Pete the Bird

Out of all the animals that you might see when visiting Africa, one of the most amazing is the Marabou Stork. This impressive and ugly bird can stand nearly 5 feet tall and have a wing-span approaching 10 feet wide.

In 2008 during our first extended visit here to Kampala for the taping of season 2 our director, Dennis, was having lunch with our executive producer, Richard, on the patio at the Serena hotel. As they were dining there they noticed these gigantic birds walking not far away in the gardens. Never having seen a bird like this before they asked the waiter, "What is the name of that bird there?" The waiter said he didn't know, but he would find out for them.

He came back a few minutes later and informed them that, "The bird's name is Peter, but I don't know his surname."

In both Kampala and Nairobi you can see large flocks of Marabou soaring high in the sky and you often see dozens of them nesting in the trees.

My friend, Raj, in trying to describe these birds described them as "nearly Beryl-sized", referring to a member of our Nairobi staff, pictured here. For the record, Beryl has nicer legs.

A Walk Through Kampala, Uganda

Yesterday after we finished taping, instead of going to the Fitness Centre here at the hotel I asked John Sibi-Okumu (JSO, the host of our show) if he would take a walk with me through the city. Click on the slide show, below, to go directly to my Google Picasa web album.



In two weeks here this was my first, and possibly my only chance to get outside of the hotel where I live and work. It was a warm and humid afternoon when JSO and I started on our walk at about 5pm.

We started off walking down towards the Sheraton and after walking through the beautiful lobby of that hotel we walked into their gardens, which also serves as something of a public park. Exiting the gardens on the opposite side we walked along the busy streets. The traffic in Kampala, like much of Africa, is incredible. The cars and trucks are packed closely together, and boda-boda motorcycle taxis weave in and out of any open space. Trucks with 20 men standing in the back drove by, but we were unable to grab photos of that. I needed to be careful in openly taking pictures on the streets as some people might be offended, so we took our pictures of street scenes by pretending to take pictures of each other and then shifting the focus of our camera at the last minute.

Our walk took us to the famous Nakasero Market, a large public market not for tourists but for those who live here. Hundreds and hundreds of small stalls crammed under a shelter where you could buy produce, spices and other food stuffs, and household goods of all kinds. It was a wild scene with the shoppers packed almost as closely as the vendor's stalls. It was my favorite thing I've seen on this trip, by far.

Our walk took us along the busy streets and many times we had to cross them. You take your life in your hands crossing the street; The cars and boda-boda don't slow at all and sometimes drive so close to the side walk that you are nearly swiped by their side mirrors. Plus, they drive on the wrong side of the street here, so I'm always looking the wrong way when I want to cross.

JSO took me to a nice little curio shop hidden under a street in a subterranean shopping area and I had my first and only chance to add some money to the Ugandan economy.

It was a wonderful time and a very different view of Kampala than that which I see from the hotel balcony.

Happy Birthday Brodie!

10 years ago today my first son, Brodie, came into the world and changed my life in wonderful and magical ways. Before that day I thought that love was something that was finite, something you stored in a jar, and if you wanted to share it with more people each would get a smaller share.

Brodie showed me that love multiplies. When he came into our lives he filled our home with more love than we had ever before known.

Brodie is smart, generous, curious, kind and above all, loving. He is one of the brightest lights in my life, and I'm sorry not to be at home with him on this day when he celebrates his first decade on this planet. I've no doubt that if he wants to, he will celebrate some of his birthdays on other planets, too.

Brodie, I love you, I miss you, and we'll celebrate when Dad comes home.

To Sleep, Perchance To Dream

When Hamlet gave his famous soliloquy with these words he was contemplating suicide. Thankfully, that has not been much in my thoughts (except for about 3 hours on Friday night when things were going particularly bad.) My thoughts have been more about peaceful sleep.

The long hours that we work here are not conducive to rest. We normally work at least 15 hours each day and sometimes as many as 19. When you finally get a chance to get to your room and lie down your mind is still churning away so that sleep doesn't come quickly or last very long. Couple that with the 11 hour time difference and the resulting jet-lag, and you can see that good sleep is hard to come by.

