Wedded bliss?

Recently I attended a local wedding. It was an exciting day for everyone. The booze was flowing freely and personally I started making rather silly remarks way before we all sat down to eat.

I realised that as I was getting drunk, my nerves were going to get the best of me at the table and sitting with my family, I would have made a right fool of myself if I were to continue drinking as I was. So I decided to take a brisk walk through the grounds of the wedding venue to sober up.I have always been fascinated by the wedding reception. I have been lucky to have attended quite a number of weddings over the last few years. My friends are getting married.
I think it's the time for my generation. There seems to be a mad rush of everyone getting married. Soon we will have babies and christenings and the lot! It fills me with dread that life seems so enjoyable yet at the same time when one goes through these milestones, one can't fail to recognise one's mortality.

However, life has to go on I suppose. But weddings are quite a strange and stressful time for all concerned mainly the bride and groom with their families but also the guests do have their worries.One of the biggest problems to be encountered by the bride to be and the groom (if he is available to help, sometime they are not) is to design and allocate sitting places for the guests.
It gets even worse if there are one or two divorces within the family before one thinks about those who have fallen out. It's a fine balancing act.
The arrangement of tables so that everyone can feel involved in the wedding reception has now become an art which people are becoming wedding planners for, and being paid handsomely for the service.
One of the wedding sites on the internet advises that there should be enough space between tables for people to be able to move around. I thought that is just common sense.

There is advice against having a round top table because those sitting there need to feel like they are connecting with their guests. I thought that too was common sense. The problem is that most times I have been to weddings, the other tables are round. So, inevitably, one is going to find that some people have their backs towards the top table.

When the guests arrive, they have major concerns as well. I have always noticed how guests have nervously looked at the sitting plan. What is one supposed to deduce from that sitting plan? What does it mean of one's position in the "pecking" order?

There has been a "mild" rush to see that plan. One can only sense it. The questions in one's mind are unending. Where are you sitting? Who is at the table? We all want to sit next to someone we know. Someone with whom we enjoy having a conversation at times like these. After all we are going to be eating a nice meal and have nice wine with it. Some people dread having kids on their tables. They can make such a nuisance and they never keep quiet when speeches are being made.

For parents like me, there is a sigh of relief if the kids are invited for a start because we do not worry about childcare. But we do then share in the trepidation. We are aware that they do not like playing by the rules after sitting for a long time. We do also nervously look around the table to find out if there are other kids. They will, we hope, end up playing with each other. It could also turn out that the table is the "nursery" table.

I have seen people's faces sink when they have realised how far they are from the top table. Does this necessarily mean that one is not that important? It's even worse when one has their back to the top table. There will be uncomfortable times when the old chair will be pulled out and needs must be met; swung around for one to see the top table when the speeches are being made. Is it any consolation therefore to sit in the furthest corner and yet still be able to see the top table without turning around?

There is always a noisy table. Never fails to be one. This is the table where the married couple will put their friends from university. The embarrassing ones! There could be an ex-partner or two. That table will be expected to shout the groom down as they attempt to make an intelligent speech and they will interrupt the best man as he makes his speech with rude comments and sexual innuendo. The wedding couple always pray that the older generation are too far away to hear the cat calls and rudeness emanating from this table. And should they be able to do so, not be able to understand what they are going on about.

Those of us who have been lucky to be invited to a wedding can recall the moment when we have all sat down and realised the group one is sharing the table with is just wrong.

The ladies are very good at making conversation even when they are not particularly interested. There is a lot of nodding the head, keeping eye contact and responding with short leading questions. How do you guys know the groom?

Or is it because of the bride that you are here? Isn't it an embarrassment when you actually admit to attending because your partner works with one of the couple? The wedding party don't even know who you are!! They will compliment each other's choice of dress. A plastic smile completes the whole picture.

Men, not a chance in hell! There will be the obligatory, "What do you do?" question. When that has been answered and all the sub questions have been utilised, a huge void descends. Chris Rock the comedian has observed that we then start talking about the routes we take to work! Once the conversation gets to the "routes to work stage", we all know that it's time we asked for a drink. Many people, wonder why there is a need to talk to these people you may actually never see again? After all some tables are that large that one needs to shout over all the flowers and the glasses just to be heard.

When the meal is finally served, we all go into a different mode. I have on more than one occasion ended up eating the wrong bun!!! Is it the one to my left or the one to my right? My poor family have looked on in despair as I have plonked the bun on to my plate. I find it especially difficult to eat that bun off centre.

I have only just recently mastered which collection of glasses belongs to me. Even then, I will not trust myself not to pour water into the one for red wine. My easiest copout is to ask for a beer. Yes, that bitter with dregs at the bottom. Some people will find that horrific but I have on so many occasions been the liberating force as others have feigned surprise that they could also have a beer with their food other than wine.

These occasions are great. If one of the guests does not make a fool of themselves or one of the wedding party, they always end well. If the weather plays ball, we all assume that the gods are on our side. There are sore heads to nurse the following day and when the couple returns from their honeymoon, all the gifts have to be sorted and thank you cards written. Another group however is left in a far worse situation. Those friends who are yet to even get engaged! There is the hopeful hand holding from the girls. The men, who invariably are the ones dragging their feet pretend not to notice the subtle messages coming from their girlfriends. When will be next?

