AFRICAN FAMILIES

23 JANUARY 2025

On December 28th, I arrived in Sipi, Uganda, home of my ‘Ugandan Family’, Alex, Precious and the two lovely children – my surrogate grandchildren – Keilah, eight and Jonathan Bean, six. I so much enjoyed the children’s company that I stayed over three weeks. And in answer to the common question I am asked at home, “What do you DO in Africa?” I can only respond, pretty much what I do at home: work rather hard and expend a lot of energy on practical projects. My ‘rest days’ involve long hikes up and down very high mountainsides… It’s a perfect ‘holiday’ for me: plenty to do physically, sunshine to do it in, and well fed and sufficiently beered by my hosts. Warm beer, of course…

My practical role is to provide design advice, paint and decorate the houses and redo most of the work done by inept Sipi workmen. Two of the new rooms had water drains connected directly to the soil pipe, without U bends, resulting in foul gases pervading the rooms. This, by an arrogant ‘plumber’ I dislike, who exploits Alex’s total impracticality. I’ve had to replumb most of his work. Twice, I lost my temper big time, berating ‘workers’ who refuse to invest in tools and rely on the bent hammer, a machete and hoe to do carpentry, make furniture and fittings. Tom, the wood butcher, won’t now come to Rock Gardens if I am there!

Our quirky guest house, named after Rock Cottage in Harberton, comes along apace, with its six detached round houses. Actually, one’s rectangular: the Kampala Bungalow, as I rudely call it: Ugandan guests don’t want to stay in the ‘old fashioned’ thatched houses so popular with mzungu guests! The place is unique, with its quaint wooden restaurant up on stilts, its excellent food and its welcoming atmosphere that feels very ‘African’ by design. We are attracting many customers; some days, it’s booked to capacity. Just a day or two ago, we hit a record of 15 guests, having expected a quiet day with just two and me. That night, we had two young Israelis sleeping in a tent, one under the stars and all rooms occupied, even the ‘emergency’ rooms – the rather basic ones in the original family block. It begins to make some money for Alex at last; it must do, because the demands on my wallet have reduced. I still pay much of the capital cost, but running costs and maintenance seem to have devolved onto the Rock Gardens cash box, such as it is in a hand to mouth economy. It’s still the biggest expenditure of my life, with all my pension coming here, and a good deal more to the other African families, but I am financially secure now – something I never planned nor expected, but a benefit of being of the Baby Boomer generation, perhaps the most fortunate in history.

All this gives me the opportunities to indulge my passion of travel. For decades it wasn’t this easy; I had to make choices – sometimes difficult ones. I remained freelance and childless, I sometimes had periods of relative poverty while I had no income, and I always scrimped and saved for my journeys. Obsessively, some would accuse! But in the end, it’s all worked well, and I now have chosen families in several countries and can share some of my privileges. I can also travel pretty much at will, despite the economic turmoil of the world.

****

It’s been great to be in rural Africa, totally avoiding all recent ‘news’. I’m told that the ignorant reality TV failure, now ‘leader of the free world’ (derisory laughter) who called all Africa ‘shithole countries’ did not invite a single African leader to his recent inauguration. Having studiously avoided even opening my Guardian subscription for over a month, I’ve been able to avoid witnessing the degradation and shame now being visited on the people of USA. Poor USA is now the shithole country. How angered he’d be to know how Africans laugh at him with such derision!

****

We hardly ever meet Americans travelling in Africa (except for hunting and expensive safaris: very few backpackers), but if more Westerners travelled in Africa (and thank god they don’t!), there would be a lot more understanding of the modern problem of immigration, and the reason that so many are willing to risk everything, even their lives, to achieve the vain dream that so many Africans (and Latin Americans) harbour: that riches and ease of life await them in the rich countries of the North.

At least every day, I converse on the futility of the African Dream. The Dream is that by getting somehow to Europe, Australia, Canada, USA, all problems will disappear and wealth will flow without limit. To understand it all, just look at what Africans see of life in our countries: not poverty, homelessness, white beggars, unemployment, racial prejudice, meagre living conditions, bad health, child poverty, unfair opportunities, divisive education – well, I could go on. What they DO see, on TV and media, and now overwhelmingly in the exploitative videos they watch endlessly on their phones, is glamour, rampant consumerism, commercial exploitation, wealth, fast cars, palatial houses, fashion, possessions, triviality and untruth: the myth that you are what you own. It is unfiltered, made to exploit, made to create customers. This great lie is taken as truth. It’s on TV. It’s on YouTube. We all live like this in our rich countries.

