Liberte Egalite Fraternite

I've had exactly the kind of week that you should have if you've got access to degenerate, Western megalopolis; chock full of that culture it was.  So much culture that I walked out of a play at the interval so that I didn't over-culture my brainspace. That wasn't the reason, unless there was a dramatic shift for the second half, said play was in no danger of over-culturing anything.  A so-called comedy where the only joke was that everyone's name began with T.

I did see actual comedy though: Nish Kumar.  His show did contain jokes, which made it far funnier than the previous night's abomination.

Went to a gig too.  I saw that John Grant, he's a charismatic chappy and proper belted out some songs. Now you can read proper reviews of this gig if you want, they are very complimentary, although they don't mention the fact that most of the latest album sounds a bit like Visage, which seemed to confuse the audience somewhat.

And I saw some art.  A double bill of A artists. Auerbach and Ai Weiwei.  In terms of what I'd most like to have on my wall Auerbach wins hands down - it seems Ai Weiwei doesn't really go for the hanging on the wall stuff - and 200 tonnes of eartquake fractured rebar would probably just get in the way. A child burst a balloon when I was in the Ai Weiwei exhibition, given the politically sensitive nature of the show and what had happened in a nearby megalopolis a few hours earlier a lot of very scared people were incredibly grateful that it was a balloon.  

And a Bottle of Brum

It's pretty poor that I've never really had the opportunity to explore Birmingham before. Whenever I have been it's always been to do something specific (like change trains) so any exploring has been somewhat time limited. Put that right this weekend. Saw me some brum.

So what did I see?

First off I saw a skyline. Naively, I wasn't really expecting a skyline. But bam there it was. Not just the Bullring.

I saw a tiny cathedral, would barely have to duck its spire to get through the doors of Norwich. 

I saw the Staffordshire Horde. I'm pretty impressed that the guy who found it realised how significant it was. If it had been me I'd have thought it was Elizabeth Duke flytipping.

I saw a length of the more-canals-than-Venice canal. There may well be more canals in Birmingham than Venice but the Venice ones are a whole heap easier to navigate. Locks ago-go in that Second City, it would take ages to get a boat through that lot.

I saw that there library. That's a mighty impressive building. And it had fennel on the roof. More public buildings should have fennel on the roof.

So yeah, Birmingham, you're alright, you are. Sorry it took me so long to get there properly.

The Singapore of Africa

Kigali is a funny city. It seems pretty different from any other African city I've been to, with its manicured lawns and its cleanliness and its lane discipline. Positively refined.

Another Kigali peculiarity is that the main "attraction" is the genocide memorial. That was brutal, and scary-as that it happened only twenty years back. Humans are rubbish.

I'm now in Kigali airport, far too early, ready to head back to Blighty. I feel I ought to sum up the trip with something insightful but I've not really got much to say other than now seems a pretty good time to visit Uganda. Go on, you know it makes sense...

Muzungu in the Mist

My stupid Englishman naivety kicked in again. As I was heading towards the Rwandan border, I was fairly surprised to see refugee camps. One of many reasons why I'm an idiot.

Anyway, I'm in Rwanda. And today did the tourist-in-Rwanda cliche: gorilla trekking. The trek itself was incredible. Proper jungle up the side of a mountain: slopes and swamps and river crossings and machetes. Proper jungle. Then, at the top of the hill, gorillas.

There weren't any "what if this is as good as it gets" moments, this was straight gorilla action. The first gorilla we saw was right there and from that point they only got nearer. A silverback tried to walk through me: box ticked.

Here's an animal fact. Elephants poo approximately the weight of one silverback gorilla every day.

Channel?

If you are alone outside in the pitch black and a hippo does a growl it sounds like it is really close. And, if you have already seen the size of its teeth, that's kinda terrifying. 

Spent the last couple of days in the Queen Elizabeth National Park, over near the Congo border. It's a whole heap greener than the safari idyll I have in my head, which makes them there animals a bit tricky to spot. That's not to say we didn't get our fill. We saw three of the big five before we had even entered the Park proper. Just lions stretching at the side of the main road. Must be weird living in places like that. I get a bit freaked out if I see one of those tiny deer things at the side of the road when I'm driving and I reckon that they would do far less damage to your car than a buffalo.

Did one of those river cruise things up the Kazinga Channel. Saw a bunch of crocodiles and monitor lizards and enough eagles and kingfishers that they have both lost their novelty value.

Bring Out The Chimp

Bloomin' love a tropical rainforest. This was the fifth continent where I've tropicalrainforested and, if I'm honest, probably the best: it seemed like a jungle; there was no obvious deforestation; and there were animals hanging out.

By which I mean, I saw me some monkeys. Three different flavours of monkey, up close and personal. Also saw me some chimpanzees (which is a box tick), had the initial 'as good as it gets' fear. The first chimps we "saw" were forty-odd metres away silhouetted against the sky. We then wandered around to a heap of places where chimps were sleeping, in the hope that they would emerge. They didn't. 

 

Finally got lucky with two super cute baby chimps doing baby chimp things right in front of us. They dangled. They played. They cuddled. Well chimp.

Jinja and Free

Cicadas, frogs and monkeys in a who can shout the loudest competition. Bright red roads surrounded by a whole heap of green, topped with a sky that switches between sun burn and apocalyptic. Ladies with jackfruit on their heads. Concrete huts painted in Airtel colours. Smiling children running to wave as you pass. Smells like Africa to me.

I stumbled bleary eyed into Kampala at four in the morning, where I was shown my first bit of smiley Ugandan kindness, when hotel security took pity on me and gave me a room. I say pity, I was pretty stinky by then so they may just have wanted my stench out of the way.

I didn't really linger in the capital, instead I headed off as fast as I could to Jinja, Uganda's backpacker mecca. I spent my first day proper rafting the source of the Nile. Now I thought that that rafting was going to be on fast moving water, which meant paddling would be a novelty rather than a duty. But no, they properly made you earn the buzz of the rapids.

The local dish appears to be the rolex, it's an omelette inside a pancake. Eggtastic.