Giving Kampala another chance

I had a really nice weekend. And since it was my last weekend here, that means that it makes it a little harder to leave!

On Friday afternoon, we had an office Christmas party at a rec center a little ways out of town. Saturday I slept in, did my final shopping runs with my housemate, and then met my friend Ruth for dinner at this really good Thai restaurant. We proceeded from there to grab a drink at what may be the only Irish Pub in Uganda, Bubbles O'Leary's. Some people call it Bubbles. I prefer O'Leary's myself though. They had real Irish music playing, and you could even get Baileys, which we did, of course. We left O'Leary's and continued our bar crawl to "Just Kicking." a pretty lively mostly ex-pat hang out.

Around 11, my housemate called to give me the coordinates of a party that we had to attend. It was just around the corner at a house belonging to a project director of another project here. Every year he apparently has a big blow out Christmas party, complete with hundreds of people, a DJ, and lots of beer. Ruth and I arrived to a huge and energetic crowd of mostly Ugandans and we danced until about 1:30am. Since this was way more social activity than I even have at home, and MUCH more social than I have been in Uganda, we called it a night and headed home.

Sunday, a former colleague invited me to spend the day with her and her 3 year old son at Munyonyo, which is something of a resort outside of town. Another big ex-pat hang out, but it was a lovely day and they had a good sized pool, so it was worth it. The three year old loves to swim and they have pony riding too, which was very very exciting!

Sunday night I attended an even that was definitely the highlight of the weekend. I went with a consultant we've worked with to see the Ndere Dance Troupe. This group of dancers, singers, and musicians is unbelievable. They put on a regular show of about three or four hours every Sunday night in front on a packed crowd. I don't think I have ever seen any performance with so much energy! And it took all of my own energy to sit still during the performance.

It was a really good weekend to end the trip on. I wasn't sick, I didn't hang out at a shopping mall all weekend, and I was super social. Can't beat that!

I start my journey home tonight, to arrive in DC tomorrow afternoon. I'm not looking forward to the process of getting home, but I'm eager to catch up with friends and family and start getting into the holiday spirit. I'll also find out (hopefully) today if I am coming back in January, so you may see a new round of stories in a matter of weeks.

Tune in next time...

SUVs aren’t all bad

Yesterday I took a spur-of-the-moment trip to Luwero to work with some folks in the District Health Office on budget and workplans. There is a cadre of drivers on the project team to get us losers who don’t drive back and forth from the field, but when every single one of them is out on call, we have to resort to the special hire taxi.

Charles arrived to pick me up around 2:00pm. Luckily, that meant that there wasn’t much traffic coming out of Kampala. We got moving…and boy, did we get moving! I’ve learned that drivers here are pretty fearless, but it feels a little more comfortable when you are several feet off the ground barreling down on a car your own size, rather then tooling along at 100km/h in Charles’ little Toyota Corolla. The bumps and potholes feel bigger and deeper when you go over them in a small car. And it doesn’t help that the main road between Kampala and Luwero is the straightest road I have ever seen. This facilitates high speeds, of course.

It is generally taken for granted here that anyone on four wheels has the right-of-way over anyone else. So when a driver is careening down the road, they slow for almost nothing. They use their horns liberally too, and everyone else knows what to do when they hear a horn toot. They scatter frantically to as far off the side of the road as they can. This goes for people as well as bicycles and motorcycles. And it’s not like the driver slows down while this happens either.

As far as I could tell, there were three things that Charles slowed down for while we were moving. A goat, a truck full of Ankole-cattle that was moving slowly in front of us (but only because there was an on-coming car so he couldn’t fly past said truck), and the rumble strips in Wobulenzi-town. At least someone was aware that this road is commonly mistaken for a NASCAR track. The rumble strips are big enough that if you don’t slow down to about 5km/h, you will probably tear off your undercarriage as you go over them. And there are about a half dozen of them too on your way through the town. Clearly, though, most drivers haven’t figured out that the purpose of the rumble strips is to cause you to maintain a constant slow speed all the way through town. Drivers go over the rumble strip at a very slow speed, and then manage to cover the 15 meters or so in between them at a normal “out on the freeway” speed. It’s not comfortable either with lots of lurching back and forth.

I made it, even though my heart rate did speed up significantly a few times, I found myself gripping the door handle a bit, and at least twice, the thought crossed my mind to tell Charles “you will not get paid by the project unless I get home in one piece.”

Anyway, as much as we all hear (or submit others to) lectures on how bad SUVs are, I have to admit, there are certain situations where I just don’t care about their impact on the environment. Often, when you are in a developing country that has two rainy seasons resulting in lousy roads and no speed limits, I admit, the oil crisis, ozone depletion, and acid rain are really the last thing on my mind. I’m just really thinking about getting out of the car safely at home.

