Chapter 8: Meeting the Ugandan kids again.

After going through custom and immigration at Entebbe Airport, Wycliffe, the oldest of the kids we educated was there  to pick us up. As I told earlier, Brigitte and I supported  3 children for 12 years from the ages of 11 to 23 through all their schooling including University. The airport looks fairly new and nothing like the one one sees in the movies about the hijacking at this airport 25 years ago.

Wycliffe appeared with his Mercedes sedan, silver color. Not bad. Wycliffe is a CPA and married to Diana, a Ugandan who is also a CPA.We drove for over an hour to arrive at our hotel, the Cassia Lodge. The hotel has about 20 rooms built like a motel but the site is absolutely stunning. At about 1000 meters above the level of Lake Victoria, the view from our balcony is spectacular as we look down on Murchison Bay. One can see rolling hills 50 or 80 miles away in the clear sunlight day. Murchison Bay is where part of the movie The African Queen was shot.

That evening all 3 kids showed up at the hotel. Wycliffe 35, Chris 32 and Fiona 29. We had drinks on the patio and then sat in the dining room and had a leisurely meal catching up on what each kid had been doing. I had not seen them in 10 years. All 3 have small kids so the next generation is well underway. Wycliffe is the head of internal audit at a large research facility in Kampala. Chris had just returned from a year abroad in Qatar as a security guard. He is now building up a sand supply business around Kampala. Fiona has her own shop in Kampala supplying dress making material. 

They obviously do not get together very often so they were able to do their own catching up. It was nice to see that they all were getting on with their lives. Monique and I had to struggle at times as these East Africans have a strong accent when speaking English and one needs to tune one's ear to get their conversation. After lots of talking and chatting, the kids left for the evening.

Patio of Cassia Lodge

Fiona

Monique and Wycliffe.

Chistopher and Fiona.

Christopher

The hotel garden from our room.

Murchison Bay from our room.

The next morning Chris and Fiona showed up at the hotel in the car of Fiona's husband who is a pharmacist. Fiona was still suffering from some fever which happens so often to Africans, particularly in the rainy season. Here in Kampala, it seems to rain each morning but on both days we have been here, by 10 or 11 am the skies cleared and the sun came out. Of course, when it rains here, it pours deluges of water making roads impassable and even worse making them like ice patches as most are out of clay. The roads are literally terrible. What used to be tarred roads are now just a patchwork of ever greater potholes which are sometimes a foot deep. The result is that traffic crawls with cars weaving from left to right to try and avoid the larger holes. One could expect that with 50 and 60% unemployment there would be crews patching holes but that is not the case. They cannot even get themselves organized to have scrappers or bulldozers to even out huge bumps and holes in the unpaved roads. To add to the mayhem, there are about 10 times as many motorcycles as cars so one is constantly being passed, cutoff or followed by an endless stream of maniacs on bikes weaving in and out of cars and around the patchwork of holes, bumps and huge depressions in what passe for roads.

The only saving grace is that no one trusts the other driver to do the right thing and no one can speed under these conditions. As a result, traffic crawls but one rarely sees any accidents or even fender-benders. There are occasional traffic lights hanging from poles, but, of course, they do not work. But even if they do work, they are totally ignored and traffic just weaves into a slow stream with each side gliding ahead of the other. The pace of traffic means that to go 3 km, or a couple of miles, one needs an hour, or 2 or 3... To add to the confusion, Ugandans love the sound of their car horns so that there is a steady cacophony of horns going on all the time, and, of course, being totally ignored by everybody. Then there are corners or roundabouts where the confusion is even greater because some police person thinks it his or her duty to screw traffic up even more by waving wildly and being, for the most part, also ignored.

I had wanted to show Monique the beginning of the Nile river which is where Lake Victoria feeds into a narrow outlet which marks the start of the long trek of the Nile to the Mediterranean. This happens at Jinga which is some 90 km (55 miles) from our hotel. Even Google maps estimates that it takes 2.5 hours to get there which implies a very high average speed of about 20 miles per hour... An hour into the drive to Jinja, we had not even cleared the city of Kampala and were stuck in traffic which was only inching along. This would have meant that we would be on the road for at least 3 hours and then have to turn around and come back. I decided that we would not go to Jinja but instead visit the African Village artisan shops in downtown Kampala.

