Inception

There is lots going on right now... as usual, especially when you haven't been writing in a while! I started my new job, only week two! Every day I am more sure that it was the right choice and I think God had a plan for us to stay in London a bit longer term!

We have been having great weather since I don’t remember how long ago… probably since around the London Marathon, and that was last Sunday 17th April, so that is almost one week ago! We have had the high pressure in Europe and have been stealing the sun from Spain, where they have had to cancel multiple typical processions of the Holy Week, among them probably the most famous one, la ‘madruga’ from Sevilla, this is what my brother was telling me as thinking about it I haven’t been quite paying lots of attention to the news.

Well, the news, they are just dominated with everything Royal Wedding here in UK at the moment… I am not saying that with any bitterness though, I am myself an avid consumer of all things ‘Hello’ so the prospect of a Royal Wedding in the UK Royals is a major major event.

So, talking about the weather, today started with beautiful weather, like every day this week, around 25 Celsius. I was off to take my son to Stansted as my brother was picking him up to take him to Spain to spend the Easter holiday, the nursery is closing, so this is a creative way of dealing with it!

We got talking, about the great things that my son has been doing lately, he was just 2 years old beginning of April, and he is really cute now, very strong personality, full of life and energy! It is always bittersweet when he is not around… like other parents, there is a strange mix of looking forward to having some time to sleep a bit longer, or to simply catch up on that book that has been on your table next to the bed for too long, but when they are not around, after having a coffee and a satisfying one hour to yourself, you start missing them and realise that you are kind of bored!

We were also talking about a family friend, who has not been feeling well lately… she has cancer, and we fear that she could be approaching the end. My brother was remembering her partner’s sister in law, who passed away around a couple of years ago, she fought cancer once but came back and took her away. He was remembering how she used to talk about her son, who was probably around 6 at the time, she was telling how she felt so sad about the fact that her son would not remember much of her… I only met her briefly myself, right after the first time she had cancer, I think about her and her son many times… I can totally empathise with what she was describing, it is not selfish at all, what she is talking about is the essence of life, about having your children and living enough, not to hold on to them, but to see them grow and become happy people, and helping them along the way.

On the way back from the airport I was thinking a lot about this while I was listening to the soundtrack of ‘Inception’, the movie of the last summer. It’s so hard… so many people don’t even feel alive; always looking for answers; always looking for the next best thing. For others feeling alive is just literally about the physicality of the word.

I was thinking inception is one of those words that for us who speak native Spanish is a bit of an obscure word… and when I say that what I mean is that you can recognise immediately that it comes from Latin, but we don’t have any word in Spanish like it really as a noun, perhaps only in adjective form, ‘incipiente’, but yes, we know is about the origin of something, is at the beginning. It’s a great soundtrack, I have grown more and more keen to listen attentively to soundtracks and this is certainly one of the best from last year.

Beginnings and ends. On the way home the beautiful sun started disappearing and I could see some lightening in the horizon. The closer I got to London the more it was raining. Certainly a mixed day, from sun to rain, much like many other days in UK, where we say that you could almost have the 4 seasons on the same day.

I came home and checked the view from my balcony. We are leaving this flat soon, it’s a bit too hot and definitely too small, but I will surely miss the view, from Canary Wharf to the North all the way to Greenwich on the South East, the gorgeous Millwall inner and outer docks, with the pretty houses at the bottom of the Isle of Dogs. We are only moving to another flat in the same building, but the view won’t be the same. Often, as in live, the view will just be different, some things will feel like new beginnings, some things will still feel comfortably familiar, like a hug from that person you love, even when they are not here any more, it will still stay with you forever. Bittersweet.

