London now that April's here

17 April 2011:  Here in UK everyone seems to have started holidays – Easter next weekend, then the royal wedding.  I passed through London yesterday and it was so crowded i was quite stressed!  Trains, underground, more trains ...    The other day a friend and I went to see the Titanic Artefacts exhibition of objects found at the bottom of the sea. As you enter you are given a boarding card with a real passenger’s name on it. At the end you find out if you lived or died.  There is also an exhibition of 3D TV – still using glasses, though.

Also met three old friends, (not looking old, I must say!) from my Nigeria days. One in Brighton, two in Dublin.   Train and boat still the most civilised way to go to Dublin, and very cheap.

A lot of reminiscing about the time we were all in Mubi.  Some old photos to look at.

18 April: The streets and gardens so beautiful in a warm sunny spring;

21^st April: in contrast back in Uganda it is rain, rain, rain. Good for farmers!  I think it is the contrast in weather coupled with a freezing BA flight which has given me a cold or flu!

My Visited Countries

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When you look for it the Libyan connection runs deep. Hotels, banks, Oil Libya petrol stations. Ugandans are even finding it in their fridges. Splash fruit juices may not have Gaddafi's face on the box, but his country's oil money runs the factory.  (Will Ross, BBC).

Drove on Wednesday to Bukoba Tanzania to see the first school I ever taught at ... in 1968. Looks shabby now, though it was one of the top schools in TZ at the time, having been a Christian Brothers school called St Thomas More before the government of Nyerere took it over. In those days we went from Uganda by steamer. It taught several now-prominent Tutsis who were refugees and used to teach aeronautical engineering.  where I was learning to be a teacher at Makerere, Strangely, no one remembered that or that there had been a small plane, crashed some time at the local airstrip to practise on.

 

From a friend in Cote d'Ivoire: Concerning our Duekoué friends and colleagues, they are all alive... they have abandoned their home and residence and find refuge to the catholic mission, since the last attacks of the forces of Pro ouattara forces. All ICLA teams and Yapi are in Abidjan and city around... Things are so confused here. I hope that things will recover with the least violence as possible... There are many weapons in circulation at this time and in case of civil war, things will be catastrophic