Thursday, September 11, 2008

Old Kenyon, We Are Like Kokosing

Well, back to the old grind. Also, back to where I left off. Even though I'm not traveling this year, I suppose I'll keep everyone updated anyway. Hopefully I will be traveling again before too long, though it won't be until next summer at the earliest.

I had some good times in DC. I did a lot of touristy stuff. The metro is fantastic-it's so convenient and pretty cheap. I went to Arlington, the monuments, a bunch of the Smithsonian museums, the Library of Congress (so cool!), etc. My favorite exhibit was a Jim Henson exhibit at the Smithsonian's International Gallery. Even though I waited for half an hour for it to open and I was the only adult there not attached to a child, it was amazing-they had puppets like Kermit, Ralph and some from Fraggle Rock and a lot of really cool displays. If anyone is in DC sometime in the near future, see if it's still around-it's definitely worth a look, even if you only moderately liked Jim Henson.

I stayed in Washington, working until August 1st. Overall, the internship was not always the most interesting work (especially filing), but I really liked the people I was working with. Everyone in the Compensation and Benefits Unit (my unit) were fantastic and I loved getting to know some of the interns. I made some good friends from Mexico, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic that I hope to keep in touch with. I said goodbye to everyone and took my one and only taxi ride in DC to the train station and then took a train to Maryland. Uncle Bill picked me up and drove to Albany, where he was going to visit with Aunt Nita's family and where my family would meet me to pick me up for our family vacation.

My family picked me up and we were off for one day in Vermont. I fulfilled two life goals/dreams, the first of which consisted visiting the Trapp Family Lodge (as in von Trapp family-'Sound of Music), somewhere I have wanted to go since watching 'The Sound of Music' and reading Maria's book. We ate lunch there at the Autrian Tea Room and wandered around a little bit. Then, we went to see Ben and Jerry's factory, somewhere I hadn't been since I was three-years-old or so. All I remember from the first trip was getting a pink t-shirt with cows on it that I used to wear all the time. This time, I took a factory tour with Amy and Laurie and taste-tested some excellent (as always) ice cream. I still maintain that Ben and Jerry's is the best ice cream in the world (that I have tasted so far at least).

The next day, we headed off to New Hampshire for a few days of taking in the views and hiking. It rained a bit and was kind of foggy, but it was beautiful. We drove up Mount Washington, the highest peak in the Northeast, which was cool even though it was really foggy on top-you couldn't see anything. We also saw a moose cross the road, something I had been looking forward to.

Then we headed off to Maine where we spent most of the vacation. Maine-namely Acadia National Park-remains my favorite place in the U.S. It was as beautiful as always and though there were tons of people as usual and the weather wasn't always great (lots of rain), it was still so nice to get away. We hiked, we ate lots of great food, we visited all of the sites in the park, we shopped at my favorite used bookstore. Overall, it was a great trip and was a nice change of pace after nine weeks in Washington, DC.

After ten wonderful days, we had to leave so dad could get back to his job taking care of screaming babies and crying children and so Laurie could start her week of fun at band camp. The drive home took two days and for me, it was great finally going home, even though the stay would be short yet again. I think overall, I've only been home for six weeks out of the past year which is a little crazy. But I spent almost eight months of the past year out of the country, so that largely explains why. Anyway, most of my time at home was spent getting ready to go back to Kenyon and face my senior year.

And that brings me to where I am now. I have work to do and while I have enjoyed procrastinating to write this, I have at least two meetings and a class tomorrow, all of which I need to prepare for, so I will leave it here for now and continue on some other day. Chao Chao and siiba bulungi!

Friday, June 6, 2008

Summertime is here

Well, I'm spending even more time away from home now that I got back from Uganda. After a short 10 days or so at home, I had some medical tests and some chill time. Surprisingly, Uganda didn't leave any parasites in my system so I guess I'm good to go. I have to keep taking the malaria pills for a few more weeks though to make sure all those parasites are gone. Hopefully I won't come down with a high fever and chills in the coming weeks and months. Supposedly malaria can hide for quite awhile without any symptoms showing up. Anyway, I'm surprised how healthy I stayed and continue to stay.

Now I'm in DC until August. I have an internship here with the Organization of American States, which has been pretty great so far. I really like the people I'm working with and I'm keeping busy which is what I needed after my adventures this year. If I was stuck in Ohio, I'm sure I would have gone crazy and probably just ended up driving somewhere random. It's weird to be working/interning. I dress nicely everyday-keeping up the ironing is one thing I wish I didn't have to continue from Uganda. My supervisor took me for lunch at the World Bank headquarters the first day I was there which was slightly overwhelming. You need a connection to get into the building in the first place so he had his friend get us through security. The building is really nice and has technological displays everywhere talking about WB projects. There was a choir singing in the lobby which was a little strange. I guess it was for all of the people wandering around. With such high security, there sure were a lot of kids running around. I guess their parents must work there. Anyway, I walked into the main cafeteria there, which was really nice, and was immediately overwhelmed with the choices. This on top of the fact that I only had $5, as well as nostalgia for Uganda, led me to get African style rice and beans. Overall, I continue to be a little critical of the WB's work. I mean, they're supposed to be aiding development throughout the world and yet they spend tons of money to maintain this building, as well as at least five others, in DC. They could definitely put the money to better use, though it's probably okay that they aren't using this money to implement potentially harmful projects.

At work, I mainly do whatever they need me to do. I did a lot of research on G4 visas so that I can give a presentation on them to the interns when they arrive next week. About half of the interns are here on these visas and an additional 20 or so are students from abroad. I think a little less than a third of us are US citizens, so it will be cool to meet more people from around the world. The people I'm working with already represent a wide array of nationalities: Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia, St. Kitts and Nevis, Mexico. I feel slightly out of place there being an American, but I'm used to that by now. It's also a little strange to hear Spanish being spoken by almost everyone, especially when I hear English everywhere outside of work.

On the weekends I go out exploring and just walk around. Last weekend was my first full weekend here and I walked to Georgetown after getting lost on the way to Trader Joe's for some groceries. Then I walked to the Washington Harbor and watched a bit of a dragon boat race that was going on there. It was a nice day so I didn't mind walking everywhere and it's good for me to be getting exercise. I walked so much in Ecuador and then not that much in Uganda so I'm pretty out of shape. On Sunday, I walked to the National Gallery of Art and just spent several hours walking through the exhibits in both buildings. There was an Afghanistan art exhibit that just opened a week or so ago. It was really crowded though so I just got frustrated and quickly went through it. It also isn't as fun making fun of modern art and annoying people by myself. I guess I'm just a little lonely after being around people I knew every so often in Uganda. Hopefully once the other OAS interns get here next week I will meet some people living near me and we can hang out or something. I am kind of a homebody though-I don't mind spending time by myself in my room. I'm keeping busy reading up on the news and reading other books as well as listening to lots of music and watching my favorite telenovela again.

This weekend, I'm hoping to go see Hilary Clinton speak tomorrow at one of the Smithsonian museums. I think she'll probably officially concede from the presidential race and officially endorse Obama. Then maybe I'll take in a few more museums before heading back to my room. Sunday I plan on taking the metro to a shopping center in Virginia. One legacy of Uganda is the gross state of most of my shirts. I made the mistake of bringing a lot of white clothing to Uganda and this clothing is not very white anymore. I don't really feel that the shirts are work appropriate becuase they don't look very professional so I'm going to search for a few new shirts that will match the skirts and pants I brought with me.

Well, I should probably get to bed soon so I can get up early and walk into the city to see Hilary's speech. It should be interesting if I make it down there. I'm getting better at getting around now without getting lost though so it shouldn't be too hard. It's just a bit of a walk and I was exhausted after walking all that way and back last weekend. I hope everyone's doing well wherever they are. Enjoy your summer!

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Homesick again

Yup. I miss Uganda more than I thought I would. I was ready to leave but the last week was great, only making me miss Uganda more. Sure, Kampala was miserable most of the time. But I loved the rest of the country that I got to see. I especially miss all of the great people that I was there with. We had some fantastic times together. Especially memorable was the sloshball game and matooke ball on our last night on the island. Now there is no one to complain to about my transportation issues or to understand how crazy it is that I have so many choices for meals. I walked into Kroger the other day and was slightly overwhelmed, just like the time I walked into Kohl's and into Target. I just feel like things here are too easy. I don't know. I'm just a little lost trying to fit back into the life I lived here for so long.

I feel slightly disgusted with myself looking in my closet and seeing all of the clothes I have that I only wear once a month or so after seeing people who wear one set of clothing over and over again though it is clearly worn out. I know I learned a lot and changed a lot in Uganda and it will be interesting to see how this will manifest itself in my everyday life. I think of Uganda all the time now. I saw a commercial on the internet that had a reference to jackfruit in it, a fruit that I have only seen in Uganda. I really don't like the fruit itself but hearing about it on this Thai commercial made my day. Then later that day I saw the video for Keep Bleeding, a song that is now popular here but that I became familiar with in Uganda, hearing a great rendition by Dylan and Maribel during the matooke ball. And then my sister's concert band played highlights from The Lion King for their concert yesterday. I think these signs all point to the fact that I should have stayed a little while longer. But I am moving away from home yet again next weekend to start an internship in Washington D.C. that will take most of the summer. Hopefully once I'm busy again I won't feel this melancholy and nostalgia for times just a few weeks ago. This feeling of being overwhelmed that I get everywhere will likely go away sooner or later, as will the strange urge to drive on the left side of the road. Meanwhile, hopefully the jetlag will end and I won't feel sleepy all of the time anymore. Perhaps I just have sleeping sickness.

Monday, May 12, 2008

Mvudeyo

I am sitting in a hotel room near JFK and it's so weird. I really miss Uganda now as well as the great group of people I got to know there. And tomorrow evening I head home. I am really looking forward to seeing my family again. I think the culture shock from this semester will be much worse than coming home from Ecuador. It's just so different here. Just sitting in Heathrow was overwhelming. We were surrounded by muzungus, for one thing. Everyone was nicely dressed and was carrying fancy electronics. In New York, it's amazing how efficient the airtram system is-the tranpsortation at the airport here is much better than the transportation system in all of Kampala. There are no bodas weaving in and out of traffic, people complain about everything and move much more quickly and I blend in so easily in the crowd. I miss hearing muzungu and walking slowly once in a while. I should probably get some sleep because I'm heading over to the airport early tomorrow to spend some time shopping for books and eating Wendy's junior bacon chesseburgers. Mvudeyo-I have returned.

