Day 3 Fri 16th

Today consisted of chicken cooked in banana leaves, a motorcycle race through the streets of Kampala, a bit more computer repairs, Simeon's first throating of a chicken, some hard neck haggling, refrigerator resurrection and a guided tour around the new Red Chilli by the manager.

Our first job of the day was to fix the computer......zzzzzzz I know. This is a long job. Benedicta bought this PC 3 months ago. It is actually about 8 years old. It has a hard drive of 20Gb. Barely big enough to carry the operating system. You think you have a slow computer? this is a hybernating tortoise. Simeon was gifted a chicken for our lunch and it was his privilege to be able to throat it for us. Lucky boy. He went off to buy charcoal and returned 1 hour later with 1 black bag of charcoal. The usual story of lost keys, someone to the city for a meeting, not enough charcoal in the shop etc etc etc. We ate the chicken for lunch after Victoria - she has a day off from school after yesterday's end of year exams - had cooked it in banana leaves for us. Sim and I jumped on the back of two boda boda's (motor cycle taxi's) and dodged the world famous afternoon traffic jam on the Kampala Road to buy some computer bits. This was more exciting than usual as the Ugandan rally hit the streets of Kampala in our traffic jam. when we found a good computer store we asked for best price and were quoted 340 shillings. I love to haggle so in a swish, air conditioned technology shop we managed to haggle our quoted best price down to 230 shillings. A very very satisfying result. It felt very good. 

Benedicta's fridge is a challenge to me. We all take it for granted in the UK that we open the door and take out the milk apply to the tea cup and replace. It is just there. It just works. Bennie's experience is quite different. She is used to lifting the door from the fridge placing it on the floor etc. that is if the fridge is working. The Ugandan climate is such that it is like a hot British summers day every day of the year. That is 28 degrees every day. Benedicta's fridge hasn't worked for 1 year because she can't afford to fix it. We organised for the refrigeration engineer to come fix it. He arrived not in a white van but in a red Toyota MR2. He was covered in bling and with a mate sporting a trilby with gold sparkly stuff all over it. It reminded me of a kiss me quick hat for a 10 year old, quite bizarre but Benedicta has cold water for the first time in a year. So worth it. 

Finally we visited the new red chilli which becomes active in September. I look forward to staying there next year it looks like a fabulous development. 

A great day with much accomplished. Roll on tomorrow.