And of course, the only mzungus they see are tourists. I explain that we tourists are APPARENTLY wealthy when we come here because of the relative value of our money. But how do I make people BELIEVE me? I tell them that my 20 bob cup of tea in Kenya (12p) will cost them the best part of 500 bob in England. That a cheap room to rent in London will cost them at least 130,000 Kenyan shillings (say £800), and that if they are fortunate enough to even GET a job legally, they are likely to be on minimum wage (£10.90 I think). A meal will cost them that much, a bus fare to work a minimum £3. I tot up my monthly electricity bill in Ugandan and Kenya Shillings. They gasp. It’s more than most earn here in a month…

But The Dream lives on. Not a day goes by without someone asking me for help to reach Europe. Marion, a smart, clever young woman working at the Kessup guest house, passed out of school with the highest marks: university place almost guaranteed despite, William informs me, coming from a very humble family. But she’s fixated on The Dream, which will solve all her problems and make her rich. I point out that if she has any hope of raising the airfare, visa costs and the probably exploitative fees for some unknown university in UK, that is most likely nothing more than a sham business, then she has every chance of raising the deposit she needs to secure a government loan in Kenya to study at university, without wasting her resources on the chimera of The Dream, and suffering the prejudice, climate, restrictions and dislocation of family and culture. Stay here and do good things, where you have friends and family and are culturally secure, I tell her. She appears to take it in, but the lure of The Dream and all its glitz and glamour is very persuasive. Life to most young East Africans is on their phone screens now, and all they show is the consumerism and superficial wealth of our countries. All fake. All exploitation.

I’ve seen the other end of The Dream: Africans living in austere conditions in illegally sub-let council flats in London; a trained doctor selling train tickets for British Rail; a smart Ghanaian woman married to an elderly British manual labourer of very little education, living in a dowdy mobile home in dismal Lancashire; the prejudices flamed by the rightwing hate-speech of the Reform Party and their ilk; the inflammatory language of the Daily Mail and rightwing TV; violence of the ignorant; selfishness and mean-spiritedness of so many ‘superior’ white people. For god’s sake, I was just in Texas for the Trump election, so I’ve stared into the depths of the abyss! I’ve seen how mean and selfish man can become, when his own livelihood is threatened. That’s why Trump succeeds in his vicious, lying poison.

But this is the reality behind the desire to get to Britain, despite the appalling risks. Britain raped and pillaged for 150 years, and through some ancient propaganda, many still see those times as secure and stable. “You were our masters,” they say, with a misplaced nostalgic respect for a time when politics were stable – because dissent wasn’t allowed.

This is why so many risk all, even their lives, to reach The Dream… It is impossibly sad. I’m ashamed to be upheld as an example of living The Dream. I know the reality is SO devastatingly different… Poor exploited Africa.

****

Last weekend, Alex and I rode to a HUGE, extravagant wedding in Lira, in the middle of northern Uganda, 170 miles away and a couple of thousand feet below Sipi’s mountain shoulder elevation. On the first night, we stayed in Dokolo, in a calm, cheap £5 hotel of round thatched houses, setting off early next day to catch up with the Kapchorwa clan in Lira.

Thank goodness we decided to ride there. The local clan, from Sipi and Kapchorwa, travelled by a school bus, driving half through two nights, while we enjoyed a couple of nights away from home. The clan members are expected to attend, but it appears that the bride and groom, a mature couple with three teenage children, paid for everything. Alex guesstimated that the whole event may have cost at least £6000 or £7000, a massive sum in Uganda. It was a fine example of high African bling, and an occasion to dress up: women wearing all manner of African fashion, from traditional swathed African print dresses to clingfilm-tight fabrics that left little to imagination. The men, as usual, wore ridiculous, impractical, ill-fitting western suits (not me, of course, for I have only a pair of slightly grubby zip-offs and a relatively clean, crumpled long sleeved shirt!)

