Beginnings in Uganda

I moved into my new home ten days after arriving in Kampala. The Magnay Builders were still finishing off the work on the house though the rain was pelting down, undoing some of the work they had done before the end of each day. Behind the house, the loose mud flooded down into the kitchen garden and sometimes into the kitchen itself.

   Our Project Team Leader, Madge, who had lived in Uganda for decades had arranged a maid for me. Grace, who lived with me for five years and became a dear friend. In that time, she learned to read and write, had two babies and became an adept cook and house-manager. 

   I remember, one day, playing tennis at the American Recreation Association and inviting a horde of men and women for dinner at the end of the day. I merely phoned Grace (the cheek of it!) and told her how many would arrive for the meal. When I got home with the crowd at seven in the evening, there were fresh flowers in the vases, new towels in the bathroom and a full Indian meal ready for all of us. 

   When I left Uganda in 1994, my expatriate friends were queueing up to employ Grace. She 'interviewed' them and picked one, but her relationship, almost mother and daughter with me, had spoiled her for a strictly madam-and-maid situation. Later, she left her first employer and found another. Sometimes I talked to Grace on the phone, from Zambia, where I was working on another project. She died of AIDS a few years later, still under thirty years old.

   So many of my friends and colleagues have succumbed to AIDS since I left Uganda. Grace and many like her did not know how they could have avoided it. There were no anti-retroviral drugs then. And nobody talked about it either.

UGANDA - 1998 (for Shumon who has a great few years in Uganda in front of him.)

The fag end of 1998 in Uganda. I arrived on a rainy day - the kind of rainy day when even the frogs retreat and the soft mud everywhere begins to descend down all the seven hills, which Kampala is famous for. I was met at the airport by the local Assistant Director to the British Council, Richard, a warm-hearted man, who became my friend and confidante over the years. Like so many expatriate friends, I have lost touch with him too, with both of us moving from country to country, not always remembering to touch base, cherish friends.

   Richard had nearly given up on me that day because the immigration authorities kept me the wrong side of the counter - they were suspicious of Indian-looking people.  Couldn't possibly be an Adviser to the Council; I did not look the part.The Deputy had flagged my arrival with the Immigration, but clearly I was way different from their expectations. But then, I often met this reaction within the British Council from strangers, so I was unfazed.

   I was accommodated at the local Diplomatic Guest House and the rest of the team came to meet me after Richard had settled me in and left. They stood around, uneasy, wondering perhaps as to how I would alter the mix. I was glad when they left; I could catch up on sleep, think about the family in England, who had been concerned about my accepting a post in Kampala, of the recent Amin fame.

   Nothing, however, had prepared me for the morning after: the Kampala sun beamed down on a sloping garden, full of tropical colours, the pettrichor was reminiscent of Kerala after the first days of monsoon and I rapidly got re-acquainted with the chameleons wandering around on the turf. I could get used to this, I thought, especially after the guest-house cook served up a cooked breakfast of toast, bacon and sausages, and actually asked me what I would like for lunch.

   I began to feel very important.

(More to come on Kampala.)

   

This Indian love-and-marriage thing

This love and marriage thing in India. Rather overwhelming. And how it has changed and grown like Topsy. Today I was looking at a picture of a happy couple (they chose each other, thank God) cutting their wedding cake. It's all there: the knife held together, face up for the photo, beaming parents conducting the event. When did the cake enter into a wedding in Kerala? Cakes were strictly for evening tea on the odd occasion when revered guests turned up - about twice a year.

   I HAD to do a flash back to the occasion when I was 'cabin'd, cribbed, confined' and handed over. There was a big rice sadhya (feast), with two-thousand guests - that was absolutely every one my father knew at work or at home, all the people down our street and then some other streets. They ate on banana leaves laid out in lines along with thin thadukku (grass mats) in the panthal (covered area) outside our house. The women ate inside, also on the floor, on those ubiquitous banana leaves. The whole thing was over in one evening. The ceremony itself took ten minutes.

