Coming Home #2: Survival, Choice and Opportunity

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So how do I begin to explain Africa? First, as you know, Africa is a phenomenally large continent. To give you an idea of how big it really is, check out this overlay of some of the other continents or countries that actually fit inside Africa all at once including, the US with Alaska, most of Europe and China.


We have only visited six of the 53 countries since arriving here so when I speak of Africa I am really talking about the small area referred to as East Africa, although we did make a quick jaunt up to Egypt and Ethiopia. Nonetheless, through my reading I have concluded that everyday life in East Africa is very similar to life in West Africa, Central Africa and southern Africa excluding South Africa itself. And what are the characteristics of this “life”? The simple answer is that life in Africa is all about survival. Of course, as in any place, there are those who are surviving quite easily here, but the overwhelming majority of the 800 million inhabitants of this continent live a daily life of struggle and survival. One can see this everyday on the faces of the women working in the fields, or the kids who are skipping school to gather wood and water for cooking. It’s absolutely amazing to see the responsibilities that are thrust upon the children here. It is all too common to see three and four year old kids hauling the yellow jerrycans of water from some far away well or spring, or come across a three year old girl with her one year old sister strapped to her back. While I wish that the kids could be in school instead, I am also constantly impressed at how practical people become in many facets of life because of their lifelong survival skills.

If you ask me, “What exactly are Africans lacking that we in the west are not”? The answer is not democracy or money or food, it is the choice and opportunity to realize those very same aspects of life. Choice and opportunity are two things that not only do we in the west have in abundance, but, unfortunately, we also take for granted. I live in a country where the life expectancy for a man is 48 years, and I am considered an elder. We have friends who have grown up their entire lives, to this day, without running water or electricity, or have spent half their lives living in refugee camps. There are thousands of places in this country that do have running water and electricity; our place has it. Do you think my friend chooses to not have running water or electricity? No, his family simply has not been afforded the opportunity to acquire, what some would call, such basic necessities. But are they really necessities? Apparently not, as illustrated by the fact that he is a bright, athletic kid who finished secondary school, and who is also ambitious and motivated. He is willing to work, but job opportunities are few and those that are available require either 3-5yrs. experience or, more importantly, knowing someone of stature that will give you a job because he knows you, not because you are qualified. I have several other friends in the same predicament, young, healthy, smart and nothing for them to do. However, my friends are special because instead of falling into the vicious trap of loitering around the local pool table, drinking and waiting for the next Premiership football match to be aired; they are actually donating their time to charity. Yes, these guys who have so little have taken it upon themselves to start a community based organization that disperses donated goods and provides health & sanitation workshops to some of the most vulnerable people in the country. I imagine there are thousands of people in this country like my friends who look beyond their own needs and truly believe Uganda has the potential to help itself, but the opportunity to be heard is drowned out by the “cha ching” of aid money flowing into the government coffers.

Choice is also about the most fundamental things like what clothes to wear on a daily basis. Did you know that about ¾ of all the clothes that get donated to places like the Salvation Army are packed up and sold to dealers who then ship it here to Africa to be sold even cheaper in the markets and stores? I didn’t know that, just like I didn’t know there were so many thousands of Eminem and 50 Cent fans in Africa, but I see their shirts everywhere. I don’t think the boda driver I saw the other day chose to wear a red knit Christmas sweater with dancing reindeer. I don’t think half the colleges in America know they are advertising their schools on African bodies. And, I don’t feel gratitude when I see my friend wearing a nicely pressed button down shirt that happens to be from McDonalds. But, this stuff, that’s already been thrown away once, gets dumped over here at ridiculously low prices, killing the local textile market and removing the opportunity for many people to even choose what to wear. My friends can and will go very far in life, but it will be a struggle everyday because of the lack of these and other types of choice and opportunity.

Again...

Is it really happening again? We can not tear ourselves away from the online footage of the Jesusita Fire. Another nightmare it seems. The accounts are terrifying tonight. Our thoughts and best wishes to everyone affected. Thanks to the Independent and Noozhawk for keeping us informed in Uganda. And, of course, a million thanks to the firefighters. Again.
Lynn and Danny

Today

Today, I woke early. Made my morning cup of tea. And read over the lecture I was scheduled to give at 8am. The main road between our house and the university was quiet and easy to walk across, and I arrived on time. Over the next 10 minutes the classroom slowly swelled, filling with 3^rd year medical students ready for a thrilling (?) lecture on cardiomyopathy, part of their core medicine lecture series. As usual, their interest and enthusiasm made being the lecturer enjoyable. We ended on time, and I wished them good luck on their upcoming exams.