Image is everything

November is here. Christmas is only a few weeks away and its getting cold. This is the time of the year that I hate most. The days are getting shorter and any hot day is seized on by me as probably the last hot day of the year. In fact there aren't any days that are warm now. Its down hill all the way to next year. However, I love the colour of the leaves and one of my favourite pastimes is having that long lazy walk through a wood. But this is often tempered by the cold air and many times than not the endless rain. However, I am not alone here. I know that we the great British public like complaining about our weather. This was one of the art of conversation that I learnt pretty much as soon as I arrived on these shores. It was not taught. It was more like instinct.

The summer of 2003 is the last time that I remember a nice stretch of heat. The rest have been a wash out. What happened to the barbecue summer we had been promised? Did I miss it or was it a sick joke? For the summer of 2003, I remember watching the weather forecasts while in Bristol. The job was an easy one for the weather forecasters as all they had to tell us that was that we were to have wall to wall sunshine the following day and the day after that and then the day after that. An area of high pressure sat on top of the UK and refused to budge. I heard about Bewl reservoir and how it was getting drier. But for me I thought the weather was glorious! Or was it? Soon we were complaining that it was too hot. The gardens were getting parched and the threat of hose pipe bans was a reality. I was told of days when water tanks were left on street corners for people to fill up. Armageddon was going to happen on us! I started listening to the broadcasts. How was Bewl reservoir holding? She seemed like the measure of how the country was wilting under the relentless sun. Thank God she did not get to her lowest levels until 2005.



Having grown up in Africa where I had to get water from a well at times, I thought that it was not going to be that bad. Just a little discomfort especially where we had to flush toilets. I should have known better but I joined the complaining masses. Why is it then that we are never happy with what we have got? The temperature is never right. When we get temperatures touching 0C, we are experiencing Arctic conditions! When they creep towards 30C, we are now hotter than the Mediterranean regions and records are hauled out. I reckon even God (if you believe in one) gets confused.



I have experienced all year round summer. Its boring! Day after day, month after month temperatures hardly never going south of 20C one starts to wish for a rainy, windy day. A bit of atmospheric activity. There is nothing to look forward to. Even Christmas day can be hot! Yes, that seems like an attractive prospect. But my sincere submission is that when one starts to look forward to the spring and the rebirth of flowers and animals coming out of hibernation, nothing beats that.



Now that the days are shorter and the cold has started, summer holidays are in the distant past. The days when a huge proportion of the country were sunning ourselves in sunny climes, kids playing in the surf and having no care in the world have almost faded.


With that so have the tans. People are fretting with the onset of pasty skins. Tanning shops are doing a roaring trade. There is a popular belief that people look healthier when they have a tan.


People feel good about themselves. That look is better topped off with a slimmer physique. I find that interesting because the reverse is true in many regions of Africa. Anyone going back to Africa is well received if they are looking decidedly plump and pasty! I have stopped doing this now but I used to go on a fattening diet before I visited Uganda.


It was even better were I to be visiting in the depths of winter because despite the fact that I am black, come the winter months I would have my tan as well. This time though it is more like me looking a little lighter due to the lack of sunshine. My mother would look me over with concern if I was not fat enough.


She would order a fattened goat to be dispatched if she was not satisfied with my size. Tragically now I am having difficulty dropping a few inches. I have had to warn friends with whom I have travelled with back to Uganda that should the locals comment that one is fat, it is a compliment! And should they be told that they are thin, yes, they may feel good inside and its a compliment here but its a matter of concern in Uganda.


The reason this is so is that most of the Ugandan diet is not fatty. There is a plant called cassava. It is a root tuber and its eaten by so many people. Very drought resistant and heavy in starch. There are allegations that when one eats it, the body uses more calories digesting it than it gets from it. Therefore people can not get fat eating cassava. It's also better eaten if one does not want to exert themselves. It completely drains one of their energy leaving people lethargic.



There are concerns here in the UK that those on low incomes eat a lot of saturated fats and therefore obesity is rampant in this group. It's the other way round in many parts of Africa.


Those on high wages are the ones now facing medical problems associated with high intake of fatty food with increases in diabetes and high blood pressure. The people on middle incomes remain lean because they only indulge themselves on certain days only. It's sad however to note that those living in abject poverty suffer from malnutrition the result of which is death in many cases.


We may not be happy with what we have got but in many cases, these are just issues that one can easily laugh at. However, last Tuesday I saw a programme on Channel 4 called Bleach, Nip, Tuck; The white beauty myth.


Three people on this programme where not happy with the deal that they were dealt with by their races. A lady who lives in Brixton, South London who is of Jamaican origin wanted to look like Victoria Beckham whom she thought had the perfect figure. She had a huge bust and she wanted it reduced.


On the other end of the spectrum, a lady of Chinese origin wanted to have a bigger bust just like the white women she was seeing. I thought that this was just going too far with people getting really hardcore, wanting to change their entire person.


Again, I understand that people have the right to do with their bodies what they see fit. And I do hope that they get the help that they need both physically and physiologically because I can only imagine what it is like for one not to be happy in their own skin. I am in mine. So let us complain now about this dreadful weather!

Love of animals here and abroad

Earlier on this year, I wrote about the love of animals here in the United Kingdom. Indeed we have just bought a cat at my house. The other night she graced us with a dead field mouse she had killed from the farm behind our home.

I must say that I had to persuade my neighbour to come and help me remove the dead rodent. Dogs are the most loved animals to my observation.  I, on many occasions have to be out of my house ridiculously early to go to work and the number of people out taking their dogs for that early walk is amazing although personally I would rather be in my bed than take a dog for a walk.

