Head lamps and Danielle Steel

I've been in Mubende this week and am spending the weekend here. The program manager is back in the States, so Claire and I have been able to stay in the house at the office compound. It's definitely been a luxury. Better internet, electricity... most of the time. We've been cooking quite a bit in the kitchen: pasta with tomatoes, onions & green peppers and toast. It's definitely a nice change of pace. Plus any time we want something different and don't want to do dishes, a short walk down the hill for some chips and egg. There is also a fridge here so our Splash juice and water can be cold! Yes, I do enjoy the little luxuries in life.

Work has been pretty good. I'm here to help support the Mubende F/CBOs with their data entry, see where they are having issues, and continue to edit our M&E tools. They have a bit of catching up to do on data entry, but there are the usual problems with the data: lack of power for desktop computers, incomplete forms, difficulty collecting the forms, etc. Things are progressing though and hopefully we'll have a decent amount of data collected in the Excel databases I made by the time I leave. Just in time for me to pass the torch of work onto Claire.

We spent the morning at one of the F/CBOs my organization works with that is just down the hill. They have a program for children who come from vulnerable environments in the area to come together on Saturdays. They are provided with spiritual, cognitive, physical, and socio-emotional support. We stopped by for a visit and managed to disrupt every class. The children were really excited to see their mzungu visitors. Weirdly enough, they all had an easier time saying: "Hello Auntie Jessica" as opposed to "Hello Auntie Claire." I wonder why that is.

We took the 9-11 year olds into the field and tried to teach them songs/games. Turns out they all knew "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" and "If you're happy and you know it" already. So in a last minute attempt to entertain them and because I do not have a cache of games to play with small children stored in my memory, I decided to teach them a Chinese song. There is something extremely amusing and slightly mind-boggling about teaching a group of 9-11 year old Ugandans how to sing in Chinese. I'm not sure if they'll remember what I taught them today, but I officially have that song stuck in my head. That might have been due to singing the song over and over and over again. And no, I do not enjoy singing in public. Claire played "Follow the Leader" with them and I thoroughly enjoyed watching them follow her, single-file, like a mother duck: walking, hopping, skipping, slow-motion running, crab-walking, and clapping. After a morning with the children, we were both extremely worn out. I definitely didn't have enough caffeine to match the children's energy level.

Electricity has been a bit spotty the last few days. The office runs on the inverter, which is great. Until the inverter runs out. Then we're left in the dark. But have no fear. We find ways to entertain ourselves, which include head lamps, finding Danielle Steel novels in the closet which were left behind by past volunteers, and taking photos in the dark. And yes, we are reading them.

C-pop in Sembabule

My favorite piece of electronic equipment here in Uganda would have to be my iPod. Nothing drowns out the cows mooing, roosters crowing, random radios blaring, and incessant whining of mosquitos better than a little C-pop in the early morning.

I can't really think of anything profound to say, but here's a little update on life here. You know how they say you can never "catch up" on sleep? They are right. I've been a bit of a walking zombie all week from the lack of sleep last weekend. As for work, we had visitors from the project that funds us this week. There were meetings and discussions for them for a few days. We're also coming down to the end of this fiscal year, which means lots of reports are due. I've been working on data collection for our projects all week. Every time I think I'm done with the data and I submit it to my supervisor, the next day or even that night, she tells me that we've filled out the wrong form or we didn't get all the data they needed or we've done something else wrong... It gets a little frustrating after a while. Especially when you're hand counting several hundred forms and tallying up totals. But I'm happy to report that the data is now completed... but that might just be wishful thinking.

The tap wasn't running for part of this week so Claire and I were running out of water to bathe, do laundry, etc with. This is slightly inconvenient but I think I've reached a point in Claire and my relationship where she doesn't mind when I wake up, looking horrible after not showering for 2 days... maybe... unless she's not telling me something.

I do all my laundry by hand in the basin I wash myself with. The water always turns a beautiful reddish brown color. And no matter how many times I rinse my clothes, I can never seem to get the water to run clear. I cannot wait to get home to Wisconsin and throw all my clothes into the washing machine.