Restoring our human spirit

Today the news are talking about the consequences of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and the fears around a potential nuclear disaster in the region, about fighting in Libya between Government and rebels, the UK Foreign Office advising British nationals to leave Bahrain now after the state of alert was established yesterday, one of the biggest paedophile networks having been uncovered in the UK, an woman from Tanzania being obliged to live as a slave in UK for 4 years after a woman from UK promised to pay her 21 pounds per week but then didn’t allow her to leave the house and obliged to sleep on the floor of the kitchen…

With days like this it is hard to find anything that can keep us thinking about anything positive… It is definitely a hard time, hard for so many who have family, friends, affected in any of those situations, people who know others who are affected… we cannot avoid finding ourselves wondering what’s the point of all this… is God trying to tell us something, especially with all the natural disasters?

Among all these sad news at least a couple of things have been positive in the last days. On one side, news from the London Olympics camp, we are now around 500 days away from 2012 Olympics and tickets sales have just been launched yesterday. Another anecdote regarding Olympics related news, I read in the Financial Times that some hotels have already increased their prices almost 300%!

The other positive piece of news is about the Cutty Sark, which was burnt almost completely and was pretty devastated 4 years ago. Prince Philip was visiting the restoration works today in situ at Greenwich, you can check the short report through the link http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-12756046.

So among all this natural disasters, fighting among people, people being mean and abusive towards children, towards other people… I almost feel that the story about the Cutty Sark provides a metaphor and some hope that, although some things may become really devastated, our hopes should not be. Like the Cutty Sark, which has lived more than 4 times what its builders had expected, which has survived storms, corrosion, fire and is now just being restored and transformed so we can still enjoy it and cherish it… something tells me that although it will indeed take time to restore our faith in others, our faith in nature, time after time human beings have demonstrated that we are extremely resilient. It’s still time to deal with the magnitude of the disaster, but once we have done that, we will be ready to restore our human spirit.

Walking around Parliament Avenue

I wanted to be able to show you a bit more about Kampala... and how Kampala looks like and feels! So in the first of these, I am showing you some photos of when I took a walk around Parliament Avenue... I was doing some errands in town and I made the most to take some photos of the Uganda Parliament building and a couple of other things.

Let me introduce a couple of facts about the city and the Parliament.

Kampala's population is around 1.5 million according to my book (my source is the Lonely Planet guide to East Africa, edition of June 2009). Like Rome, Kampala is known as the city of the seven hills, although it has since engulfed many more, and that rolling topography is where the comparison starts and ends!



Apparently, according to the same book still, the Parliament House is open to visitors (I didn't check it that time). If you want to see the government in action you need to make a written request to the public relations department which should decide by the next business day if you are worthy of acceptance.



And on this note a bit of history regarding Uganda's independence: 'Unlike Kenya, and to a lesser extent Tanzania, Uganda never experienced a large influx of European colonisers and the associated expropriation of land. Instead, farmers were encouraged to grow cash crops for export through their own cooperative groups. Consequently, Ugandan nationalist organisations sprouted much later than those in neighbouring countries, and when they did, it happened along tribal lines. So exclusive were some of these, that when Ugandan independence was discussed, the Baganda people considered secession.

By the mid 1950s, however, a Lango school tracher, Dr Milton Obote, managed to put together a loose coalition headed by the Uganda People's Congress (UPC) which lead Uganda to independence in 1962 on the promise that the Buganda kingdom would have autonomy. The kabaka (king), Edward Mutesa II, became the President of the new nation and Milton Obote became Uganda's first Prime Minister.

And from that moment, the story goes like this: it soon became obvious that Obote was not keen to share power. In 1966 he moved arresting several cabinet ministers and ordering his army chief of staff, Idi Amin, to storm the kabaka's palace, who exiled to London. Following the coup, Obote self-proclaimed himself President and the Buganda monarchy was abolished along with other kingdoms.

Idi Amin's star was on the rise, and he eventually ended up staging a coup himself in January 1971. But we will leave that story for another time.

By the way, check this out, I loved to find this, I couldn't believe that there was a Parliament Souvenir Shop! Interesting...

And coming back to the present, on the other side of Parliament Avenue you can find one of the nicest cafes in town: Cafe Pap, there is one cafe here and another one in Garden City Shopping Mall, but this one is the original. According to my book 'this stylish cafe may be the place to meet some movers and shakers. The house coffee comes from the slopes of Mount Elgon, and many will tell you it is the best in town. There is also a full menu with breakfasts, sandwiches, salads, fajitas and pastas'.