The ceremony began in a big born-again church on the edge of sprawling Lira, an unattractive, surprisingly large town on the hot, swampy plains of central Uganda. 500 people packed into the tin-roofed church, including one very conspicuous mzungu, making it impossible for me to get out my phone and read a book during the extended shouty sermons and formalities by half-crazed business pastors. I could understand nothing, with the amplification of chest mikes, and exaggerated accents. I sat – as I have become accustomed in so many African events – with a smile and look of apparent interest fixed on my face, the sinecure of a thousand eyes. I’ve no doubt that the bride and groom, when they sit to watch the HOURS of video, will wonder who the hell the freeloading mzungu was! If they were listening attentively, they’d’ve heard me introduce myself on the microphone, as requested by a ranting pastor, to the entire throng. My years as a mzungu in Africa have accustomed me to such spotlit moments.

The ceremony over, we repaired to the Lira Hotel for a splendid glittering wedding feast, with gazebos decorated in orange and white furbelows, gold-encased Chinese plastic chairs and a white and orange arched bridal walkway to the high table with its acres of fake florality, golden chairs and backdrop of autumnal Canadian woodland. By some odd chance, Alex and I were not directed to the Kapchorwa clan tent, but to the ‘Church’ tent, a source of much private hilarity for a couple of avowed atheists. One of the pleasures of the serendipity of travelling is the play acting often required. And as members of the ‘Church’ contingent, we were then ushered to the front of the pressing line of hundreds of jostling diners, anticpating a free meal. A good meal it was too, cooked by outside caterers and served with aplomb by the hotel staff.

Speeches were long and very tedious. Give an African a microphone and they seldom know when to stop. Everyone must be introduced and their status paraded at length, all pride and name-dropping. The MC decreed two minutes per speaker. Some chance. He gained a round of amused ironic laughter when he wrested the microphone from the bride’s sister after 25 minutes of tedious introductions, suggesting that we had already met every one of her aunts, uncles, sisters, nephews and nieces, and her children could just wave from the crowd to satisfy the final introduction he was allowing her. We all applauded the MC.

We were entertained by a small troupe of male dancers from the northern Karamajong region of Uganda; energetic and lithe, they danced frenetically and often with humour. One supple young fellow was particularly humorous, dancing provocatively feminine roles to great effect with shaking bum tassels. They leaped in fast acrobatics, formed human towers, somersaulted through hoops and breathed fire. It really did seem that no expense was spared by the bride and groom – a professor at one of the universities. But quite what they thought of the unknown mzungu, now an honorary part of the Kapchorwa clan, I do wonder.

Alex and I stayed the night in Lira and rode the 170 miles home on quiet Sunday roads across the flat interior of Uganda, where swamps and sinuous lakes make up some of the landscape. It was my third ride through the area, but Alex’s first, an experience – and well earned rest we both relished.

****

In Alex, I see a lot of myself… It must have been this early instinct that formed the bond, that first evening, seven years ago. Funny how instinct is often the surest guide.

In him, I see shades of my own somewhat obsessive, sometimes compulsive nature, my restless need for activity and order, my extreme sense of justice, impatience with meanness of spirit and my irritating ‘White Anglo Saxon Protestant’ work ethic, to say nothing of my obstinacy! Half my age, he never stops, is upset by injustice, has a great sense of integrity and thinks and plans ahead, vanishingly unknown qualities in so much of Africa. He’s become a steadfast companion, it’s easy to travel together, especially away from the stresses of Sipi. We both like people.

****

A day’s hiking in the rural beauties away from the tourism of Sipi, is Alex’s and my idea of relaxing, despite the energetic nature of walking in this steep country, with its dramatic cliffs and red mountain tracks. It’s hard countryside to tame, prone to many serious landslides and with tiny terraces of fields battled from the steep slopes over many generations. We seldom pass beyond populated places, every inch used for subsistence crops. But we DO get quickly into areas where a white visitor is rare, and I am feted all day by countless excited children (in this country where half the population is younger than 14 years) and shake their grubby hands hundreds of times. It’s fun progressing through in this celebrity manner. Alex and I chuckle at the antics of distant, often invisible children yelling, “Mzungu! Mzungu!” and calling their friends to look.