Not just a herd of stampeding elephants...

If you are paying attention to the news, you might have already confirmed what I felt yesterday afternoon:
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KINSHASA, Congo (AP) -- A powerful earthquake has toppled dozens of homes and buried children in rubble in eastern Congo, killing at least two people in a region already beset by chronic violence and grinding poverty.

The quake, with a preliminary magnitude of 6.8, struck at 2:20 p.m. (12:20 a.m. GMT) and was centered beneath Lake Tanganyika on the Congo-Tanzania border, about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) southwest of Nairobi, Kenya, the U.S. Geological Survey said on its Web site.
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This was reported on cnn.com. The epicenter was a fair distance south of us, which shows you how powerful it must have been there if we felt it pretty significantly here.

The excitement never ends here...

Unexpected Thrills

It's about 4pm on a slow moving Monday. The most exciting part of the day was that we just felt a smallish earthquake - tremor really, but it was enough of a shake that a lot of people went flying out of the building. Your's truly included...

Non-Verbal Communication 101

The most interesting people here are the ones who I feel like I can’t adequately communicate with. I’m frustrated by my verbal limitations here. Even when I am (I think) speaking the same language, the accents are so different that both I and the other person end up repeating ourselves over and over trying to be understood. Sometimes I finish a conversation aware that my mouth is really tired because I have been focusing so much on an exaggerated enunciation of each and every word, every syllable. It reminds me of vocal warm ups from drama class in high school.

But then there are the situations where I have a true language boundary. Like I have with the gardener. He’s a very sweet guy. He greets me every morning with a big smile and “good morning madame!” Most of the exchanges we have usually consist of me saying something, usually with pantomime gesturing, and him grinning and nodding saying “okay!” It doesn’t matter what I have said, or what I have asked him. The response is always a spirited “okay!” He has no idea what I’m saying, I think.

Today (Saturday) I was sitting out on the front patio writing Christmas cards. He came around the corner, saw me sitting there and greeted me. We briefly discussed the universally appealing topic of the weather (I said, “the sun came out!” because this morning it was overcast. He grinned and replied “okay!”). He sat down on another chair and looked off across the yard towards the primary school behind us, where there seems to be an all day festival going on with lots of singing and dancing and drumming. I’m not entirely sure what he was doing there, and I tried a few more angles of conversation before I gave up and got back to my Christmas cards.

It’s quite possible that he simply wanted company.

See, this guy is the gardener, and as far as I know, that’s his main, possibly only job. He lives in a small house on the compound. At night I hear music playing from his house. During the day, he is often talking to the day guard, a young woman who is also very nice. (I have decided that they would make a good couple. :-)) He is single, and his family is in a village far, far away. He says he may get back there over the holidays at some point but that's not certain.

It must be really lonely being far away from your family, and not having people to talk to who understand you. The day guard was gone today, which probably added to his boredom.

I can understand what he’s going through. I went to hang out at the mall today. The MALL. I’m 31 years old. Hanging out at the mall on a Saturday afternoon is something that people don’t usually do past the age of 16. Nevertheless, sometimes when you need human interaction, you are willing to go to desperate measures. So, when push comes to shove, I hang out at the mall in a far away country, and my gardener friend hangs out on the front porch with the Mzungu who can’t even communicate with him. Sometimes we expect very little from companionship I guess. Sometimes someone’s presence is just enough.

Right about now, I would kill for a pizza

A nice greasy deep dish pizza.

I’ll admit, I am sure there is much much more to Kampala than what I have seen. Maybe I’m not being adventurous enough. Maybe I’m just feeling like I should save money so that I can but people Christmas presents. Whatever it is, I have indeed been skimping on food (having food poisoning Wednesday didn’t help either, of course!) during this trip. It’s easy when you are traveling to eat at restaurants…at least when there is a restaurant nearby. I will be moving into a hotel on Sunday, and I am really excited about having access to a restaurant. But so far, I have been surviving on cereal, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and some traditional Ugandan food for lunch. Maybe we are spoiled when it comes to food. I am so used to having a wide variety of culinary choices that when I am deprived of that choice, my body seems to think it is literally starving. I remember having these inexplicable cravings for Pad Thai when I was living in Guatemala. So far this past two weeks, several people have asked me at lunch if I’m vegetarian. They see my plate full of rice, potatoes, posho (corn meal, sort of), and peanut sauce, and I suppose the question makes sense. I have had a hard time eating goat, which is commonly served. I don’t know why. I don’t know why it’s easier to eat chicken. I see just as many chickens running around as I do goats. Then there’s the fish. I am not much of a fan of fish to begin with, but even less so when all original parts of the fish are still attached. I sat across from the IT guy yesterday and watched as he waded through fins and gills and skin. Ick. So maybe I should just tell people that I am vegetarian. But then I will have to explain myself when I make a lunchtime run to Lugogo Mall tomorrow. I noticed the other day that there appears to be a fast food fried chicken place there. That might give me the fix I need to make it til I get back to DC.