I was aghast to go by the Sheraton and Speke Hotels where I had stayed on previous visits, 25 years earlier only to find that the roads had not changed in those many years. What had changed was that the car and motorbike population had greatly increased and traffic was even worse. We finally made it to the village and spent an hour ambling from shop to shop looking for small souvenirs which would fit in our already rather full trunks. There were no other tourists in the place which had about 50 little shops so we were able to get a nice collection of small things with the usual bargaining, which is part of the fun of such places. We then headed back to the hotel which is on the southern side of the city. Fiona was feeling ill, so Chris took over the driving and we were back in the peace and quiet of our Cassia Lodge by 1 pm. This gave us the afternoon to read and write. I went for a nice swim in the hotel pool looking down on Lake Victoria. 

Lake Victoria is the second largest lake in the world after Lake Superior in North America. It is about 200 miles long from North to south and up to 160 miles wide and is shared by Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. It has some 3500 km of shoreline around the lake. 85% of the lake water is supplied by rainfall making the lake level highly sensitive to annual rain falling in the area. If fact, I was told that the lake is actually getting smaller each year due to evaporation as the lake is not very deep. The lake did actually dry up completely some 17,000 years ago. If that were to happen again, it would be a disaster for the three countries surrounding it but it would be fatal for Egypt which depends on the lake to keep the Nile flowing through the length of the country. There are some 3000 islands which are inhabited around the lake. Most of the local communities live off fishing on the lake.

The lake's ecosystem was in good shape due to existence of a type of fish called Haplochromis or Haps. This type of fish fed on all sorts of rotting material which fed the water and the fish.  In 1954, the silly people of the the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) decided they would improve the nutrition of the 1000's of people living off the lake. They introduced two new types of fish, Nile Perch and Nile Tilapia. These fish had no predators and started feeding on the local fish,  including the Haps. They proceeded to wipe out the Haps and grew to such large sizes that the local fishermen did not have the nets needed to land them. An ecological disaster continued until finally these Nile fish started to die off 10 years later. 

But by that time, the delicate balance of the lake was upset and the lake started to have bad oxygen levels resulting in masses of algae and spreading water hyacinths. Today, the lake is still in bad shape but apparently some species of the Haps may be coming back and there is hope the lake will revive.

Below are pictures of Kampala and the 2 of us in the artisan village of Kampala which is worth a stop.

Streets of Kampala

Monique and I in the artisan market

Man doing his bathing in city drain.

In the evening, Wycliffe came to the hotel to pick us up for a dinner at his house. It is a house we help finance 15 years ago and now serves as the family house of Wycliffe, his wife Dianna and their 2 boys Thomas and Elijia. Chris, the brother and his wife were there with their daughter Channel as well as the sister Fiona with her husband and 2 kids. They had the dinner catered and it was quite a spread including a huge cake with the inscription :"Monique and Alex, Africa tour 2018".

It was really an African dinner and it was wonderful to be in the middle of this group. The little kids were amazingly quiet during the whole meal. They certainly were not creating a huge amount of noise. We were told it was because we were new in the house and that they could be very noisy under normal conditions. We had time to catch up with each one and I must admit I was quite proud how they all turned out. Conversations were sometimes difficult due to the heavy accents of these East Africans, but things went smoothly during the whole evening. We left at around 10 pm and Wycliffe brought us back to our hotel in his wife's Range Rover. The roads were terrible so our dinner was well shaken by the time we got back to the hotel.

A big thank you to Dianna and Wycliffe for organizing the dinner and to Chris and Fiona for being there with us. We were honoured.

Fiona, Diana, Chris's wife, Chris, Wycliffe

Wycliffe. Fiona,  me, Diana, Chris with his wife and daughter.

Monique and Alex  with our African children and grandchildren.

Fiona and husband, Diana, Chris's wife and daughter, Chris and Wycliffe.

Diana's SUV.

We are off this afternoon back to Addis to connect to the Paris flight for an early arrival in Paris tomorrow. We will overnight at a hotel on the airport in Paris and head back to Florida on Saturday.

