Happy Belated Australia Day, Uganda

Uganda, you are SO LOVED. Oh hang on, we need to take some of the ST tags off.

Mum was so excited when she discovered that The Sunday Telegraph had put out a special Australia Day hat once again. Not because she wanted to wanted to wear it on January 26th, but because she wanted to send a whole truckload to Uganda.

Going on some of the gear the Ugandans had been spotted in previously - Australian beach cricket XXXX Gold and Socceroos tops (which a colorful feather duster seller below had been sporting) - the east Africans clearly had a love of Oz and were going to GO NUTS WHEN THESE BUCKET HATS LANDED ON THE STREETS OF KAMPALA. Even though most of the time they got Australia mixed up with Austria. I'm sure I'd seen a freebie hat from one of the papers Down Under at local Owino market before.

Spotted roadside in Kampala: a Socceroos jersey.

The hats set you back $1AUD once you had a coupon you could get out of The Sunday Telegraph, which you could buy for $2. That worked out to be the equivalent of 8,191 Ugandan shillings. For the same price, you could probably feed an African family of five for a year. But that didn't stop Mum.

"I've got seven. Is that enough?" she emailed me anxiously in the lead-up to Australia Day.

Do these look like they come from Dinky Di Discounts? Check out the Australian money.

I told her I thought it would be, for the time being.

So Mum got seven hats and, because we didn't want the Africans to think that we didn't truly love them and we hadn't gone to Dinky Di Discounts Murwillumbah and forked out money for more expensive ones there, she cut all The Sunday Telegraph tags off them. She promised to glue them all on a shirt for our favourite Sunday Telegraph reporter Jmo, so they wouldn't go to waste.

A Cricket Australia hat being flogged in Kampala during Uganda's Golden Jubilee Independence week, of all times.

Dad threw in some money (chocolate Australian coins) for the Ugandans. He'd always said he didn't have much money, that was why you should be careful not to get kidnapped by pirates in Africa as he couldn't pay much of a ransom. But it turned out Dad had a few bob after all.

Crikey, at local Owino markets they're even selling the Fitness First backpacks.