Have a good weekend. I’ll check back on Monday and let you know how the weekend here was and how my new digs are. Apparently part of my Friday will be spent shopping for housing. I guess that’s the courtesy they give you when they insist that you go low-budget. I’m thankful for that.

Getting Salmonella does NOT make me feel like a badass

It makes me feel horrible.

I have spent the greater part of the last 12 hours in the bathroom. I throw up everything that’s there, and when I’m done, I throw up nothing. That part really sucks. After about three rounds of this before about 11am, my colleagues decided I needed to take a visit to The Surgery. I was in no shape to protest.

The Surgery seems to be where ex-pats go when they get sick. The head physician is British, I believe, and there’s another doctor who I met at Thanksgiving dinner who is Australian. The line was long and we were counseled to make an advance appointment for the afternoon. I came home, slept for two hours and went back.

The doctor assured me that whatever it was, it would most likely run it’s course in 24 hours, but it could last five days. He suspects Salmonella, which is apparently very common – as he put it, “everyone’s a carrier here, so why not?” He gave me some antibiotics to start taking only if the “troubles” start up again, and some other pills to take if the other “troubles” come back (the latter troubles being the barfing uncontrollably). Very inexpensive pills from Pakistan and India. Hooray for generics manufactured in south Asia!

I’m especially happy about the pills that will keep me from throwing up. I’m weak and dizzy when I stand up and I’m supposed to visit the field on Thursday. So it is now about 4:40 PM on Wednesday and for the next 14 hours, I will most likely only move from my bed to go to the kitchen and refill my water or get juice. It’s all part of the job. It could be worse. All that will come of this is a missed day of work and a few lost pounds. But I would certainly prefer to go about meeting both of those results and not feel like crap to get there.

Work: That's what they pay me for

I’ve written about all sorts of adventures, but not much at all about my actual purpose of being here, which is to work. I know – you couldn’t really tell so far, could you?

If you have any interest in what I’m really doing here, read on. If you want to hear more stories about crazy wildlife adventures, skip this entry.

For the past several years I have been working with a particular model of child health program known generally as community-based growth promotion. I worked with this program first in Honduras, and did my Master’s thesis research last summer with a similar project in Guatemala. Personally, I believe that it’s a very promising child health program. But the conditions have to be, if not perfect, then very close for it to work well and show results. First, we must gain the support of the local government body because without their support, the program will not be sustainable. Then we need to work with the local health officials to train the people who will train and then supervise the community volunteers. That’s what I was doing in Arua during my first week. Then the trainers train community volunteers to conduct growth promotion sessions on a monthly basis. This also requires financial, material and human resources, which you don't get unless you get the local government support as well as generous donations from implementing organizations.

Growth Promotion involves a series of steps. All children (ideally) under the age of two are enrolled in the program and weighed every month. Based on their weight and age, their growth is monitored. Each month, there is a goal weight to be reached that is based on their weight the month before. The idea is that, just because a baby is growing doesn’t necessarily mean it is growing well. Maybe the kid gained 2 ounces from last month. Technically he grew, but not at a healthy pace necessarily.

Then, the child and caregiver (usually mom, but sometimes grandmothers or fathers) are counseled by the growth promoter. The counseling messages vary depending on the age of the child and whether the child gained adequate weight or not. The counseling session is used to discuss nutrition, illness, and other health issues. The goal is to negotiate certain behaviors with the caregiver to try during the course of the next month to improve the child’s growth. The idea is for these negotiated actions to be realistic. For example, if I were counseling a mother whose 3 month old child was not gaining weight, and I thought she needed to breastfeed more times a day, but she works away from home all day, I would work on giving her options that were realistic to her individual situation. So I might ask her to try to feed the child more before she left and when she came home at night. The behavior might be as simple as making sure that whoever prepares food is washing their hands adequately or making sure the child's shots are up to date.

It’s something that ends up making caregivers feel empowered. It can be frustrating and scary to have a child who isn’t growing well and is always sick, because it’s not like we are all hard wired to know exactly how to take care of children and make them healthy.

We went to the field last Friday to visit a community in a district north of Kampala. We ended up talking to a mom whose child is involved in a growth promotion program there. She told a trainer (who translated for us) that she likes the program because she now knows that she has all of the resources she needs to feed her child well at home. The problem was that she didn’t know exactly how to use those food resources. Now she does, and her child is healthier for it.

