Lira daily life

More than a year and half ago I published largely unconnected snippets from my daily Kaabong life. Compared to those, the largely unconnected snippets from my daily Lira life are not so colourful - though they could be called more "urban sophisticated". To an African degree, of course.

On Fridays, assorted members of our small expat community meet for an after-work sundowner drink in The Clouds. The Clouds probably got its name because, towering on the top of a two-storey building, it's among the highest-rise places to be found in Lira. It's a rooftop. Literally. Just in case, prepared when the future construction growth comes. 

On a good day, they serve cold beer. On other days, beer. Independently of that, it's a good place to finish a week.

We're still in the dry season, which means very hot and very dusty all the time, and the rare rain comes as a very welcome relief (remind me of this in the middle of rainy season when we'll be swimming in mud instead of the dust) - more so if in the middle of the heat you have ice cubes falling from the sky. This is how it started...

... and within minutes my yard was covered in ice. In equatorial Africa and with 30°C, priceless.

Having someone name their baby after you doesn't happen all that often back home. Here it's clearly a more common phenomenon - or at least when you're a man. Only in Lira I know of three guys having babies named after them, but not a single woman. Perhaps girls aren't seen as important enough to take the effort.

Not that I'd particularly want a little Ugandan named Zuzana running around here (nobody could spell that anyway) - but it's true that while I've been in Uganda for three years and in Lira since April last year, Michele only started working with me in Lira last year in July and he already has a namesake here: the last-born of our driver is called Michele Odongo. Ah well. In the absence of having my own namesake, I joined Michele during the weekend to visit his.

Michele and Michele

On a more homely note, I've upgraded the decoration of my palace.

And - having postponed it for a year - I even managed to plant a few edible plants:

Unfortunately, afterwards some neighbours got chicken, and I found out that chicken eat both basil and rocket. After they successfully destroyed almost all my (by itself not that abundant) harvest, and after dismissing the option of violent action against chicken, I created a very sophisticated chicken defence barrier, which so far seems to work. More harvest coming!