One day, we clamber down the ladder on the cliff near to Rock Gardens and drop to the slopes below, following a sinuous red dirt road through lovely scenery and many hamlets. At every house, crowds of children gather to stare and call. We stop in a scruffy village on the steep slopes for tea and chapatis. The people tell us that their community is due for resettlement to the hot dry plains far below, after the giant landslide that buried 12 hamlets and about 200 people last rainy season. Climate change is making many disasters in Africa, the continent that causes least pollution and is least prepared to deal with its consequences.

We’ve spotted a track winding up the steep slopes. It rises from this decrepit hamlet. It’s a huge staircase of rock-built steps, rising over 650 feet! It’s a rarity here, where the paths are always informal, made by a million plastic flip-flops and Chinese sandals over many years. It’s amazing! A giant stairway to heaven, built in 2024 at the behest of a rare generous politician, the local MP, to get his constituents up this precipitous mountainside.

The steps end at a metal staircase, the last 100 feet up the cliffside at the top. Unfortunately, a rock slide has already carried away the top 30 feet or so and it’s been replaced by the usual rickety stick ladder above a dangerously slippery rock face. Some acrobatics are required above the cliff face to transfer from formal steel to the crazy sticks.

At last we are on top. We’ve climbed over 1300 feet since we spotted the path, straight up the side of the mountain, and now stand well over 6500 feet high. The air is thin, it’s good training. The views are magnificent from up here, but I know that our hike home will be relentlessly up and down, and still three hours or more. It’s great to be here. Great to be in rural Africa, with a smiling companion who treats me with fatherly respect and fondness.

****

It’s now January 23rd. A couple of days ago, I rode back round Mount Elgon to Kitale. What used to be a derelict goat track that took all day to ride, and made me arrive beaten, battered, smothered in dust (and highly exhilarated), is now a smooth road belonging to the Chinese government. “Cheap loans from China are VERY expensive!” I say to the staff at Suam border post.

The journey takes a record short time, door to door in two and three quarter hours, including half an hour of bureaucracy crossing from Uganda back to Kenya.

We are expecting Wanda and Jörg to visit today. I met them on my travels about four years ago and we became instant friends: an older couple from Köln, with an old camping car that they keep in Tanzania and use, like me, to escape from winters in Europe. They made friends with Adelight and Rico and now stop by most years on their wanderings.

As at the remote international border post, where I’m known by my first name, I’m recognised all over town in Kitale; even the street traders welcome me back, the shopkeepers, supermarket staff, all give me warm welcomes. What is there to be afraid of in Africa, the commonest question I am asked at home? Implied, of course, is a immense misapprehension of Africa, encouraged through 150 years of English culture, as we colonised and controlled ‘the natives’. Buried in the question is a huge sense of cultural superiority. It’s all so far from the actuality of what’s around me; of what brings me back year after year; of what’s caused me to form families across this misunderstood continent – where I am greeted hundreds of times a day, made welcome, respected and befriended.

****

Next week, I’ll ride back to Sipi. We have to find a better school for the two children. The quality of education in Uganda is abysmal, and they have not been doing well, despite their intelligence, at the best school available, 10 miles away in Kapchorwa, where they had to board thanks to the dangerous driving of the school minibus, packed with small children on the dangerous road. It’s likely that they may have to travel to Mbale, 30 miles down the mountain, to find a better education. Life is tough in Africa. Whatever age you are.

This year’s journey is remarkable for my delight in the small people around me. Perhaps they – and I – am at an age to appreciate this. Keilah is the eldest at eight, followed by Maria in Kitale at seven, Jonathan in Uganda at six, Wesley in Kitale at five and his brother, the wonderful Wayne, whom I could pick up and bring home, at eighteen months, a serious little boy with the biggest eyes and a habit of attracting attention by tapping you, rather than speaking.

I’ve come to adore them all! A fine gift for the mzee mzungu – the old white man! They are making this safari a delight. Who’d’ve thought it?

****

IT’S TOUGH, AFRICA

6th JANUARY 2025

Grandfatherly duties take a lot of time, hence the long gap in my updates. Well, they’re not duties of course: they are pleasures; pleasures I never really expected to enjoy until I gained my two surrogate grandchildren in my ‘old’ age. A great gift.

