Since I was hell bend on paying for this trip out of frequent flyer points, of which I have plenty, I had to do the booking of the flights myself.
Airline websites might be suitable to book a flight from A to B and return, but when it comes to booking a trip half way around the world with some 10 or so destinations on the way, they fail miserably. And when it then comes to the game of spotting free seats for the avid Frequent Flyer (FF) than the thing becomes completely useless. Why, for example, the Qantas website lets you put in all the destinations you want to fly to, provides you with a selection of seats to chose from and then, after all sectors have been defined, tells you that one of the sectors – but not which one – does not work for the FF is beyond me.
After spending about a day on assorted airline websites with frustration growing into unhealthy proportions, I decided that the only way to do this was by way of human interaction. So I called the Qantas people and explained to the girl on the other end of the line that I needed to go to Singapore, Kampala, Hamburg and back to Sydney. That I did not like flying more than 8 hours at a time and that any routing, which would include those must have destinations would be fine with me. I even indicated that my timing was reasonably flexible, just to give me 12 days in Kampala, about 10 in Hamburg and the rest was up to her.
With these instructions in mind, she came back to me with the schedule below. The 3 Mumbai stop overs were a result of my eccentricity of not wanting to fly more than 8 hours at a time.
trip 5
23rd October, Sydney – Singapore
25th October, Singapore – Mumbai
27th October, Mumbai – Kampala
5th November, Kampala – Mumbai
7th November, Mumbai – Hamburg
11th November, Hamburg – Munich
15th November, Munich – Faulueck
16th November, Faulueck – Hamburg
17th November, Hamburg, Mumbai
20th November, Mumbai – Bangkok
22nd November, Bangkok – Sydney
Singapore was on my agenda for two reasons, stop over and meeting up with Ute and her Mother Helga.
Helga usually visits Australia between October and February and Ute had planned to pick her up in Singapore and using the opportunity to show her a bit of the town, where she, Ute had been about 20 years ago for the last time. Ute, being the left over hippy as I am, had some good memories about little India, where she booked a hotel for herself and Helga.
I must admit that my appreciation of the charm of those parts of town is slightly less developed and I found the Carlton Hotel somewhat more to my liking.
The main thing, though, is the fact that I need internet connection in the hotel.
Anyway, we had some very nice days in Singapore and did some sightseeing like going over to Sentosa for a walk through the botanical gardens there.
And one night we had a very enjoyable dinner in Boat Quay where a long line of restaurants rolls out the welcome mat for the interested diner.
The thing with these restaurants and their ‘guestcatchers’ is that they compete very heavily with each other and on a 1000 m walk you have some 20 odd menus thrust in your face by people who wish to convince you that theirs is the only place worthwhile considering for a dinner. And those catchers can sometimes be rather persistent to put it diplomatically.
They use a few ways of enticing you, one being to offer a bottle of wine for free. Once this happens for the 3rd or 4th time, you can start making counter offers, by saying, well, we have been offered so far 3 bottles of free wine, how about 4 (the 3 bottles free is a lie) In other cases where normal defence proved to be blessed with little success, we switched to speaking German, looking at the hapless catcher and talking fast and furious in a tongue, which he or she was utterly unfamiliar with. Realising that the conversation ended in a serious cul de sac, they usually gave up.
We then decided – after walking past all the restaurants on offer – that we would make our decision based on occupation of the restaurant. The logic behind it is, that the more people – local people in particular – sit in a restaurant, the better it is likely to be. And on that basis, we found a very good place with a very agreeable dinner menu and a reasonable wine list as well.
A couple of days later I made my way to Mumbai. For the three stop overs I had booked myself into the Fariyas Hotel,
in walking distance to the Gateway of India,
close to the water front but at a reasonable. The most enjoyable thing about the hotel was an outside area on the roof, where they served alfresco dinner. This part of the establishment was usually fairly empty because it was not air-conditioned. Most of the guest seemed to prefer sitting in the adjacent dining room where the guest were almost snap frozen and a serious fur coat would not have been out of place. Something I often encountered in Mumbai this time. Arctic temperatures in closed rooms.
It reminded me a bit of our first experience with a fridge in Kampala. Some years ago, when I bought the first fridge in Masaka road, I left it to Johnny and Patrick to put our shopping into the fridge. Here one has to say that for all the boys it was the first time in their lives that they had the luxury of a fridge. And when I came to the kitchen some time later and looked at the fridge, I found a very strange distribution of goods between fridge and freezer compartment. The freezer contained 12 raw eggs, 2 cans of Tuna and my cheese, whilst things like minced meat and all the other groceries were in the fridge compartment. Asked by what kind of principle they had done this, the answer was ….well these are the most expensive items…..
In other words, the logic was, the more valuable the colder. And I had this uncanny feeling that in Mumbai this principle was used in an inflationary manner.
In Kampala this time, our activity was focused on Wunderbar and GPSS. Let me explain.
Some time ago I started renting a little piece of land in the local market, so wonderfully named Wankulukuku. Early in May we have bought a large container and plonked it on the ground there. And this container is going to be home to two little businesses, one being a second hand clothing boutique and the other a small office services business, which offers things like type writing, CD burning, laminating, printing, photo copying and eventually also sells small office items, consumables such as note pads, pens etc.
It has taken a while to get all this organised. By the time, my guest had arrived in May, all they could look at was the empty container.
By now, writing this, the boutique is already in full operation and has had a good pre-christmas trade. and the office service business is expected to start operating early next year.
the boutique had been named Wunderbar by some of my guest who so often and in excitement looked at all these things and said… oh ist das nicht wunderbar…. And my boys, always being intrigued by foreign languages, asked me, what wunderbar means. And upon hearing the meaning they decided that this was a good name for the boutique.