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Almost there

I am so over this place. This is probably my stressed-out self talking, but I am very ready to go home. This week has been slightly crazy. Other than finishing up my research paper, and not really having much to go from with it, I have had some interviews and tomorrow promises to be a hectic day, running around town trying to return materials from where I borrowed them. Everyone is slowly trickling back into the city and it's good to see everyone again. We will all be together starting Saturday night so it will be nice to hear everyone's stories.

A few interesting things have happened so far this week. On Sunday, there was a rabid dog running around and since then, it's been lying dead on our street. It's right by a school and no one has moved it yet. It's getting pretty gross. This just adds to my desire to leave, as does my experience two days ago. I was crossing the road and a boda driver was nice and stopped for me to cross because I had been standing there for a while. However, another boda driver wasn't so nice and drove around the stopped boda and ran over my left foot. Luckily, he stopped to yell at me so only one of the wheels went over my foot. No damage done-just a little bruising. It just added to my general feelings of misery regarding Kampala. Boy has this semester been long. There are so many things I am looking forward to, the first of which is finishing this dumb paper and the second of which is boarding that plane on Monday morning (May 12, not May 5-I wish). I'm kind of past the point caring how well I do on this project because I really don't think it will turn out well, but everyone seems to be in the same boat. Now we all know why the practicums we read at the beginning of the year were so bad-and ours will be comparable. Oh well. It was nice to get on the internet and do a bit of procrastination, but I should probably go back to work now. I am really looking forward to May 12-it couldn't come soon enough!

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Finally

We finally had a night without rain, I think the first in a week and a half. It was fantastic walking to the main road this morning without having to shake my feet around to get the clumps of mud off of them. I also managed to catch taxis fairly quickly and got to work within 45 minutes or so. Things just move more efficiently when it isn't raining.

I have a few more days of work (hopefully with some interviews) and then I write my paper next week and then the last week we just have presentations and preparations for going back to the U.S. I have a lot of work to do before then. Other than working from 8:30 to 5:00, not much else is going on.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Best Weekend Ever-Rafting on the Nile (and other stuff)

I had the most incredible weekend. But I should probably start where I left off and leave the best for last. I have been working at UDN for a few weeks now and I'm in a pretty comfortable routine. I go to work around 8:30 or so, leaving my house around 7:15 or 7:30. Once there, I just sit at my desk with my computer and read report after report. Last week, the executive director, Daisy, gave me a job-write an analysis of the Ugandan debt strategy-which I did and now I have to write a short report on the African Growth Opportunity Act between the U.S. and Africa, in addition to researching for my project. Everyone I have called to interview has told me to call back at another time which is slightly annoying but I'm sure some of them will follow through. I'm not entirely happy with the way my project is going and I was so excited to find a topic-international aid and trade in development with a focus on the agricultural sector-and now no one will talk to me but at least I have a bunch of reports to read on this topic. Anyway, now I have internet which is very distracting but nice becuase I don't have to go into town and spend money on it. The people I am working with a very friendly and have helped me a lot with finding information and just getting comfortable with this routine. However, I only keep it up through next week and then it's paper writing time. I can't believe I only have three and a half weeks left here. The time has especially flown by during practicum though some days in the office are really long.

So the weekend wasn’t so great at the beginning. On Friday, I went to work in the morning as usual and nothing was amiss. However, a few hours later, my officemates were talking about how bodas weren’t driving anyone anywhere. I assumed that they were just talking bodas not able to drive down some of the roads because of the rain. However, after lunch Patrick came into the office to talk to us about how the matatu (taxi) and boda drivers were on strike for some reason and there was no public transportation throughout Kampala. I was in Kamwokya, quite a distance away from home, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to get from point a to point b. The funny thing was that this was happening just after I wrote an article for the Kenyon Collegian on the transportation system here.
(read it at: http://media.www.kenyoncollegian.com/media/storage/paper821/news/2008/04/10/Features/Notes.From.Abroad.Getting.Around.In.Uganda-3317503.shtml)
Anyway, drivers were burning tires and using sticks to prevent people from taking any public transportation. They were also blocking off roads, though it wasn’t so bad near where I was working. However, three people were shot and killed in a section of town that I used to pass through twice a day when I still lived in Kagoma. It was a little worrisome, but I figured things would turn out all right. I texted Martha to ask her what the best way of getting home would be and she said to leave the city as soon as I could and that private hire was the best way to get home. So I left the office about an hour and a half early. I only had 4,000 shillings to get home because someone had taken 10,000 shillings or so from my bag the night before while I walked to the taxi park in the dark, something I try to avoid but I was buying cheese at a more muzungu store. The receptionist, Esther, told me that it would probably cost between 7,000 and 10,000 shillings to get a private hire from Wandegeya to Lugala so I was a little worried that my money wouldn’t quite get me there, not to mention that I had to spend at least 500 shillings on internet on an urgent matter involving a summer internship. So I walked to Wandegeya which wasn’t too far away from Kamwokya and I knew the way well from taking the taxi there every day. I used internet for 20 minutes or so and then just started walking to see if I could find a private hire that takes a full ride, charging around 600 shillings each for a total of 3,000. Anyway, there were none of these types of private hires, only the excessively expensive ones for which I didn’t have the money to pay. So I just kept walking. By this time, the bodas were running but they were charging a lot of money, so I kept telling myself that I would keep walking first to the end of one road, then to the sign for Kasubi Tombs, then to Kasubi, then to the tombs at the top of the hill, and then I just figured I could walk all the way. I felt kind of like Forest Gump when he just starts running and just keeps running because he feels like it. So I just kept walking and the taxi drivers were all parked on the side of the road, watching people walk by and sometimes yelling comments to me about how I had to keep walking. Some of them were laughing, but I was really enjoying the walk. If it had been raining, it probably would have been unbearable but it was nice to get some exercise, walking up some of Kampala’s hills. It was a little scary when I saw some blockaded roads and people with sticks ensuring that no one would use public transportation, but there were so many other people walking with me that I felt pretty safe. Some of the scenery was pretty and I saw a lot more than I normally see from the taxi. Anyway, it took me around 2 hours of walking to make it all the way home, which isn’t so bad considering that it sometimes takes me an hour and fifteen minutes to go the same distance in a car. I should start walking at least part of the way to cut down on time and cost, but only if it isn’t raining or muddy which it pretty much always is lately. I got home and since I was so thirsty and sweaty from the walk, I bought an orange Fanta to reward myself with the money I had saved by not taking a boda. I got home and had to get ready for a party we were having for the people in Kampala as well as some other visitors. Almost everyone we invited came and we even had a few surprise visitors so it was great. I was surprised that so many people came because the transportation system was still a little sketchy, but most people got bodas or private hires to take them to our house. We all had a great time because for some of us, it was the first time we had seen each other for a while. For Tom, who has been in the mountains, it was the first time he had seen muzungus in a while. We ate cheese, drank wine and watched "Stomp the Yard" and just talked. Amy, the only other fellow Ohioan in the group, was stranded in Kampala because of the transport situation and she told me that a group was going rafting the next day so I decided to tag along with them.

The next morning, the taxi drivers in Lugala claimed that the taxis still weren’t taking passengers so we hired one out privately though he still told us it might be dangerous to drive into the city center. We went anyway, prepared to duck down if we saw any mobs, but we didn’t see any and there were even some taxis that were taking people normally. It appears as though our driver was lying to us or didn’t get the memo that the strike was over. So we took the taxi to the other side of town and caught a bus from there to Jinja. We met up with the rest of our group in Jinja and ate a nice breakfast before getting our lifejackets and helmets in preparation of rafting down the Nile. The rafting here is supposedly some of the best in the world with level 4 and 5 rapids, as well as some level 6 rapids which we wanted to go down but weren’t allowed. We drove to a point in the river and everyone split up into groups of seven people with one guide. My group was pretty great-it was four of us SIT students, one woman we met that day who was alone and two people from Purdue who had been staying in Kenya for a while. Our guide’s name was Alex/Muzungu and he was pretty great as well, probably the best guide there. So we got into a raft and got into the water and practiced a few things before heading out. I was the first to go into the water to practice getting back into the boat. We also practiced tipping as they assured us this would be happening to us throughout the course of the day. We were all really excited to get going which we did. The first rapid was level 4, which is the third most difficult. Our guide told us instructions like pedal forward, pedal hard, get down, etc. and in this case he told us to start pedaling backward midway through the first rapid which we later learned caused the flip that resulted. We were the first team to flip and the only team to flip on the first rapid. At first I was terrified of the thought of flipping over but it was actually pretty great and I managed to hold onto the raft throughout this time. We all got back in and prepared for the next rapid which was a level 5. Once again we flipped over and it was a little scarier because I didn’t grab a hold of the raft but I grabbed onto a kayak and they got me back to the raft. The next rapids was named Silverback and it was one of my favorites. It was a level five and was a long rapid and my group did really well on this one, making it down without flipping. We went right through the middle and up these huge waves. It was a good thing I didn’t fall out because there were whirlpools in this area and I probably would have freaked out if I was caught in one. Anyway, the next area was also pretty great with this waterfall we went down backward. Not everyone gets to go down the waterfall because you need to go just the right way and there has to be enough water for you to go down, so we were lucky. After that we had lunch on the Nile which was pineapple, glucose biscuits and water. It was nice just floating along. I also forgot that we had been swimming in the river along the way which was also quite fantastic. We haven’t been able to swim in most bodies of water due to the threat of bilharzia but the Nile is bilharzia free so we jumped off the raft into the river. After lunch we had some more great rapids. On one of them, Alex told one person to stand at the front of the raft while the rest of us went to the back in something known as the flying squirrel. We were the only raft to complete this maneuver that caused our raft to fly off of a wave at a ninety degree angle and the flying squirrel really did fly. We flipped of course and somewhere along the way I scraped my toe up a little. We passed some level six rapids that Alex joked we could do if we wanted and we were all ready to go down them but I think the company isn’t allowed to take people down the most difficult ones. Then we had a few more and then the last one which was optional because it was a little intense. My whole raft was up for it so we went and flipped on the first wave. They told us to swim to the side if we flipped over which most people did and I tried but I was in the middle of the river doing into the next part of the rapids with only my lifejacket holding me afloat. I saw huge waves coming towards me and saw that the raft was next to me with Alex holding on so I held on two and went down the next part trying to hang on. I lost hold a few times but managed to catch back up to the raft. It was fantastic and I’m glad I didn’t swim to the side like they told us to. Alex got the raft flipped back up and we picked up Amy who had also floated down the rapids and had caught a kayak. Then we got back to shore and hiked up to the vans that were taking us to the hostel we were staying at for the night. Overall, rafting was so great and I am so glad I went. It was terrifying at first and I really did think I was going to die a few times but all the scrapes and bruises I am finding all over my arms and legs are worth it and I can’t wait to go again. I was so surprised afterwards that I didn’t chicken out and refuse to go at the last minute. I just don’t feel like I can describe it very articulately so I apologize if the above sounds dumb but it was great. And then to finish off the experience, we all went to the hostel that the organization runs and just chilled out for the evening and into the next day. There was food waiting for us, including some great veggie burgers and we all sat back with nice, cold Nile Specials (Ugandan beer brand-the best one here, evidenced by the fact that I normally hate beer but actually wasn't too opposed to this kind) and drank it while looking out on the Nile (which we couldn't really see because it was dark) and listening to the Nile rush by. I called my parents standing outside by the Nile which was pretty cool. We watched the video that one guy had made of us rafting. There was lots of drunkeness going on (not on my part) so I talked to the guy who filmed us from a kayak and he said some really interesting things about the rapids at Murchison, where he is going next weekend. It was overall a really good time despite all of the random Ugandan/muzungu men hitting on me in their totally inebriated state. That night we slept in a dorm like room with 12 beds and I fell asleep to the sound of the Nile rushing below the hill we were on.