My favourite African, charming little Keilah, eight years old, is a warm-hearted, unsophisticated but intelligent little girl. We rather love each other! Jonathan Bean is a boisterous fellow, just turned six years and full of life. He copies most of Keilah’s actions and they entertain one another happily, with few spats or battles, perhaps thanks to Keilah’s patient nature. They join in the household activity, as most African children do in a culture without ‘labour saving’ devices. Washing all the guest house bedsheets is a constant chore carried out in the garden in plastic bowls; cooking is over smoky open fires or charcoal; cleaning is with hand-brushes and cloths. Ask the children what they’ve been doing, and the response is invariably, “Sweeping…”

Now they are growing I don’t get wakened at their whim, but they watch for the door of my house opening, my signal that I’m ready for my morning hug and greetings. We breakfast together up in the crazy wooden restaurant, product of Alex’s imagination, all formed from wooden poles, elevated ten feet above the compound, decorated by me with line drawings in mud paint of local activities and scenes. I’ve come to love these two children – and perhaps I’m at a time of life to fully appreciate the joys of having small children around. I never felt the paternal instinct – too restless and free spirited for that, but I DO like children and finding two such delights now is a great joy. But they do demand attention that prevents the peace to sit and write…

****

I rode round the mountain on December 28th, now a fine quick ride on the sweeping Chinese road. It’s twenty yards wide and empty of traffic, except local boda-boda motorbike taxis and a few labouring local trucks. Why the Ugandan government has elected to build this expensive folly, and the extravagantly vast ‘One-Stop’ border post (built by the Chinese State Construction Corporation…), is impossible to understand. No articulated trucks, the traffic that blocks the lower altitude border posts between Kenya and Uganda, is likely to opt to drive over these high mountain shoulders, with steep inclines and curving tarmac. And few tourists come this way to be impressed by the hubris of the ‘One-Stop’ border post, another source of immense debt to the rapacious Chinese government’s economic colonisation scheme. In lieu of debt repayment, China last year seized ownership of Entebbe Airport, Uganda’s state airport. (They tried to get Nairobi’s airport last year, but the Kenyans united in objection…) China does nothing for free, and the president is well entrenched in their pockets. Poor Africa. The British stole their resources for 150 years; the Americans imposed their hideous cultural colonialism; then the Chinese milk what’s left, providing apparently cheap loans that come with vast cost – repaid in land grabs of mineral-rich untapped mountains and deserts and natural resources.

The unhurried border officials recognise me now. My passage, with my hard-fought six month multiple entry visa causes a little consternation to Betty, the immigration officer, who has to consult her superior, but is apologetic for the delay. Business is still done by the same few officers in what appear to be huge garages; there’s been no progress with the giant architectural folly since March. Priorities are perhaps best proven by the only large poster in the Kenyan immigration offices: ‘8-ball English Pool Official Rules’. The pool table has been the centre of activity for the seven years I’ve been coming this way, since the days of the broken gate, the dust-covered tin huts, the concrete colonial bridge from 1956, and the rutted goat track across the rugged mountains. This time, I arrive at lunchtime and must wait upon the immigration officer’s whim.

****

The views to the north feel as if I am gazing over half Uganda. Small pimples of extinct volcanoes prick the blue-hazed distance. I lean and bend; this is one if my favourite roads as it weaves its way along the mountainsides. It’s difficult to remember just how hard this road was four years back, a deep dusty, rocky rutted track – that was SUCH fun to ride on my small trail bike, 90 miles of exhilarating riding. Now it’s smooth and boring, but quick. I’m reminded very soon just how outgoing Ugandans are, as children scream from the steep banks and adults stare from their doors of tin-roofed, earth-built houses at the roadside. It’s fun to ride in Uganda.

****

Then I’m at Rock Gardens for the welcome the children have anticipated for so long. Precious is ululating, the children clamouring. Alex is away at a clan function, elected MC yet again, this wise, smart young man.

There are new buildings everywhere. This is where my money’s gone since March. Most of ten grand of it. Two new round houses with grass roofs (over metal sheets for the abundant rainy season), a new gate and gate house, a raised wooden terrace that stands higher than the hedges, and an ugly sort of bungalow block, imposed amongst the ‘traditional’ round houses.

