Brushing up.

Wednesday, 18th August, Semliki Time: 01:39am

So, now I’m 22. I don’t know how or why that happened, and it doesn’t seem quite right, 21 maybe, okay, sure, 21, but 22 just seems so ‘adult’. As Tom Lehrer put it “it is a sobering thought to think that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for one year”. Of course, as Tom Lehrer said that when he was 36, the quote is probably less applicable, but I think it's applicable in spirit. I certainly haven’t achieved anything equal to writing ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star’ yet.

To celebrate the ‘momentous’ occasion, we headed out to the Lodge for a slap-up meal with steak, beer, wine and the most fantastic chocolate cake. I imbibed alcohol in quantities that may not, under normal circumstances, have constituted excess, but that combined with malaria prophylaxis, dehydration and ‘lack of practice’, had quite a noticeable effect. I think I made an interesting impression on the owners of the lodge, but they’ve invited us on a game drive tomorrow, so I can’t have been irredeemably awful. Yesterday's late, medium-heavy night, followed by a 5:30 start today has left me feeling less than chirpy, so if today’s blog entry doesn’t quite follow, I apologise.

The meal was absolutely wonderful. While the camp is very good as camps go, the $200 per night lap-of-luxury safari lodge was like accidentally wandering into paradise. Keith and Nadia had decorated the wood-panelled room with balloons, and the flickering lamps combined with the sunset over the vista of Semliki was almost otherworldly. When Nadia and Keith proudly presented me the the crate of beer they’d bought “as a birthday present” and served us freshly squeezed “Semliki Sunrises”, I had to pinch myself. The dinner was equally superb. There was the most wonderful soup for starters with bread and real butter, perfectly medium-rare steak for the main with to-die-for honey mustard sauce and, to top it all off, sticky, runny chocolate cake for pudding. Joy!

As I said, however, today’s 5:30 start wasn’t great. It’s 1:43 now, and I’m still not really feeling “with it” but have had a nice morning, none the less. Every second Wednesday is Fort Portal day, so Alex and I are now pleasantly ensconced in ‘The Gardens Restaurant’, Fort Portal’s five-dollar Ritz. My morning has mainly consisted of a quest to find the mysterious toothbrush twigs of Uganda. Bill McGrew, my supervisor, tells me that in many African countries they sell twigs and sticks, which are used by the locals as toothbrushes. I thought that it might be interesting to buy some and see if the chimps chew bark from the same trees. From our pre-trip meetings, I came away with the impression that toothbrush twigs practically littered the streets of Uganda and that I would not be able to walk ten paces without having my pegs polished to a botanical shine. Fort Portal, however, seems to be the exception to the rule. I systematically asked at every stall in the market and, in each case, the conversation was the same:

“Hello, Mzungu, what do you want”
“I want something to brush my teeth.”
“Ah, here is a toothbrush! It will clean your teeth!!”
“This is good, but I am looking for a toothbrush made out of a twig.”
“Sir, you want a twig?”
“I want a toothbrush made up of a twig”
“What is a twig?”
“I want a toothbrush made from wood.”
“Sir, this toothbrush is better, it is made of plastic.”
“Yes, but I have heard you make toothbrushes out of wood here.”
“No… no… Ah…. you want a toothpick!”
“No, I want a toothbrush made out of a branch of a tree!”
“A tree? Where are you from?”
‘The UK!”
“You brush your teeth with trees??”
“No.. no. No, you do. I mean, I thought you did! Does anyone here do this?”
“No, sir. This is Uganda sir, we use “Colgate”.

No-one, no-one in the entire town had the foggiest idea what I was talking about. At one juncture I even mimed with a twig I’d found, something that earned me a very funny look. At another point I wandered into an innocuous-looking DVD and general goods store and found myself in a room hung with photocopied centrefolds indulging in a variety of rather graphic and not-entirely-wholesome pursuits. Thinking that my request for toothbrush twigs might be taken the wrong way, I backed out slowly. I also managed to get into a conversation with a middle-aged Ugandan lady about how Ugandans had much stronger teeth than Wazungu. I nodded politely and smiled a fragile Mzungu smile, leaving hastily before she got the chance to show me photos of her weak-toothed American friends. If there were anywhere else to try, I’d try after lunch, but I think I’ve been everywhere. Does anyone know anything of African toothbrush twigs? Father , father – did they have them when you were here? Have they been superseded by polynolythorypeptide? Will I ever find a Ugandan toothbrush twig?