   Missing: three-tier cakes, fancy receptions with alcohol flowing (though there was a little furtive and committed drinking at the rear of the house). Missing also the three-day ceremony, which starts with the henna ceremony for the bride and girls, when their hands are decorated with intricate patterns, then the pre-wedding ceremony of close friends dropping in to a small celebration, then the wedding itself. By which time there must be a sense of surfeit and emotional exhaustion. I hear in some cases the wedding is a five-day ceremony. I am inclined to agree with the notion that there should be many days of heart-searching before tying the knot, but in less public ways.

   It is now de-rigeur to hold hands with your partner in public places, though kissing in public is for the future. And old couples, long married are also seen with their arms round each other in photographs. How sweet! In my time, a public display of affection was considered embarrassing to all, especially those watching. Facebook has much to answer for - we shall soon have all of them kissing in Facebook photos, that is after running round a few trees, Bollywood style.

   I can hear my family saying, 'sour grapes.' I must be jealous. Perhaps. the only thing in all this that pleases me is the fact that more Indian men and women choose their own partners now-a-days and the caste system is taking a back-seat. Now, if this behaviour of choosing one's own partner extends to India's villages, that will be something to celebrate.

   I think it is time for me to leave the stage to the young, bubbling ones and just enjoy their happiness and self-assurance. Must stop comparing. Except so much money is wasted on the weddings these days - if only that money could be spent on health-care, education or care of the disabled...
   

The Hay Effect

HAY-on-Wye

I have, for many years felt that this was something I wanted to do, but it always happened when I watched some scintillating author like Will Self or similar on the T V, talking with obvious confidence about books, writing, the soul and the state of the economy. I am the devoted acolyte, swept away by the power, not only of words, but sheer hubris. I tried reading a book by Will Self after one such occasion, but soon realised neither my vocabulary nor my cognitive tools were up to it.

   But there were many others, almost by accident, there on T V, authors and thinkers talking to the anchors, the plastic rose waiting in the wings to be offered at the end of the interview. Again, I would say to myself - next year, must get organised. However I had no idea where Hay-on-Wye was - somewhere in Sussex? Lake District? This year I struck lucky. One of my long list of Book Clubs, which help me to push my demons away to the corners of the  bedroom at night, offered to take some of us to Hay if we wished. Peter, one of the organisers, patient, considerate and relaxed, did everything. He booked hotels, arranged vehicles, kept us all informed. It was easy. All I had to do was get myself to Barons Court BP Connect, ( nearly messed that simple one up, but was rescued by son.) and the rest was in his hands. And how safe and gentle those hands turned out to be.

   When you arrange to travel with four others in a car, for three-and-a-half hours, ( I had googled Hay and knew how far it was now) you know you are letting yourself in for captivity in the company of strangers. I was pleasantly surprised. They treated me like heirloom China n deference to my age, but they were interesting, with varied backgrounds and opinions; the hours went quickly. I did not close my eyes once.

   At the end of the journey, again my expectations were limited. Peter had booked me into a B and B, called Sunnymount. I envisaged morning trips down the corridor to bathroom queues, small plastic cups in the bedroom tray, never quite enough to hold a big, first-thing tea. But the room was light-filled and fresh, the bathroom was mine alone for the duration and the tea-tray was generous. The mug of tea could turn my morning battery on to full.

   Denise and Bob, who run it were slick and pleasant. I loved the breakfast room, where we met up in passing for a cooked English breakfast. Denise foresaw every need of a paranoid old Indian woman: pillows enough to prop up my neck to read, multiple electric outlets to charge phone I Pad etc and T V and radio if all else failed. The tariff was way below what I thought it would be. I can't wait to go back next year.

