Christmas tree

In most of East Africa, December marks the beginning of summer. By mid-December, the short rains are over, the humidity falls and the mercury rises. For anyone who's grown up above the tropic of Cancer, it feels distinctly un-Christmassy, though the occasional appearance of a sweaty-looking Santa Claus and some half-hearted piped Christmas carols in Nakumatt, Shoprite and Game serve as an unwelcome reminder of the commercial excess in most of Europe and North America.

Excess aside, however, Christmas, along with the long evenings of the Wimbledon fortnight in late June and early July, is the time of year when I feel most nostalgic for home. Prototypical bright frosty mornings, Christmas lights strung along the high street and, best of all, the annual task of decorating and admiring the Christmas tree.

The bizarre tradition of chopping down a conifer, bringing inside the house and decorating it hasn't really taken root in most African countries, though a few Harare vendors did a roaring trade in thinnings from the pine plantations in Zimbabwe's eastern highlands. Before that, when I was based in Tanzania's southern highlands, I was lucky enough to live and work on a large wattle and pine plantation, where one of the unwritten benefits of employment was the December visit to the forest to fell a Patula Pine (pictured) and bear it home in triumph.

In Kampala, however, apart from the hideous plastic efforts available in Game, there don't seem to be any Christmas trees on sale. Surely there must be a good business proposition here. Buy up a few acres of mountainside land in Eastern Uganda otherwise unsuitable for farming. Plant the land on a 2-3 year rotation with Patula Pine (or another vaguely Christmassy conifer suitable for the Ugandan environment). Chop them down when they are 2-3 years old and bring them to Kampala for sale at Garden City, Lugogo, Kabalagala and other expatriate hang-outs. Or, better still, make home deliveries on special order. Sell them at $50 each to homesick expatriates and pocket a healthy seasonal profit.......

Come to think of it, the Christmas tree is just the tip of an iceberg. A good quality turkey is very hard to find.