On Saturday night after our first day of taping our Director, Dennis, asked me to try and fix an annoying problem with the video output from my computer, a white raster flash that occured every time a new question was displayed. I worked from 8 until 10:30 on the problem without finding a solution, so I decided to 'sleep on it'. This was the first time since I had arrived that I had been able to get to bed before 1am, and in 6 nights in Uganda I had yet to sleep for more than 4 hours. I fell asleep quickly and slept well until about 2:30am when I woke up with the solution to Dennis' problem. Apparently sleeping on it actually works! I lay in bed for a while going over the solution in my head and was excited to find that it should actually work. Well, there was no more sleep to be had that night, so at 4:30 I got out of bed and showered and then headed down to the control room to re-program my application to institute the change. It worked perfectly, by the way.

Sunday night was my first good night's sleep. I got to bed at 10:30pm and woke to something I had never seen before in my room, and it scared me half to death. Daylight! I opened my eyes to see light coming through the window in my room and I bolted out of bed in a panic, thinking that I had overslept and was late getting down to the control room. Actually, it was only 6:45am, and I had plenty of time for a shower and breakfast before work, but the adrenalin rush lasted for several hours.

Monday night was another good night's sleep; I was actually awakened by the alarm on my cell phone, which I have turned on and put into Airplane Mode just so I can use it as an alarm clock. On Tuesday we had our fourth day of taping and finally reached the half-way point. It was my best day, energy-wise, so far.

Wednesday is a 'dark day' here, which is to say, a day off from taping. All of the participants and most of the crew were being sent out on tours to Jinja, the source of the Nile river. Mary also arranged a night out at a club for our crew on Tuesday night with a special reserved area for them with bottle service, all payed for by the production. This was a great chance for the crew to get together and socialize, blow off some steam, get rip-roaring drunk and then have the next day open to sleep it off.

As much fun as that sounded, I opted to stay at the hotel and turn in early again. Sleep is more fun.

An Army Marches On Its Stomach

As I write this, it is one in the afternoon and we are just coming back from our lunch break after having recorded 2 more shows this morning.

In years past, the quality of the food has been one of the biggest complaints of the American staff working here in Uganda. It's not just that the food has been different from that to which we are accustomed (which it has,) but that sometimes the food has made us physically ill.

In the most memorable example from the first year, the caterers prepared finger sandwiches for afternoon tea, which the crew descended upon with gusto. Unfortuately, the warm mayonnaise dressing did not fare well in the 95 degree heat there and we ended up losing almost 20 percent of our crew the next few days to food poisoning, some of them even needing hospitalization.

Last year in season 2 every meal was a buffet of indistinguishable hunks of meat simmered in some saucy stew served with rice, usually chicken or goat. While goat is a delicacy here in east Africa, usually reserved for feasts, it did not appeal to our American crew day after day, especially as it appeared to have been butchered by a blind man with a meat cleaver; Bones hacked in half, weird joints in the middle of a hunk of meat, gristle and sinew in every bite, it became the joke of the event, "Try the goat!"

In this, our third season, we would be spending a week longer here to tape double the number of shows as previous seasons and Mary and her staff realized that morale would be an issue, so they devoted considerable effort to the menus that the hotel would be serving. Mary already works 27 hours a day on this project, and indeed, moved from California to Kenya this year to make even better use of her limited time, so for her to spend hours on the crew menu shows that it had some importance to her.

She and her staff came with cookbooks and their own recipes from home and together taught the Ugandan kitchen Chef to make chili, tacos, jerk chicken and Philly cheese-steak. They have arranged a nice variety of themed meals to break up the monotony, and provided comfort foods to help us better manage the incredible stress that comes with this production. Yesterday at lunch we even had some honest-to-goodness chocolate ice cream.

It has definitely made a difference this year for most of us, and had made this sometimes hellish experience less unpleasant. Having said this, I've just this moment been informed that tonight's menu includes goat. Seriously. Oh, well.

Battle and Television

They say that, "Battle is long periods of boredom punctuated by short bursts of terror." Well, television is like that, too.

After 5 days of everything going relatively smoothly all hell broke loose on Friday night, right before we started taping on Saturday morning. A glitch developed in my program that was throwing a white raster flash on the screen every time a question was displayed, and it needed to be fixed and proven before we could start taping, but I couldn't get to work on that because I was also needed to record student intros, a mind-numbing process that required me to click a button once every 2 or 3 minutes. Unfortunately it was once every 2 or 3 minutes for over 3 hours. When we stopped at 8:30pm I had a quick dinner and then finally got working on my fix. I worked on that until after 1am and then I still had 90 minutes more work to get the questions for the first day into my computer for taping. This night was a flashback to year one of the show, probably the worst 2 weeks of my life. I stumbled to bed after 2:30am and set my alarm for 4 hours later. I was due on the set by 7am.