The next morning, I slept in a bit and then got up and just went up to the main building. It started raining a lot and continued raining off and on throughout the day. I took a shower in an outdoor shower facing the Nile River which had a nice view but was a really cold shower. Then I ate a rolex with avocado, tomatoes and cabbage for breakfast which was really tasty. We all just kind of hung out for a while at the lodge-like area until the Jinja people left and there was Tom and me and the one woman we met the day before on the raft. The bus back to Kampala didn't come until 5:00 or so which was slightly inconvenient but it was a free ride back into town. I got pretty bored waiting around for it, especially becuase for once in my life I didn't have a book with me to read. I would have loved reading on the comfy couches in the place but too bad. We eventually got on the bus and had an uneventful trip back to Kampala after which I headed home. And thus ends my great weekend.

Not much has happened since then. One of my roommates got pretty sick and we thought he had malaria, but it was just an infection. And I have a cold, but it's not too bad. And it's been raining every day in the morning which makes the trek into work especially more annoying down the extremely muddy dirt road. Oh well. Uganda wouldn't be Uganda without the rainy season. I hope everyone is doing well wherever you are and happy spring!

Monday, March 31, 2008

Practicum

Never mind about not having a practicum. A short while after I published the last post, the UDN called me and I now have an organization to work with. I will start working there tomorrow so things are looking up. Back to the weekend, I spent Saturday just hanging out. We still don't have DSTV in the house but we bought some American shows on dvd so we just watch those. It's crazy how much I feel like I'm back in the US when I'm in the house. That ends pretty much as soon as I leave and see the hills. It has also started raining a lot and my sandals get ridiculously muddy. I tracked so much mud into the Resource Center on Saturday, it was disgusting. In my defense, I tried to wipe off my feet, but the mud gets into all of the little cracks on the bottom of my shoes.

On Sunday, I had a few religious experiences. I went to a Baha'i service just to see what it was like. It was pretty interesting. The singing was acapella and it was really beautiful. I got really sleepy during the service, probably becuase it was so relaxing with the breeze blowing through the open doors and the birds making noise in the background. I didn't really understand what was going on, but there were people reading things in other languages (French, Luganda). It seemed like quite a muzungu haven, though there were people there of all different types of backgrounds. The temple itself is gorgeous and has all this green space around it. I'm not interested in converting, but I am interested in picnicing on their lawn. After the service, I went to the mosque in Kampala that Gaddafi opened last week. I went on Saturday with some friends but we weren't allowed in becuase we didn't have head scarves but the guard assured us that they would provide head scarves for us if we came back the next day. As we were leaving, a man caught up to us and introduced himself as the guy who does the morning and afternoon call to prayer, Mahmoud (spelling is probably wrong). We returned on Sunday to find that there were no head scarves waiting for us, but Mahmoud met us at the entrance and took us around the outside. It's a really beautiful mosque and it's really new so it's quite clean. It's on a hill that overlooks much of Kampala so we got some great views. We took off our shoes to go up to the main part and just walked around. The architecture is beautiful. We didn't look around for too long becuase our guide had to do the afternoon call to prayer at 1:00 so we left. As we were walking down the street we heard him chanting/singing over the other sounds of the city which was really cool. I went home early and prepared for some interviews I had today, only one of which has happened so far.

This morning I headed into the city and met with a woman from an organization that deals with trade. We had a great conversation about trade and development and I may have found a focus for my project in examining trade vs. aid for development, or maybe the aid for trade program. I met another guy and got more contacts which will probably be helpful after I start my work with the Uganda Debt Network as an intern tomorrow. I don't know what I'll be doing but it should be interesting. Then this afternoon, I was supposed to meet with a member of Parliament about transparency and accountability in the government, but he's busy, which is understandable, and I will probably have the chance to talk to him at another time. Meanwhile, I'm just enjoying some free time becuase this is probably the last day that I'll have this time off. Anyway, I hope things are going well for everyone. I will try to keep this updated but things are going to probably be getting pretty crazy.

Friday, March 28, 2008

I'm still alive

It's another long one, sorry about that. But here goes.

Looking I forgot to mention last time that the last day of in-depth module was really fun. My group went to a few schools to learn about public health regarding how it affects children. We first went to a high school and walked around with the headmaster to see the library, computer lab, some classrooms, labs, kitchen and the clinic. In the clinic we learned that the nurse had been administering quinine incorrectly with the risk that children would develop necrosis (dying tissue) but Sister Harriet corrected this. I could tell that this school was fairly well-funded because it actually had a lab and it had enough facilities for the classes. It also had a computer lab with at least fifteen computers. When we were there, many of the kids were making powerpoint presentations. I think it was a private school so that’s probably why it seemed so well funded. After that school we went to a primary/nursery school. Again, the headmaster showed us around which was nice. We saw a bunch of classrooms. In one, SH told us to look at the kids’ feet to see how many weren’t wearing shoes, which was slightly uncomfortable because she said it in front of all of the kids. It was true that at least five kids out of thirty or so were not wearing shoes but she probably should have been more tactful about telling us some of the kids were poorer than others. We also saw the kitchen facilities and dorms where some kids lived, some of them because they are orphans and others because their parents are too poor to support them. The nursery school kids had just gotten out from their class so they came and mobbed us. One girl was fixated by my hair. I tried talking to her but the teacher told me she was from Rwanda and she didn’t understand the English, Luganda or French I used with her so I’m guessing she was either really shy or speaks Kirwanda. A lot of the kids also kept touching my upper arms, I guess because they liked my light skin. It was a little strange but they were all so cute. We went to see the nursery school classrooms and all of the kids came with us. They all claimed a muzungu and fought over us. I had three kids who claimed me as their muzungu. They loved being twirled and they tried hanging off of my arms but they were a little too heavy for that. I love the kids. I wish I had some in my family. Anyway, that was the last day of in-depth public health. We didn’t really learn too much about public health but we had fun with the kids.

Then on Sunday we headed out to eastern Uganda, first to Mbale. Mbale was a really beautiful town with some nice hills/mountains in the background and trees and flowers planted along the roads. We had the day off once we got there so I went walking toward the hills just for some exercise and fresh air. It was nice to breathe air without diesel fumes or dust. That night we played capture the flag in the dark at our hotel which was really fun. The lights went out at one point which was really cool because it was pitch black and the stars were incredible. Unfortunately, the power came back after ten minutes or so and a few of us went to star-gaze and it just wasn’t that great with electricity. The next day I went to Children Restoration Outreach, a program that works to get streetkids into school and into jobs. We met a 15-year-old girl who ran away from home because her family was trying to marry her off and she just wanted to finish school. We also met a former streetkid who is currently attending Makerere to study social work so that he can help streetkids in the future which was pretty great. After lunch, we headed off to Sipi and Kapchorwa. We hiked to the bottom of Sipi Falls which was pretty cool. Once we made it to the bottom some of the group decided to go swimming and I was tempted but it’s probably better that I didn’t because now there’s a chance they got bilharzia. The waterfall was pretty cool. It wasn’t nearly as powerful or as awe-inspiring as Murchison, but it was still pretty nice. That night, Clueless was on DSTV so it was nice to pretend that we were back in America for a little while. On Tuesday I visited some caves and saw another waterfall, this time from the top down. Once again, the stars were amazing.

Then came the rural homestay in Busia district, right on the border with Kenya. My family consisted of a man, one of his wives, and ten of his children. The compound consisted of a bunch of mud huts with grass roofing while the family’s main house was brick with tin roofing with many holes. The room I shared with my partner Ashley had one bed with mosquito netting as well as a table and two chairs. The main house had a table, some wooden couches without a bottom in some parts, a storage room where they put some chickens at night and put some dishes (not sure how sanitary that combination is) and another room. Then there was a chicken coop (the kids kept going in and then would come out scratching and watching fleas or some bug jumping around on the ground-I didn’t go near that building), more housing for the kids, and more storage. There was also a really nice open shower that consisted of three short walls and no ceiling and a rock bottom. I wouldn’t mind showering there all the time. And then the pit which was fairly spacious but full of bugs of all kinds. On the first night I saw maybe twenty cockroaches while on the second night there was a mouse in the ceiling. During the day, there were flies and bees all over the place. Within the first hour of our being there, two of the kids had puked in the yard and more than the ten children of the family had congregated in the compound to meet the muzungus. They were all dancing around and put sparkly stickers on their faces and arms. Whenever I brought the camera out they would pose and then run and grab at the camera to see their pictures. They also liked doing this weird dance that was kind of like the Russian dance where you kick both legs out to their respective sides. It was pretty interesting. We also taught them how to play hopscotch which they really liked. The first night Ashley gave them books and crayons and they enjoyed drawing, an activity they continued in the dirt outside with sticks the following few days. Some of the older girls knew English and could read a little and write their names but most of the kids only knew the local language, KiSenya (or something like that, it was pretty close to Luganda). The three older girls went to school during the day and then would come home and help around the house, doing some cooking and cleaning and watching the kids. I don’t know when they would find time for homework. The mother also worked pretty much all day long without any breaks. She was always feeding the one-month old or gathering sticks for firewood or collecting water from the protected spring. The day never ended for her.