I miss food. I miss hot meals that don't involve matoke or beans. I miss my mom's cooking. Nothing can relate how much I'd kill for some quality Chinese food right now. OR when I'm paging through the few magazines I've accumulated and I come across an ad for DiGiorno's pizza. Sigh. What's worse is flipping through these magazines and stumbling across images of food. Delicious sandwiches, meals, salads, cakes... I know you might find me slightly pathetic at this point, but I'm beyond caring. I miss food.

I stayed in Sembabule this weekend so it's some quality time to lay around and recover from last weekend and my zombie-state. I've finished The Wizard of the Nile (a fascinating book about Kony and northern Uganda) and am now tackling Atlas Shrugged.

The countdown begins: 2 months until my feet touch American soil again.

Rwanda

I took the night bus to Kigali Thursday night. It was a pretty pleasant trip since we took a Kampala Coach bus, which has comfy reclining seats and only 2 seats in each row. I sat next to this Ugandan businessman who lives in Kigali and he told me that he had left Kigali at 9am Thursday morning, got to Kampala at 7, did his business, and was now returning to Kigali on the 10pm bus. That is SO much traveling! I was able to only sleep a few hours on the bus, but I remembered to bring a hoody this time so I didn’t freeze to death like I did when we rode the bus to Lake Bunyonyi. I highly recommend Kampala Coach Buses rather than Horizon Buses.

I walked across the Rwanda-Uganda border at around 6am, while it was still dark. It was extremely cold and rather eerie. After getting stamped in on the Rwanda side, I was able to watch the sun rise. As we drove the last leg of the trip to Kigali, I watched the Rwandan countryside pass by and it is breathtakingly beautiful. The sun was shining through the morning fog over the rolling hills of Eastern Rwanda. Absolutely amazing! I couldn’t help but smile.

We arrived in Kigali around 9am. This trip includes 4 Brits, 3 Swedes, and 2 Americans. Only the 2 Americans weren’t med students, but I felt rather confident that if anything happened to me, I’d have plenty of medical expertise to help me out. There are quite a lot of mzungus traveling together and we manage to attract a lot of attention. We were meeting 2 other British guys who I’d met one time in Kampala. They are working in a hospital in Kigali and we were able to all stay at their house for the weekend. We first exchanged money at the UTC and hung out in a very Western coffeehouse called Bourbon Café. It was very nice. Then we spent the afternoon at a pool by the house we were staying at. It was incredibly relaxing after being on the move for almost 12 hours. I was able to try Chinese takeout for dinner (this was the first time I had Chinese in Arica). The evening was spent hanging out with friends, exploring Kigali a little, and enjoying Kigali nightlife.

We all woke up and just hung out in the morning. The Swedes made breakfast for us Saturday morning. It was great. Then afterwards we headed for the Kigali Memorial Centre, aka the Genocide Museum. It was a somber afternoon. There were headsets that guided us around the museum, which included a section on the Rwandan Genocide, a section about different genocides that have occurred all over the world, and a particularly difficult section dedicated to the children who died in the Rwandan Genocide. Then outside there were gardens and mass graves. I think the museum is very tastefully done and is a must-see for anyone visiting Rwanda. Then to continue this experience, we had a late dinner at Hotel des Mille Collines aka Hotel Rwanda. It was almost surreal to look up to the roof as we were eating and to know that that’s where Paul Rusesabagina would have jumped from to commit suicide. I had such mixed feelings from enjoying the company of friends and amazingly delicious Western food and then knowing the reality of what happened there in the hotel and in Rwanda in general. I highly recommend the steak sandwich at the hotel though; it was incredible. The rest of the night was spent hanging out and continuing to enjoy Kigali.

