Christinaswwworld Unlimited

Tomorrow will be spent putting up the two flyers I've been preparing this week on notice boards around town. Expat Moving Sale Please visit on 4 April 2009 :: 10am to 5pm :: Luthuli Ave, Plot 86 (no. 2), Bugolobi 3-piece wicker sofa set shs30,000 2 wicker end tables shs5,000 each 3-piece local wooden sofa set shs80,000 1 light wood medium sized simple table/desk shs20,000 2-story bedframe from dark wood shs80,000 2 dark wood bookshelves (1.5m x 1.5m) shs35,000 each 1 wicker shelf unit (.75m x 1.25m) shs10,000 1 light wood standing coat rack shs10,000 4.5 KW Generator shs750,000 Clothes washing machine ( shs350,000 Clothes dryer shs100,000 Kitchen Blender shs15,000 Large European baby crib with mattress shs80,000 Collapsible playpen shs40,000 Large hard plastic kiddie’s swimming pool shs10,000 Toddler size push stroller shs40,000 Toddler size car seat shs25,000 Car seat for 3-5 yr olds shs20,000 Also available on 4 April: Houseplants plates & dishes pots & pans toys & ...

This post has been contributed by my 16 year old Ugandan daughter Christine (actually, her birth name is Christina, like mine, but she's accustomed to being called Christine - which saves a lot of confusion around here.) As I wrote in my last post, Christine left boarding school last year. She has been living at home with us in Kampala since April. As a proud mom, I just have to mention that I only corrected one very small typo in what Christine gave to me to post - as I'm sure every reader will be, I am so very impressed with her writing style! (Bravo, my dear!) In Uganda, most parents take their children to boarding school because they believe it is the best place for them in terms of education. I’m not a parent but I’ve been in Uganda martyrs secondary school, a boarding school for about two years and while I was there I didn’t like it that much for various reasons you will get to know. What surprises me most is that some parents take their kids to boarding school as ear...

View from the Amasiko peninsula, Lake Bunyonyi (Uganda) Uganda's Lake Bunyonyi has got to be one of the most beautiful places on earth. Sprawling through valleys created by southwestern Uganda's very old volcanic mountains, it's said to be Africa's deepest lake. Mountains caught in the middle become islands, large and small. I've been told there are over 100 of them, mostly family owned and terraced to grow crops which are ferried by canoe to a small dockside market near the main road to Kabale, South Western Uganda's largest town. My family has a decade of gorgeous memories from weekends spent at Lake Bunyonyi. It was the ladies in these mountains who originally inspired what would become the Life in Africa logo, almost 10 years ago, and there is an energy there that calls us back every 2-3 years. We've stayed at many places on the lake. This past weekend, we visited the future site of a wonderful community based eco-tourism project that our old family ...

The little white guy at yesterday's preschool gala is my Benjamin. He's 4 and loads of fun. Today (October 9) we all got to take a day off to celebrate 46 years of Uganda's independence from British protectorate rule. Uganda was never actually any nation's colony, but the colonial powers put Britain in charge. The Brits pulled out 46 years ago today, but later helped Idi Amin get to power. That always kinda made me go hmmm. This morning the president (who they say paid parliamentarians about $3,000 each to change the constitution so that he can stay in power for life) made a speech about how Uganda will be fine even though the rest of the world is falling apart. In the afternoon, we went to a barbecue with Ugandan friends... and talked about the rest of the world falling apart. I held a captive audience when someone asked me to try and explain how America's housing crisis came to be. They were stunned at the whole subprime mortgage story. Keep in mind, Uganda is ...

My back (and backside!) have finally stopped hurting enough to confirm that I won't be going horseback riding again in the near future. I did earn a badge of adventurism from my near-teens, however, so I'm glad we went and we did have a really great time. Nile Horseback Safaris is run by a lovely english woman called Natalie, who has a well trained Ugandan staff taking care of more than 15 horses and their various guest riders like us. Her house and tented stables overlook a lovely pool in an elbow of the Nile, not far from it's source at Jinja, at the edge of Lake Victoria. Our 2 hour guided horse ride took us on paths through villages there along the Nile, past homesteads with their ever curious children, shouting and running to watch us up close as we passed. I noted that this time their shouts were not "mzungu! mzungu!" referring to our family of foreigners, but "mbabazi!" They were so excited to see the horses! (Horses are not indigenous to Uganda, ...

We've had some great family adventures in Uganda. But when we were in the USA a few weeks ago, I was SHOCKED when my kids were shocked that I got on a horse. Upon further inquiry, I learned that my kids' image of me did not include adventurous . WHAT? Me, who has lived my life bouncing from one foreign country to the next, not adventurous? Me, who has been river rafting on the Nile at least a dozen times not adventurous ? Me, who has worked in an African war zone? Over the next few weeks of our US vacation, I took every opportunity to show them an adventurous side of me that I imagined 11 and 12 year olds could understand. I went on roller coasters, I body surfed in the ocean, I played with the Wii, and I even let them go to the movies by themselves. Lord knows, I can't stop with the adventures now - with near teens in the house, my reputation as a mom is at stake! So I'm planning some fun family adventures during our last months in Uganda, including some of the wonderf...

Over the past 2 months I have been venturing into online neighborhoods where folks are making money on the internet by working from home. My objective has been not only to find ways that I can earn money for myself working from home, but more specifically to identify activities that friends of mine here in Uganda (where I live) can consider as possible sources of income for community activities that they would like to undertake. After investing in several ebooks and scouring the click exchanges for tools and ideas, I decided to try my hand at blogging the google trends. Within 24 hours of my first post, the ourwwworld blog had received over 600 visitors and raked in over $60 in advertising revenue. Within a week of deliberately very little additional activity (and none of it quality writing), the total revenue reached over $150 - which is more than very many Ugandans earn in a whole month. Last year I initiated an online experiment with my Ugandan friends that involved researching h...