My late-night fix worked perfectly the next day, and we taped our first 4 shows without hardly any problems. My biggest challenge was staying awake and alert the whole time. After finishing only 15 minutes late for the day, I had another 3 hours of boring student intros to tape.

Now it is Sunday evening here and we've just finished day 2 of taping and got another 4 shows recorded without any troubles. Once again I am in the middle of another 3 hours of student intros, but this time, for the first time in 3 days I have my computer back and I am able to check emails and post to my blogs again.

We have 3 more days of player intros to tape after this, and 6 more days of taping 4 shows a day before I get to go home again. We're barely a quarter of the way through, but I feel like I might be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Or maybe that's just the muzzle flash of the cannon.

The pictures above show how the signal from my computer is fed into Helge's switcher where it is composited with many other layers and signals into the polished video package that will play on TV.

Ready For Rehearsals

It's Thursday evening here, and we're finally getting everything locked-in, just in time for rehearsals to start on the set tomorrow. We start taping shows on Saturday, so Friday is our only day to get it all together.

Here you see Helge, our technical director from Germany hashing out last-minute details with Peter and the crew from Focus in the Netherlands.

Our set has been painted in the new colors from the palette of Zain, the sponsor. The lights are being set and programmed, and here in the control room the cameras have been tuned and synchronized. After doing three days of run-thrus with the host of the show, my program is thoroughly tested and I feel ready to go. The questions for the 1st day's taping are ready, and the questions for the 2nd day are in their final stages. The hope, by the time we start taping on Saturday is to be 3 days ahead in preparing the questions for TV.

On the set we have this marvelous rear-projection big-screen with an image so crisp and sharp it looks like it was painted on. The secret to the incredible image is the projector, which features a 12,000 Watt bulb. It's so powerful, I'm surprised it doesn't melt the screen. As expensive as this projector must be, we can't afford to be without it for the show, so we have a back-up ready to go.

Tonight I enjoyed dinner with our director, Dennis, our show's host, John, and Richard, the executive producer. We spent a leisurely 90 minutes at dinner being educated by John Sibi-Okumu on the finer points of the game of cricket. Walimu (teacher, in Swahili) demonstrated his deliberate teaching style in a lesson that lasted nearly as long as a cricket match, but was definitely more entertaining.

Morning Hijinx

Here in Kampala it rains nearly everyday, not that I ever see any of it. I've been in the hotel for 3 days now and only been in the open air once, but it rains whether I'm there to see it or not.

I was reminded of that this morning. I was enjoying breakfast at a table near the window to the outside patio when I heard a torrent of water pour down. The tables on the patio sit under the cover of a giant canopy and the canvas was sagging under the weight of all the captured rain-water from the previous night. One of the hotel workers had gone out with a broom to poke at the canvas from underneath and allow the water to pour off the edge. Peter, the 6-foot-tall leader of our Dutch production crew was outside enjoying a smoke and decided to use his height to help out. As he tugged on the edge of the canvas to stretch it out and release the water he was pushed under the cascade by one of his coworkers and drenched. A wrestling match between the two resulted in Peter getting his revenge on Remie.

The Eagle Has Landed

At 5:30 Monday evening my luggage finally arrived, 30 hours after I did.

It turns out that I didn't need to travel to the airport and back to get it. I don't know who was paid or how much, but I'm grateful that it's done.

After taking 5 minutes to unpack, I applied a liberal layer of deoderant and changed into my sneakers. True happiness lies in the small details.

Day 1 In Uganda

After 3 flights and over 32 hours of travel I arrived at the Imperial Royale Hotel in Kampala at 11AM on Sunday. Unfortunately, my suitcase didn't make it with me.