Growing up in Uganda, I was lucky to have extensive grounds around my childhood home. My parents bought me a goat when I was about 5 and before long, I had a huge heard. Whenever I went back home for holidays, I would spend hours grazing them. They absolutely understood me and so did I. I spent long lazy hot African afternoons out in the bush, sometimes miles away from home with them.

The difference was that as I took them out grazing, I was making sure they were fat enough for the slaughter.My wife and I met in Uganda. She was aware from the very fast day about my goats.

In fact many people in the villages around knew about me and my goats. When she came to visit my family, I suspect that she was delighted to see that I had a soft spot for animals. She had a Labrador back at home and a couple of cats.

Probably goats were not her ideal kind of pet but at least she was happy that I had them. We spent hours together as well herding them which was a very different but exciting experience for her. After all, this was the kind of thing that she would have been seeing on television back at home.  Here she was with her boyfriend looking after goats in the African wilderness!

The horror however when she found out one Sunday lunch time that the pot of meat boiling on the fire was one of the goats was too much.And therein lays the subtle difference between pets in the UK and Uganda. Dogs are mainly used as guard dogs. In instances where they are not the type to guard, they are ignored generally. One of my friends also called Arthur told me of a story of how he once went for a drink with friends. One of them had a dog which followed him to the pub. And when I speak of "The Pub" in an African village, it may well be a large tree where men usually congregate after dark and drink from the same pot of warm millet beer.

As it is very dark, one has to be careful of ones surroundings. You could have all kinds of creepy crawlies about like snakes of safari ants! But on this particular humid night, Arthur and company were having a quiet drink discussing the problems of the world (usually how the harvest season is going and which well is dry).

The friend with the dog started lashing out at it wanting it to go back home. A fight nearly broke out between Arthur and the man. Arthurs' irritation was that this man was picking on the only mammal in the group that did not expect any kind of return for his affections. It was not even expecting a sip of that millet beer! After a few tense moments, the man realised what a good friend that dog was.

When I arrived on The Isle of Man, the farm I was visiting had a dog called Koko. I can hardly remember her breed. All I remember was that she was spectacularly stupid!!!  Jimmy had spent years trying to toilet train her to no avail.  She was like no other dog. But she was such a loving dog. Koko and I struck a special relationship as soon as I arrived at the farm. I quickly realised that I was going to have long days to myself without much human interaction if Jimmy and his partner Nadine were to be working away.

So, I was told of the fetching game. Koko and I quickly found a stick and went to the fields where we spent hours me throwing this (soggy) stick and him fetching it. She also enjoyed having a dip in the stream at the bottom of the fields. Koko and I were to become inseparable for the following weeks as I spent time with her.

However, much as I became aware of her as the family pet, albeit a stupid one, I still at kept a distance from her respectful of the fact that she was still only an animal. I hated her barking which was only instinct. Once on a rare evening out I was startled and very uncomfortable when she came bounding and barking wildly at the car when we returned.

I was very sad when I left her after my visit and learnt later on that she had sadly passed away.When I left for home Koko was to stay on my mind for a while. I realised what a friend dogs can be to whoever owns them and I thought that when I returned to my country I would treat dogs with a different understanding. It never happened.

As soon as I stepped off that plane, I was back home. And that meant returning to the ways that I was used to. Dogs were used for guarding premises. It was great visiting this country for the first time and in many ways prepared me for when I finally moved here. My father always told me that experience is a personal thing. I learnt about other people's ways but so did they about mine.

I was fascinated about the number of historical sites around the country like Stonehenge, Salisbury Cathedral and Old Serum. We do not have buildings that old in Uganda. But most of all, I was happy for the friends I made all of whom I am still in touch with to this day.  

Speaking the Queen's English

This afternoon I went for a bus ride with my youngest who just loves them. He is at the age where his vocabulary is coming on rather well and he is always chattering away saying whatever comes to his mind.


The questions keep coming fast. “Daddy what is that?” and “ Daddy what is this?” It must be a fascinating time for him.


At long last he can attempt to express himself. It's always good like that until he warns you with seconds to spare that he needs to go! The panic! Kids do not appreciate the usual “wait a minute” or “We are nearly there. Just hold on”.


If they want to go, they want to go. However, amidst all the fun of being on this huge bus, I found myself correcting his pronunciation of certain words. It was rather embarrassing but I just kept on doing it despite the fact that I do have a heavy African accent.


Accents within the UK are one of the things that always surprise people who visit this shores for the first time.


At school, I was taught how words were pronounced. My teachers who happened to be Church Missionary Society people from England never let an inch on enunciating!


If one were to be caught pronouncing “cat” as “cut”, a few cuts of the old cane would grace one's backside! I still fail in that department though and on many occasions I muddle my “hearts” and “hurts”.


My friends have learnt not to ask which word I meant to say. They listen to the whole sentence. But the belief, and it was so in my case, was that everyone in the UK spoke like the Queen. As was the belief that every one was Christian and went to church.



I spent a week in Winchester after my arrival here in the summer of 1995. Winchester is quite middle class. Or at least the areas I was in were. And there spoken English was distinctly very posh. I found that I understood it rather well.


Anywhere I went within the city, I was not worried about not understanding the people. In fact its probably they who never understood what I was saying. Nevertheless, it probably never occurred to me that people could have spoken differently.


I was placed on a train at London's Euston train station by my host Harold on the Monday after I arrived. I had never seen such a huge station.