   In passing, I started the first day at Hay listening to Anthony Beavor on the Ardennes Battle. It was the kind of talk in which you expected the sound-and-light system to show all on a back-drop. Beavor merely talked, but I had read his Second World War , two years before, and loved it. He had this anecdotal touch, which made History come alive. (And his 'o' sound was a delight to listen to; it was a parody of posh.) I had bought the hard copy, read the first 25 pages and then downloaded it to Kindle. It WAS heavy; I wilted, my arthritic fingers sagged - on Kindle it was perfect, Interesting, long, filling in gaps in my understanding of that era and its torments.

   I listened to many interesting talks at Hay, disagreed with some - but all were provoking.  My poor brain was bubbling, waiting to say something, do something, think a little differently. All in the next blog, starting with Hariri of the SAPIENS fame, the depth of whose intelligence and the level of engagement with the audience, was never surpassed by anyone else, Tom Holland, with no satisfactory answers to the Terrorist threat, Carol Black on occupational illnesses, Kashuo Ishiguro... I am sated. I have to tell everyone everything. Look to my next excited tumble of words.

The Royal Event - never mind the election

The Royal baby has arrived or, as my son might have said, 'She's dropped the sprog.'There is of course nothing else for us British to get excited about today. Forget the election, which will affect the lives of millions. Today we shall hear, nauseatingly frequently, about the bloody royal girl.

   And did you know, the simpering, media say, 'She's only been in in labour for three hours.' Bless her. Quite an achievement that, having a baby - no other woman has managed this in the century! Not even the tea pickers in Assam who squat amid the tea bushes, have their babies, and then move on to the next tea bush.

   I would not want to deny Nicholas Winchell his brief moment in the limelight - but for heaven's sake, we don't see the bruiser, George (so far, a journalist said, we've seen him twice in his lifetime.) and we shan't see this little baby girl probably till she joins her aunt in her escapades at the age of twenty+.

   We pay for this lot! I shall wait to see this girl on a royal tour down under. If I wish to see pictures of her, which I don't. The food banks sit heavily on my conscience. This is an affluent country in spite of five years of the Cameron- Osbourne merry-go-round, but there are many families who can't afford decent food, new shoes,books for their families. And the sickening sight of media drooling over the royal baby is driving me to language I don't normally use.

   To be honest the fourth estate have a lot to answer for - the way they twisted facts to support the Tories.

 And of course, there will now be a sudden spurt  of support for Cameron. Kate could not have timed it more conveniently for the Conservatives. Question: why is the royal family associated with the posh people all the time?

   If this country votes the Cameron lot in again on the 7th, they deserve what they get. My family, incontestably middle-class, have done quite well out of the Tories. Except we don't vote for them. They do nothing for the mute poor. I think people like us should pay more taxes, not less.

The year I got my husband back

Two or three months into our life in Nigeria, after five years of being married, I got my husband back. It was not planned.

   The provincial Office of Works started every morning at 7.30 and finished at 2.30, in the afternoon. I believe it was a system set up by the British to get the day's work done before the heat became oppressive. Balan, my husband, had nowhere to go except home at that time. He had no Sri-Lankan drinking pals as he had left his usual crowd at home in Colombo.  I actually liked most of them, gentle men, who dropped off from the group that frequented the Saracens Sports Club one after the other when they got married. Balan merely replaced one drop-of with another person to drink with.

   However, in Ikot ekpene, Balan had to start reorganising his life and routines. The boys, two and four years at that time, began to see him before they went to bed.  He talked with me about his work and his colleagues. I often thought I had been a huge failure in wife-terms. If a husband simply does not want to come home after work, what can you do? Surely there must be something wrong with me?

   I tried a few tricks. I'd ask him to send the car to me in the afternoons to go shopping into town in Colombo. He would do that, and Francis, the driver would come to pick me up around three in the afternoon, after Jane, our Ammeh (maid) had taken the children over after her lunch-break. I'd wander around in Pettah, (Fort was way beyond my means) and buy nothing except the odd T shirt for my sons, which stretched out of shape in the first wash.