Chapter 7: A couple of days in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

In the afternoon of our first day in Addis, we left our hotel on foot to visit the newest and biggest Ethiopian Orthodox Church of St Mary which was only a 10 minute walk from our hotel. 45% of the population o Ethiopia belong to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church which is related to the Coptic Church found in Egypt. The weather was cloudy and cool but it was fun to walk among the local population mostly just ambling along on a Sunday afternoon.

When got to the Church which is huge with 3 blue towers, we entered the main gate and walked up to the main door. The door was locked so we could not visit the inside. At that moment, a group of 25 men and women all dressed in rather strange religious garb started walking towards us. I was not sure what was going on but they passed and stopped a few yards ahead and started to take pictures of themselves in groups. One them beckoned me over as they wanted me to join the picture. So there I was, surrounded by the smiling group of mostly young men having my picture taken. I called Monique over and then they all went wild. The group doubled in size as all the girls and men wanted to be in the picture with her. You can see the results below. We found out later that they were members of the church choir.




I had agreed with the tour guide Abex, whom I had met in airport on arrival that he would be our guide to-day to show us some of the sights of Addis. At 9 AM we set off in his little car to visit the other church of St Mary which is on the top of Mount Entoto. It was about a 35 minute drive from the hotel but it gave us time to get a feel of this city of some 5 million inhabitants. The roads are really impressive with large boulevards cutting through the city. The city even has an elevated light rail system which covers the city east to west. Traffic lights were modern with timers showing the time to the next red or green light in huge numerals. Most the these facilities had been recently built by the Chinese. Traffic flowed for the most part. 

The other amazing feature of this city is the number of unfinished high rise buildings. All throughout the city these great hulks stand awaiting the owners being able to raise the funds needed to complete the job. It is a modern and clean city and one can sense that it has prospered in the last years. In fact, this country has grown at a 10% annual rate which is one of the fastest rates in the world.

We headed up to the top of the Entoto mountain which towers 3,200 meters (about 10,000 feet) above sea level looking down into Addis which is 1000 meters below. It is a good drive with wide road winding its way up to the top. At the top, there is another St Mary's church built by King Menelik,one of the country's early kings. That king actually lived up there until he built himself a castle lower down the hill. The mountain is planted with Eucalyptus trees imported from Australia by Emperor Haile Selassie. These tree supply the city with firewood for charcoal as well as building material. On the way up, we saw women carrying huge loads of wood on their backs heading down hill to sell the wood. You can see a picture below.

Woman carrying Eucalyptus wood to market.

View of Addis Ababa from Mount Ontoto

Original church of St Mary.

Monique and Abex, our Ethiopian  guide.

Eucalyptus forest above Addis.

The church was again closed so we could not visit it. We headed down the hill to arrive at Chiromeda,the second largest market in Addis. This is actually made up of hundreds of stalls along the road mainly selling traditional Ethiopian cloth. It is actively visited in this period by local women who need to stock up on new dresses and cloth after completing the local lent period. We did not want any cloth so we paid a short visit to pick up a few trinkets.

We then spent an hour visiting the Museum of the Ethnicity of which there are some 80 in Ethiopia. It is a great museum where one could spend days learning about all the various tribes and their traditions. It is on the campus of the University of Addis which in itself is worth a visit.

We lunched at the Lucy Restaurant outside the national museum which houses the skeleton of Lucy. The skeleton was found in 1974 and studies have dated her back over 3 million years.

After a nice lunch, we headed to the Trinity Cathedral which was open and we were able to enter. There was a funeral of some important person going on at the church entrance. We were told tht funerals are not done inside their churches. Inside, there was an old priest standing in front of the altar and he agreed to have his picture taken with us. We then toured this huge church which has a wonderful collection of stained glass windows. The tombs of the last Emperor and his wife are also in this church. There is a picture of Monique and me standing in front of the tombs. A bit morbid, but in keeping with Monique's interest in cemeteries...

We are standing in front of the tombs of the last emperor and his wife.

Note the beautiful stained glass window of the cathedral.

Monique and Abex with a member of the choir.

We are talking to an old monk and Abex is taking the selfie.