He made sure that I was not to get lost by alerting some station staff that I needed a train to Lancaster where I was to change to a smaller train to Heysham for the ferry to Douglas. At Euston, I heard my first cockney.


I thought they were foreign just like me. I had a few pounds on me and I went to buy a newspaper to read on the journey. The poor lady at the kiosk and I were completely lost.


I could not understand what she was saying and looking back neither was she understanding what I was saying. A few minutes later, I got my newspaper but she must have headed home after that encounter.



On the train, I sat by an Asian man. We got engaged in conversation especially about Idi Amin and the way he expelled the Indians from Uganda in 1972. He was ever so keen to hear what Uganda was like.


From what I gathered, he had relatives who were affected by the expulsion. I talked to this man expecting him to speak with a very heavy Indian accent. He didn't. He spoke perfect English. All my theories were being turned on the head now


On arrival at Douglas, I was met by the family with whom I was going to stay with for the following three weeks.


There was an awkward silence when we met as they were caught by surprise that I could actually speak English. The relief! I suppose that they had spent the previous month when they knew that I was going to stay with them agonising on how communication was going to be.



The Isle of Man is an idyllic place. Given half the chance I could move there and cut off all contact with the outside world. It's a place that one can completely relax.


I was lucky that the family that I was with lived in a large rambling farm house with extensive grounds. I spent many hours by the stream that ran at the bottom of the farm with the family dog called Koko.


Jimmy and Nad my hosts did a lot of things for the community other than running the farm. They ran meals on wheels and helped other people by taking them around the island.


However, the fact that they were nearly always at home meant that so many other people who were retired treated their home as a tea house. Every morning a group would arrive and sit in the garden drinking tea and generally chatting. Jimmy and Nad hardly noticed them at times.


I, however, joined in at times to listen to their stories and after a while, I was surprised by the way I was picking up the island accent. Gone was my insistence on using the pronoun “my” to replacing it with “me”. As in “me car”.


It was funny that in a few days my African accent was slowly being erased by this accent I was getting bombarded with on the island.



Of course now I have reverted to my heavy African accent. My home town in the UK is Bristol and we do have a lovely accent in that region. Its a friendly one. But even after living there for a long time, I failed to take on the accent.


Living near Stoke now, I do double up in the occasional “ay up!”. Its the most appropriate salutation in certain situations and its usage is so varied. The beauty of the United Kingdom is that much as I was used to the many languages that are spoken in my country of origin Uganda, the different accents, be it Cockney, Estuarine, Liverpudlian or Stoke make it all so exciting when one visits other areas of the country.


In Uganda 70 miles from my home I am literally a foreigner in my country as I may not be able to speak the local dialect. In the UK, apart from Welsh and Scottish languages, bring it on! Its all English!

All change

It's been a while since I last wrote on this website. A lot has been happening.
I have just joined The University of Staffordshire to study for a Masters in Journalism.

It is an exciting time for me although at the same time worrying. Having a young family and working full time at the same time, one wonders whether there will be any spare time.

As I was writing the last time, in response to many questions about my first experiences in the UK when I first arrived on these shores, a lot of things were new to me. Looking back now and seeing how I have adjusted is amazing.

In some cases I would say that my attitude life compared to 1995 is almost unrecognisable. Of course that goes with one getting older and having a family.

Summer 1995 was the time when the last Tory Government was facing difficulties and all the indications were that at the next elections they were going out.

To me as an outsider, I could see the difficulties that John Major faced against a young charismatic Tony Blair.

Having said that, my political awareness came to maturity during the Thatcher years. Combining that with my view of African politics, where incumbents are difficult to dislodge from power, I was thinking that as the Tory government had been in power for that long, it would weather the storm.

Also, my view of Britain through the British people that I had met back in Uganda was by a large part structured to recognise the Tory party as the natural government of power.

This view was shaped by the many British that I met in Uganda. They were not necessarily Tory. The fact is that a lot of them were white middle class people.

My teachers at boarding school in Uganda were the type that one may have seen in up market public schools in the UK.

I therefore formed the conclusion, albeit prematurely, that all people in the UK were white middle class. And with that I thought that as the Tory party was being associated with that class of society, it was by default the natural party of the people.

The above rather twisted view about Britain and British politics was also further complicated by the strengths of Margaret Thatcher who is by the way still held in very high esteem in African countries.

Her departure from Downing street had never been fully explained to me but I thought that Major was her anointed successor.

Now to see him being hounded by the likes of John Redwood was very surprising. I remember that announcement from the Downing Street garden when he asked his detractors within the party to “put up or shut up”.

I watched it from the lounge at Lawn End (name of the Winchester home I was at) on a rather muggy hot summers' day.

It showed me the difference between Western style governments and African style governments especially Uganda. Leaders in Africa, and there is a long list, do not take lightly to being challenged. And such a pronouncement would be regarded as weak.

I have had to explain to many of my friends here in the UK how democracy works in many parts of Africa. There is what some call “benevolent dictatorship”.

I know it sounds wrong here in the UK and especially in Stoke but in many African countries where “strong men” exist, they do actually have support in their countries.

An example in Uganda which I think I can speak with some residual authority. We do have Yoweri Museveni as the President.

He would not survive a whole term were he to be a ruler in the west. But in Uganda, he has been since 1986. The reason is that he has correctly realised that the majority of the population are peasants.

He has therefore made them rely on his presence for their security after the turbulent years of Amin and Obote.

We, the educated urbanites who are constantly voicing our displeasure at his rule are the minority.