Anyway, during our rural homestay we were to briefly research a specific issues and we picked education. The first full day our father took us to a few places, beginning with the home of a blind man and his family. His son, Moses, had to drop out of secondary school because although the government pays for the first two years, fees after then were too much for his family. He hopes to be a doctor and work in the community where he is living, but for now he has to help his father break stones and his mother with the farming. Our next stop was the level-III health center. There were no patients there when we got there because it was lunchtime so a nurse had time to tell us a little about what was going on. The center was clearly underfunded-it lacked beds, bedding, medicines, and other basic necessities that are essential in adequate medical care. Afterwards we went to the seat of the local government of the sub-county of Busitema. We met a few people there including the sub-county chief. They talked about decentralization which we had already had a lecture about but they shed light onto the lack of funding due to a tax the government abolished a few years ago promising to make it up with direct revenue, which never happened. Then we met a volunteer for the only legally operating NGO in Busitema, World Vision, who explained how the organization is working to promote grassroots development in the area. There used to be a bunch of NGOs in this rural area but because of funding cuts many of them have pulled out though this is clearly a very poor area lacking many services. Anyway, World Vision has a bunch of programs and they go directly to the community to learn what they want and how they want it to be provided which is pretty cool. They have a sponsorship program for some local kids to get them in school though it doesn’t help the problem with quality of education. We discussed this issue with the headmaster of the Busitema primary school. The headmaster explained that enrollment cubed with the government passed the Universal Primary Education initiative about ten years ago. UPE pays for kids to go to school though it doesn’t pay for food, uniforms and other scholastic materials (books, paper, pens) so many kids still have a hard time paying for school. This school was clearly improving as test scores are rising and less kids are failing despite the rising enrollment, but they still lack a reliable electricity source, safe dorms for girls, a water source nearby, and many other things. I wondered how we had talked to all of these people so easily and I think it may be because our host father was the local chairperson for the community. Anyway, we headed back to the house for lunch after a quick stop at our host father’s other house to meet his other wife and a few of their kids. It was interesting to see that some of the kids in this household were visibly malnourished while the ones in the household in which I was staying all looked well-fed. It was also interesting to note that later in the day the other wife came over and it looked like she was friends with my host mother and the kids all played together most days. Family dynamics were pretty interesting and it would have been cool to look a little further into it if I had had more time. The rest of this day we hung around the house a bit and played with the kids. We walked to the protected springs with the parade of kids with us. They’re building a borehole for the community which is great because it will provide a clean source of water that is accessible to my host family and a few others but is somewhat far from other people’s homes. The stars that night were incredible. There is no electricity in the area so we only had our kerosene lamps to detract from the night sky.

The next day we went around with Moses, the boy from yesterday, to a bunch of homes to talk with people. We would interview them informally for a little and then would leave them with a piece of soap as a sort of payment. In the morning we only talked to men because the women present just didn’t talk but that afternoon we talked to some women whose husbands weren’t around. However, the women still didn’t talk very much. One of the women, though, told us about this business she has selling pineapple. Somehow she had gotten some pineapple seeds and planted them and is now one of the only sources in the market for pineapple. It’s in high demand and she sells them from her house which is pretty cool. Also this day, my host sisters didn’t go to school and we learned that it is because when it rains the roads become impassable and they have to walk several kilometers to get to the school so when it rains or when it might rain, they stay home from school. This was pretty sad to hear because the rainy season is just now starting so they will likely be missing a lot of school in the months to come. It just shows how much education intersects with things like infrastructure and health. I just finished reading “The White Man’s Burden” by William Easterly as a followup to “The End of Poverty” by Jeffrey Sachs and this is one area where Easterly disagrees with Sachs in that programs shouldn’t be overly ambitious and try to improve everything at once but should specialize when Sachs calls for a general improvement in everything. I am somewhat torn because I can see where specialization would work better and would get the job done more efficiently but also, if you don’t improve the infrastructure, improvements in education won’t really help the kids who have to stay home because the roads are impassable.

That night we stuck around the house again. It really started raining at one point so a bunch of kids came into the hut with us and we just watched the rain and the sunset. Later, after Ashley and I ate dinner in our hut (they served us there, not sure why), we watched the rest of the family eat dinner. It was cool to watch the mother doling out servings to the kids. There were about ten to twelve small bowls on the ground into which she would put a piece of meat (coming from the meat that we didn’t eat) and some watery sauce that would be for the posho. The kids took posho from a communal bowl that they picked large chunks from. They would all share a cup of water for a drink. It was such a cool process to watch. I kind of felt like I was in a movie watching it this night and the night before. Also this night, we gave the rest of the toys I had brought to the kids and one of the boys fell asleep on the ground holding one of the stuffed animals which was adorable. I love the kids here. Also this last night my host father asked us some questions. He didn’t understand why our families in the US would pay for our education but not demand a bride price when their daughters get married. We tried to explain that our parents just want us to be happy but he thought that they should get something out of raising us well. He also thought that poverty only existed in Africa and we tried to explain the relative poverty in the US and he didn’t understand why we send help abroad when we have poor people at home that we should help first, which was a pretty interesting and valid thought. I don’t think he understood the difference between the types of poverty though.

During this homestay, I got to ride a motorcycle for the first time which was incredible. I think I’ll have to buy one in the future. I rode along on a dirt road on the back and just took in the scenery. You can sense so much more in the open air and it was just a great feeling to be driving around rural Uganda on the back of a boda. The last day we rode back into town on a motorcycle with our host father. It was about a half-an-hour long ride and we saw so many people. Everyone would wave to us as we passed and when I was comfortable enough to stop hanging onto the boda I would wave back. I wish I could always travel like this. In town, I walked almost to the border with Kenya but had to stop at the customs yard because I didn’t have my passport (it’s processing somewhere in the Ugandan government) but I rode on the back of a bike to the hotel where we were having lunch that day. It was nice getting back together with everyone and hearing their stories. We had the first malaria victim of the group with one more to follow a few days later. I’m still healthy and taking my medicine and using a bednet every night so I should be fine. After lunch, we all went to Miriam’s (the great assistant we have here) family’s house where we were staying for the night. We had an amazing dinner of all the Ugandan food cooked so that it was better than normal (chapatti, matooke, posho, rice, beans, cabbage, etc.) and then just hung out that night. I played an uno-like game with some Ugandans and went to a dance party where all these Ugandans were standing around watching us muzungus try to dance. It was a little awkward but some of the kids and adults eventually joined in. It was a pretty fun night. The next morning, they followed up the best dinner with the best breakfast and we had lots of pineapple, mango, banana, omelet, bread with butter, etc. I wouldn’t mind going back to eat there every once in a while. We said good-bye to rural Uganda and hello to Kampala that afternoon. It wasn’t great being back in the city but at least everything is more familiar in Kampala.

Monday morning wasn’t very fun. The taxi conductor flat out lied to me and told me the taxi was going to Kampala Road when it was really going to Old Kampala and the New Taxi Park. So I was shoved out of the taxi at the end of the line and had no idea where I was. Luckily I had some landmarks (the mosque, the taxi park) to guide me and I eventually found my way to the Resource Center. I also had Luganda that morning for the first time in two weeks and it was brutal. I didn’t remember anything but neither did anyone else. It wasn’t a great idea to have two weeks of no Luganda before the week of the ACTFL test. Later that day, I tried getting into touch with the organization I’m hoping to work with for my practicum but learned that they lost my application so on Tuesday, I got on a taxi to a part of town I have never been to before and then took a boda to the organization. I felt pretty good about getting there on my own, especially because I was so worried that I would get lost on my way. We had a free day because we were supposed to go to Parliament as a group but parliament wasn’t in session. I went home early and just did some work. The door to my room was open while I was using the computer and a mouse just ran in and scampered about for ten minutes. It was a little strange. It definitely made me glad that I wear sandals around the house (at my family’s insistence-I don’t have the tough feet that they have and the cold floor might make me sick, at least they claim that’s the reason I had a cold a few weeks ago). Wednesday was a pretty busy day. I went house and apartment-hunting for post-homestay Kampala time. Our guide for the house was about an hour late picking us up which turned out fine because on our way to the house, we had to walk to the New Taxi Park to catch a taxi to Kasubi. As we were walking down the street the Resource Center is on, the police stopped traffic, which was really nice for us because we could easily cross the roads. A motorcade started driving through with lots of fancy cars, guys holding really huge guns, and a car where we saw Muammar Gaddafi, president of Libya, being driven to the mosque in Old Kampala that he built. He was in town for the beginning of the week to open the mosque and we got to see a brief glance of him. Later in the day he passed the RC again going the opposite way. That night we went out to a fancy muzungu restaurant for Amy’s 21st birthday which was a lot of fun. I split an elephant pizza with Amy and it was delicious. Then Thursday we prepared a little more for the Luganda exams. My taxi completely broke down on the way home-something fell from the bottom and started dragging. I thought the tire had fallen off but luckily it was something a little less minor, but I did have a brief moment of slight terror. I caught another taxi heading up to Kagoma which also broke down but luckily made it. On my walk home, some mouse bolted in front of my and slammed into the wall of the ditch by the street. I am now convinced that I am getting bubonic plague from these crazy rats I keep running into. Then Friday was the ACTFL test which I think went okay. My tester asked me questions I had never heard before and wanted me to talk about public health in Luganda though I, or anyone for that matter, don’t have the vocabulary for. She also asked me what I was studying in college in the US which led to a discussion that I study Spanish. She then asked me how to say “Wasuze otyanno” in Spanish which really scrambled my brains for the rest of the test. I couldn’t help thinking a lot in Spanish during Luganda classes and it really started popping up in my brain after that. I really don’t know what score I’m expecting but I’m hoping above novice-low. Because it was Good Friday, a lot of things were closed so I headed home early. My somewhat creepy brother was home from boarding school and my host cousin was watching a bunch of American movies. Shortly after I sat down to watch one with him, he switched it to the Tenacious D movie which was a little awkward to watch with my family. It continues to amaze me how much of American culture has spread here and how much people love it.