Before you say this is simple and ask why the mom couldn’t figure out how to feed her kid, it’s not as easy as it sounds. There are lots of cultural factors that get in the way of correct feeding practices, for example. Sometimes if a kid is sick, the caregiver doesn’t push food and milk as much as they should. Have you ever tried to get a kid to eat when he or she didn’t want to? It’s not that easy! Also, as I have learned over my years working in public health, breastfeeding isn’t all that easy either. There are all sorts of problems that mom shave which keep the baby from getting enough nourishment. And here especially, AIDS is a problem. HIV can be transmitted through breastmilk. So what do you feed your baby if you can’t breastfeed.

These are the questions thatthe growth promoters try to help answer. So my purpose here is to follow up with three districts whose trainers have been trained and they are ready to start weighing sessions. They are eager to start, and it spurs me on to action and inspires me to continue working. Hopefully by the time I am done with my consultancy in February, I will be able to say that I helped get at least two district programs going, and hopefully in another six month to a year, I will hear good news that kids in these communities are doing better than ever thanks to the work of the devoted supervisors and community volunteers helping them. That’s really all I could hope for.

Did you know?

• That a 2001 poll sponsored by the University of Maryland showed that most Americans think the United States spends about 24 percent of its annual budget on foreign aid.
• That the U.S. foreign-aid budget as a percentage of gross national product (GNP) ranks last among the world’s wealthiest countries (at about 0.1 percent).

We could probably do better...

Getting chased by an elephant makes me feel like a badass

I just got back to Kampala from a very cool weekend away. My colleague, Adwoa, invited me to come with her family to Murchison Falls National Park, which I believe is the largest national park in Uganda. It had some bad publicity recently when two British tourists happened upon some rebels, who then killed the tourists. There are some rough stories about the north because of ongoing war, which is really unfortunate. We all had to assure everyone back home and in Kampala that we would be extremely cautious because we were going to an area that wasn’t being recommended by various official sources. But we did take precautions – including bringing along a guard in our car with us. George has worked at the park for 23 years, knows it inside and out, and carries a very large rifle. I felt pretty comfortable with George. The park rangers were also spending more time patrolling the park to make sure it was clear of rebels.

We left Kampala on Saturday morning. We arrived first at the Falls, which is about a half an hour away from the lodge. It’s a pretty powerful waterfall. If you know your geography, the Nile begins at Lake Victoria, slightly east of Kampala in Jinja. The Victoria Nile flows north and then west to where Murchison Falls takes in into Lake Albert. It then flows north from Lake Albert, where it becomes the Albert Nile. Eventually it makes its way through Sudan and Egypt.

Then we went to our lodge for the night, the Nile Safari Camp (http://www.innsofuganda.com/nile.html), which really is like camping. Lots of stars, and bugs, and I even slept in a tent. It was nicer than a tent though. There was a wooden room and I had a full bathroom, but there was still a strong canvas tent built into it where my bed was. I went to sleep at night to the sound of frogs and hippos.

On Sunday morning we woke up at 5:30am to take a game drive through the park. It’s better to go in the morning because it’s cooler and the furry critters are more active. I can’t even begin to describe how exciting seeing these animals are up close and personal, and in their own homes! Not like the zoo. Unless you’ve seen it, I don’t think it’s possible to really appreciate how incredibly graceful a herd of giraffes looks running (galloping, gliding…) across the savannah. They are so beautiful – that was definitely my favorite sighting. The elephants were second on my list. I’ve never seen a creature quite as powerful. We saw one close up, and he wasn’t too happy about it so he started running towards our car. I took a picture from out of the roof of the car, and I’m curious about how it will turn out, since he was running and we were moving away fast. It will probably be a big gray blur. Because we weren’t close enough to be in danger and we had a very good driver, we weren’t at all in danger – but it was pretty thrilling.

We stopped for breakfast at a bush camp, and saw our first out-of-water hippo lumbering down a trail to the water. These guys are really funny. They spend pretty much all day in the water and then come back to land at night to feed. I don’t think that sounds too bad as a life. They make a very distinct sound when they are in the water too, which I heard going to sleep at night and waking up every morning, since my lodge room overlooked the water. It caused some weird dreams, that’s for certain!

Continuing on, we saw many more giraffes, elephants, bush bucks, water bucks, hippos, water buffalo (which are more dangerous than any of those other animals apparently), oribis and other deer/antelope-like animals. We saw about 30 species of birds too, which I won’t list out since my dad may be the only one who really cares. The top three sightings of birds for me though, were 1) the rare Shoebill Stork, 2) Red-Throated Bee Eaters, and 3) the Gray Crowned Crane, which is Uganda’s national bird.