And there are those amongst our group who have been elevated to a relative position of comfort.

Middle class values so to speak who are very much in support of him because they feel that their wealth has been created under his watch. So for them its the devil that they know.

Therefore with such views on the way politics is run at home, my mind was in turmoil as to what was happening.

I was of the view that the Tory party was receiving such shabby treatment from the media, the public and many of its members of public. The Tory party to me at the time defined what Britain was. Whether that view was correct is yet another matter.

After the political differences came the way that days are spent here in the UK. The way that a “normal” day is arranged is different in the UK with families having breakfast which consist of sweet tea and maybe a slice of buttered bread or plantain boiled in a tomato source.

Lunch comes in the middle of the day and it is a meal. Then a remnant of high British society is the tea in the afternoon.

Yes, its a cup of tea with cake or sliced bread with butter! This is usually had at about 1600 to 1700 hours. And then later at about 2100 hours to 2200 hours, families will have supper or dinner.

People do not have a cup of tea just because one has had a kettle boiled. Cups of tea are really heavy with full fat milk and loads of sugar. It's a meal in itself.

So when I was confronted with having “tea” as a meal, that completely threw me. And the time too was just wrong.

We were having our “tea” at the right time but I had a plate of food in front of me! I wondered what we were going to do for the rest of the evening.

To make matters even more confusing, Diane asked me whether I wanted a cup of “tea” later.

Was she meaning tea as I knew it or was this something else. My father had told me that if I was not sure of anything, the best way was to politely decline it. So I politely declined her Cup of tea. However, I went and made myself one. I must have offended her greatly.


Then there is the issue of washing ones body. Despite that fact that my family had a bath tub at home, and I had seen people having baths on television, the act of one actually sitting in the water I found difficult to do.

My concern was that I was sitting in my own dirt then having to wash my face.

Sub-Saharan Africa is very hot and in many places dusty. The dust and the heat get into everything. It governs one's pace of life.

When one goes about doing their daily chores, one finds that they get dirty very quickly. This red dust or mud in the rainy season gets the feet really dirty. So, the practice is to wash from top to bottom.

The lack of showers however means that many people will resort to using large bowls otherwise known as basins where they will scoop the water out to wash themselves.

It's a very economical way of using water as well as the average wash could use less than ten litres of water. I was however confronted with a huge bath of steaming water all nicely filled with the best foam bath.

I first washed my face in it then lowered myself in the water. I just could not do it the way that everyone does it. Also the fact that many people wash from basins, having a wash does not take that long. So it must have been a surprise to my hosts when I walked out of the bathroom in less than five minutes. I was yet to learn the joys of having a good old soak!

Adjusting to a new time zone

Flying in to Heathrow from the East, I failed to appreciate that I was going to gain time. This was something that I was not yet understanding even though I had been told about it many times.

I think it became light over Austria and of course having hardly left time zone GMT +3, my body clock was not used to time zone changes. So when the sun came up and we were given our breakfast, I started thinking that as we flew and got nearer to Heathrow, so did the time move on. Well, of course the clock does not click as fast as it should if one is flying east to west.

When we landed at Heathrow, I thought that it was sometime in the afternoon. Of course it was not. It was still in the morning and I think I should have taken that on board.

But with the problems that I encountered with immigration I took my eye off the clock. The excitement being let through and seeing the UK for the first time, I completely lost track of time.

Later on in the day the fatigue and the new phenomenon of jet lag were to take hold in a rather interesting way. Quite dramatic!

We had a light lunch, my first meal in the UK which was vegetarian. I found this one a new one on me. In Uganda at the time vegetarian meals were not that much of a favourite.

In fact for one to have a purely vegetarian meal meant that one did not have enough money to supplement their meals with meat or chicken. When the lettuce was served, I thought the family I was visiting despite having a nice house did not have enough money to buy food! Besides, they were not cooked! We in Uganda, fry a lot of our food.

Once one of my friends from the UK joked that we are about to fry water. That was a difficult meal. Thankfully Jackie whose parents I was with at the moment had written an A4 sized letter to her parents as a sort of "operation manual". So we were later on to eat quite a lot of chicken to my delight.

Later on, Harold decided to take me and my sister to have a quick look around the immediate area. We walked down Park road, across the Worthy Road and into Russell Road the aim being to get to the fields beyond and enjoy some bit of countryside within a city. Well, that was the plan until he got a brain wave! "A change of plan!" as he so triumphantly announced. He knew of some nice tidy pub nearby called the Hyde Tavern on Hyde street.

The Hyde Tavern introduced to me the traditional English pub. Slightly stuffy with a lot of "organised" clutter yet very intimate. It was one of those places that one never heard loud music. Just quiet enough for a contemplative pint. Harold asked us what we wanted to drink. With the excitement of finnaly tasting English beer I could hardly contain my self. However, I could hardly recognise a single one so he ordered for me a half pint of Wadworth 6X. My first taste of proper English beer. 6X! For a while that is all that I ordered anywhere we went.

On the walk back home, that is when the jet lag and the fatigue finally took hold. It was like a tiredness that I had never experienced before. I felt like throwing up (no it was not the beer), I lost my sense of distance.

Everything seemed really far. My legs felt like they were encased in cement and I started speaking nonsense. Thankfully my sister was still with us and she quickly took control of the situation. As soon as we got back home, I was sent to bed for a quick nap. I was to awake a few hours later, thinking that it was a different day because it was still light.