It’s a mistake, I see immediately, out of proportion and angular, like something dropped in from a housing estate in Kampala, amongst our quaint structures. When Alex comes, he tells me he had to build it as Ugandan guests are too proud to sleep in our old fashioned African heritage rooms! Its ironic that he has to pander to pride here.

Rock Gardens is still the cheapest accommodation in Sipi, getting the highest ratings on the internet, popular and well booked. Travellers now use the multinational corporations to book their rooms; gone is the fabulous serendipity of going and looking for yourself. It’s in Alex’s favour, but I regret that so many young travellers have such a tame experience nowadays; it’s taken the adventure out of travelling. Even backpackers book ahead now, book guides, do the same activities as everyone else. It’s bland and lacks the initiative we older travellers required. Now they sit on their phones and ‘share’ it all with their friends at home, instead of being in the moment – in Africa. Well, times change I suppose and mine is only the bleat of all the old about the young…

****

We decide to remove the bungalow roof and redesign it: it’s far too dominant. As I write, the appalling workers are demolishing the zinc roof. Every construction job in Sipi is done with no more than a hammer, a panga (machete) and a hoe. Hammers have long lost their handles, replaced with odd bits of welded pipes; pangas are shortened by use and the hoes have rough sticks for handles. I lose my rag many times a day. Why not buy some simple tools? A chisel to separate bricks instead of a battered hammer: we might save the bricks. A jemmy, surely no more expensive than a couple of pounds here, to lever the timbers apart. They’re all nailed anyway: you can’t even BUY a screw here. Instead of a small outlay, they waste huge amounts of energy, doing things the difficult way. I’ve stopped buying any tools and bringing them from better supplied Kenya – they all get stolen within a week, or are destroyed by lack of care. One day, I ask for the spirit level. I bought it last year. Now it’s blathered in old cement, with its level missing and shaft bent. I have to throw it away. “Oh, do it your own bloody way!” I just yelled at Tom, the worst wood butcher I know. I have to walk away.

****

In October, two electric poles fell down up the muddy lane to Rock Gardens and its village area. A young woman died. It’s a common death here. Five people have been buried from deaths by electric shock in the past months. I’m not surprised. There’s a flagrant disregard for the dangers of 240 volts, where wires are knotted and bare, poked into sockets with sticks, and left in uninsulated twists, open to all. Right now they’re burying another victim down below Rock Gardens.

So Alex (me!) invested in a generator. It’s making a hell of a racket and something is very wrong. Even I, lousy mechanic that I am, can tell. When I investigate, I find that someone – ‘who knew the answer’ and fiddled, has stripped the thread on the spark plug housing. There’s no plug cap anyway, just a twist of HT lead. I forbid Alex from letting ANYONE else even touch the machine.

“Ring Kato now!” I demand, knowing that Kato, the mechanic that now looks after my Mosquito has more skills than any of the ‘mechanics’ in Sipi. He rides down from Kapchorwa, the town 17 kilometres back up the road. In twenty minus he confidently strips the machine. It needs a new cylinder head, the barrel requires reboring, so a new piston and rings; the silencer needs welding up where it is shattered right round. The valves need decoking and adjusting, the armature is covered in oil and the brushes knackered. It’s so far out of tune it’s amazing it runs at all. Most nuts are stripped and rounded.

It cost over £200. Sipi’s ‘experts’ have destroyed it already. It costs me £80 for Kato to get it working again.

It’s TWO MONTHS old.

****

Alex is stressed much of the time. It’s so difficult to run a guest house for so many strangers in an ill-supplied place like this. The state electricity probably won’t be repaired for years, and only then when there’s a big enough bribe to some official. On January 1st, the water supply mysteriously goes off. We spend the morning carrying water in 20 litre jerrycans up the hill from the spring, 100 feet down the hill. I make three trips: 60 litres. Water for guests who have no idea what it’s like to live without a tap to dispense purified water. We suspect that the minor ‘official’ in charge of this area supply has turned it off to get bribes to reinstate the supply on this public holiday. But everyone spends hours of labour trudging up and down the hill. The water comes back just as mysteriously at midnight. The water official is also the local ‘plumber’, moonlighting. He’s installed a lavatory in the new ugly room. “It doesn’t flush…” says Alex, “and there’s something wrong about the seat.” The ‘plumber’ left without adjusting the plunger on top, and fitted the seat brackets backwards, took his money and left. He hoped Alex would call him back and pay him to ‘repair’ his workmanship. He didn’t bargain on a practical mzungu!

