Dr Livingstone I presume?

Dr Livingstone I presume? The famous words of Stanley upon finding Livingstone's camp. Today I stood on the spot where that famous meeting took place. I wasn't going to do a blog about that but someone let me get on a computer that had no anti-virus and the 3 blogs I had written on the palm are gone. I took a ride out there and a tour of the Livingstone museum. It is not so much a museum as a bunch of tables with copies of pictures from his biographies on them. There is also a pair of statues in concrete of the pair meeting, as well as some paintings made of the event. The tour then lead up to where the tree that they met under stood until 1927. Unfortunately the tree was dying so grafts were made of it and a monument was erected on the spot made of stone from Jericho. Today two trees grown from those grafts still survive.

This was still a pretty big trip for me since these guys are my Louis and Clark. I collect old 1st addition biographies of Livingstone (in case you were wondering what I really want for Christmas)  and have a shelf of books about these two.  In 1982 I got to see Livingstone's grave in Westminster Abby

The lake has receded some 400 yards in the intervening years. Today they were loading a boat that makes a 15hr journey to some islands out in the lake. I'm told it will hold 40 ton or 100 passengers. Close company would be the order of the day.

Please hold we are experiencing technical difficulties.

Yesterday at the internet cafe I got a computer with no anti virus. I lost 3 blogs. Today the power is out except for one place running on a generator. The keyboard is very bad and I miss get every 5th letter. Also I'm not sure I've got rid of the virus. I'll try to get back to you. Thanks for reading.
Leon

A brief update

Friends,

I have been the last month at my brother Jason's house. The last week Dan, who is waiting for a Kenyan work permit, has also been here. His visitor visa was about to run out and he had to leave the country and re-enter to get another visitor visa. This was the first time we three boys had been together since Jason got married which, it turns out, was ten years ago this week. Thursday we went to a resort in Jinja where Dan and I got to do some baby sitting while Jason and Linda painted the town. We came home Saturday afternoon.

Lord willing I head south towards Zambia Monday. I had hoped to visit some high school classmates in Rwanda but they will be out of town this week. Some of the other people I hope to visit I only have contact with via facebook but are not really the facebooking types so I have not heard back from. Mom and Dad will be headed to South Africa for Mom's cataract removal surgery so I have a bit of time till I need to be there. I hope to take the ferry down lake Tanganyika. I inquired about the ferry across lake Victoria but was informed it would not be repaired till "next month" which if you read Lonely Planet has been the case for at least the last year. The ferry comes only every other week on Wednesday which is not listed on the web so I think it will be the week after this. Yea, calculations based on one entry from Lonely Planet. It should be an adventure. Hopefully I should be able to find an internet cafe and have time to put up a few blogs.

Thanks to all of  you who check in on me so often with so little to see. 

Leon 

Milk

Milk may seem such a boring topic to blog about you probably think I'm out of my mind. Well, you may be onto something but hey, it's my blog. I mean you just go to the store and buy it right? You have two choices-cartons or jugs and a variety of sizes and percentages of fat content. How hard can it be? Surly it's the same the world over right?

Well no. I understand even so close as Canada they do things differently, although it may be a rumor. In Uganda milk comes in a bag or one of those small boxes like juice comes in.....with the bendy straw. You know the ones-they spill all over you as soon as you stick in the straw because you are also squeezing the box to hold it. Those, and don't say I'm the only person that ever happens to.

An empty after being impaled

The bags are one liter. What you do is there is a jug that you put the bag into and clip the corner. It's all green and frugal and low carbon foot printy. Actually, it may be, but I suspect that from a technology point of view it's just easier. Because the milk doesn't touch the jug you don't even need to wash it(although it may not be a bad idea). There is another specialized jug which I like because it has a certain savage quality to it. With it you open the lid, restrain the corner of the bag with a little clamp then close the lid which impales the bag and directs the milk out through the lid. This type of jug would need to be washed after each use.

One liter does not sound much but when you consider that it's sour right out of bag sometimes only one liter is a good amount to have to throw out. The fact that milk may be sour out of the bag may have something to do with power outages and shops not having backup power. It may also have to do with inferior sanitation at the dairy that bagged it. It could not be the same process that we use in the states. As you can see this is a mystery to me. There is quite a bit I don't know about milk at all. What I do know is that it always slightly disturbed me that American milk could be so long in my fridge. Maybe what we have here is closer to what it should be and what we have in the states is suspect. (Those who wear The revolution will not be pasteurized tee shirts would probably say that.(you know who you are)) The upshot is check your milk before adding it to your cornflakes.