Anyone who has not travelled far beyond the tropics of cancer and Capricorn, the length of day remains pretty much the same all year round. In Uganda, the fact that the country is astride the equator means that day and night are equal. Its twelve hours each. This has affected even the way time is told. When I woke up later in the day, my cheap digital watch was reading something like 0813PM. But I failed to internalise the PM bit. I thought that it was 0813 in the morning because I had never seen it light that late in the day.

The sun along the equator rushes up the sky in the morning then crawls across it through the day roasting the ground and the people. As soon as it gets about 1730, the sun literally drops out of the sky! As a young boy, I watched the sunset many times with my father and it always excited me seeing the huge red sun drop behind the hills on the horizon.

Within minutes, the stars would be out. That evening, my first evening in the UK, the sun seemed to refuse to go away! I could not believe it seeing day light until way past 2100 hours!

Welcome to Great Britain

My first proper step on to British soil was just after 13.00 hours on April 23, 1995. After that gruelling questioning by immigration officials and the anxiety that it had all caused I felt a little scared of what I had let myself in for. To look back now and think of all the negative thoughts about this great country that had been sowed in my mind just because of one immigration man!

Harold and my sister took me to the car park where Diane had been waiting all that time. We again seemed to walk for ever through halls filled to capacity by people from all nationalities.

I was anxious. I wanted to get out of this huge building and yet it seemed to go on for ever. Even getting to the car we had to through a tunnel.

When we finally got to the car parks, I wondered how we were ever going to find the car that we needed. The size of the car parks just completely amazed me. Again looking back thinking about the largest car parks that I had seen in Uganda at the time were hardly larger than the average car park at a supermarket.

Now it seemed cars had taken over where people had been. There were cars for as far as I could see.

People weaving and rushing between them with trolley loads of luggage. But I had never seen so many cars in one place. Yet Harold did not even stop to think as to where he had left his Red Volvo Estate. Poor Diane had sat in the car waiting for us all that time. It must have seemed like a quick stop and pick up but alas it was not to be. I have never asked her what she must have been doing all that time waiting in the car. This was the time before SUDOKU. Maybe she had the crossword.

Greetings exchanged, we loaded the car up and headed for the exit. For a while as Harold drove round looking for the exit, I panicked thinking that we were yet going to take a long time just to exit this maze.

Hitting the M4 Heathrow spur, with the Concord model that used to be on the roundabout, I quietly let a smile spread across my face. I felt at that moment that we were away from the clutches of air travel, the airport, the endless carpeted corridors, immigration, the throng of humanity; peoples that I did not even know existed.

Cars everywhere! People seeming to be in a constant state of panic. Rushing. Waiting nervously watching blinking screens. I let myself relax and decided to take in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I could not wait to explore this island and meet its people and traditions.

Uganda is renown for its dust. Red omnipresent dust. It clogs everything. Covers every surface and controls ones pace during the day. The tropical heat bakes the ground and it all turns in the stuff. When it rains, parts of the country just turn into a quagmire. It is never ending. The lack of it when I exited the airport took me by surprise. I was like "where is the red dust?" It was no where and I honestly I felt relieved. Also the tropical heat can be debilitating. On a recent visit to Uganda, the temperatures averaged 40C everyday. On this April morning, with the spring at its height, I thought the country was air conditioned.

When we joined the motorway network, I was in for another shock. Bearing in mind that this was a Sunday morning, not a lot of traffic was about. But I have been told that I was amazed at the amount of traffic about.

Cars seemed to be whizzing past at a very high speed. There also seemed to be a variety of cars. Africa has been taken over by Japanese cars. And they are all white! So to see a red Mercedes or black Toyota was great. I had only seen cars like Alpha Romeos in Time magazine or Newsweek. Now they were sailing past me.

Driving in some parts of Africa can be a real hazard to pedestrians. In many parts one will find that they have to fight for that road space with domestic animals like cows which are let out to graze for themselves.

In Uganda, the situation is just as bad. With the roads being very narrow in certain places one wonders how really nasty accidents are avoided. Driving down Worthy Road in Winchester after we had left the motorway, I half expected to see all these people walking about doing there business.

Maybe a few cows here and there. There was nothing. England seemed all to empty at the time. I wondered where everyone was? But I knew where I was. Winchester!

Rumours of swine flu

I flew into Uganda on July 16th 2009 on a pretty rickety Kenyan Airways Boeing 737. It was one of those nights that the tropical heat hits you in the face like a wall. Tired, with my family in tow, we made a dash for the immigration desks.

This, for those who fly into Entebbe airport, is one of the most annoying times in ones travel to Uganda. Immigration staff just take forever to process anyone. The problem is further made worse by the fact that the airport is small enough for one to be able to see loved ones waiting the other side.

The end to one's journey, in many cases long haul flights, is near. Yet these servants of the state just slow down to a near halt!On this balmy evening, I had failed to appreciate the effects of swine flu and the coverage that it was getting in my adopted country, The United Kingdom.

> Thanks to Sky News - which is widely watched in Uganda - and other media outlets, travellers from the UK are viewed with suspicion. The growing perception even on the dusty streets of Kampala is that we in the UK are dropping like flies from this disease. Which actually makes for interesting observation because we in the UK, thanks to Sky News and other media outlets think that they in Uganda and Africa in general are dropping like flies from all manner of disease and poverty.

>Another layer of safety had been added to the defence of the Republic. Men with surgical masks corralled everyone off our flight into another corner so that we could fill out a form on whether we had had the symptoms or not. I actually wonder who admitted to having had them.