We arrived at GPSS (which stands for Green Point Secretarial Service) by way of a little competition. I organised a little name finding competition where we designated three judges – Grace, our neighbour, Moses our office manager and Parker our accountant and soccer nut. Since as judges they were excluded from the competition, they each received 10.000 shilling for their duty. Whilst the winner of the competition could go away with 30.000 Shilling. All name suggestions were raised within 12 hours and delivered to me, allowing maximal 5 different names to be suggested by each contestant. I typed them all out and provided the selections anonymously to our judging panel. And they then came up with GPSS as the winning entry. Arnold was the lucky guy who came up with this name. One of the entries made me laugh. It makes more sense in German than in English and it was “Holz Computer Services” (Holz translating to timber or wood and, of course, also being the first part of my family name)
And so these days went by with a lot of work and discussion on the new enterprises. the interior was sketched and then built during my days there, the roof came on the container and by and large the excitement was great and palpable amongst all the boys. Now we have three businesses in the market, since also Figaro has his barber shop there. And it’s only about 25 minutes walk from Masaka Road, so handy to get there.
With these two little businesses in place and the hope that they will sustain their operators and helpers, we are a significant step further in our main plan for Kampala and that is to create a viable economic base for all the 12 boys.
Looking back on 2008 I must confess that I feel a certain degree of pride having achieved this in the last few years since I have been active in Uganda. It has made a huge difference in the lives of those young men who, when I met them first in 2004 lived on the streets of Kampala, most did not speak English and their outlook for the future was bleak to say the least.
Now all of them have a secure roof over their heads, can eat at least one meal a day, all speak English, 5 have a drivers license which enhances their chances of getting a job, even if it is only temporary.
One has a trucking business now which makes very good money, and all of them have changed their attitude towards life, working, achieving something in life. They now feel that it is in their grasp to make a decent living.
And, what I find most rewarding in all this, is the fact that most of them have had some form of reconciliation with at least parts of their families, from which some had been excluded on the basis of their sexual orientation. The fact, that many of their relatives were happy to come to my birthday lunch invitation, full well knowing about my being a gay man, seems to indicate that some at least have changed their views and attitudes on this subject, which in so many instances shows itself to be so cruel and inhuman in this country and parts of its society.
After the usual and heart felt farewell at the airport it’s off for me, once again and for the 10th time since 2004 to say good by to my friends and, this time, fly to Mumbai and then Hamburg.
In Hamburg we had a few pleasant days, this time with my accommodation, as so often, provided by sister Beate and brother in law Klaus Martin. Visiting friends, some work and planning my next excursions was the order of the days.
I had made plans of going via Nuernberg to Munich by train. I often now use the train instead of the plane as it does not take much longer and is more comfortable. The first two days were filled with client visits and then we had our traditional Stammtisch in Munich.
Of course all the Africa travellers from Munich were there and a few other friends. Even Dorothea and Helmut, who had just arrived back from Australia two days earlier, joined us and you can imagine that there was a lot to talk and tell about.
At my next and second last stop over in Mumbai I had allowed myself 3 days to be able to re-discover the city a bit after having been there in the eighties for the last time (except for my stop overs during this trip) So I did some walking and sightseeing and also walked a few times past the Taj Mahal Hotel and took a break at the Leopold Café.
Obviously not knowing that about 24 hours after my departure heading towards Bangkok, these places would become the scenes of fighting, shooting and murder in the bloody Mumbai clashes which have been reported on so extensively in November.
Bangkok once again served as a brief stop over destination, just for two days during which I did not do very many touristy things, but had a fair bit of work on my computer.
In Thailand I have on a number of occasions experienced the benefits of language skills. During one of my last trips it had been at the airport, where I was suitably assisted by my language skills. I was waiting in my line and observed in the next line an increasing number of Thai airline staff trying to convey some apparently important message to a passenger who obviously did not speak much English let alone Thai. This went on for quite some time and both sides seemed to become more and more frustrated.
One the of senior Thai guys was desperately trying to phone for an interpreter, if only he knew, what language skills he should ask for. To me, the helpless passenger looked very much like a German or Swiss. So I crossed over to the other line and asked whether I could possibly help. Everybody looked at me with the big question mark in all their faces saying …we don't know, do you speak his language?….. I turned to the bewildered passenger and asked him in German which language his native one might be and with a very familiar southern Bavarian sound the answer was …ja mei Deutsch halt (well German, of course).
The rest was kids play. I explained to the Bavarian the question, translated the response and the problem was solved in less than a minute.
Soon it was my turn to lift the oyster on the scales again and they nearly jumped out of place with the overweight being thrust upon them. The signs of worry on the face of the petit Thai girl behind the counter were very effectively blown away by the senior Thai guy with the mobile phone who made it very clear that this passenger could take an elephant onto the plain if he wished because he just had saved a few lives from absolute misery. Smiles all round and with a locally customary bow I thanked for their understanding and graciousness and was on my way to the flight.
This time it was in the hotel restaurant at breakfast time and the problem was a group of elderly French visitors whose English just did not cover any menu item. And after the increasingly bewildered Thai waitress started to throw the towel and leave those equally increasingly bewildered French pensioners to their own devices, I scrambled together all my french vocabulary and offered to give it a go to translate the menu as best as I could. and with a bit of help and imagination, we managed for those poor sods to understand most of what was on offer. That same evening I was offered a thank you wine at the bar for free. Nice gesture.
Anyway, I made my way to the airport again after 36 hours in inner city Bangkok and flew to Sydney. Just in time, before 12 hours later, all Bangkok airports were closed by the protesters and left thousands of tourists stranded with no way to go anywhere for a few days.
As they say in Hollywood: timing is everything. Or as they say in German Das Glueck ist immer mit die Doofen (good luck is always on the side of those simple minds)
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