We ended the tour thrilled by everything we saw, and ferried back to the south side of the lake for lunch (and for me, a nap).

In the afternoon we took a boat ride up the Nile in the direction of the falls. We saw many more birds, we saw hippos in the water up close and personal, and many more crocodiles than I am comfortable with seeing. I’m told that they were all pretty small, but they looked big enough to me!

On Monday morning we woke up before dawn again to drive to Budongo forest, which is either just inside or just outside the park. It’s about two hours away from the lodge. There is a conservation project there which works with school groups and brings people to the park to see Chimpanzees and other wildlife in their natural habitat. There are three Chimp families in the forest. The staff of the project have “habituated” one of the groups, which means that they are accustomed to humans being there. That doesn’t mean they like them there though. We tracked the group with our guide, Joshua, quite quickly and saw several of them up in the canopy. They made a lot of noise on a few occasions, which was a little scary sounding but apparently they were having disagreements amongst themselves. They did, however, make it known that they were unhappy we were there. They tried to pee on us. Luckily, our wise guide had positioned us far enough away and in a place where there weren’t good branches directly overhead. Something tells me this trick was learned the hard way.

In Budongo Forest we also saw Black and White Colobus Monkeys and Baboons. That was pretty much it, not that we complained! We were there to see the Chimpanzees, and we saw them.

It was a fantastic trip and I am so grateful to Adwoa and her family for adopting me for the weekend. Now I just have to get back into the frame of mind to work!

What I am thankful for

On Saturday, we drove through the dirty and crowded streets of Kampala. Traffic was thick both on the road and on the sidewalk. We slowed for the street traffic, and I saw a little girl sitting in the middle of the sidewalk. I would guess that she was about 1 year old. She was sitting with legs crossed in the middle of the sidewalk, nestled in a blanket. As we waited for cars to move, I looked around to see if I could identify a parent or some adult who might be nearby watching over her. I didn’t see anyone. As I continued to watch the little girl, I saw two older children approach her. They took her hands and they instructed her to hold them out palms up. Then they moved away, and the little girl sat obediently, with palms up, as people walked by her. Not even seeming to notice her.

What might happen to this little girl? How is it decided who ends up begging on the sidewalk in Kampala and who ends up screaming “Mzungu” from the carseat in the Land Rover?

What I’m thankful for this Thanksgiving is that I’m in the position to be doing what I do. Because I know that things could have gone differently for any of us. I, too, could have ended up as that little girl on the street. I could have ended up the older girl in Arua who had to drop out of school to work and take care of younger brothers and sisters. I could have ended up as the woman in the village who was beaten by her husband, infected with HIV, and left to die. But I didn’t end up any of those women. I ended up as a woman who has friends and family who love and respect her, who has had unlimited educational and professional opportunities, and who has access to food, water, and healthcare whenever and wherever I need it. Sure, I worry about my finances sometimes. I get frustrated because my bad knee acts up and I can’t jog like I used to. I get bored or stressed out by my job. I’ve felt the grief that comes from illness and death of a loved one.

But all and all, I’m in pretty good shape and I realize that even more starkly when I do field work. Nothing puts things into perspective for you like doing this stuff.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Even if things sometimes seem hard, we all have much to be thankful for.

Happy Thanksgiving

As I already mentioned, I had my turkey last weekend, so while all of you are enjoying your turkey and cranberry sauce tomorrow, I'm not sure yet what my plans will be. But since I had my turkey already, I'm okay with that.

My sort-of funny Thanksgiving story is that, when I was in Arua, I was describing Thanksgiving to one of the trainers. I told him that it was a day to give thanks for everything we have, and originated with the first immigrants to the US who were happy to be alive. Then I began to describe the elements of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. What is stuffing?

"Well, it's mostly breadcrumbs with some seasonings and usually you take all of the organs out of the turkey and you put the bread inside the turkey and you bake it. Then you take the stuffing out and you eat it."

As I explained this, I decided that the concept of stuffing is actually not very appealing if you really think about it. It's basically bread stuffed inside a turkey. It was obvious from the look I got from the trainer that this idea was really not something that sounded tempting to him.

Oh well. Just another American custom that won't catch on elsewhere maybe.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Have a slice of pie for me.

A cubicle is a cubicle is a cubicle

Arua was fun. It was gritty and adventurous.

Kampala is not. It's big and crowded and boring.

Maybe I'm just saying that because I have, for the past two days, sat in front of a computer with very little to do. Yesterday I was completely overwhelmed by my full time access to a decent internet source, yet I realize, no one is awake while I'm emailing, so I have to settle for delayed gratification. Sure, it's nice to get into work the next day and have emails waiting from your friends and family, but I'm so used to the instant back and forth that resembles conversation.