>I could see a flurry of Bic pens quickly ticking the "no" boxes. The lines grew longer as these men with the masks milked the situation, making us more irate. They too were asking questions which I thought would normally be asked by immigration staff only.

>I could see the immigration desks empty with two bored looking officers waiting for us. Their sole purpose, I suspect, to make our journal longer! I wondered what they would do if this airport were to suddenly get two large plane loads of passengers.

Fourteen years previous, I had landed at Heathrow airport fresh from a long haul flight from Muscat. Our GulfAir plane had touched down on time. The flight though uneventful, had seemed to take forever! I had watched as The Bosporus, Greece, Switzerland and all of Western Europe lazily float bellow us at a painfully slow pace-or that is what it seemed.

We had taken such a long time to arrive in London that I started thinking that either London did not exist, was moving further away from us or the pilots had missed a turning somewhere and were now hurdled over some atlas thinking "that place down there looks really iced over".

We got off that plane and I thought that I would rush to immigration as I do at Entebbe, clear with them and collect my luggage and hey presto! There was Diane and Harold! Little did I know that, I had entered what seemed to be the largest building I had yet encountered.

How long does one have to walk from an aircraft to those immigration desks? For a while I wondered whether I had indeed left Heathrow (and London) and was probably heading for another country still in one building. We turned left, turned right and the fear that I had encountered before of pilots missing London altogether started to creep over me.

I wondered whether those arrows pointing me in the right direction were actually not intended for me anymore. My assurance was that I could still see that lady who was looking after me. She too was following these arrows with a grim determination.

Then I hit the lines. I had never seen so many people of so many different nationalities in one place. A family in front of me clutched American passports. I was privately satisfied that they too were here lining up, waiting for their turn. A group of South Americans, or so I thought as they spoke Spanish, nervously thumbed through their passports making sure all visa stamps were correct and glued in.

Then I panicked! For at this moment it dawned on me that I had not looked at my passport again in the preceding 24 hours! Where was it? I could not even find my chequebook sized air ticket.

I was carrying enough junk on me as hand luggage to fill up a council tip! I even had the in-flight magazine on me. Who ever carries those off a flight? After a brief "pit stop" on the side, where everyone kindly waited for me to regain my position in the line, I had the offending items.

I rejoined the snaking lines to immigration where my nightmare begun.As I was travelling solo, having been invited for a summer holiday at two addresses, I had not carried much money. In Uganda, for one to go and spend a holiday with someone in their home means strictly that.

One stays at home. And if your host were to be so kind as to take you see a place, they foot the bill. So, I arrived with a paltry £50 in my wallet for a ten week stay. I approached that desk as the lady who was looking after me approached another one.

I thought we were going to be waved through together. She was. I was not. The interrogation started. Same questions repeated over and over again. Thankfully, I had memorised exactly what I had written on my visa application form. Any diversion from what I had written I politely corrected the immigration man. Any question as to why some information that I was providing at the moment had not been disclosed earlier I defended myself that it had not been asked of me in that application form.

>An hour into my interrogation, my suitcase was given to me, taken to a separate room and they proceeded to search it. It was an old leather case that my father had been using and regarded as an important family possession.

>I was horrified when these two burly looking men appeared with a pen knife and proceeded to cut the bottom out of it. I was distraught. I knew nothing would be found and indeed nothing was found.

>My toothpaste tube was emptied completely and a bag of millet flour spread out on the table. Still nothing was found.Two hours into the ordeal with I no wiser as to what they were looking for, I saw Harold and my sister being marched into another room.

Friendly faces at last. The immigration officer returned with both of them to me, took my passport and endorsed it with a six month tourist visa. I protested! I wanted only ten weeks not six months. Not after his shoddy treatment.

He mumbled something about procedure, let me through and wished me a nice stay. A nice stay? I could have decked him! I was furious, tired but happy that at long last I was on British soil. I broke down and bawled like a baby.

My sister who does not do emotional stuff just walked ahead of me. Harold, who I was to learn later did not also do this kind of emotional stuff, stiffly put an arm around me. I was to learn later on that that £50 was my undoing.

They thought that I was coming to work illegally.After that two hour delay at Heathrow I take the delays at Entebbe with mild irritation. An acceptance that these defenders of the state have a job to do.

That man at Heathrow (whom I would love to meet in a dark alley with no witnesses) had a duty to question my £50 pocket money. I will also one day ask Harold and Diane what the total parking bill for them was on that day.

African time

Since December 2007, I have been working for First PMT in Stoke- On-Trent. It is probably the largest bus operating company in the region. Like all other transport companies in the country, safety the number one priority.

Transport companies also operate tight time schedules to try and give their passengers reliable services. Before I moved to the Potteries, I also worked on the railways in Bristol.

The time factor is very important on the railways as they are charged phenomenal amounts of money for minutes delayed. On Sunday 23rd April 1995, my Gulf Air Boeing 767 flight touched down at London's Heathrow airport on time.

I thought that the pilot had suspended the landing gear over the runway for a moment with his eye on the clock. I was impressed. Where I come from, the time concept is sometimes either not understood or adhered to.

We have what is called "African Time". African time means being chronically late! For example, if two people were to arrange for a drinks meeting at 1400 hours at the local pub, the two would agree to meet " in the afternoon". If they were then to eventually meet up finally at 1600 hours (and please mark my usage of the word "if") that meeting would be on time.

This attitude to the passing of time was with me as I headed towards London. My expectation then at the time was that this Gulf Air flight would make London Heathrow sometime that day, the pilot radioing in for permission to land.

