Martyrs Day

June 3rd is a national holiday in Uganda, known as Martyrs Day. You can read about it here if you'd like. It commemorates a group of 45 Christian martyrs who met terrible deaths at the hands of King Mwanga who was fearful of the political implications of the new religion. About half were Catholic, half Anglican. So I have a light day of work--nothing scheduled except an interview at 5.

I have moved from the Golf Course to the Serena, which is the best hotel in the city. They are close together but immensely different. This is real luxury with lavish, beautifully landscaped grounds. So I can, finally, go for a walk. There is also a gym which I haven't yet tried. The pictures are taken from the balcony of my room and give a general idea of what it's like here. The gym is housed in the Moorish looking building in the first picture. We'd talked vaguely about having me move but two power outages at the Golf Hotel last weekend were the deciding factor--the hotel took over an hour to restore power because of difficulty with the backup generator. They had no emergency lights because they didn't need them with a backup generator. I crept down the stairs in the dark to dinner, thanking my luck that I was not in the elevator at the time of the outage. A reminder: it makes sense to pack a flashlight when coming to Africa; I forgot. The picture to the right was taken at breakfast showing the 7000 volt sign with the electrified fence tastefully hidden behind a metal railing.

There are some discomforts to luxury--one of them is cost. I'm given a daily rate to cover "M & IE" or meals and incidentals like laundry. I'd hardly been touching it at the Golf Course since breakfast came with the room and I've been going for lunch with my colleagues to a little cafe where expats are extremely rare. That costs about $2.25 to $2.50 for a pretty traditional meal of a starch and a sauce with some meat in it. The starch choice includes rice, the white maize dish we called shima in Mozambique and nsima in Malawi or roasted bananas. I like the last--don't know if it's normal bananas or different ones but it's good.

Here, on the other hand, I have to pay about $17.00 for the luxurious breakfast buffet (where "scrambled" is spelled correctly) and dinner last night was $25.00. Still, I think it's worth the margin. The hotel put a very nice fruit basket in my room when I arrived; don't know if it will be refreshed but it was great to have passion fruit when I first woke up.

The gym is part of a luxurious spa; I think over the weekend I will treat myself to a massage.