Remember Remember…was that the Apocalypse?

This weekend while most of Great Britain was kept awake by fireworks, rotting their teeth with toffee apples and generally having a miserable time with all the added lights and noise in the sky, the Clays, plus lodger, went away to Entebbe. It is a rather comfortable fact that every 6 weeks or so the Family tries to go away for the weekend to somewhere with a slightly more western feel but more importantly a pool. Last weekend the destination was Entebbe guest house, the last place we stayed with the stunning birdlife. We departed Chez-Clay after lunch on the very hot Friday. Unsurprisingly, due to the heat in the car even through the air con, before long the three older occupants of the car were getting rather tired of the 5 younger participants. However before long we came to Kampala for a quick money withdrawal and ice cream purchasing session for the weekend before back into the car for the shorter trip to Entebbe. I noticed this time on my visit to Entebbe that the Ugandans who live in the airport town don’t give Muzungus a second glance compared to the Ugandans in the rest of the country who will stop what it is they are doing just to stare. I have to admit I do the same if I see a Muzungu out of New Hope surroundings, in fact its rather fun to guess their occupations. The missionaries are usually easy to spot, beards, sandals and sun hats usually accompanied by very large rucksacks. Then there are the people who 30 or 40 years ago would have been big game hunters but these days are probably just normal thrill seekers trying Africa out. There seems to be a very large Asian population about and you catch the odd Asian Adonis walking around with his pencil thin beard, aviator sunglasses and extraordinarily white shirt strutting his stuff like he would be more comfortable in an arrogance of the year contest that in the middle of Africa. But I am going completely off the point. The point was that in Entebbe there must be white folk coming and going all the time so the locals don’t bat an eye lid. It was strange after being stared at on every outing for 2 months to suddenly be invisible again.
The Entebbe guest house is still as delightful as ever with fantastic food (we actually had feta cheese…forgot where I was for a moment) and the usually array of tropical birds. The Friday we arrived we didn’t do anything because of the late hour so had some tea and went straight to bed. I had a disturbed night sleep for some reason meaning that when I woke up at a severally unhealthy 5:30 am and couldn’t get back to sleep I wasn’t particularly amused. Add to this the fact that I was again sharing with Jed and Moses, coupled with my task of keeping them quiet for Aunty Jenny next door…by the time 7:30 rolled around I was ready for another nights sleep…little did I know I would be lucky to get any the following night but I will get to that later. Saturday was spent with board games, some badly timed rain canceling the swimming trip and some very well timed intense sunshine rescheduling it. I spent every available moment in the pool, not knowing when I might go again and wanting to make the most of it. By the evening I was very tired having swum solidly for about 3 hours on a bad nights sleep the night before. I lay in my bed at about 10:30 after an intense political comparison of the UK and the US, none of which I understood, and felt rather inadequate in the brains department. I fell asleep but a few hours later I was awake.
I discovered the following morning that Naomi had got her blanket tangled up beyond repair and when she began screaming the other two girls in the room decided stupid o’clock in the morning was a ripe time to strike up the four thousand six hundred and seventy ninth daily Clay screaming contest. Susanna won this round managing to wake up most of the other residents of the guest house before one of the parents got up to mercifully sort them out. Naomi was obviously upset with the result of the contest because a few moments after the end of the last contest, Naomi threw the gauntlet down again with a pointless but none the less very loud scream. By the time the girls had been given their orders to shut up or ship out it was pushing half past two and I was getting a bit bored of my waking state. Finally I drifted off only to be woken two hours later by a Plane blowing up outside my room.
Or so I thought. I must qualify the next paragraph or so and ask you, before you make inquiries about mental institutes for me, to put the thoughts in context of having a rubbish night sleep and being a bit out of it. Anyway after the earsplitting sound of the explosion I was wide awake is a second. I went to the window and could see nothing extraordinary. No screaming people, no flaming wreckage no birds fleeing the area in fear. I unlocked the door and ventured out, I could smell burning and I noticed one other person coming out to see if they could see the wreckage. Nothing. That was when I noticed the sky. The clouds were low, much lower than usual and were illuminated in the sky by brief pockets of white light that came and went without a sound. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what was going on. If couldn’t be thunder and lightning, there wasn’t any rain and I have never heard of thunder and lightning with no rain. So what is it then? Perhaps North Korea had finally gone one extra step in their nuclear tests and launched a Nuke at Entebbe…but what did the Koreans have against Entebbe. No I couldn’t be that…I hoped. Then I finally came to the only logical explanation I could. The only one that made sense and filled all the gaps. It must have been the apocalypse. Well that’s alright then, I thought, and went back to bed.
After a few minutes of lying in my bed trying to get back to sleep, secure in the knowledge it was only the world coming to an end, I figured out that the end of the world was a fairly major event and probably needed a little thought. Was I going to heaven? Hopefully. Will I be hearing Gods voice over a large all-earth PA system any second now? Maybe. Should I watch the end of the world? Probably, but that involved getting out of bed so I didn’t bother watching for any horsemen. Just then the rain kicked in, and apparently the storm sorted itself out. The thunder and lightning resumed properly with all the necessary flashes and bangs. I discovered soon after my apocalypse theory was thrown in the mental waste bin in exchange for a feeling of utter silliness, that the plane blowing up was in fact just a very large crack of thunder very close to the guest house. Having never really heard thunder that close up before I didn’t know what it sounded like, assuming it just sounded low and rumbly like it usually does by the time it reached you. But no, apparently it sounds like a rather sizeable explosion close to and turns into a rumble as it travels from its epicenter. A few more better aimed bolts of lightning struck the guest house compound that night giving only a split second warning flash before shattering the soporific rain effect with a mighty crash.
So I'm left to wonder what the point of fireworks are, I think my Apocalyptic night of Nukes and Plane crashes was much more fun, we even had lights in the sky.
I must apologies for those who have lost fingernails in the past week or so due to nervous biting with the lack of Blog for a while. Let me reassure you I am fine, and more importantly will continue to enlighten your lives with these little memoirs until I return in March. Thanks for all your prayers and support. Take care
Dan