Sitting in our living room with the curtains still closed (lazily wearing my dressing gown), it’s easy to forget that we’re in east Africa. I’ve just enjoyed a bowl of weetabix-and-muesli combo followed by freshly-baked white toast with my Mum’s marmalade, while reading the news on the BBC website. But there are things here that jolt you back into the reality of living at Kisiizi.
A couple of evenings ago, I left the bathroom light on, while the window was open. At the height of summer in the UK that would probably encourage a few moths to make their presence felt, fluttering as they do against the bulb. Here, though, it prompted the (not altogether welcome) ingress of the hugest beetle I’ve ever seen. Sadly I didn’t have the foresight to photograph it , but suffice to say that it was at least 3 inches long. It wouldn’t fit in a decent-sized cup when we (OK, Kate) tried to rescue it from the sink. At least it didn’t seem to have the power of flight.
Our evenings here are often punctuated by goats roaming around our house, inexpertly controlled by a very small boy of maybe 6 or 7. One of us often has to ‘shoo’ them off our garden, which seems to form an impromptu thoroughfare for grazing livestock. But last night the usual goat routine was augmented by a lost-looking piglet!
You wouldn’t find that in the UK. At least, not where we’ve lived.
