5

Hello! I’m sitting in the Danish cafe with butterflies all around. The sun is so hot but the air is cool so it’s the perfect weather!

Walked into Masaka the country route on Friday through all the little villages. Loads of the houses are literally just a concrete square building with an iron door bolted shut and no windows. Some people are really poor, there’s loads of really dilapidated buildings, can’t believe people live in them and the people are really dirty. There’s loads of NGO projects here though all over the place.

Yesterday was hilarious all round. Me, C-M and the 2 medics from Queens found ourselves in the back of a slightly dilapidated mini-bus full of nuns with plastic leopard skin seats and the odd seatbelt, heading up country to one of the sisters sister’s graduation party. I now know what pot holes are. The sister is one of 11 kids, all of whom have been to uni which shows you how rich the family are. Even so, their house was pretty simple but they had quite a lot of land. They had set up 3 markees with chairs and sofas and an alter in. There were priests and monks and nuns, the family and us in one markee and all the other guests in the other 2. They did a lot of speeches with the odd interspersed motivational quote in English like “Better to be a lion for one day than a sheep for your whole life”. And one speech on the virtues of a woman which were in order wife, mother, organiser, beauty, manager, negotiator. There was a chicken tied up which was one of her graduation presents. It tried to escape twice when no one was looking but only got about 6 feet. It must have known its days were numbered.

Then the rain came, and it RAINED. Our marquee was a wooden poles and tarpaulin contraption and the water got so heavy it started leaking and I thought the whole thing was going to collapse. The next thing I knew there were nuns and fathers with chairs in the air, water everywhere – and the guy doing the speech kept going through the whole chaos. We were in hysterics. I made a couple of videos. Then there was masses of food. Some of which was gross.
We brought some English food (shortbread from the pound shop and a packet of toffee bonbons and a 2 for £3 M&S fruit cake) with us to give to the family as a little taste of England. We ended up presenting the daughter with the sweets and shortbread in a procession of guests with massive beautifully wrapped boxes. The only thing we had to wrap them in was a Tesco carrier bag which we decided against. Then they thrust a microphone at us and we had to give a speech about the fruit cake before presenting it to the parents as a gift.

Then the music started and all the kids and this crazy old man started dancing. We started filming the kids and they loved it so they came closer and closer. One of them was totally going for it, so cute, the guy should be on X-Factor. Then people kept asking us to dance. Bearing in mind there were about 200 people there we just laughed at them thinking it was a joke. It wasn’t. We were ushered into the middle with a handful of nuns and had to dance for a whole song in front of all the guests (we’re English, we can’t dance) You had to laugh. As I sat down this old man leant over and said to me “Thank you for your dance. It was interesting.” which was followed by hysterical laughter. Fair comment. There are videos which I hope no one will ever see.

The rain meant an interesting journey back. I was slightly disturbed when the sisters started singing a prayer for protection. More disturbed when the driver got out twice to check the tyres. but we made it.

Today we’re back at the Danish cafe getting the internet. It is a church as well so we went to the service this morning. There was about 20 people here, fab to worship with them and the guy who preached runs the organisation (they have an orphanage as well) he was brilliant, really spoke to me. Afterwards he gave me a 1 year old beautiful baby boy called Gideon then he showed me a picture in the news paper of him a few months ago. He was found under a bed starving to death because his mother was didn't want him and was trying to kill him. He looked like a skeleton but now he’s gorgeous and chubby. Loved it when I spun him round. The pastor said he was a different kind of miracle. We’re going to go and visit their baby orphanage at some point- can't wait.
I keep writing so much! Happy Father’s day to my dad!
Christine