evening.

Leaving the box in our room we went downstairs for an afternoon cup of tea and a snack. After a short while Anne went to collect her sisters from their river-trip to the Falls, whilst I returned to the room.

At first sight everything looked normal, unchanged from when we had left it. But then my eyes fell on a quantity of green and gold silver foil lying on the floor. A short distance beyond lay the box of Bendicks Bittermints, its top gouged open by some wild and voracious beast and empty (apart from 3) of its original contents! It lay before the open door to the balcony of our first-floor room.

Then I remembered a previous visit to Paraa when I had chased two opportunistic baboons from the balcony. This time they had returned, but on this occasion with greater success and to their greater benefit. Amazingly, nothing else in the room, laptop, camera binoculars or anything else had been disturbed.

But now, we are looking forward to encountering a new and more classy breed of baboon at Paraa; baboons who have begun to appreciate the finer things of life, and whose eating habits will more reflect the refined character of the food they have now tasted. The alternative, of course, is that they will be driven into a wild frenzy (like me) in their search for more of these glorious mints, very few of which can ever have made their way to Murchison Park, and will rarely ever do so again.

Certainly we will be much more careful in future!

“Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb.........” (John 20.1)

We got up at 5.30 am and it was certainly dark as we walked down to the hospital chapel on Easter Sunday morning with the temperature having dropped to a ‘chill’ 20 degrees in contrast to the rest of Holy Week when it had been around the 33 degrees mark.

The week had begun at Kuluva Parish Church on Palm Sunday (see last blog) a truly cross-cultural experience as the children and young people waved their palm branches enthusiastically and responded with spontaneous applause to the Christmas messages from St Denys. They didn’t seem to think it remotely odd that we should be talking about Christmas on Palm Sunday. After all, a king whose first bed was a manger and who had to flee to Egypt to escape the anger and paranoia of Herod fits well with a king who rides a donkey and whose throne was a cross.

But half way through Holy Week, Alice, the new Chaplain at Kuluva Hospital, asked if I knew anything about Easter Day Sunrise Services. She had attended one when at University in Mukono which had made a lasting impression, but since that had been in 1990 she couldn’t remember much about it.

My mind drifted back to parish life in South Yorkshire and the almost 20 years of Easter Sunrise Services we had shared with the churches of Rotherham. There we had climbed a hill overlooking the town’s shrinking industrial landscape to pray and to celebrate the resurrection, often in sub-zero temperatures and freezing rain.

Kuluva was a different context, but it was the same celebration, and indeed I had compiled some material during preparations for a Muzungu Sunrise Service in Arua the previous year. That had been a bit of a disaster, but when I showed the material to Alice she thought it would provide a good framework for what she wanted to do.

And so it was that by 6.00 am we had begun the walk to Kuluva Hill, the growing company singing Lugbara songs accompanied by drums and guitars. For much of the night it had been raining with thunder in the distance, but now it was dry, although we were wrapped up warm against the new, lower temperatures.

Arriving at a collection of grass thatched houses just below the hill, the home of Shadrach and Josephine and their family, we read John’s account of the resurrection before continuing up the hill singing 'Thine be the glory'.

New Years Day. 8am. Allan is in the shower. I am making breakfast.

One big advantage of living in Uganda is being able to do exotic things on big birthdays. This year took us to Eastern Uganda for my Big Six-0 and to the highest mountains we have yet seen in the country, with Mount Elgon, its highest peak, at 4165 metres. Our destination was Sipi Falls, a modest 1,800 metres above sea level, but high enough to be free of mosquitoes and cool enough to need blankets at night – a real treat.

We were staying at Lacam Lodge, which prides itself in being electricity-free, using gas for cooking and kerosene lamps to light the restaurant and bandas at night. Another feature was the toilets.

Being built on solid rock, digging ‘long-drop’ toilets is impossible, so instead the Lodge provides bucket loos. These look like ordinary toilets, but instead of a flush guests are provided with liberal quantities of sawdust to sprinkle as appropriate. It was ideal, and 100% effective in rendering the toilet odour-free. Every couple of hours one of the staff would enter the toilet via a back door to empty, clean and return the bucket (presumably ensuring the toilet was not in use at the time). This was a job we decided not to apply for, but to show our gratitude, left a healthy tip under the loo seat.

During our stay in Sipi, we were fascinated to be met by several groups of young people jogging and dancing their way along the road, singing, shouting and blowing whistles. We enquired of our local guide, Fred, what this meant and he told us with some pride that they were preparing for circumcision rites. He explained that these usually happen in the month of December in even numbered years. We thought of little babies, but no. Here, in the home of the Bagisu and Sabini tribes, circumcision is carried out on males, generally, between the ages of 16 and 26!

The ritual marks the transition into true manhood and qualifies the initiate to marry and take positions of leadership in the community. Initiates nominate themselves for the ritual in the previous May or June, which apparently gives them time to prepare for the event. I wondered how you could prepare for such an event. Circumcision is performed, with no anaesthetic, in public before family and friends, and even tourists can attend – although these tourists didn’t. Subsequently we noticed a number of young men wearing skirts – they no longer have to prove their manhood. Fred confirmed what we thought, again with great pride. He had been circumcised in his teens. Better to look back on than to look forward to, I thought.

That aside, Sipi Falls is a beautiful spot. There are four main falls, the last and longest of which provides a magnificent setting for Lacam Lodge. From our banda we could both see and hear the long and extraordinarily elegant cascade plunging 100 metres into the river below. It was a glorious view looking down into the valley and the plains beyond, towards the north-west and our home in Arua some 600 km distant.

On my birthday itself Fred took us along the edge of the ridge above the falls, and then steeply down into the valley itself. The slope was precipitous, involving some rather hairy walking/climbing, including an almost vertical ladder down part of the rock face, but it gave us great views of Lacam Lodge across the valley, and then the Falls themselves. As we descended, our daughter, Jo, rang to wish me a happy birthday and I received a birthday text message from friends in Doncaster, UK – a lightly surreal but delightful reminder of home.

At the foot of the Falls, out of the sunshine, it was very wet, muddy, slippery, and a little scary., but as we ascended back out of the valley into the sunshine again, we encountered a girl and young boy. Both were carrying great loads of bananas on their heads from the banana groves growing on the valley side. Being unable to balance anything much on our heads we were much impressed by their amazing ability to scale rock-face ladders with such a burden.

We stopped to talk to them as they, and we, rested on the way. The girl’s name was Emma. “It means ‘God is with us,’” she explained. “Of course, from Emmanuel,” I said, “Jesus’ name.” “You’re a Christian!” she responded with a bright smile, and told us she was a singer in her local church. She then sang us a song about heaven and the truth that if we trust in Jesus we will all be there together one day – ‘every nation, tribe, people and language’.

Our best wishes for a very happy Christmas and joy-filled New Year.