I get picked up in the morning around 8:30, and I arrive in my cubicle. I don't even work in a cubicle in the US. I check my emails. I try to make a phone call or two, and in general I wait until someone important and relevant to my work has the time to talk to me. That happened briefly this morning, but I didn't get too far with it. Tomorrow should be better. Adwoa and I are debriefing with the two activity supervisors at 10 to tell them about the Arua training. I made one phone call this morning, and the planning for the similar training in Bundibugyo is underway.

I took a trip to the close by grocery store today at lunch. The Shop Rite is apparently where all of the ex-pats shop. I treated myself to a can of sour cream and onion Pringles.

I discovered a serious ant problem in the office. This isn't new to me today. I noticed it yesterday too. This morning I came in and found that someone had thrown away the plastic cup I had filled with water the day before, which was annoying because it was just water and I didn't want to keep using more plastic cups. So I got another and drank the water. When I came back from the Shop Rite, I found a parade of ants marching right up and over and into the empty cup. Stupid ants. It's water. Not juice or something else truly march-worthy.

At home it's not much more exciting. I'm staying in a house in the suburbs. I spent about a half hour last night trying to figure out how to work the DVD player. I got frustrated, quit and watched MTV all night instead.

Having access to phones and email is good, but I really feel like an addict of some sort. First there was my flurry of emails yesterday, and then getting annoyed that no one checked their email in DC before 9am. I finally yesterday got a land line number to send to a few important people, and I was so excited to think that I might actually get a call from my fabulous boyfriend, who I haven't spoken to since I arrived. I even had a dream that I heard the phone ring at about 5:30 in the morning, and I got out of bed and flew down the hallway to the phone, which of course, wasn't ringing. I was even more disappointed when I arrived in the office and realized I neglected to include the country code on the number I gave out.

Today I got a cell phone too. Not that it's mine to keep, but to borrow and to pay for minutes as I use them.

Here I am in East Africa and it's about as interesting as being in DC. I have a cell phone, I sit in a cube in front of a computer all day, I go home, I watch TV and zone out. The main difference is that the weather here is warmer than it is back home. I guess I should be happy about that! And maybe Kampala will grown on me if I can just get out of my suburban hideaway once in a while.

Back to creature comforts - Kampala

Okay, so at the time that I wrote it, that whole entry about race consciousness really did feel genuine. Then on Saturday morning, we arrived at the airport and I saw white people everywhere, so it sort of ruined the “moment” I was having during the week in Arua. The plane was probably half-full (there were only about 14 people that fit on the plane anyway) with missionaries.

We made it to Entebbe, and Adwoa and I were whisked away by Richard, one of the drivers for the project. Having seen traffic in Kampala on a Saturday afternoon, I will never again complain about DC area rush hour. Luckily for me, in order to earn the title of “driver” here, you really have to be able to navigate some pretty tight and crowded spaces, and you have to be willing to play chicken with anyone. There were boda-boda drivers everywhere, except in Kampala they are more often on motorbikes as opposed to bicycles. I arrived at Katrina’s house, the lovely Finance and Admin person on the project, and she took me to Judith’s house. I have never met Judith but she has a lovely house, and I am living in it until Dec 5 when she returns from leave. I have a guard (Brenda by day and Moses by night), a maid/cook (Christine), and a gardener (Tumba Simbi, or something that sounds like that). I have a beautiful house and garden. I have hot water and a toilet that flushes. I even have a panic button apparently. Not that I’m interested in using it. The only things that have reminded me that I’m not in some cushy resort are that a) Katrina showed me how to prime the generator if the electricity goes out, which happens often, and b) there was a gecko hanging on the wall outside my room. I do think it’s going to be hard to get used to never being alone though.

Saturday, I went with Katrina, her two kids, and their nanny to a Drama Festival which is an annual event done by an organization called TASO – The AIDS Support Organization. The organization is celebrating its 18th birthday and is known as an amazing support network for people living with HIV/AIDS. There were 300 participants who came from around the country, all HIV positive. The theme this year had to do with prevention among positives. Uganda is going through an extreme shortage of condoms, from what I understand, and the US government’s insistence on making “moral” decisions for where it funds projects isn’t helping.

One of the really cool things about this festival was that everyone performing had HIV, which means many of them were on anti-retroviral therapies. It’s a true testament to how powerful these drugs are. These were incredibly healthy looking people, who were leading very normal lives thanks to these drugs.

After the festival, we went to someone’s house for an early Thanksgiving dinner. There’s a huge American ex-pat community here working on a variety of projects. I talked to some nice people, and had a wonderful meal, complete from turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce all the way to apple and pumpkin pie. It’s nice to not feel like I was missing out on Thanksgiving completely.