That weekend I spent most of Saturday, all day Sunday, and most of Monday with my family. On Sunday, I was inside all day because it rained pretty much from morning until night. My family didn’t go to church because, as my sister told me, Easter is a day when even pagans pray-a little strange. So I just sat in my room for a while reading “Atlas Shrugged” which I really got into. My parents eventually came in with some popcorn and told me that they thought I was lonely so I went and talked with them for a while. They were watching some really bad tv-some dance show and Apprentice Africa, a terrible take-off of a terrible American show to begin with. So I was bored out of my mind and I just wanted to read my book but I had to watch bad tv. However, my dad did say something that entertained me-“Salt is a medicine for the snow”-when we were talking about Ohio’s weather. And my mom told me I made her laugh which I do seem to do a lot. Then on Monday I bought some movies to watch, including one dvd with seven movies, and gave it to my family and they of course picked the worst movies on the dvd including “Delta Farce” and “Who’s your Caddy” which were painful to watch. Later on we watched “Constantine” and started “The Saint.” Overall, I feel like I wasted most of my last days with my family. I bought some chick flicks to watch with my sister because she asked me to but she wasn’t even home the last two days. Oh well.

Then on Tuesday I moved out of my homestay and into the house I am sharing with Maya and Emelie. We found a really nice house about 30 minutes from the city center by taxi and a 15-minute walk. It has two bedrooms, a bathroom with a real shower (and hot water) and a flush toilet, a kitchen, a living room with a tv and dvd player. The people who own it also gave us dishes to use so we’re pretty much set. We are supposed to have DSTV, which means American tv channels, but that doesn’t work at the moment. I guess no NCAA tournament for now. Hopefully we will be able to get it soon. Anyway, we cooked veggies last night and watched a movie. It’s so nice to eat and shower when I want to and not have to sit and talk if I don’t want to. We also have some couches so it’s nice to just sit and read for a while. It only costs about $5 which is way under our budget of $15 so it’s a great deal. Practicum wise, I’ve tried calling the offices of where I want to work all day today because they were supposed to call me yesterday and let me know if I can work with them but never did. Now I just need to keep trying them out. Ideally, this would have been resolved last week if my application hadn’t gone missing somewhere along the way. I still haven't heard back from them though they told me I would know for sure by today, but I guess I can just do an ISP project without an organization. I have two interviews scheduled for Monday so things should start to fall into place. One interview is even with a member of the Ugandan Parliament. I'm still not sure how I want to focus the project but I know I want to do something with international aid and transparency/accountability issues.

I’m really impressed with how far I’ve come since I got here over two months ago. I don’t mind using the pit and I’ve learned to ignore the cockroaches and mice I occasionally find in my room and elsewhere. I’ve been eating more adventurous foods which for me has meant raw veggies and ice cream (by risky I mean possibly illness-provoking since I’m so paranoid). Talking about food, I could go for some chesse nan now from Ponnus, an Indian/Lebanese restaurant near the RC I have been frequenting lately. They also have pretty good pizza which I’ve had a bit of in the past week. I also found some good ice cream with some people which is a nice treat once in a while-3 scoops for a little under a dollar.

Anyway, overall I am doing well. Hopefully things will start to get busy soon. I hope everyone is doing well wherever they are. Happy belated Easter!

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Still here

Hey. I'm still alive here in Uganda. We had our eastern excursion and rural homestay last week and it was pretty great. I love getting out of the city which is making me slightly anxious about spending six weeks in Kampala for my practicum, but I'm sure I'll make it as long as I can get out of the city every weekend. A few of us are going to try to get a house so we'll see how that goes. I'll add a full update soon when I have more time. This week is crazy finalizing things for practicum which begins next Tuesday after the Easter holiday. I hope everyone is doing well. Siiba/sula bulungi.

Sunday, March 2, 2008

Weekend adventure

Another week begins on Monday and it's crazy that I've been here for five weeks. I went on an impromtu outing with some friends in the group on Thursday and we got back on Saturday. We went to Murchison Falls National Park in the north (as far north as we can go in the country-the top third of Uganda is off limits due to the conflict/civil war going on there). It was quite an adventure, especially because we really didn't have any of the trip planned out beforehand. I didn't hear about the trip until Thursday morning so I went to class as usual (our last Luganda class-sad) and went home to get my stuff. The taxi ride home was quite interesting-the taxi wouldn't start up in the park and I tried to get out but a heavily pregnant woman was blocking my way and a bunch of guys were pushing us to start the car, which it eventually did. But, it kept breaking down every ten minutes or so until we rolled into a gas station and I guess a little gas did the trip. I was so tempted to get out and find another taxi but we were in an area where it would have been hard to find a taxi going to Kagoma with an empty seat. So I just stayed in it and I got home safely though a little later than I would have liked. Then I packed very quickly and left to take another taxi into town. I was in such a hurry that I did something stupid-got into an empty taxi with only the driver and collector. Some more guys joined us and they were all talking like they were friends so I was a little creeped out but eventually a woman got in so I didn't feel to unsafe. Our ADs told us that as long as there is another woman present, it's ok. Anyway, this taxi took forever to fill up so we kept stopping and honking at people, trying to get them to join us. We also had to stop for gas and the driver went down this back road and we were stuck behind a car that broke down in the middle of the road for fifteen to twenty minutes. So I was a little late meeting my friends but we were good to go. So we went to the old taxi park to catch a taxi out of the city but were told to go to the new taxi park-just a slight snag in the plan. The two are pretty close so we just walked to the new taxi park and were completely bombarded with "muzungu, where are you going" and tons of vendors trying to sell us everything from men's briefs to friend chicken to shoe polish. Some creepy guy came and tried to sell us lace and asked us for $1,000 but after an hour and a half we took off and didn't have to deal with him anymore. By the time we left, it was dark out becuase we had waited a while to leave so by the time we got to Masindi, it was still dark and we had no idea where to go to find the hotel we were trying to stay at for the night. So the taxi people were nice and drove us past the last stop and around the corner to the Executive Lodge. It was so close but we would never have found it on our own. So we got a room for Sh. 7,000 a night, which amounts to a little over a dollar each, and it was definitely priced to value. The small room we got had two beds with mosquito (with large holes-they were too big to keep the mosquitoes out) while we found that the bathroom was a pit-latrine in the back (I'm used to that by now) and the shower was a cockroach-infested hole in a room and one bucket to split between the four of us. It was the worst hotel room I have ever stayed in, but it was good for only costing $1 a night. Since we were getting up in six hours none of us showered and we went to bed after deet-ing ourselves to keep the mosquitoes from biting.



We woke up at 6:00 the next morning becuase a woman at the hotel told us that we would have our private hire taxi at 6:30 the next morning so that we could spend all day in the park. However, we did a lot of waiting (as usual) and tried to find some guy off the street but no one seemed to know where they were going. A guy from the hotel got a friend out of bed to drive us and he finally showed up around 7:30 and agreed to drive us to the park, where we planned to go to a hotel and hitch rides around. However, there were no available cheap hotel rooms left for that night so we figured it would be better to just hire him for the day and go back to Masindi for the night. So we agreed to pay him Sh. 210,000 (a little over $25 each) and he drove us to the park. We paid our fees to enter and went chimpanzee trekking/tracking first. There is a forest in Murchison Falls National Park called Budongo Forest Central Reserve where we went to find some chimps. We were the only people there when we got there and we payed another $25 and had a guide for a three-hour trek into the semi-deciduous tropical forest. We started out and right away something exciting happened-the guide found this gorgeous bird on the trail. It was an African Dwarf Kingfisher and was caught in a branch so it couldn't move. The guide spent about 20 minutes trying to untangle the bird and eventually did so to find that its legs were broken. However, the bird flew away and we got back on our way. We walked through this lovely forest. We saw three types of monkeys-black and white colubus (sp?), red-tailed, and some patas (I think). However, we were tracking chimps. We saw chimp tracks. We saw the fruit that the chimps often eat (though it wasn’t very ripe) as well as the black and white monkeys that the chimps drag off to eat as well. We saw their scat (“This is how they make their poo”-our guide) and we smelled the chimps in a few sections of the forest. However, for three hours we did not see or hear them. There were three other guided groups in the forest at the same time and none of them were having luck either. It was 12:00 and thus time to head back so that our guide could have lunch and prepare for the tours in the afternoon. However, she wanted to try one last spot and suddenly, we heard them. She told us to be quiet as we headed off the trail into the forest, bushwacking our way through the tall grasses, trees, and other plants. She also told us that we would probably only see them for about ten seconds before they ran away to hide but that at least we would get to see them. So we followed her and there one was, sitting in a tree. We approached it and it didn’t run away-instead, it stared at us. Then our guide pointed out another one in another tree. Then we saw more in the trees and some on the ground. They were everywhere, some quite close and others high up in the trees. They just sat there and watched us as we watched them. A few times they even started talking to each other about us and howled. That was really cool, though at first I was a little alarmed that they might attack us. This has to be one of the coolest things I have ever experienced. We stood there and watched them for about forty minutes and saw some mating as well as some grooming going on. I feel so lucky to have seen them. We almost headed back without seeing any and total we saw about twelve while the other groups didn’t see any. I would have been pretty disappointed paying $25 and not seeing any chimps so it was great to see all of them. So we headed back to the main lodge, all satisfied at having seen such a cool thing.