I have to agree on the point around the coffee... It is one of the best in town, in fact, there is only 3 places where, if you are a coffee lover, you will like the coffee in Kampala: Cafe Pap, Cafe Javas and Serena Hotel... humm, not too much point to try it outside these places.

As many tourists these days, I had seen before the Cafe Pap in Garden City than this one, so it was nice to see this one as it is definitely picturesque, and it is definitely one of the places to meet people (leisure and business) in town.

And the vuvuzelas stopped too early

This is such a bittersweet moment for all the Spanish living in Kampala. On one side, we are celebrating that Spain has won its first World Cup, which is a dream come true; on the other side, we are saddened after the bombs that exploded in two bars in the capital, targeting innocent people who were watching football.

It's difficult to explain how one feels about this, because this is as much about the facts as it is about the feelings. I remember when we were living in London and the tube bombings happened... I felt quite intimidated back then, mainly because you realise that you are vulnerable: all of a sudden somebody targets your usual public transport, what you use to go to work and back every day, and it is so hard to protect all those millions of people from crazy people. So you realise that you are vulnerable but ultimately you cannot avoid taking the tube every day, so you just come to the conclusion that only God knows when we are going to be called... after all, you could also be in a 'safer' environment and be involved in a freak accident...

This time round I have felt more sadness and a bit angry probably. I feel sad because Kampala is such a safe environment... Ugandans have worked really hard at stopping lots of the issues that they had back in the 1980s, when people feared leaving the house after 2pm and crime and danger where an everyday problem.

Kampalas enjoy the social live, and the safe environment has been so conducive to supporting this, people enjoy meeting in places like the rugby club and enjoying the World Cup final together, with a quiet drink, and I think why not, why shouldn't they. During each game we have heard the vuvuzelas out there, and the party going on until late into the night...

I feel angry because they were innocent people, lots of them suppoting my country in a highly expected final... While millions of Spanish celebrate (and we should), in Uganda, and in other countries, more than 70 families are mourning the death of their loved ones.

I didn't feel vulnerable this time round. Although I have read comments in a couple of places on internet suggesting that the places were usual 'expats hunts', I think that those places were very popular with the locals, I was discussing this with another friend here (Colombian) and she was saying the same. In fact, so far we have only heard about 1 foreigner (US citizen) among the dead. I have seen the list of dead and of the admitted to hospital in yesterday's newspaper and all the names are local except for 6 US citizens admitted to hospital. I think those places unfortunately were targeted because they were just popular... I think that probably only the rugby club must have had easily over a 100 or more people watching the game, they wanted to hit as many people as possible, not particularly locals or foreigners.

Apparently we know now that Al-Shabaab has claimed the bombs, further to previous threats to Uganda and Burundi following Uganda sending peacekeeping forces to Somalia. Today I was watching CNN Back Story, they were talking about Nate, the US citizen who has died; he was a fulltime volunteer for 'Invisible Children', who had moved to Uganda quite recently. As the representative of 'Invisible Children' was explaining to CNN, it is quite ironic that a person who was working to end children being victims of war (and LRA terrorism), has himself been taken by terrorism.

It is almost metaphoric or even paradoxic, how Nate's death has made his organisation and the children's cause more visible... so often suffering is invisible to all of us, may this help us see the suffering around us and help us bring hope where there is despair, and courage where there is fear.

The vuvuzelas stopped too early on Sunday... let's keep them playing to show that we are not intimidated, not fearful, not invisible.

And the octopus was right!

We had been making so much fun about the German octopus guessing that Spain would win the semi-final... it is incredible, apparently he is on 100% right guessing... bookies' dream!

I am so excited that Spain will be going to the final. Surprisingly I was by far less nervous that I had imagined watching the game last night. I thought that Germany would be even more dangerous, and although you could feel the intensity of the game, I felt that Spain was calm and collected, and that they were in control. So I was not scared, we were playing very well, it was a matter of scoring to make sure that the game was not going in the wrong direction.