   At the end of the half-hearted shopping, at around 5.15, I'd ask the driver to go to Balan's office. The offices of Walker Sons and Co. would be just beginning to disgorge its staff. I would send Francis up to tell Balan that I was downstairs and would he like to come home? He invariably told Francis to take me home and bring the car back after. My ruses never worked. The driver would look faintly sorry for me. I think he sussed me out.

   With the babies coming within the space of two years I had lost all connection with my first love - books. I admitted defeat with Balan and started looking for books to read. My father said that as long as he did not chase after other women, beat me up, or fail to provide house-keeping money, I was well-off. So much for a concept of marriage in those times in India.

   I often remember those years in Ikot ekpene, from 1962-'65, as the best years of a rather unremarkable marriage. In my youth I asked for so little, like many young Indian girls from Kerala. But in 1962, I started writing and sent off my article on education to a magazine published in Lagos.

Ikot ekpene - far from 'civilisation.'

I should have settled-in easily in Ikot ekpene - after all I came from a tiny one-horse town in Kerala. Thalassery, to be precise, on the coast of the Arabian sea, where in spite of all my wanderings, my heart resides, and I feel is the only place and people amongst whom I really belong.
  Just like my new home in Ikot ekpene, Thalassery did not have electricity when I was growing up and it did not boast running water either. Except the water that ran off the eaves in the monsoon, that is, enough to flood the front yard and the gullies behind the house. Many a rainy day, I have watched the water level rise slowly to reach the top steps to our veranda -- will it, won't it? With no television or radio, it was a pastime sitting on the torn up planter's chair, where us children had to create our own pastimes. 
  When that got boring I would run to the back of the house and watch the pink-brown flood-water gushing downhill from the rise at the back of that stretch of coastal land where the English had established a European Club (no Indians allowed). The water would bring with it upturned shit-pots, uprooted banana trees, coconut fronds and the odd dead goat, rushing at great speed to waste ground below.
  I was better off in Ikot ekpene; there was a water closet, if we could get the water connection to our house going. My husband, Balan, rushed off to the office, rounded up the caretaker, Sunday, and soon the water was flowing in the taps. Rust-coloured water, gradually getting lighter till it flowed colourless as I stood over it. It tasted metallic, but otherwise definitely like water.
  A messenger from the office, a young man called Solomon, went shopping and brought back bread and tea, blue-band margarine (that staple much-maligned substitute for butter) and other essentials. The milk came out of tins - we had a choice of Dutch Baby milk powder or Peak Milk. The kerosene 'frig with the pan-handle shaped kerosene container looked risky but had built up a frost overnight.
  Solomon also told us not to drink water without boiling it --for many minutes -- he insisted. I had to make an executive decision here. All my life I had drunk the water from our well at Thalassery without boiling. When it looked less than pristine, (i.e. when a dead frog or rat floated,my aunt dropped Potassium permanganate crystals in it and declared it clean after a day. Now I needed to get precious about this? I suspended that decision for then. Too many to make!
  I was rapidly feeling better. Now I could bathe the children who had gone to bed grimy, and wash the dust out of my hair. I battled with the beast of a stove in the kitchen, burning packing-paper in it, trying to light the bits of wood on top. After much smoke and tears and charcoal on my nose the water boiled (never mind the black kettle.) and I made Dutch Baby milk for the boys, and tea - lovely home-making tea for me. I was ready for Ikot ekpene.
  'I must get to the shops,' I said to Solomon who had hung around, and waded in with lighting the recalcitrant cooker, in moral support. He looked sheepish. 'Only market, Madam,' he said. 'No shops in Ikot Ekpene. For shop you go to Aba.'
  In the goody bag  brought by Solomon there were tins of meat balls and spam. We warmed them up for lunch. In the afternoon, we went to Aba, an hour away and came back loaded with everything we needed except fresh meat, and then some more. It was like preparing for a siege.
  At dusk, after the children went to bed, we sat out in the front of our house, the now-restored Tilly lamp casting a bright light in a corner of the sitting rooms. The garden was full of dappled shadows and it was very quiet. We did not talk; we were tired, but the life ahead had improved considerably from the previous day..