Home

I have moved from the guesthouse to a more permanent home. I actually moved the week before last, so I've been in residence for about ten days now, but owing to the Murchison Falls trip and a generally busy week (i.e. an accelerating social life!) I felt as if I hadn't spent any time there until this weekend.

I haven't moved far – Kansanga is only on the other side of a steep hill from my old stomping ground in Muyenga, about 45 minutes' walk from work or a ten-minute, 30c boda ride. I'm renting a room from Sarah, an veteran English ex-pat who has been living in Uganda on and off for at least ten years, and her five-year-old, Jojo. She's currently working as a freelance NGO consultant and I got to know her through some contacts at the Irish embassy.

Also resident are the family I call the Sharons; their eldest daughter is called Sharon and the rest of the family seem to take their names from her. Mama Sharon and Tata Sharon take care of the house for Sarah, and Uncle Sharon comes to pick me up on his boda every morning. In addition to Sharon, who is nine, there's four-year-old Chris. This amuses me no end. When I first heard Sarah refer to Mama and Tata Sharon, I presumed that they were names used for the children and for Jojo, in the way parents call each other Mom and Dad at home in front of the kids, but no – they later introduced themselves to me as Mama and Tata. As an eldest born myself, I must say I quite like this system. I could certainly get used to all the O'Learys being rightfully christened the Taras!

I fell in love with Mukasa Close when I first saw it – the garden is huge, one of the biggest I've seen in the city's compounds. For anyone who's been to Knockeragh, its certainly not far off the size of my parents' place. We have bright flowers, fruit trees, a vegetable patch sprouting maize and chickens. Apparently they started last year with only a handful of hens but they're up to about 12 now, so in a few weeks we should have a regular supply of fresh eggs. They're occasionally a bit of a noisy nuisance – last night it was still dark when Peter, the cock, began a screeching cacophony of noise for no particular reason – but chickens here are so much sturdier and more colourful than their plain brown Irish cousins, I quite like having them running around. Not only sturdier but unafraid of asking for good treatment – as soon as he saw me eating breakfast on the terrace the other morning, Peter came over and patiently begged for crumbs in exactly the same manner as spoilt pet dogs at home.

Peter, dressed fetchingly in white, and friend

Add in Ellie the dog, who usually waves me off at the gate in the morning and welcomes me back at night, and I'm starting to feel like part of the family. Pet dogs are rare here – no one except muzungus keep them for pets. Ugandans usually don't keep pets at all, but if they do have dogs they're bred to be angry and dangerous so they can guard compounds. Ellie, on the other hand, is a sweetheart and loves posing to have her photo taken. She very patiently sits and waits and looks into the lens, with the flattered vanity of a sitter for a portrait painter.

Ellie

The house is lovely – old and simple but airy and comfortable. In my room, a square mosquito net is draped over four high bedposts, so that I feel as if I'm sleeping in a four poster bed. I've heard lots of muzungus talk about how they had to get used to sleeping under nets, but it's never bothered me. If anything, it makes me feel as if I've finally got the princess canopy bed that I always dreamed of when I was small.

But above all, Mukasa Close comes with two unimaginable, incalculable luxuries: a washing machine, and a coffee pot.

You never do notice the rock-solid foundations upon which the world turns until they've been taken away from you. You never realise just how much underwear women have to go through, for example, until you've spent a month perfecting your technique at washing knickers in the sink (a bit of shower gel does a great job if you've run out of detergent, you know). You never realise just how stupid make up is as a concept until you've blistered and torn your knuckles scrubbing Clinique out of one of your only two good work blouses. And you never notice how often you bitched about doing housework until you realise you'll never complain about doing laundry in a machine ever again. Washing machines truly are modern luxury - most of the people who can afford them find it better value to just pay a washer woman to do it for them by hand. Hand washing is so ubiquitous that guestrooms in Uganda generally come supplied with a plastic basin for the purpose, which I made great use of in Muyenga. A washing machine, and Mama Sharon, mean liberation.

As for coffee, well, I did in fact have a pretty decent prior appreciation of just how precious a regular supply of the good stuff can be, after spending time in a few jobs at home where people distrusted me for the offence of seeing myself as too good for Nescafé (far from espresso I was reared, after all). Brewed coffee in any form – filter, cafetiére or espresso – is a speciality here, a novelty item available only in a few cafés run for the muzungus where Ugandans might go for a treat or to have a nice lunch at the weekends. These cafés are only located in the city centre, and as I work in the 'burbs I only have access at weekends, drastically limiting my supply.

Ugandans don't drink much coffee in general – it's all about tea down here because it's so cheap – but when they do, its instant, served from big rusty metal tins that resemble leftover Soviet food rations. Star Coffee, the “leading” Ugandan brand name, even has a military red tin with a big red star for its logo. This is doubly heartbreaking because they grow so much good coffee here – the locals can't afford to drink it, so almost everything is exported.

I'm a coffee snob - I hold my hands up unashamedly and admit to the world that I had not touched a drop of instant coffee in about three years before arriving in Kampala. I searched for coffee pots – any kind of coffee pot – in supermarkets and shops all over town, but “coffee pots” here are metal tea pots in which they mix up the instant stuff to serve more politely to guests. Six weeks in, if I had not acclimatised by now to a glassy brown mug of this stuff every morning, I feared I never would. And then I moved into Sarah's house and saw the stainless steel Bodum glinting at me from the back of the cupboard. Tears almost rose in my eyes. I actually exclaimed out loud and thanked her – thanked her! Coffee had been given back to me. She'd brought it all the way from the UK to satisfy her own coffee snobbery, and she offered its use to me wholeheartedly. With this small gesture, the foundations of comradeship were laid.

In all, it was an excellent weekend - I think I had about eight or nine mugs in the last two days. Bliss comes black in a cup :)