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We will be leaving this country to-morrow. It is a shame we did not have more time to visit this beautiful country. It is hard to believe that this is still Africa as it has such a rich and documented history with traditions going back centuries. As it was never a colony except for some 10 years of Italian occupation, the historical background of Ethiopia has been preserved despite the years in the 1970's and 80's when the country was ruled by a communist despot. The people are friendly and hospitable. I would want to come back one day. Our tour guide, Abex was a great guide and we learned a lot from him.

Chapter 6: Our last few days in Madagascar

Our last few days in Madagascar were fun as we had a relaxed schedule.

We went to the airport in Nossy Be 2 hours before our scheduled departure time for Tana as required by the airline only to find that the flight had not even left Tana. The airport is a rundown building built many moons ago. We checked in but did not go through security as the waiting room inside was a hot place. So we sat down on a small wall outside the building along with many other passengers waiting the departure. At one point, I noticed we were sitting outside the VIP lounge and that the door was open. So I went in and found an air-conditioned room and a very nice bathroom, which is always a luxury in such countries. We used the facilities and I sat down in one of the comfortable sofas. Monique preferred to stay outside as she really hates air conditioning. Shortly before the departure, we went through security.

We boarded our flight and arrived in Tana about an hour late. It was a good experience as usually flying Air Madagascar because not only did we arrive on the same day as scheduled but our two bags appeared intact on the belt. The airline has a horrible reputation as being overpriced and inefficient which is well deserved but they did us well, so we were happy. Henri Rabarijohn was waiting for us which was a relief as to reach his house requires more than just a GPS.

His house is located only 15 minutes from the airport which was a godsend for us as it can take more than 2 hours from most places in Tana to the airport. His house is located in the Talatamaty area on the edge of a large rice paddy. In fact, he built his house and another rental house while he was working with me on our Africa project for entrepreneurs. The land was owned by his parents and he grew up there in the family house which is next door to his house. I will add some pictures of his beautiful house.  When he built the houses there were no other houses around. Now, to get to his house one needs to go through about a mile of road through a couple of villages and many other houses. The road is potholed, narrow and hardly fits two cars and it means working one's way around pedestrians, push carts, dogs, trucks and other cars. In Madagascar, many people use charcoal to cook their food. 

We arrived at home and it was great to get back to our apartment. That evening at dinner with Corinne, we planned our activity of the next day. An early night was needed as it had been a long day.

The next morning, we headed out with Corinne with her driver to visit the large artisinal market on the dyke where we wanted to acquire a few things. The roads are full of pull carts carrying goods. These carts are moved by one or two men, many who are barefoot.  They are carrying anything from bricks to sand and other goods. It is an indication of the poverty of this country where men are used to move carts and many of these men cannot even afford to by flip-flops for their feet. 

Monique had seen some aquamarine stones and indicated that she would really like to get some jewelry with her birthday stone which is found locally. We got to the market and Corinne and Monique headed in one direction and I headed to a shop selling stones. I found one with some good looking aquamarine stones. I really did not know what to be looking for but I went into negotiations starting with 3 stones he wanted to sell me for lots of money.  I found that this is a really expensive stone. I chose 1 stone and spent some time negotiating  the price to about 1/3 of what he wanted which was more than I had expected. I really took a chance but I went with my gut trusting the seller. I then went and bought 2 nice wood carvings in Palisander and rosewood which will look great back home. They both weigh as much as lead so I am crossing my fingers that we get them home without having to pay overweight. 

Monique added to her collection of salt and pepper holders of which I think she now has 8 or 10 as they are attractive. I imagine some of my readers will be given these as souvenirs when we get home.

We then went on into town to have lunch at the Paladios restaurant which Henri and Corinne had recently bought. It is a nice restaurant in a central downtown shopping center. It seats some 100 persons of which 50 seats are on a glass enclosed patio. They were lucky to find a partner who has lots of restaurant experience and who manages the restaurant. So far, the restaurant is doing well. We also met a Malgache lady who had migrated to Quebec many years before to become a Public accountant and who had recently returned to Tana with her husband. Henri has been charged by a large local bank, BNI, to set up a facility to assist local entrepreneurs and this lady will be working with him. I wish them success and I was proud to see that Henri was putting into practice much of the experience he had gathered while he and I worked together many years ago.