After the chimps, we headed off for a lunch at a really nice lodge, the first lodge to open in the park. However, there was no one else there because people use cheaper places to stay. It was really nice inside and the grounds looked nice, but it was a bit out of our budget range. Then we headed down the road to the top of the falls. I was expecting a normal waterfall, something cool to see but nothing really impressive. However, Murchison Falls was incredible. It was so powerful and so fast. The falls occur when the Victoria Nile flows through a narrow ravine to plunge downward into a delta that eventually flows into Lake Albert on the border with the Congo. The spray that was coming up was incredible. We just went to a few lookouts and hung out for a while. One of the lookouts had quite a lot of spray so we got a bit wet. We were also at the very top where the river flows by quickly before falling. It was so neat. It made the trip even more worth it. We headed back when it started raining though it never rained really hard. We saw some wildlife on the trip back to Masindi including more black and white monkeys, red-tailed monkeys, and this rare gray one that crossed the road with some babies that doesn’t come out of hiding very often. We also saw hartebeests which were really strange looking with the face of a horse, the horns of an antelope, and the body of a deer or something like that. It reminded me of the thestrals from Harry Potter but I don’t know what real animal I would compare it to. They were really eerie looking. We also saw lots of baboons on the road. They would congregate on or around the road and then would run away as we approached in the car then start to emerge as we were driving away. We also saw some warthogs, including some babies, and some more waterbuck. Overall, it made the hundred dollars well-spent. However, I really would have liked to see giraffes. We could have crossed somewhere to see giraffes but the ferry wasn’t working and our driver would have charged us a lot more money. I’ll just have to go back again to see giraffes and to see Murchison Falls during the rainy season. We got back to Masindi, ate at a muzungu joint (I had rolex-chapati with an omelette), and went back to Executive Lodge for another cheap, showerless night. This time we didn’t even sleep with the nets because it was so hot and they really weren’t protecting us as we were leaning against them and the holes were big so we deeted up and hoped that we wouldn’t get malaria in a week.

The next morning we got up around 8:00 to make the bus that we were told left at 9:00. We figured that a bus would be more comfortable than a cramped taxi and it was Sh. 1,000 cheaper so we went for it. We got on around 8:20 thinking that there was no way that the driver would wait for it to fill up. Boy, were we wrong. We sat around for two hours waiting to get enough people before we could leave. It was around 10:30 when we slowly left Masindi. We stopped several times to drop people off and pick people up along the way, as well as stops in small towns to buy skewers of sketchy meat and sketchy water bottles from vendors. There was one large section where there were speedbumps every ten meters or so which was really annoying and prevented me from sleeping or even reading. We definitely took a different route back than we took to get to Masindi. It was the worst bus ride of my life. Never again will I take a bus in Uganda. We weren’t even comfortable because we had our backpacks that wouldn’t fit in the top bins and wouldn’t go under the seats very well. However, the scenery was pretty nice. I was reading “The End of Poverty” by Jeffrey Sachs and it was interesting to read about extreme poverty and then look out the window and see exactly what Sachs was describing with people in their homes made of mud with grass roofs and people getting water with dilapidated jerry cans from dirty ponds. It was pretty depressing.

We got back to Kampala that afternoon and were swamped with the usual taxi drivers asking us where we wanted them to drive us and not leaving us alone after we told them no. It wasn’t the best welcome back. Then I took the taxi home and was welcomed by my family. I have never been more dirty-we hadn’t bathed for two nights and the bus ride was incredibly dusty and dirty, especially since I was sitting behind a man who kept his window open the entire way the entire time (it was quite hard to breathe when we were going full speed-thank goodness for the speedbumps) so I was full of the dust of rocks and dirt from various parts of the trip. I probably smelled pretty dreadful. So I showered and ate and went to bed early because I was pretty tired from the trip.

The next day I went into the city as usual to use internet and finish up an assignment. I started watching “Funny Girl” with my family (my sister’s choice of the few dvds I brought) but went to bed early again because I was still tired. Then Monday we started our field visits of the in-depth modules. We have some pretty interesting facilitators for this module including Sister Harriet (sister because she’s a nurse, not because she’s a nun), who says Excuse Me all the time and wears a strange hairpiece. The public health group headed to a level four clinic in Kasangati, a suburb of Kampala. We saw a lot of women with their children there for weighings and inoculations. We even had a focus group with five women who talked about reproductive health and their families. It was really interesting though the language barrier was annoying during some parts of it because they weren’t always translated for us. Then we toured the various areas of the clinic. I was back to feeling awkward walking around, looking at patients, though this time I was with nine other muzungus. Then on Tuesday we toured some water sources: a borehole, a protected spring, some other dirty places to get water. Then we went to the dump. That was quite an experience. It smelled quite bad. We got out of the taxi and waited around for half-an-hour (it seems like we do this all the time) and had a tour guide and some other creepy guy to accompany us on our tour. We walked into the dump among the various waste items (I wore sandals-not the best choice) which was pretty gross. I did my best to avoid any really questionable looking stuff but it was hard not to walk on crap of some sort. There were so many marabou storks there going through stuff as well as people scavenging for anything they could sell. We then walked to where they treat the run-off water from the dump. It was not the most fun experience and it really wasn’t all that different from a dump at home. Afterwards we had some lunch at Mulago and headed off to a recycling plant. I’ve been drinking at least a liter of bottled water a day and I have felt really bad after throwing away each bottle because there really isn’t a program for recycling around here. However, we learned that people do pick the recyclable plastics out of the trash and bring them to this plant where they are recycled to make more bottles and such. It was pretty cool to see something good coming from all that bottled water I’ve been drinking. Then on Wednesday we went to an outreach clinic where the Kasangati level four clinic sends people to vaccinate and care for the simple cases of malaria, headaches, diarrhea, etc. in a woman’s home. It was good to see something more on the community level where people can reach free health services more easily. A teacher was there with her primary school class and we had fun with the kids for a little while. Then we headed off to some homes to see what poverty looked like which was super awkward. The first house we went to had two older people living with several grandchildren. They had six children but they all left and didn’t support them and two even left their children with the grandparents. The kids were sitting around on polythyrene sacks which was their bedding and one was eating leaves from the ground where the chickens and the cow had likely been walking. They were all wearing really tattered clothing, though the baby wasn’t wearing anything at all. They weren’t in school because the family doesn’t have enough money to pay for school and they weren’t eating at midday because they only had enough food for one meal a day. They had one calf to provide milk (not sure how that’s working out) and a few chickens scratching around. Then we visited the home of a woman whose husband was working making bricks. The woman has two children, one at school, and was watching her husband’s young step-sister. Four people were living in a very small room and they had to share their pit-latrine with the husband’s father’s family. They had a few pigs and chickens. When we left each family the facilitators would give them money. With the first family it was interesting to see that they gave the money to the woman right in front of the man. This is probably so that the woman spends it on household upkeep because she’s the one that’s cooking and providing for the children. Anyway, it was really awkward to just go to these houses and stare at the people and their circumstances. It was also quite depressing to see people so visibly poor, but that’s the reality through so much of the region.

So things continue going well. Time here is passing so quickly. I only have a week and a half left with my homestay. The homestay continues to go well though they are convinced that I’m bad at ironing so my host dad irons my clothes for me. They continue to enjoy my few dvds and I came home to my host mom watching “Hable con ella” in Spanish with English subtitles the other day. The funny thing is that she can’t read very well so I don’t think she understood what was going on. I think the same thing probably happened when they watched “Motorcycle Diaries.” However, my family did really like “Life is Beautiful” but shot down “Spirited Away” before seeing any of it because they thought it was a cartoon for children. I wonder if they’ll want to watch “The Sound of Music” tomorrow. I am just now realizing what a random mix of movies I brought though I have yet to watch any of them. Next week we have another expedition coming up. The practicum will begin soon-I think I’m going to look into international aid and transparency issues. I keep thinking about Ecuador, especially after the news of its conflict with Colombia. I still can’t wait to go back and there are definitely days when I feel like I should have just done another semester in Latin America. I think I hit the low point of the culture shock curve last week with many bad taxi rides, a lost raincoat (I still miss it-it would have been great to have it this rainy season), a flying cockroach in my bed, multiplying ants and lots of slow and unproductive internet. However, the trip really helped me get back on track and I’m feeling better this week. Hopefully things will go well during our trip out east next week. The rural homestay should be interesting but I’m feeling quite prepared because I already have to deal with a pit-latrine with cockroaches coming out of the hole every day. I hope people are doing well. If there’s anything specific you want to know about or if you have a general comment, feel free to leave a comment. Chao chao!! Siiba/sula bulungi.

Monday, February 25, 2008

Catching up with blogging

This post will probably be kind of long as will most of the posts to follow. I have less time to update so I cram everything into one posting. I hope you enjoy.

I’m typing this draft from my laptop in my house. I could not find wireless internet that was actually working so I’ll save this on my flash drive and transfer it to the site sometime when I have time and good internet, and access to a USB port. It’s so hot. I am sweating so much and I’m always so dirty from the dust. Ugh. I just feel so gross. I definitely look forward to showering everyday though it’s not long before I’m dusty and sweaty again. Ok, I got that over with. So I’m getting more behind with these updates. I just got back from a week in western Uganda and Rwanda which was a nice break from the city. It was a really nice trip but now that I’m back in the city again, I feel like the culture shock process is just starting up again. I am definitely noticing that it’s a bit harder to adjust to life here than in Ecuador, which I still think and miss a lot. Oh well. Before I talk about the trip, I should pick up where I left off.

After orientation, we had two weeks of lectures and Luganda classes. It was nice to have a schedule for a while. The lectures generally weren’t that great, but we did have a few good ones including one on politics. Luganda classes are interesting. We have learned about greetings (formal and informal) which are very important to Ugandans, as well as food, numbers, and random verbs. The language is completely different to anything else I have taken but I enjoy learning it though I don’t feel I will be close to fluency anytime soon. We have also had some panel discussions with men and women who work for NGOs in Uganda and a few of them are really interesting. One NGO, Conservation through Public Health, focuses on improving people’s access to public health and the quality of their care in order to conserve the environment. The program originally started to protect the gorillas from illnesses they were getting from humans and they have made some good strides in this area. Also, one weekend I went to a dance concert with some friends in the group and we were expecting traditional dances from all over Africa. What we saw was a bunch of modern dance, many of it weird but some of it beautiful. It was kind of a weird experience, not to mention that I had to brave the taxi park at night which wasn’t nearly as scary as I had feared.

We have lectures interspersed with site visits which break the time up nicely. Our first visit was to an AIDS organization working through Mulago, the largest hospital in the country. The organization is TASO and it has branches throughout the country. The presentation and tour wasn’t as interesting as I had hoped it would be. The lab technicians explained to us how they test for HIV/AIDS which was one of the more interesting parts, to me at least. We also saw where they keep patients’ files. At the end we met with a group of people who have been living with HIV/AIDS, most of them for some time now. They sang a bunch of songs that they wrote together in order to cope with the disease. One woman gave her personal story and though it was really sad, it sounded really rehearsed and things got slightly awkward when they brought out collection baskets for donations. Overall, we didn’t learn too much about how the organization works and what it’s doing to prevent and treat AIDS patients. We also visited Kasubi Tombs, a tomb that holds four Bugandan kings. It is also the largest grass hut in the world. It was pretty cool sitting on mats in this giant grass hut, listening to our guide talk about Buganda’s kings and the relatives who are still considered royalty and who take turns living in the palaces and at these tombs. We also visited Bulange, the Bugandan Parliament, where we learned a little bit about how decision-making works in the kingdom. The next week we visited CONCERN, a group that works with urban slum development. My group attended a microfinance meeting with women, though language proved to be a difficult barrier to overcome. On the way back from that we saw the smoke coming from the riot and saw police headed down to the market. Since the riot was somewhat close to where I catch a taxi for home, I headed home right after getting back and didn’t have to witness any rioting.