But it’s this way all the time here: lazy, uneducated and backward. This clan, Alex admits, is known for its jealousy. They look at him progressing, and rather than cashing in and gaining from the tourists he’s attracting – setting up small kiosks with their produce, making handicrafts or souvenirs, getting together to put on cultural displays – they undermine his business. The local expensive hotel set up a scam to deplete his reputation: they got a young woman tourist to come to Rock Gardens, pleading poverty and needing a cheap deal. Alex is generous about this. “She kept herself to herself,” he says. “She didn’t come out of her room, and she couldn’t afford to eat!” Next day, she claimed that $500 had been stolen from her room. To avoid damage to the reputation of his business, Alex had to pay up. “I think she wanted her fare home,” he says with an ironic smile. “Even the police, so corrupt themselves, suspected it!” Later, he found that he had been set up by a jealous local hotel.

Locals constantly tear down his guest house signs, and have thrown stones through guests’ car windows. They break and steal out of jealousy. They ‘steal’ his guests, taking them elsewhere. He began to get bad reviews from guests who never even came to Rock Gardens, redirected to inferior places by his local ‘agents and guides’, forcing him to close his account with the horrid multinational booking company we all know but I can’t write without importing links to your device as you read. He sacked his ‘guides’, lost all fine reviews he had, and had to start again.

Scratch the surface of rural Africa and you see the truths hidden beneath. But where, in a country like this, is there an example of selfless decency? It’s corrupt and amoral from the very top to bottom. The president’s wife is minister of education and sport, his daughter head of the national bank, his son head of the army and president in waiting. Every official and politician is utterly corrupt. Nothing happens without greasing the wheels.

There is no example. Immorality spreads, especially amongst the misogynistic males. Rape and unwanted pregnancy is astronomically high: “Probably 85 percent of families in this village have had unwanted pregnancies amongst their daughters. Many of them schoolgirls!” Last year there was a revolting crime committed in this village. Two teenage girls, one of them with learning disabilities, were given the choice by a gang of drunken boys: either be thrown over the 200 foot high cliffs or be gang raped. The boys fled across the country but, Alex tells me, the father is a rich man and had the resources to insist that the police did not give up. Some boys were caught as far as the border to Rwanda. Several are now on remand, and may spend years in prison. But it was the father’s wealth that made for a measure of justice, not moral indignation. “The community kept quiet…”

****

Recently, Alex ‘rescued’ Josephine, left pregnant by a married boda rider, who subsequently threatened violence. She was rejected by her family; tried abortion herbs unsuccessfully; considered suicide. Alex employed her at Rock Gardens, a reserved woman with a gentle smile once she’s comfortable. This week, a baby boy was born in the hospital (another bloody Ugandan man in the making) and after two nights she came home. I can now add £100 ‘birth fees’ amongst my very varied expenditures in Africa, way beyond Josephine’s resources. Alex was going to pay, from his small profits.

Alex tells me about his latest ambition: to construct a sheltered haven for all these young women left with unsupported babies by irresponsible men – the ‘85% of local families’. He already completed a rough hall on a plot of land a few hundred yards away. He hopes to be able to provide a safe place where these often rejected girls and women can gather to share their lives and fears, perhaps to find mutual support to care for their babies and find some way to support themselves. He plans to set it up as a small local business and hopes for support from visitors and donors. He’s a determined young man with a strong social conscience. I will support him of course…

****

In Kapchorwa, 17 kilometres by road, where we’ve walked over the shoulders of the great mountain, probably 20 kilometres, with Sarah, a visitor from Germany, Alex introduces me to an age-mate, 74. As he leaves, Alex tells me, “He has 46 children! From six women.” Poor Alex, who volunteers to try to reduce the birth rate, increase education for girls, stop female genital mutilation. Men with whom we are sitting, laugh at my anger. They don’t understand anything but that he is a ‘strong’ man. I bet he can’t even remember the names of the average eight children of each woman.