Sunday, I was woken up early by singing coming from a church service in a school sort of in the direction of my backyard. The service goers sounded very enthusiastic and they must have had some serious energy, because the singing and preaching continued for about three hours. Katrina came to pick me up at noon to run errands, and then we went back to her house for the afternoon.

Now it’s about 7:30pm and I am watching Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer on CNN. Funny how even half the world away, watching Donald Rumsfeld talk makes me want to puke. I just made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and I may crash soon. Playing with a 2 ½ year old afternoon will wipe anyone out. Katrina’s son, J.R., is my new best friend it seems. He’s very energetic. He’s also in the “repeating” stage, where he repeats the things other people say, with some very funny results. He’s the blondest, palest, most blue eyed little boy around. Sitting in his car seat, he gets a real kick out of yelling “Mzungu!!!!” at the top of his lungs to anyone (usually Ugandans) walking by. Mzungu is the word Ugandans use for white people, which makes it hysterical that J.R. screams this at the Ugandans. He only knows the word because other kids yell it at him, but he clearly has no idea what it means.

All for today. I'll have pretty steady email access now so feel free to email me. :-)

11/17 Week One

I am writing this on Thursday night, hoping to post tomorrow. The internet café here is a bit rough and I try to not spend much time there. Here’s week one in Uganda to review:

We arrived on Sunday and were taken to the Hotel Pacific on a main street on the outskirts of Arua. Definitely a change from the Imperial Beach Resort Hotel in Entebbe. The rooms aren’t too secure – they have wussy locks that open with a skeleton key that you leave at the front desk when you leave the premises. The toilets don’t flush well. Though now that I have had the experience of the water going out for a full day (Thursday), I won’t complain. At least when the water was working, they flushed a little. Yesterday water was out all over town, so I, my six co-facilitators, and 26 intrepid trainees got to spend the day using the pit latrines at the hotel where we had the training. That was an experience I’d rather not repeat. The electricity was out all day too. The hotel has been turning off the electricity at night, usually around 10 or 11, but usually I am sound asleep by then anyway.

The streets are busy all day from about 5am until about midnight. I can’t get a good sense of where people are going or from where they are coming. Traffic congestion in the streets is mostly caused by the boda-boda drivers, who offer public transportation in the form of a bicycle with a small platform on the back that you sit on, right behind the driver. They call them boda-bodas because apparently they originated at the border crossing between Kenya and Uganda. There was a kilometer stretch between borders where the more traditional forms of public transport (taxis, buses) wouldn’t go, so the “border-to-border” or “boda-boda” services popped up.

I wish I could say that the training was going really well, but it has been hard. Today (Thursday) everyone started getting lost in the material, and it’s clear that 99% of them don’t understand the program well enough to train other people (it’s supposed to be a training of trainers). I won’t get into the frustrations of work. Instead, I should say that the people are wonderful. Everyone – facilitators and trainees, hotel staff, staff at the workshop site – is incredibly friendly, kind, and enthusiastic. They are really entertaining too. At this point, the group has definitely developed rapport, which is fun. It’s actually very hard to see them struggling, because they are so energetic, and they clearly want to learn it. I wish we had more time here to help.

The only time I have really spent outside of the workshop and hotel has been to walk to the internet café, which has brought me a seriously heightened awareness of my race. I’ve spent a significant amount of time in Latin America, but somehow I never felt like I stood out so much there. In this little corner of the country, I am the only white person on the streets. Some people are curious, especially little kids. Sometimes I hear someone say “hello, my sister” as I pass by. Sometimes I get hissed at, usually by packs of boda-boda drivers with nothing better to do. Others seem to look right through me, as if the whiteness of my skin is washed into the background by the bright sun. I mentioned this to my colleague Adwoa, who is from Ghana andd is married to a white American. “I hadn’t ever really thought of it that way,” she said, when I told her how peculiar I felt walking down the street, “but I know the feeling well. I guess it’s probably good for everyone to go through that at some point.” In my world back home, I am neither a curiosity nor invisible, and I have to say, I’m much more comfortable with that place that falls in between.

That’s my week. We go to Kampala on Saturday, where I am sure more adventures (of the urban variety) await!

Greetings from Arua

I am now about a stone's throw from the borders of Sudan and the DR Congo apparently. Got an early start with my colleague Adwoa and her husband Biff. It's about an hour flight from Entebbe but we got diverted temporarily because, well, it had been raining really hard and the dirt runway was a bit waterlogged and couldn't take us. Betcha don't hear that often! So we landed in Pakuba. As we touched down, I was startled to look out the window and see a horned animal running alongside the plane. My first African wildlife sighting! It was an impala, and there were several more along the runway and fields around it. When we were finally allowed to take off again and head for Arua, I got my second sighting - about 8 or 9 giraffes a bit of a ways out in the bush along side the runway. I have to say, even from up in there air, there is something way more thrilling about seeing these guys outside of a zoo and in their home environments.