So now on to the next step, the final. I will be hosting a small Spanish party to celebrate the landing of Spain in the World Cup final, with some tapas and sangria. It is interesting how nobody knows about the concept of tapas around here, or not much about Spanish cuisine for that matter! So I am sure it will all sound very exotic to them.

We are also hosting my husband's boos and wife, and another colleague of my husband and wife for dinner tomorrow. They also don't know much about Spanish cuisine, so I hope they like it! Entertaining in Kampala is a whole challenge, not only because of putting everything together for the actual dinner, but also because as I have mentioned before in my blogs, it does take a while to get all the ingredients together, and one always needs to have some options, just in case any of the ingredients is out of stock!

The very first time I entertained at home, I remember asking my guests if there was anything that they would not eat/are allergic to, just to take it into account. One of the Ugandans responded that they eat everything except monkey's brains. Wow, I was shocked... is there anybody who eats that?! Of course, the response is yes, although I think it is one of those traditional but nowadays illegal things around here and some countries in West Africa. I was a bit shaken at imagining myself preparing some monkey's brain... I wouldn't even know where to get it in the first place. And it was not a joke, my guest was very serious in case you are wondering.

Anyway, so I managed to sail through that... I prepared pannacotta for dessert that day... and I had to change the recipe completely because the texture of the cream here is just different... the normal cream is extremely liquid, and the double cream is as thick as a stone almost... the gelatine was also interesting... And later on when baking cakes, the main problem is that the flour here is not very strong and it just doesn't raise... It is all new for me in this field, but after some trial and error I have managed to produce (I hope) good quality food.

Anyway, it will all be easy on Sunday as I prepare some crowd pleasers like Spanish omelette, every African I have cooked Spanish omelette for just loved it, and they all find it funny that my version of Spanish omelette (egg, potato and onion) is not similar at all to what you get around here in restaurants, which tends to include most times egg, tomato, peppers, onion... but no trace of potato.

It all boils down to the fact that we are not many Spanish in Kampala (or Uganda)! We are around 35 in the whole country, with around 15 of them only in Kampala. I must say this is the first time that I live in a country where Spaniards are under 50 ;)

In any case, wherever we are, I know all Spanish around the world will be together in one place on Sunday: our eyes will be on the World Cup Final in Johannesburg: Spain vs Netherlands! VIVA ESPANYA!!!

Change is in the air

Wow, Brazil and Argentina are out of the World Cup. These are the two teams that I was reckoning would make it to the final! Everybody is in shock about this World Cup... it has been really exceptional with some of the traditionally big teams going out (read the France and Englands of this world...). Spain managed to scratch a goal in a heartbreaking game on Saturday, hey at least it is good to go ahead, not everybody goes ahead playing their best always, so we shouldn't be criticised for doing it once in a while.

I was reading that there are is no clear favourite for the game Spain vs Germany. Well, Germany did go ahead playing their very best... 4-0 against Argentina can only be read as the very best I think.

We watched the Paraguay vs Spain game at a friend's place, it was his goodbye party. Just before leaving for the World Cup in mid June we had heard that a couple of people were thinking of leaving Uganda... but it has been quite shocking to come back and realise that things had developed so quickly and they were moving out NOW! One of our friends, a lovely woman entrepreneur is returning to Nairobi after years living in US and then 2 years in Kampala; another friend, senior person at a local Bank is leaving Kampala after around 6 years to go back to Kenya too... and our friend, the host of Saturday's party, is leaving Kampala after 2 years too to go to a new position with his company in Indonesia.

Just before going to the World Cup a couple of my Latino ladies friends also left... One, Argentinian, moving from here to Vietnam, the other one, Mexican, leaving Kampala after 3 years to go back to Denmark.

Well, I suppose it is what happens when lots of your friends are from outside Uganda, although this was never so acute in London because thinking about it lots of our friends were international but their span of time in London was longer.