I went with my host brother to church the first Sunday morning I was home. It was overall a pretty interesting experience. Everyone in my family are born-again Christians and they attend a Pentacostal church. We got there shortly after the service began and people were singing and dancing, some of them outside. My brother and I sat in the back and the rest of the service began shortly. The preachers were speaking mostly in Luganda so my brother had to translate most of it for me. At one point, they asked all of the visitors to stand up and say something about religion. I tried to get out of it, but I was the only muzungu there and when I didn’t stand up to introduce myself, one of the pastors pointed to the back and said something in Luganda that probably amounted to "Look at that muzungu visitor back there" so everyone in the church, which probably had a few hundred people from the village in attendance, turned to look to me. I just said my name and where I was from but it was kind of embarrassing. Throughout the rest of the service, I noticed quite a few glances in my direction. I really don’t like drawing attention to myself so this was a slightly uncomfortable situation. I felt really out of place throughout the service because I wasn’t singing and dancing along with everyone because I didn’t know the songs and because I just felt really foolish. What did make the service somewhat more bearable was that an adorable little girl insisted on sitting next to me during the second half of the service. She was dressed in this cute purple dress with small barrettes in her very short hair. I also didn’t understand anything that was going on. There was a guy who was interpreting the Luganda into English, but the Luganda-speaking guy always spoke over the English-speaking one so I couldn’t hear him very well. It also started really pouring in the middle of the service and the rain started coming in the windows, which didn’t have glass on them, so much of the congregation moved towards the middle of the church. The noise the rain made on the tin roof also managed to drown out everything that the preacher was saying, making it even more difficult to understand what was going on.

I have also gotten to know more about my family through some assignments. For the first one, the family tree assignment, I sat down with my host dad for a few hours and we talked about his side of the family. I learned that he comes from the Ente (cow) clan and that he feels fortunate to have land here in Uganda. He has been to Kenya and finds it sad that many people cannot buy land in Kenya because it is so expensive. He works selling various used electrical parts in Kisseka Market, where there were recently riots (over ownership of the market-a few people were shot and one person died, but mainly the riot consisted of burning tires and shooting into the air). I also talked to my mother about her side of the family which was difficult because she doesn’t know English very well and because I don’t know Luganda very well. We’ll have to work on the communication between us. I also learned about the village and culture here in general through a mapping assignment where I walked around with my brother one Saturday for a few hours. It was a really hot day but we walked quite a lot and saw a lot of Kagoma as well as Maganjo. The whole area used to be Maganjo but it got so large that Bugandan (the kingdom where I’m living) authorities broke it into two villages. We saw a lot of brickmakers and new homes going up, though only for rental. My host brother David told me that the village is growing because people would rather live outside of the city than in the city. Also, land is too expensive for a lot of people to buy so many rent these small houses made of brick or concrete. We also saw a mine where old and young women and a few men were breaking up what looked like limestone into small stones that people could use to make houses with. Most people just open really small businesses selling everything from milk to meat to shoes made of tires. There are so many footpaths all over the place, it’s so easy for me to get lost. My brother showed me at least three other shortcuts I can take to go from the taxi stop to the house, but I know if I take them I will get so lost. That night, we watched the Arsenal-Mancester United game when we had power, so I missed the first fifteen minutes or so but got to see ManU score the first three goals before the power cut out again. They ended up winning 4-0 which made me happy. It’s been a while since I’ve actually paid attention to football but it’s so popular here that it’s hard not to hear something about the game last night. I have also interacted more with my host sister Martha. She really likes American "high school" movies and she wanted me to "illustrate" some movies for her. I started with "She’s the Man" but did a very bad job with it (according to her) and she went on to tell me all about "Honey I Shrunk the Kids" and "Little Man." It was pretty interesting to hear her talk about the former because I remember loving it as a kid but I haven’t seen it for quite a while. Again, it’s really strange what gets passed on from American culture at home to popular culture here. The variety of pirated dvds that people sell is even more random than in Ecuador.
The taxi ride process continues to be interesting every day. Often the taxis take the bumpy backroads and I can’t read, but when we’re on semi-paved road, I like to sit and read for the hour or so that the ride lasts. I have finished reading "We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families" (a really good book about the Rwandan genocide) and "Mountains Beyond Mountains" and have read half of "What is the What" thanks in part to these long rides. It’s a nice break sometimes, but oftentimes it’s hot and smelly in the taxi. Even with windows open, traffic is generally stop and go and when we are going, it gets pretty dusty. I know I probably get ripped off on the taxi everyday, but I still haven’t figured out the correct system of paying and stops. A lot of people lately have been paying with large bills expecting change, which sometimes holds us up. I haven’t figured out yet if you pay with large bills at the beginning of the ride so that the conductor knows to get you change, or if you pay regardless of the bill shortly before your stop. The stop issue has gotten better though people often stop the taxi a few feet from where it was previously stopped. I don’t like to do this so sometimes I get out a little sooner or a little later than I technically could, but I enjoy walking (unless of course it is raining). People have also been fighting lately on the taxis. One man didn’t have enough money to pay the conductor, which he wasn’t too sorry for, and the conductor made fun of him in Luganda, which I couldn’t understand but everyone else in the car started laughing at him. The conductors also occasionally fight with each other over potential clients and though they don’t come to blows, they start hitting each other’s cars. These are occasions when I wish I spoke more Luganda because it would be nice to know what is being said and if I should be concerned for my safety. I have gotten to talk to some people, both nice and strange, on the taxis. One guy kept tapping me on the shoulder and wouldn’t leave me alone, talking to me in Luganda the whole time. I kept telling him "Simanyi" (I don’t know) to try to get him to leave me alone and finally when the taxi stopped and we both got out, he started to say something to me and I bolted. It was a little scary because it was dark out but he didn’t follow me home. Another time, a woman made the conductor give me change because he was overcharging me. The women tend to be somewhat motherly towards me, telling me how much to pay without overpaying and making sure I am treated fairly though I am a muzungu. Then there are the people who practically sit on me in the taxi which is slightly uncomfortable. And after the taxi ride, there’s this friendly guy who always says "Welcome back friend" and today when I walked home from town, he told me it had been a long time since he had seen me and asked me where I was. I enjoy talking with him because he’s not creepy and persistent. It took me a week or so to warm up to him just because I was sick of hearing "muzungu" and "hello friend" in solicitations to take a boda-boda or buy something from someone.

TV and radio continue to add an interesting background to my life here. One or the other is always on in my house when the electricity is working. Generally on tv my family is watching a religious program, the news, or music videos while on the radio they listen to all kinds of random music and spoken shows. A lot of the popular music here has to do with bad boy bands (*Nsync, Backstreet Boys) and Britney Spears, with a little Latin thrown in once in a while. There is also a really awful Spanish soap opera on that my family occasionally watches but I can’t bear it. One of these days I will sit and copy down lines just so I can share how bad it is. I really miss my telenovelas, but I’m not desperate enough to watch this one. I am trying to keep up with English recaps of "Al diablo con los guapos" which I started watching before I left and which I really wish I could have continued to watch. Maybe I’ll get to see the finale when I get home in May.
I love the kids around here. Oftentimes I have a small parade following me home from the main road, chanting "Bye muzungu" and "see you muzungu," the only phrases most of these kids know in English. Some mischievous ones try to kick me and grab onto my backpack, but I just ignore them. Also, whenever a plane flies over, I hear them say "Bye Museveni" and "bye queen" because they think that whenever a plane goes over, it is carrying either the queen or Museveni. (They think of the queen because of her visit to Uganda this past November for CHOGM.)

The trip was great. We started out going to Mbarara, a city in eastern Uganda. I crossed the equator for the second time this year, stopping to take some touristy photos on the line. Then it was into the Southern Hemisphere yet again. The countryside we passed while driving was gorgeous-lots of rolling hills and green everywhere. From there we traveled for an hour on a very dusty, bumpy dirt road to a United Nations Millennium Development village which was quite neat to see. It was nice to see development in progress and a program that was succeeding at least in part. I still remain convinced that development is often sustainable rather than progressive because people generally stay in the same state they were born in with important but, on the scale of humanity, minor changes in lifestyle that leave them better off but not better off enough. I don’t know. Enough development talk. Regardless of this somewhat pessimistic view, the village is cool. We saw projects that support women with the sale of their beads made from dried banana leaves, though they only sell between three and five necklaces a month. Some tourists are trying to open up a market in the US. They were pretty cool necklaces. We also saw an agriculture project to introduce new crops to the communities so that they don’t only have bananas to rely on, which isn’t so great because disease may cause problems in the future. Also, bananas are not very nutritious though they are a main staple here. Banana trees (which are pretty much anywhere you look) cover about 40 percent of the ground in the area where we were. Also by this agricultural project was the water project. They filled in a pond and are somehow draining it so that it flows eventually into two large storage containers, from which people get the water. The water isn’t very clean and it is full of different minerals in larger amounts but it is a great improvement on the water people previously collected from the topsoil. However, the big problem with this project is that many people do not have easy accessibility to this water. Some have to walk 3 km up and down hills. We climbed down to the water and it was a pretty steep climb. It would have been much harder carrying 20 liters of water or if we had been elderly. They’re working on pumping the water uphill, but that may take some time to get running. We also saw some clinics, one of which was built with the help of Jeffrey Sachs, a somewhat controversial development scholar. About 30 percent of the people there suffer from malaria while TB is another big problem and only 9 percent of pregnant women give birth in clinic which leads in part to a high infant mortality rate. We also passed by a food storage facility which didn’t appear to be used by many people though the World Food Programme offers to buy products from the village farmers at fair prices. I’m not sure how successfully this is working but there needs to be more effort made to increase and diversify production to decrease malnutrition. We got to see tons of schoolchildren who raced out of their classrooms to wave at us as we drove by. Unfortunately we didn’t get to stop by any schools but there were tons.
After this, we headed to a refugee settlement, Oruchinga, near the river border with Tanzania. Most people have been living there for fourteen years, since the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Almost all of the people living there are Hutus and the adults likely participated in some way in the genocide. It was quite an intense situation, especially with my group. After splitting up into four groups, we went to a village within the settlement to talk to the people living there and hear their side of the story. We were immediately swarmed by pretty much the whole village as soon as we stepped out of the vans. So we had children standing in front of us and people all around. The people behind me were playing with my hair and the children were all waving, so it wasn’t a hostile situation but still somewhat uncomfortable for all of us. We had a guy to translate for us because the people there only spoke KiRwanda or a little bit of French. I got to use a little bit of my meager French skills (Je m’appelle Christie. Je parle un peu de Française). We asked questions and learned that the people still felt threatened in their home country. They return to Rwanda every year but find that they will be punished for their crimes (often a combination of prison time and community service) so they come back to Uganda where they don’t really have a legal place. Though many children have been born here in Uganda since the genocide, they don’t automatically gain Ugandan citizenship. Instead, they are considered refugees forever until they return to their home country, which doesn’t seem likely to happen soon. The children really caught my attention. Many of them were born after the genocide occurred and are thus innocent, but they are made to continue living in this very poor state because of what their parents did fourteen years ago. Everyone here lives in poverty. I think this is the poorest place I have ever seen. People live in tiny rooms and wear dirty, tattered clothing. The children all have distended bellies that signify they don’t eat nearly enough and suffer from malnutrition. Their education also isn’t sufficient to lessen the hatred that still exists to some extent towards their fellow Tutsi countrymen. Though Rwanda is stable, there is still tension between the Hutus and the Tutsis. Anyway, the only reason people were talking to us was because they were drunk off of an afternoon of drinking banana beer. One man remembered Miriam because she had brought a group to the same village before. The previous time he accused her and the students of being spies for President Museveni of Uganda and wouldn’t let them take pictures or ask too many questions. He was drunk when we were there so he wasn’t too hostile to us. He even told us about his two wives and eight children.