I had to leave very early in the morning to make it back to Kampala to pick up Claire and then head back to Sembabule. Claire spent the weekend in Kampala and was kind enough to do a bit of grocery shopping for me so I didn’t need to do it when I arrived in Kampala. Let’s just say the trip back was… a bit difficult. I was on the road for about 17 hours. We had a blow out, well actually 2, about 45 minutes away from Mbarara (which is about 2 hours west of Masaka). The driver was going to continue driving with our blown tires if it were not for one incredibly outspoken Ugandan woman who demanded that we stop. Initially I didn’t know what had happened; I figured we had hit a big rock and since the driver was still going, there was no problem. Not so much. The driver finally pulled over and they worked on changing the tires. That took a while. Then there was about a solid hour on the drive between Masaka and Kampala when I thought we were going to get into an accident and I might die. Our driver drove like a madman. Considering that we had blown 2 tires already, I would have thought he would have driven a bit more carefully. Not the case. Since there’s a ton of road construction between Masaka and Kampala, the roads are really bad: lots of potholes, giant holes, speed humps, gravel, etc. He was flying over all the bumps and the bus honestly felt rather unstable. I finally reached Kampala around 4:30pm. I ran for the new taxi park to meet Claire. We sought out a bus and departed for Masaka. At this point, my behind was a bit flat and sore. We got to Masaka after dark and then had to undergo the process of finding a taxi to take us to Sembabule. A bit of wandering was involved, but we finally found a mini sedan (seats 7 comfortably). The driver ended up stuffing 14 people into this vehicle and off we flew toward Sembabule. Claire and I were sitting in the back row… my body hurts. Then when we tried to pay the driver, we were told the money was fake… so that was a bit of a debacle and we aren’t sure if this bank note is real or not. But finally around 10pm, we arrived in our room in Sembabule, utterly exhausted and grossly dirty.

Overall, I’m really glad I was able to go to Rwanda this weekend. Aside from the horrible trip back, I had a lot of fun! Kigali is amazing. It is so different from Kampala. The streets are clean, organized, and they drive on the right side of the road. The boda drivers all wear marked vests and marked helmets. They are required to carry an additional helmet for their passenger and only 1 passenger is allowed per boda. It is so much safer to ride bodas in Kigali than Kampala. Only flip side is the potential of getting head lice but given the alternative (my brains smashed all over the road), I’d rather get head lice. The other issue with Rwanda is the fact that I cannot speak French at all. That makes communication with people nearly impossible. I’ve heard that they are trying to move toward having everyone learn English. I hope to go back to Rwanda someday and to be able to have time to explore it more (after learning some French).

8pm Bedtimes

So the last time I blogged, I spoke too soon. Starting Saturday morning, power shut off... and has yet to come back on. So at least 5 days without power. Thus leading to the 8 o'clock bedtimes. I can't tell you about today's situation because I am currently writing from Kampala and will leave tonight for a long weekend in Rwanda!!!

Last weekend was pretty quiet, since there was no internet. Claire and I managed to use all the power on our computers on Saturday, watching Glee, so Sunday was a day of reading, sleeping, and resting. This week has been a bit different at work because we had a Regional Meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday. This meant that all the staff from Mubende came to Sembabule and we met as a Central Region to discuss our Family Planning and HIV/OVC projects. It was rather exiting to have everyone all together. We had a ton of stuff to work through, which made for long days of work. Which was made even more difficult since we didn't have power in Sembabule, but it was also fun. My role during the meeting was to help lead the discussion on changes that need to be made to our M&E tools, the translations that will need to be done (English to Luganda), and presenting data from a survey of private family planning practitioners we did in September. Then after a bit of chaos, I headed into Kampala. And I'll be leaving on the night bus with several friends to head to Kigali.

PS: to anyone who wants to still send me mail (which is not at all saying you need to or should), please do so sometime this month or I may never receive the package and it will die a slow, sad death in the Ugandan Postal Office. Because if you don't already know, my date of departure from Uganda has been moved up due to family reasons and I will be back in the USA earlier in December rather than 2 days before Christmas.

Just A Small Town Girl...

Last night, my roommate and I set up our small home entertainment system (which involves a tiny Netbook screen on a stool and the volume cranked up) and watched several episodes of Glee. LOOOOOVE!!! The title of this blog post is a shout-out to the Glee rendition of the Journey song. Now if people here would just break out into song randomly with a band playing in the background, they would make my trip THAT much more fun… Sadly, I am missing the beginning of the new seasons of all my favorite shows while I’m here… Does someone want to DVR my shows for me??????