The little boxes of milk are Ultra Heat Treated which means they do not need to be refrigerated and can last for months.  Naturally little box milk is expensive.

Sorry there have not been any updates this week.

The title pretty much says it all. This week I have been making small repairs to Jason and Linda's house. The house is only 2 years old but suffers from a general lack of quality building materials. The devil, it's been said, is in the details and that is the case here. I have replaced two drawer slides. Both of them the plastic wheel that they ran on degraded and developed a flat spot. At less than $4 each they were not expensive to replace but that was probably the problem to start with.

Another project I've done is add hinges to the kids' bedroom wardrobe doors. The doors are solid mahogany and with the kids abuse needed more support. The hinges are those complected style with a number of pivot points and adjustable in several ways. The feature that makes them adjustable also makes them able to be pulled off the frame. The doors, if they were sold in the states, would probably be more than I paid for my last car in raw materials alone. The tragedy is the wood was never properly dried. The doors have warped some. Maybe drying is what makes the wood so expensive in the US but I doubt it. It is just heart breaking somehow to see such good wood not treated right.

This is 2 year old landscaping in Linda's backyard.

The climate here is just great for growing things. Monday Jason bought 2 mahogany  trees. The area where the house is built is reclaimed swamp and the fill dirt, as it turns out, has quiet a bit of rock throughout. After digging in the sometimes quite clay soil I'm feeling very 40. They already have one mahogany which is two years old and probably 10'+. I asked the guy at the place how long it would be before you could get wood from it. He didn't really answer my question but said it would be about the size of a power pole(actually he pointed at a tree that size) in 12 years. Jason also has a number of teak trees. They are closer to 20' and the size of your arm. They just shoot straight up with a few large leaves growing from the trunk and then grow from there. With no branches whatsoever for the first 20' it's easy to see why they are valued for timber. 

As I type this I have a "toy" that is shaped to look like a tennis racket. What it is in fact is a bug zapper. It has a rechargeable battery and when you see a mosquito you push a button and take a swing. It doesn't get them every time but when it does it is HUGELY satisfying. As soon as I was told what it was I couldn't find any mosquitoes, strange that. Somehow child safety people in the states might have a problem with it, I can't think why.   

At Jason's house in Uganda and other topics

In a land far away, in a time before my reckoning, lived a happy couple with their cats. You may know them so we'll call them Rob and Ginny. Ginny cared for people's bodies. Rob tended to their souls, a man of the cloth, with a conservative if not thinning hair cut, in a wild and crazy place, in a wild and crazy time. In those days it seemed the world as we knew it was coming undone by new and diabolical thinking. The truth was, ever thus goes the world, but now maybe just a little more so. Rob kept the faith, faithfully ministering to his small flock amongst a town of six thousand earnest sinners.

Now it so happened that one Sunday a missionary sojourned in the land ministering to Rob and his small congregation. Afterwards Rob invited the missionary home to lunch. As is often the case, those with the least give their best. So out of the freezer came a large trout-so generously given by a member of the congregation. A wonderful big trout, this was the perfect occasion. A missionary in the house!

Alas, all was not well for the next morning Ginny was ill. How long had the retched fish been stored? Surely freezing it would keep it right. Well rest dear. But no, again a second day Ginny was ill. Finally the third day medical attention was in order. Test were run, cold hospital rooms, all that, you know the drill. Finally on that cold December day a doctor with a word. Good news the fish was fine. So not the fish....what you have are symptoms of the Notorious Egyptian Syndrome. Anyone familiar knows, there is nothing to be done. It will eventually develop into a full blown case, or sometimes not. Nothing to be done really but go home and prepare.

In due course the doctor was proved right. There were of course occasional doctors visits. Unplanned expenses and sleepless nights. From time to time tears and occasional worry. Three more times Ginny developed full blown recurrences of the syndrome. Afternoon naps were not unheard of, this was a tiring way to live. With each recurrence our happy couple had to readjust their life. There were new expenses, financial belts were tightened even as real belts, over time, were loosened. It was not all bleak days there was a good deal of joy through it all.

So today marks the 40th anniversary of Ginny, or as you may know her, Virginia becoming a MUMMY. Thanks mom and dad. I wish you the best in this, your 40th year of parenting. Take it from me, you've done well.

And just because they're doting grandparents, some gratuitous pictures of me with the grand kids. This is how I've been spending my days. Like I've said...good times.