Okei Wapi ?

3^rd April – Day 186 – Arua, Uganda

In a shining display of productivity....

...we achieved very little today after the exploits of yesterday and little sleep. We got up, had breakfast, and then became strangely hooked on a Nigerian miniseries called “Warrior Heart” - a sort of jungle village soap opera where a prince is hit by an arrow fired by his brother but then is nursed to health by the female chief of a neighbouring “kingdom” (which M pointed out seemed more of a small village than a kingdom) set up as a woman (the female chief's mother) is accused of being a witch and banished from the other village by an evil king. The prince then falls in love with the chief and ends up marrying her, despite the fact that the two kingdoms/villages are enemies. The acting was terrible and the sound technician should have been fired as we couldn't hear anything that was being said if the actors were more than a few metres away from the camera. Prince Obiorah had a strangely American influence to his Nigerian English and also was sporting a slight beer belly, which one probably wouldn't expect from a member of the royal family. Somehow, though, it was strangely compelling and we ended up watching the entire thing, even if one of us ended up asking the other “what did he just say?” every couple of minutes. Another mystery was why such a series was only to be watched by people aged 16 and over – we could only think that Obiorah at one point called his brother Obinna a “bastard” and declared that his marriage arranged by his father was not consummated as he was still in love with another woman. Unfortunately, this woman had been framed and castigated as a “promiscuous trump” [sic.] by the prince's father. The highlight of the series, however, was when the girl was accused of schmoozing with Obinna, and her father was summoned to the royal court. “You prostitute!!”, he exclaimed. We howled with laughter. It was nearly as good as the Mel Gibson movie about the Incas we'd seen on the bus to Arusha.

M, as she often does, wanders the streets of Arua with a camping mattress under her arm.

After 3 hours of “Warrior Heart”, we got up to head into town, whistling the music from the show (which consisted of about 4 bars repeated for several hours) – we'd only seen a little of Arua (and got given a tour by car yesterday evening by Ismael) although we had a few strikes against us. M had picked up a cold, we were both still wrecked, and we were staying a distance away from the centre. Consequently, we ended up having an accidental 4 hour nap. Evening consisted of eating and watching Manchester City demolishing Burnley in the beautiful northern English weather. Further laughs came as the cameras panned over Burnley's council housing and industrial chimney as the rain poured down and the commentators declared that “with the heavy rain and the setting sun, there's an almost tropical atmosphere here”. Sitting in our hotel bar with open windows in northern Uganda, we sniggered.