After my lecture, I wandered home and had my second cup of tea and a quick chat with my lovely hubbie. He had been up very early himself to complete a project related to his thesis in development studies. The question of cause regarding Mbarara’s litter problem was to be tested by Danny, who placed a large, obvious rubbish bin in the middle of the busy bus park very early in the morning to see whether, if given access to a bin, people would elect to use it. Does the fault for litter lie in the hands of the local government who don’t provide adequate bins, or in the local culture where littering is acceptable? We shall see…

After a cup of tea, I was off again for my daily ward rounds, and walked across the now slightly busier street, dodging bodas, matoke trucks and, perhaps most dangerous of all, SUVs belonging to international NGOs. Upon reaching the ward, I met with the PG, Obayo, who works on my firm. Together we are currently responsible for half of the female ward (~16 patients). We gathered the medical students who are currently working with us, and began to sequentially see and evaluate our patients. The general format includes a brief (hopefully) presentation by the medical student responsible for each bed, followed by a focused physical exam by either myself or Obayo and a group discussion and decision regarding the plan for the day for each patient.

The first patient of the day was a 70-year-old lady who would be called a “frequent-flier” by residents in the US, and while she is now well enough to leave the hospital, the tragedy of her situation reflects bigger problems for Uganda. Due to both culture and a lack of government-funded social services or nursing homes, people in Uganda expect to care for their elderly or ill family members at home indefinitely. Indeed, this attitude is carried inside the hospital itself where medical care is provided but all ancillary services, such as toileting, cleaning and feeding must be provided by a patient’s attendant (usually a family member). The assumption that the health of family comes above all else, and the expectation that your family will care for you, is a beautiful part of the culture here. The problem, however, arises when there is no family, as in the case of our patient. Every day for the past week, as well as every day of the last 3 admissions, she has had a new symptom or complaint which we have diligently investigated, with little to report except mild, chronic hypertension. She finally revealed that she has no family and at an ancient 70 years of age (life expectancy in Uganda is 46), has found herself alone with neighbors who are tired of her asking for money or help. While I understand the comparable attractiveness of a private room and TV at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital over returning to the homeless shelter, the fact that this lady would prefer to sleep in a TB and HIV filled ward with 36 other women rather than return home reflects the real heartbreak of her situation. Today we finally discharged her, but I suspect I will see her again soon.

The other cases were as diverse, interesting and frustrating as always…

• A 65 year old lady with a severe heart valve problem, now in heart failure. Diurese, diurese, diurese!
• A 38 year old, HIV-positive woman with TB meningitis. Nearly always fatal without treatment. Due to a problem (i.e. complete absence) with the national supply of TB medication for the past 6 weeks, she and many like her have been without ANY treatment for several weeks.
• A 23 year old woman with end stage kidney failure. Reason not known. Dialysis unavailable.
• A 28 year old woman, also HIV-positive, with septic shock and a chest X-ray revealing military TB. Thank god the TB drugs finally arrived last night.
• A 30 year old woman without HIV, admitted with severe wasting. She is disappearing before our eyes. With her vomiting, we are worried about stomach cancer, but the endoscopy needed for diagnosis is prohibitively expensive. The differential diagnosis is short: cancer which we can not treat or disseminated TB which we can. Today she will begin TB treatment, but I suspect she is not long with us.
• A 20 year old, HIV-positive girl, on TB treatment but not yet on ARVs. Weight 65lbs.
• A 45 year old, HIV-positive woman with anemia due to her HIV medication and pneumonia. Got blood, got antibiotics. Got better. Going home. Yay! Victory.

After my rounds on the ward, I walked into town with a friend (a visiting resident from Boston). Hit Pearl supermarket for the typical juice, cheese and canned food. Moved on to the Central Market, where I visited my usual three stalls and picked up eggplant, carrots, onions, chili peppers, green beans, tomatoes and bell peppers. A steep $4 gone. I’ve become picky about the size of our eggs, so made a special stop at a shop that sells the big ones. After a quick visit to the DVD rental place, we jumped on bodas and headed home.

