Men here literally just pick a team and decide they are a die hard fan. It's not like they can base it on where abouts in the UK they are from, or which team were playing at their first ever football match. It's nice though because they treat you like family if you support the same team.
Over thousands of miles away from home and I still get "yes goonerette" in the street, people pointing to my badge then theirs and grinning, and even someone grabbing my hand, shaking it, congratulating me on being an Arsenal fan, and then pointing to his house behind the shop and saying I should stay there some time... Smile, wave and back away politely.
Apart from that weird incident, it almost feels like I have mates in town as everyone greets me haha.So today, I ended up in a westernised cafe/restaurant/food place called The Keep where I sometimes go for wifi, a drink or some nice English type food such as steak sandwich, fish fingers, spag bol etc. BUT the best part of going there is the banana milkshake. It's beautiful. Made of icecream and real bananas mm.
Recently I've been enjoying the sun (maybe too much, my shoulders are peeling from one day being out at midday with no cream on) and the lack of rain (obviously because I live in Manchester), so hearing Ugandans constantly voicing their hopes for it to rain soon made me want to send them over to Stockport for a week in "summer" and show them how unexciting rain is. However, I've now had it explained to me that it is unusual to have such little rain during this time of year and that rain here is very different. Mostly short periods of (warm) rain but extremely heavy, and some exciting storms, which then suddenly blow over and it goes back to being ridiculously sunny again. Doesn't sound anything like the grey rain I'm used to.
Also, as some of my pictures show, all roads, paths and any ground that isn't grass, is an orangey-reddy-browny coloured dust. Because of the lack of rain the dryness causes the dust to just be everywhere. And when a bike or car drives past you, a huge cloud of dust fills the area for a short time (in which people run as far from the road as possible up the banks or into peoples gardens until it calms)
So that's why people wanted it to rain.
Having still not experienced this yet, it was a shock for it to happen when I was on my own, 5 miles from home.
It started with me hearing bombs and gun shots, assuming war had begun in Jinja and I was going to die, I looked around the sky for planes and flying bomb type objects.
Then I realised it was thunder.
It was like torrential rain and I wondered if I would ever find transport home, and if not how wrinkled I'd be from being soaked with only a tshirt on. After my dramatic thought process of how tragic my day was going to turn out, the rain stopped.
I walked out of the cafe and everything was how it was half an hour ago (just a little damper)
I met up with Ivan and Edward (Ugandan men who run and oversee the Village of Hope) who were driving the minibus, picking up some shopping and food for the village for the week. We visited one of the house mamas who was in hospital (nothing like a UK hospital at all plus pretty expensive to stay per night) and then went to the a bakery to pick up enough rolls for about 70 kids to eat one every morning.
While the bread rolls were being sorted and put in bags of 8, Edward, Ivan and I stood talking. That is until one of the men from the bakery hauls out a chair and insists I sit on it. Grinning, I sat down and thanked him. That was not the end of the special treatment, (I felt bad really) a few minutes later another man comes out of the kitchen of the bakery with a cake for me.
It was still warm. Of course I shared it with the others. It's crazy the way they treat white people here in comparison to the Ugandans. So different to in the UK where everyone has to be treated equally.
It was a nice cake
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