The final day in Tana was spent on our own. Corinne and Henri had previous engagements so they gave us her driver and SUV for the day. Monique and I wanted to make a last run at the artisan  village and I wanted to find a jeweler who would mount the aquamarine stone I had bought for Monique. We were sent by Henri to his jeweler call Palo. It is located next door to the Colbert Hotel in the upper old city of Tana. We got to the store just 15 minutes before the store would close for lunch. 

 Now came the test of the stone I had bought the day before. I was nervous. The jeweler put the stone inside some sort of electronic magnifying machine and peered in. He looked up and said it was a beautiful stone. Wow! Monique asked how much such a stone would cost and the man made my day! He quoted a price 5 or 6 times what I had paid... We then asked whether he could put a gold mounting on the stone within the next 2 and half hours. He said: No problem. We agreed on a price which was 3 times what I paid for the stone! It is like buying paintings and then pay 5 times as much to have them framed.

Monique and I headed back to the Hotel Colbert for lunch at the Fougere restaurant. The hotel goes back to colonial times and remains the signature place in the old town. I stayed at the hotel 25 years ago on one of my visits. The Fougere restaurant is an island of peace and quiet within the chaos of Tana. The streets of Tana are narrow and are the same as 50 years, or even 100 years ago so that traffic just crawls all day. We had an enjoyable lunch catching up on our emails and news of the world. While awaiting for the jewelry store to reopen, we were approached on the street by a stone seller carrying a backpack of stones. I asked whether he had any aquamarine and he said yes. We went around the corner with him and I negotiated for 2 smaller stones which I will have mounted as earrings at one point. Monique had chosen them as they match the color of our original stone. Given my great experience in the field, I got the stones for a good price. 

At one point this guy said he had to bring his wife to our spot on some steps. He asked we keep an eye on his backpack. He was gone for over 5 minutes and we were amazed that he would trust us with his whole collection of precious stones of which there were well over 1000 stones. Trust does strange things.

At 2.30, we picked up Monique's now mounted stone. It has a very nice gold mounting which brings out the brilliance of the stone. We then headed back home which took over an hour as once again traffic was bumper to bumper mainly due to some government official cars with sirens blocking traffic as happens too often in such countries. That evening we went back into town for a final dinner with Henri and Corrine at the oldest restaurant in Tana called, La Varangue. Good food and environment but service was terrible.

The next morning, Henri and I jumped into to his 1955 Citroen sedan to go to a local duck liver pate factory to get a can of this delicious food which I will bring home. Henri had rebuilt this old car and drives it only occasionally with pride. We got a lot of waves and smiles as we drove through local villages. 

At noon, we headed to the airport in his big Toyota to catch our flight to Addis. We were met by Henri's agent who ushered us through the formalities which are slow as there are only 2 security machines to process passengers. Our Ethiopian flight left on time for the 4 hour flight. We again had our front row seats with lots of leg room which was nice except we had some screaming kid across the aisle. Amazing that a kid can scream for several hours.

On arriving in Addis, we headed to the immigration line and found that we were the only ones there as everybody else on our flight of 250 persons were  transiting to other destinations. I had never seen such a quiet airport at 7 pm when we arrived. It is an indication of the success of Ethiopian Airlines which now serves some 55 cities in Africa and an other 40 international destinations. They use the most modern equipment, flying 777 s
and 787 s.

While awaiting our bus to our Harmony Hotel, we were taken care of by a young Ethiopian called Abex who offered to be our guide tomorrow. For today we are taking it easy as it is rainy. We will visit a close-by Coptic church and head to the Sherameta market this afternoon.Cheers.

Henri pouring a good wine.

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Corinne and the house man DIDI.

Flowers in the main garden

Lunch on the bottom patio.

The back garden.

A rice paddy after harvest,

The gray parrots from west Africa.

Monique in Henri's 1955 Citroyen, rebuilt

View of the main house and rice paddy from our apartment,

Dinner on our last evening with Henri, Corinne and their daughter.

Looking down on the supreme court from the Colbert Hotel.

The long distance bus depot.

The Tana main rail station but no trains anymore.

Carts being pulled along by men.

The ladies chatting in the kitchen.

Harvested rice paddies drying up.

The lovely palisander wood floors.

Typical city street.

Local development using traditional Malgache architecture. 

The main living room of the Rabarijohn home.

School children in uniform returning home.