This baby factory of Uganda undermines any hope of continued human life on this planet over coming centuries. Over seven children is the average per woman, most families include children by ‘outside’ women. Rape is endemic. Uganda has grown from 5 million to 50 million in my lifetime. The growth is exponential, rising to 100 million by the end of the century. Resources of land stay the same. Pollution increases. Food quality reduces. Education is low. Morality elusive. Good example rare.

But the Bible and Koran both, “Tell us to have babies…” No one understands the pressure on the planet’s resources. “God will hep us if we pray…”

****

At Rock Gardens, we have varied visitors, most of them very congenial. Interesting folk from all over the world, the exposure for Precious and the children is terrific. Precious, now 29, has matured a lot, gathering liberal opinions from the many young people who stay. She now accepts that two children gives her family a chance to develop, be well educated and remain healthy, a fact that most rural Ugandans fail to grasp.

****

Walking down below the steep cliffs, accessed by dramatic ladders, we stop at a simple house amongst the matoke banana trees. I’m known here and the welcome is fulsome. Alex and I are with two smart, open minded Dutch young people, Rosa and Vincent. Two small girls are fascinated by Rosa’s long light-coloured hair. She’s a good traveller, patient. They stroke and play with her hair for half an hour. Miracle is a thin girl in a black leotard, cropped hair and a shy smile. Her friend and mentor is Elizabeth, a very bright girl of about eleven, I guess. (I can seldom guess ages as African children are usually so much smaller than Europeans). “What’s your ambition?” asks Alex, always quick to engage children in conversation.

Quick as a flash come the retort, “I want to be a lawyer!” We are all impressed by her certainty. She has an educated father, who’s a local small-time politician and clan leader, so perhaps she has a chance in this misogynistic society. “What do you think are the obstacles?” asks Alex.

“Ignorance of parents and the attitude of men,” Elizabeth replies confidently. We all praise her determination and encourage her. It’s always good – and sadly rare – to find girls and young women with confidence here.

****

Thank goodness we have our hikes to get us away from the frustrations and irritations of local rural life, its jealousies and hatred. Alex is a great companion. He gets no support from his own family, despite being the firstborn so I’ve taken on the role of father-figure.

We have some long hikes we like, and are always looking to extend our repertoire. One day, we walk to ‘town’, Kapchorwa, a hike that he does frequently now, maybe 20 kilometres. We hiked it together for the first time three years ago. It’s varied country, dipping into the Mount Elgon national park with its old mature trees and birdlife. We cross streams, struggle up loooong hills of grass and colourful equatorial scrub. We climb to some high bluffs that Alex calls, ‘Jonathan’s Point’. There are vistas all around, green valleys with swishing banana trees, tall conifers, and winking tin roofs. Red dust roads wind around the contortions of the steep hills. The extensive plains far below fade to the horizon.

We relax and unwind. Here and there, our routes have a frisson of excitement as we must clamber ladders, some made of steel and others of rickety timbers nailed to tree trunks leaning on the cliffside.

One day, we take Keilah and Jonathan up that crazy ladder. They love it! With no fear, Jonathan shins up the steep rungs, laughing in excitement. Both children, followed by their father, wave down at Uncle Jonathan 70 feet below. Uncle J ponders how we overprotect our Western children from all dangers and risks, limiting their the opportunities for such adventures. As we climb into the gulley at the top, two small girls – carrying bags of cassava – bounce up the bendy tree-ladder, as they probably do every day to get to school.

Life in Africa is frustrating and often disillusioning. Tourists see the romance and glamour of traditional life; they see the wild animals (all in parks now), the exotic dances (posed for their benefit alone in modern African life), the quaintness of traditions and the humour of illogical situations. But when you stay here, become involved in family life in a rural area, amongst the ignorant and prejudiced, it all takes on an edge that is sometimes cruel, often aggressive and jealous. The ‘traditions’ can be barbaric, the uneducated mindset antique, criminal behaviour common, cruel practices all too prevalent.

It’s hard, not very romantic – but then I have made families whom I care for a lot, grandchildren I love, many I respect as they struggle against ignorance and narrow-minded attitudes. It’s both an education and a privilege. It’s tough and it’s warmly loving.

It’s my life now!