We had a very short 1 hour 15 minute connection in Nairobi and we had been unable to check our bags all the way through to Entebbe, so we were faced with the prospect of having to wait in line to clear customs in Nairobi, then pick up our luggage at the baggage claim and re-enter the airport to check them back in with Kenya Airway; In short, an impossible task. Enter Kalpesh, our man on the ground at Jomo Kenyatta airport. Lillian had contacted him to meet at as we deplaned and he had already checked us in for the Kenya Air flight and had our boarding passes in hand. He directed us to the Kenya Air desk inside the terminal for help in getting our bags without exiting the terminal. Tom Cunningham went with the KQ rep to pick our bags off the carousel and have them re-directed onto our next flight, but he didn't pick my suitcase. Then, after he let Lillian know my bag didn't make it, she contacted Kalpesh to get my bag on the next flight. Unfortunately, his directions for me to file a lost baggage claim when I arrived in Entebbe never got to me, so now my bag has made it to Uganda, but we can't get it out of the airport. Today, Monday, I will need to ride 1 hour back to the airport to claim my bag personally. A total waste of about 4 hours of my time, I figure. Meanwhile, although I was able to shower and change into the extra clothes I packed in my carry-on, I haven't shaved for about 50 hours, I brushed my hair with my fingers, and without deoderant I run the risk of fitting right in, odor-wise, with the locals by this afternoon.

The rooms here at the Imperial Royale are absolutely huge. I don't know if you can tell from the picture the amout of open floor space in the middle of the room. There is a nice little sitting-area (that I will never use) and a 40 inch LCD TV hanging on the wall opposite the bed, about 20 feet away. Unfortunately, the remote control doesn't work, so I have to get out of bed and walk across the room to turn it on or browse the channels.

The bathroom is also big, over 350 square feet, with dual sinks and a shower stall that is about 3 X 6. The king-size bed has a nice comforter and 6 pillows, which sounds nice. Unfortunately, the pillows and the linens stink of cigarette smoke so badly that I couldn't fall asleep, and the mattress is a wooden plank rapped in stiff foam sitting on another wooden board. You don't realize how much of the softness of a bed comes from the foundation support until you sleep on a hard mattress on a wooden board.

I worked until after 11 last night, a 12 hour day after all my travels, but the room didn't prove too restful and I was awake at 4:30AM. Time to get back to work now.

This All Looks So Familiar

4 in the afternoon here in London where I sit again at Virgin Atlantic's Heathrow Clubhouse after an uneventful flight last night from Los Angeles. The Ambien worked as advertised and I got 6 1/2 hours of sleep on the flight, and then finally enjoyed the movie Wall-E while I ate breakfast over the Eastern Atlantic. Courtney Love was on our flight. She was in line behind me for the bathroom at the end of the flight when I was changing out of my VA Pyjamas, but I didn't talk with her. Some of the other guys in our group talked with her during the flight and said she's very nice, if a little chatty.

It's 8 in the morning back home, and hopefully the rain has passed and Marion and the boys will have a fun day today. If I were there I would head down to the beach and walk from San Jon Road to the river and back. Marion, Brodie and Nik, you should totally do that!

Soup seems to be my meal of choice whilst travelling, so I've just ordered a bowl of the very delicious Scotch Broth that I had a few weeks ago when I was here. I'll be avoiding alcohol for the rest of my journey until my return, so Coke Light is good enough for me.

Next stop, Nairobi, where we have a short 1 1/2 hour connection to make our flight to Entebbe. Virgin can't do anything to check our bags through to Entebbe, so we will somehow have to clear customs, collect our bags and then check them back in to the Kenya Airways flight in that short amount of time. It may not be possible. I'll let you all know what happens . . . .

Here We Go Again

It's less than 2 weeks since I've returned from my whirl-wind tour of Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria, and now here I find myself again at the Air New Zealand Lounge at LAX waiting to board a flight to Africa. It seems that I've only just got over my jet-lag and started to feel normal again, and now in the next 24 hours I will travel half-way around the planet again, far from those I love and miss.

This trip will be almost 3 weeks, but I will spend all of my time at the Imperial Royale Hotel in Kampala, Uganda. Work has already begun there building our set in their grand ballroom, and for the next 3 weeks I will be working along with a team of about 100 people to tape season 3 of the Zain Africa Challenge.

My biggest regret as I leave is that I was within one day of completing the luxury tree-fort in my backyard for Brodie and Nik, but it has rained steadily for the last 2 days in Ventura, so I am forced to leave the job undone. All that remains is to finish the stairs that lead up to the deck 9 feet above the ground in our 45 year old plum tree.

Oh, well. Something to look forward to when I return on February 25th.