I also just had my first experience with Ugandan food. If I'm remembering correctly it's called Posho - it's a maize mash stuff, about the consistency of mashed potatoes. You eat it with other stuff as a side, like rice.

Okay, that's about as exciting as it gets for now. I have to make my way back to the hotel to meet the rest of the folks working on this training that starts tomorrow. It's going to be a long week. If I get back into the internet cafe, it probably won't be to write much, so tune in next weekend for a better update where I may tell you about more wildlife, my conversation with our driver about the war in Uganda or more strange new food experiences.

Getting there is half the fun!

Did I sound convincing when I said that?

It’s about midnight local time as I am writing this, which means that you are all still be at work. I’ve just taken a nice long shower and took some advil for my headache, and am, unfortunately, feeling very awake. So here’s the quick recap of my journey.

Airport #1: Dulles. Everyone who complains about delays at airports through check in and security has never flown out of Dulles on a Thursday at 1pm. Being the good passenger that I am, I arrived the recommended two hours early. There was one person in front of me to check in, and no one in front of me to go through security. How anti-climactic.

Airport #2: Newark. A fun game to play is to try to pick out the Americans versus the Europeans. While there is no universal rule when it comes to this, I found that a general guideline is that the Europeans are more likely to be quieter, wear more trendy clothes, and have hair that makes me nostalgic for the days of Pat Benetar and Joan Jett. The Americans are more vocal and are more likely to be wearing color coordinated velour jogging suits (I swear – I saw three of these. Though it could be more a trait of New Jersey than the US. Maybe it’s unfair of me to generalize).

Airport #3: Brussels. All messages are in four languages. I get to sit through Dutch, German, French, and then English. And people can smoke at these little smoking stations that are all over the airport. Other than that, I can’t really remember what happened while I was there waiting for my flight. It’s all becoming a blur at this point.

Airport #4: Nairobi. I should say runway #4 because we don’t actually get off the plane. A very nice Dutch guy was sitting next to me on the flight and he got off here. We got to sit a few minutes and listen to some very skittish German tourists talking to an Italian ex-pat living in Kampala about the murders of British tourists near Gulu (in the north. No panicking folks, I’m not going there) a few days ago. They hadn’t heard about the incident so they were going through a serious inquisition of the resident, who appeared to not know too many details, yet spoke with great authority and so made it sound like he did.

Airport #5: Entebbe. This has been a long two days of traveling. I have a dull headache, and I think I probably slept too much for my own good. My visa looks really pretty in my passport though. No silly little stamp for these people – I get a fancy sticker that fills up the whole page this time.

Now I am at the Imperial Resort Beach Hotel. I’m intrigued to see what beach I wake up looking at. It’s considered a "five star deluxe hotel," but I couldn’t get the hot water to work in the shower. Hmm. But the room is comfortable, and the bed is nice and big, so I’m going to try to get a reasonable amount of sleep. I may try to make a day trip to Kampala tomorrow. Then we will fly to Arua on Sunday.

Good night. :-)

down to the wire

Passport...
check.

Malarone...
check.

Yellow fever vaccine...
ouch!
check.

I finally got my official approvals this morning, so in exactly three days I will be on a plane to Newark...and then to Brussels...and then to Entebbe. Then after that, to Arua for 8 days. I'm told that they do have internet cafes there.

Here's a map of Uganda. http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/cia05/uganda_sm05.gif . You'll see the big star with Kampala written next to it. That's where I will mostly be. But if you look in the NW corner, you'll see Arua, where I should be for the first week or so, if everything goes according to plan, which it rarely does.

Keep your fingers crossed that I am on a plane in a few days. Already the plan has changed about five times this morning.

One week to go

Someone in my book club suggested last night that I set up a blog for my traveling, and since most people in my family and many of my friends have no idea what I do when I go far, far away, I thought it sounded like a good idea. Besides, it makes us feel closer, right?

I have one week until I leave for Uganda. It's my first trip to Africa, so I'm a little nervous, but excited at the same time. I'll be getting my first ever Yellow Fever shot on Friday. How exciting, really. Not.

I don't know too much yet about my trip and work, but I do know that it has to do with growth promotion programs and setting them up in Uganda. I worked on some growth promotion programs several years ago with the really cool woman featured in this article, that just came out: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1124300,00.html . She's famous now, but I talked to her yesterday and she says she'll still remember the little people like me. ;-)

More to come...