Then someone in the control tower would thoughtfully, over a cup of tea wave us in. The flight was itself to me an introduction to another world other than Uganda. My heart raced when we were called to start boarding the aircraft about thirty minutes late. This of course was not of any inconvenience to me.I had been put in the care of another lady who was traveling ostensibly to look after me. At the time I felt that this was embarrassing.I wanted to look after myself!

Later she was to come to my aid on two occasions. I failed to work the seat belt buckle the first time, desperate to go to the toilet and a minute late and all my respect amongst the other passengers would have evaporated. The second one was at Muscat airport when I saw an escalator for the first time. What a fuss!! I am in Uganda as I write this piece.

The country has just been introduced to the delights of escalators within the last decade and the excitement about them has only just about started dying down. The first time one was introduced in The Garden City shopping mall it had to be switched off every now and then because of the human foot fall on it. With me at Muscat airport, I was like a rabbit caught in car headlights.

That lady whose help I had felt so embarrassed to accept now was gently coaxing me to "step on and step off". With an impatient line forming behind me, threatening to snowball into passengers being held on waiting airliners, and others in holding stacks over the Persian Gulf, all on account of me failing to get onto these moving stairs, I stepped on to the escalator! One tiny step for me.

Looking back now, I laugh at that episode. How ridiculous I must have looked. Recently I was using one of the escalators at Seven Sisters underground and I hardly noticed it was there despite its length and height. And when my poor mother comes to visit me she finds me a tedious timekeeper as I narrow down to the last minutes about our intended itinerary for a given day.

Journey's beginning

I have on so many occasions been asked questions about my country of origin, Uganda, what it is like and how the political situation is at the moment.

Having lived in the United Kingdom for over a decade now, one finds that clear concise answers become more difficult.

Unless one is actively engaged, the danger is that slowly these topics start getting hard to articulate.

There are however stories that we who have made The United Kingdom and England especially our home by choice that never fade.

Those stories that we the immigrant population hope that we will be able to tell to our grandchildren with clarity as if the events being described only happened in the recent past.

On occasions, I have been asked about my first impression of the United Kingdom when I first visited. In this age of mass migration, when the population of the UK has grown, the new arrivals have had varying thoughts of their new home. I wonder what the Vikings thought when they first arrived on these shores.

I can only imagine the thoughts of those poor Jamaicans arriving on The Empire Windrush at Tilbury in June 1948 to a country that was overwhelmingly white. And yet this seems only yesterday.

Lenny Henry the comedian has wondered on one of his shows why his father opted for Dudley instead of Kingston, Jamaica.

The Irish immigrants to England in the 19^th Century probably did not find the UK much of a difference with the weather.

But they helped with the expansion of industry in this country. The late 20^th Century saw large migrations from Africa many of whom came here for casual labour. Some came to study and ended up settling here.

Now with the expansion of the European Union, the immigrants to this country are not necessarily coming from far flung places but right on the door step of The UK. For centuries this country has welcomed immigrants all with different stories of what they thought of their adopted motherland. This is mine.

Rick Steves the renown travel writer once wrote: "Many Americans board a plane for an overseas destination without fully realising that they are flying into a completely different culture.

"Some experience culture shock; a psychological disorientation caused by immersion in a place where people do things differently and see things differently."

That fully sums up my first visit to the UK in 1995, a young impressionable man from a comfortable African family. My whole family apart from me had at the time had a British Education in some form.

My father, an Anglican priest had been at Birmingham Christian College, Selly Oak. My Mother too had also been to some Christian instruction college near Farnham in Surrey. My sister was at college in London and my two brothers had been to University at Queens in Belfast and Aberystwyth in Wales. So, on this basis and from the stories they told of the United Kingdom, I felt pretty knowledgeable about the country.

Saturday 22^nd April 1995 was a cool day as I prepared to fly out of Uganda. I had been invited to visit by two families. The first one(Diane and Harold) lived in Winchester, Hampshire and the other family (Jimmy and Nadine) live in St Johns Isle Of Man.

The two families had their daughters working as volunteers in Uganda. The excitement was almost tangible. For my family, they felt that at long last they could talk about the London "tube" without me looking on with my jaw falling through the floor.

On my part, this day was the culmination on a number of events. Uganda at the time was still reeling from decades of political turmoil. For one to acquire a passport was next to impossible.

However, my father had managed to get mine in a record two weeks. Needless to say he spent hours waiting at offices and cajoling officers for their signatures only to be told that the next signature would be got from another officer across the county the size of Cheshire and Staffordshire combined.

With the dire road situation, that meant a two hour journey at best. He still managed to get the coveted book and I will never forget the smile on his face as he handed it to me. At that moment, it felt like he had just given me the freedom to roam the globe!

At the airport I was getting slightly irritated by my family who had come out in force to see me off. They kept giving me tips on what to do when and how. What to expect when I got on to that Gulf Air plane.

My father kept on checking to see whether I still had my passport. He kept looking at the visa to make sure it was in date. It never seemed ending and I just wanted to get away from everyone and start on my adventure.

The airport was full of people who had come to see loved ones off. This used to be a common practice in Uganda before travel became common place. The airport would be heaving with people who had come to see loved ones fly off to other countries. Entebbe airport could have had one flight in the day but the lobby and the restaurants would be full. It was a day out! Suddenly, our flight was called to start checking in! My adventures had begun. And I was getting away from these lot...............