Somebody told me that it is a good time of the year to move out of Uganda, as the tax/legal year ends now so companies do a lot of restructuring now. For others their children finish school around now so it is also a good time to leave and enrol in the new country.

Even our citizenship is changing. We met one of our friends in South Africa, a Kenyan who is currently based in Dubai. He was telling us about his son being asked in Dubai by other kids where he is from; the dad paid attention as he was curious about what the son was going to say... the dad is Kenyan, the mum half Ugandan/half British; the kid was born in London and the family have lived in London since the kid was born until they moved a year ago to Dubai. The kid said to the other kids that he is from London. The dad couldn't avoid realising that, actually, on reflection, he has now himself spend more time of his live outside Kenya than in Kenya... It's interesting, less and less we feel attached to one place and we are just more global citizens.

And talking about global entrepreneurs... This morning as I was leaving Garden City shopping mall after my grocery shopping I saw one of these adventure-like trucks I see around Kampala from time to time. We don't see so many tourists around Kampala, only these trucks which tend to start the trip in a country like say Kenya/Tanzania and take the tourists from country to country around East Africa and then going South towards Zimbabwe or SA most likely. What was interesting about this one is that the name was RatPanat! I knew this must be a Spanish company, and alas it is! I have checked http://www.ratpanat.com, it is exciting to see Spanish companies operating in Africa.

Even the weather has changed since we are back from South Africa... it is a bit 'fresher' (I can't say 'colder' really as it is not cold really). This morning I woke up very early and there was a quite cold breeze coming in through the window. It is definitely the 'coldest' that it has been here, although I am not complaining.

My brother sent me an email from Spain end of last week... his cat had just disappeared, but without time to mourn too much, his partner came back home with a new one...

As said, change is in the air!

Wold Cup: I can believe again!

Wow, that game Spain vs Portugal was very important for us in the World Cup. It was not only about going to the next stage, but it was also about giving us the confidence that we can indeed score, and even score a team which had not conceded a goal in the whole competition, even when they played the almighty Brazil.

A whole difference to the Spain we saw playing against Switzerland... I must say that first game of Spain was a bit concerning and made us wonder how are we going to continue to the later stages, but Spain has managed to improve with each game and the team we saw for Spain vs Chile and then against Portugal has made us reminisce the team that won the Eurocup two years ago.

We had the immense luck of seeing Spain vs Honduras live at the World Cup. We had been trying to get tickets to that game for months and they were always coming up as sold out. The same morning of the game a South African friend called us to let us know that they could get tickets... it was like a dream come true. This was my first Spain game (well, it was my first World Cup for that matter!) so my heart was coming out of my chest when we got to Ellis Park for that game. We also needed to win at all cost as we had lost the first game. Although we did win, there was still something that was not quite coming together... but after the Portugal game, I can believe again that we could possibly go far.

Ok, building up to the new stage...

I have been following the official World Cup blog for the Spanish team:

http://spain.worldcupblog.org/world-cup-2010/spain-vs-paraguay-quarterfinal-preview.html

Some quick summary for those who don't have time to read the article

'I hate to say this, although it comes up all the time in club football, but this is surely a case of a team “parking the bus” and looking to nick one through its excellent striker force.(...) Its hard to see Paraguay doing much with the ball when they have it, given their poor passing ability and tactical rigidity. They will probably be very defensive in their approach and hope to wear Spain’s patience down in a similar fashion to Switzerland. It has been encouraging that Spain has been able to break down some stubborn defenses in Chile and Portugal, both of which had not conceded before playing Spain. I cant foresee Paraguay offering much in this game, and as we know they are solid penalty takers, it seems they may try to draw the game out in order to wear down the Spanish and hope for penalties.'

Lovely, seems like the game could be quite similar to the Spain vs Switzerland, which we lost, but I think we learned something out of that...

Why are all these really boring defensive teams making it so far in the World Cup? Why do we have so many teams now playing this new 'pragmatic' football??

Interesting....