On the topic of refugees from Rwanda, it’s a complex issue. The international community pretty much ignored what was going on in Rwanda while over 800,000 people died there. After the killing was ended, Hutus fled as Tutsis retaliated and the international community supported them in refugee camps, often helping them live in somewhat decent circumstances despite their participation in the murder of so many Rwandans. This support has been going down year after year and though the camps continue housing many people, they don’t have nearly as many resources as in previous years. It’s a sad situation though a complicated one because one doesn’t know whether to continue supporting these people guilty of killing their neighbors or let them live in poor circumstances that aren’t fit for anyone to live in. It’s hard for me to really think of this right now. Anyway, a good book to read about the genocide is "We wish to inform you that we will all be killed tomorrow with our families" by Gourevitch. I read it before going to Rwanda and it really helped me understand more fully what I saw before me. Anyway, on with the trip.
We drove to Rwanda the next day, the same day that President Bush was arriving in town for a quick stop on his Africa tour. Unfortunately, he was visiting the sites the day before we were so we didn’t get to sit and have a chat with him. That would have been interesting. There was a lot of security, although some Rwandans told us there was normally a lot of security, regardless of having the President of the United States visiting. I did get to hear Air Force One taking off from the airport that afternoon because the hotel was right by the airport. There were also American flags up everywhere which was strange for us to see. Rwanda was beautiful-hilly and green like Uganda but more cultivated which made the hills more interesting-looking. The roads were quite nice (I am told the best in Africa) though they wound through the mountains and around tight curves a lot, making it hard to play euchre. We arrived in Kigali a few hours after crossing into the country and noticed right away how different it was than Kampala. The capital city was beautiful, clean, safe, and had enforced laws for driving, unlike in Kampala. People drive on the same side of the road as in America, making it a little easier for us to get used to, but people also used lanes and signals and slowed down to allow us to cross. Boda-boda drivers were pretty good and used helmets as did their passengers. The crosswalks were actual crosswalks and there were traffic lights everywhere. The city was clean and well-tended. We saw people in pink suits pruning trees and grass and sweeping up dust and learned that they were inmates (most of them participants in the genocide) who were doing community service as part of their sentence. They keep the city looking really nice. Anyway, it was a lot less dusty and polluted. The sidewalks were also very nice without potholes and ditches running through them. They also went everywhere instead of just stopping outside of the main area of the city. It seemed like we were all in culture shock as we got there. Martha told us that the city was so much more developed than Kampala because the Rwandan government was a lot less corrupt and therefore more money actually made it to maintenance projects.

The next day we visited various memorial sites. The first place we went to was the Kigali Memorial Center. We saw mass graves where 200,000 people were buried. There was also a museum that told the story of the genocide in Rwanda as well as the genocides that have taken place during the Holocaust and in Armenia and in the Balkans. It was a really beautiful museum and I learned a lot by walking through it. It was also very sad just to see testimonies and pictures. After stopping there, we went to some churches that were areas where massive amounts of people were killed despite being supposed safe places. The first one, Ntarama, was where 5,000 people were killed. The church was full of holes from grenades. The main building continues to hold the bones of people who died there and their possessions (clothing, jerrycans, etc.). There are also buildings where the pastor of the church allowed burnings to take place as well as the Sunday school where children were killed in gruesome ways. It was really intense and really sad to visit, but it’s good to know what happened in order to prevent anything like that from happening again (and to stop genocide in the Sudan and other places where it may be taking place). The other church we went to, Nyamata, was where 10,000 people died. There were lots and lots of bones there. The church still has blood stains on the walls and ground and holes in the ceilings from grenades. Again, it was quite a sad place to be. Overall, the day was intense and sad. We were all quite silent in the cars. I just don’t know how to fathom that many people dying in such a short while. Furthermore, it’s amazing that no one, including the US government or the UN, would step in to stop something like this from killing more people. I couldn’t help but look at the kids and wonder how old they were, if they had been around when the genocide was going on and looking at the adults and wondering what had happened to them during the genocide, which side they were on. On a lighter note, we ate dinner at a really good Italian restaurant and I had pizza and bruscetta. It was lovely to eat cheese again. I can’t wait to go to the muzungu supermarket and buy some quality cheese.

The next morning we had some free time in Kigali. I walked around with a Rwandan and he showed us where to buy fabric (really beautiful fabric-unfortunately I didn’t have enough money to buy two yards) and the Hotel des Milles Collines, a famous hotel where Tutsis stayed to escape the genocide. We also walked around various areas in the town to a lookout and took a taxi back. Then we got in the car to head back to Mbarara. From there we went to another development village, this time Rukararwe, not through the UN. We saw the agriculture project they had going on. This visit interested me especially because of the focus on traditional healing in the community. The healers. Queen Elizabeth National Park near the eastern border with the Congo. It went from being somewhat chilly to being hot in the park. The landscape also drastically changed from green mountains and banana trees to savannah. On the drive into the park we saw baboons and waterbuck (large antelope). We also saw warthogs wandering around the parking lot, including a mother with two little babies. That night we took a boat ride and before we even left land we saw a hippo. I got a little overexcited at that, but I realized how much I loved seeing these animals, especially since I hate seeing them in zoos because I hate zoos. Anyway, during the rest of the boat ride we saw more hippos, some crocodiles, more waterbuck and the smaller Ugandan kob (the national animal, I think), as well as an elephant, which was the highlight for me. We also saw lots of birds, including egrets and cormorants and lots more I can’t name. It was nice to ride out on the water. That night we were warned not to go out alone and to take our flashlights with us so that lions wouldn’t attack, which was unlikely but still possible. How cool is that. Anyway, the next morning was an early game drive, beginning when it was still dark out. The first animal of significance we saw (the waterbuck and kob were everywhere) was a male lion just hanging out in the grass. We didn’t have a good view of him, but we could see him moving his head a bit. Later on we saw a female lion chilling out in more tall grass, as well as some hyenas dragging some meat with them and warthogs. I was a little disappointed to have not seen elephants but then in the drive back to the hotel with twenty minutes left we saw a herd of six elephants just standing in a field and a short distance away we saw another pair of a baby and an adult eating and another pair a little more ways down the road. So total we saw eleven elephants during the drive and one the day before so I was completely satisfied. I love elephants. It’s fun to just watch them. Then we got back to the hostel and saw a giant old warthog sitting under a tree. So it was a cool experience. I was so dirty after the morning ride though because I had the window open and we were driving on dirt roads. I think that’s probably the dirtiest I’ve ever been, but it was a satisfied dirty.

So we drove back to Kampala yesterday. On the way we passed more gorgeous sites as well as lots of areas where slash and burn agriculture is clearly taking place. It was sad to see burnt stumps of trees coming out of the ground. There were also tons of trash fires-I guess Saturday night is burn trash night. It was cool once the sun set though because most people we passed didn’t have electricity and because of this, the only light in their shops and homes came from candles or lanterns with a flame inside. It looked really cool like that with only natural light. We made it back a little behind schedule. I headed down to the Old Taxi Park and felt welcomed back into Kampala by the dust, pollution, and bad drivers (and my pit latrine at home-it was really nice having real toilets during most of the trip). I know it sounds like I hate Kampala but I don’t. It’s not my favorite city, but it has its merits. It’s nice to be back where I’m somewhat familiar with the roads and system and know where to go to buy something. My family welcomed me back with a Kuli Kayo (Welcome Back) so it was nice. And today I went into the city to use internet and got to use some really fast (for Uganda) internet for an hour to get some reading done (a week’s worth of e-mails). And now I’m sitting in my room listening to my music (currently some Louis Armstrong but previously a good mix of Latin, classical, opera, and random). It’s kind of surreal to be back and be starting classes again tomorrow. I’m in the public health in depth classes so we have that for the first time after Luganda. It should be interesting, especially because we’re based through Makerere in Mulago Hospital, the largest hospital in the country but controversial because of the lack of quality care there. Anyway, the expedition was a nice break from Kampala and it made me appreciate being here more. I think I needed to see another side of Uganda to really begin to start liking it here. I feel more at home and more comfortable now in Kampala so I think I’m finally really adapting, though I can’t ever not stand out. Oh well. Hope things are going well for everyone wherever they are. Chao chao! Siiba bulungi.