Plan A: 6 months in Uganda

I should have known it would come to this. Maxi and I were huddled around a couple of paint cans, using drinking straws and rusty scrap metal plucked from the ground to mix what we hoped would be the perfect shade of red-orange. Behinds us, my furniture was awaiting some unfortunate shop apprentice who would, for the second time, without pay, scrape off all the paint using nothing but a worn out hacksaw blade. The paint, which was special-ordered from the local paint dealer, wasn't curing properly, nor did the color match the sample card, and after two failed attempts Maxi was convinced we could do better with our own concoction of primer and pigment. But of course! The metal tube was cut by hand with a hacksaw, welded in the dirt by a man squinting behind mirrored sunglasses, tested for flatness on a nearby concrete slab - the flattest surface available - and squared with a metal casing enjoying a second life as a mallet. Painting would be a similar exercise in ingenuity. T...

It occurred to me recently that most of my posts about life in Uganda (other than my life) have been a little gloomy, so I thought I would share a few tidbits of optimism. First, our friend Mark, the accountant-cum-taxi driver, finally found a job at bank - at least hopefully. He has been invited to a week-long training, after which most of the participants will be offered jobs. Knowing Mark, I'm confident he'll be among them. Mark is always apologizing for the condition of his car - he gets low priority from Yellow Cab because he refuses to drive 7 days a week - but he's always quick to add, “It's the attitude that makes a man successful, not the car!” Right on, Mark, I couldn't agree more. Unless the car is a 2008 Audi TT coupe with 6-speed manual transmission, Pearl Silver exterior and black leather seats. In other news, yesterday I was astonished to see the road crew at work again on “bad road,” paving over the dirt, completing the job they started a few we...