I have reached the half-way point of my trip!! It’s so insane that it’s already the end of September. Part of me feels like I just got here yesterday, then the other part feels like I’ve been here way longer than under 100 days. In summary, thus far I’ve:

• Tried sugar cane and jack fruit for the first time
• Eaten more chapati than is probably healthy for any human being
• Learned that I am still rather inadequate at lighting matches
• Ridden my fair share of bodas and have not gotten into an accident yet
• Read about 20 books
• Watched a chicken get slaughter for the first time
• Saw a live praying mantis for the first time, only to turn around and accidentally step on it
• Dreamed about pizza at least twice
• Had one nightmare about falling into a pit latrine
• Ridden in a 5 person vehicle with 8 passengers and a driver
• Spent time in 5 different districts of Uganda
• Managed to keep up with writing in my journal
• Mastered washing my hair in a basin
• Stayed within the budget I made for myself before coming to Uganda
• Made some awesome friends
• Not gotten MALARIA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I wonder what adventures will be in store for me the second half of my time here in Uganda!

I think my new roommate is good luck because we haven’t had any major electricity issues all week. Pretty impressive since I have never had the electricity be this reliable since I arrived in July. For those readers in the USA, please enjoy the fall farmer’s markets for me (apples, zucchini bread, pumpkin bread, banana bread, apple cider, pecan pie, pumpkin pie, everything autumnal…).

Ugandan Animals are so Smart

I am the silly American. I like to watch bugs crawling on the ground. I find frogs jumping around the office amusing. Then I ask random, strange questions, like “why are all the chapati stands manned by guys?” Then the other day I added another question that added to my “I’m a weird American” status. It goes something like this:

Most animals roam freely around Sembabule. You see the random chicken walking the same path you are down the street. There’s the random pig and her piglet crossing the road. There’s the occasional goat trotting up the hill. I ask my coworkers, “How do you know who each animal belongs to?” To me, this seems like a fair question. There is no ID collar on every chicken, no identifying mark on every cow. The animals just roam freely, not tethered to something by the house of their owners. The answer I got was “just watch and see what house each animal walks into at night.” My reaction was a cross between “Huh?” and “WOW REALLY?!” Thus continuing to fuel my coworkers’ amusement. It was explained to me that in Uganda, animals know where home is. So during the day, they wander around, eating, living happily, and wandering through town. Then at night, they turn around and go home. Hmm I don’t know if animals, other than dogs, do this in the USA, but maybe Ugandan animals are just smarter… AND my last question is what happens when your pig doesn’t come home at night? What if someone steals it? Are people more trusting of their neighbors here in Uganda?

No Longer Alone

I have a new roommate! No, not an animal or reptile or insect. A real live human being!!! We have a new intern who coincidentally also hails from Wisconsin. (She’s a Minnesota grad, but I think I can forgive her for that one.) Yay for a new friend! I met Claire in Kampala on Thursday. She had arrived in the country on Tuesday, and she was going to head back to Sembabule with me on Friday. So Thursday was her second day of orientation. I tagged along to keep her company, and I definitely amended her schedule a bit. I took out what I thought was unnecessary (like going to a snake park since she's already been to the Wildlife Reserve and eating traditional Ugandan food since we get that every day out in the field). I added what I thought were necessities for survival when coming into Kampala for a weekend: places for coffee and non-African food (Café Pap, 1000 Cups of Coffee House, Café Java), Nakumatt, Garden City, and how to ride a boda boda. It was a solid day and I am impressed with her level of energy since she was still recovering from jet lag. Thursday night I visited a friend in the city who has moved out of the place I lived in 2 years ago and now has a sweet new apartment. She’s looking for a roommate… I want to move in. Too bad I’m not based in Kampala or I totally would.


On Friday, I went through the fascinating process of trying to pick up packages from the post office. It took forever but was totally worth it. THANK YOU!! (special shout-out to CP… I love you, you rock my world, getting The Improper Bostonian in Uganda is AWESOME, I’ve never loved Jolly Ranchers as much as I do right now, and your card made me LOL. xoxo)

In the afternoon, we filled up the truck with luggage, all the stuff Claire and I managed to buy between Thursday and Friday (which included bottled water from 3 different large grocery stores, candy bars, and tons of crackers), and off we went to Sembabule. The operations officer graciously made Claire and I dinner, so once we got back to the office, we had a hot meal to eat! The process of unpacking tons of bags of groceries, Claire’s luggage, and reorganizing the room was a little intense but we managed to do it!

Yay for a new roommate!