And, yes, as I walked in the door of our little apartment on the compound, I put the kettle on for another cup of tea.

The Coming Home Series

It’s never easy to sum up ten months of ones life in a brief and hopefully interesting essay, especially when one has been exposed to so many new people, places and other fascinating stimuli during that time. In fact, I have only tried it one other time, when I left China, and so now eight years later I will attempt to succinctly offer you a glimpse of our experience of living in Mbarara, Uganda. Furthermore, since we have been keeping the blog up to date all year, I will spare you a repeat of the highlights and instead try to pass on my thoughts regarding the intricacies of day to day life in a Sub-Saharan, East African country. I have a lot to ramble on about so I will break it up into a series of blogs over the next month. The first entry is actually an assignment I had to turn in a couple of months ago, but seemed like it would make a good blog entry, so don’t get thrown off by the use of the words “project” and “resistance factors” as they were terms needed for the assignment. Plus this will buy me some time to collect my thoughts in order to produce more coherent blogs.

Coming Home #1: The Project

My project is obvious in that my wife and I, in August, moved halfway around the world to live here in Uganda for ten months. There are numerous reasons why our life and work here is different from the everyday routine we established back home in America, but the major differences are pace of life, eating habits, social interactions and fiscal constraints. This endeavor was carefully planned before our arrival and has been meticulously managed during our stay to avoid any undue resistance mainly regarding the fiscal constraints.
Living in a foreign country for an extended period of time can be both extremely gratifying and sometimes frustrating. There are many wonderful aspects of living abroad, especially in Uganda, such as the overwhelming natural beauty, the gracious people and first-hand accounts of a developing nation, including a strong sense of the struggles and successes of a culture far removed from one’s own. The first big difference we have experienced here is the pace of life. Africa is well known for its slower, laid-back type of lifestyle which takes a bit of getting used to when one comes from a high stress job in a fast-paced society. After six months here we have definitely gotten used to and learned to enjoy the Ugandan pace of life, but some aspects can still be frustrating to us when we are used to a more orderly and regulated atmosphere. Second, several aspects of our eating habits have changed over the last six months, most notably, being that we prepare or cook meals much more often than we did back home. Being deprived of the convenience of pre-packaged food has actually been a very enlightening experience for both of us as we have had to learn to cook our meals from scratch, which is more time consuming but also, in the end, a more satisfying and healthy endeavor. We have also had to become creative with our meals because my wife being a vegetarian often finds very limited menu options at the local restaurants. At the same time, I have learned to survive on less meat than I typically consume at home, but feel healthier for doing so. Third, we have experienced a remarkable upswing in social interactions due to our living situation. We live in the MUST campus housing along with 15-20 other short and long-term visitors. And because we are all living in the same situation, close together and away from family and friends, we, therefore, share many of the same ideas and values and often get together for shared meals, drinks and good conversation. Although we have many friends back home, our way of life differs from here and, consequently, does not afford us as much time for the numerous friendly, social interactions we have here in Uganda. Finally, we have had to become much more fiscally conservative to be able to spend ten months here earning no money. Granted, it is much cheaper for us as Americans to live here than in our own country, but our savings was limited and so we have had to learn to live a more conservative lifestyle in order to survive.
Prior to embarking on this trip, we needed to make plans and situate our lives in a way that would enable us to successfully live overseas for ten months without having to worry about resistance factors from home. These plans, undoubtedly, revolved around finances, which most people know tends to be a high anxiety undertaking. We had to cancel credit cards and magazine subscriptions, open new bank accounts, make sure recurring bills were paid, pack our belongings away and then hope that we still had enough money saved to be able to live all year in Uganda. While living here we have kept a strict budget to monitor our spending in order to live in relative comfort, while allowing ourselves enough money to explore this wonderful country and continent because we may never have this opportunity again.
This project has encompassed many of the resistance to change factors including, fear of the unknown, need for security, contrasting interpretations and lack of resources. However, these factors plus others will always be part of any project and were quite expected by us during our needs assessment and feasibility study that we conducted prior to leaving. Furthermore, we have adapted well to these factors because we have worked together as a team to rise above the complications and when this project comes to a close on May 25th we will, without a doubt, be very pleased with the results.

Top Tens

Top ten things you can buy in Mbarara for 2000 USh ($1)

1. One kg of dried garbanzo beans (several kgs after soaking)
2. A third of a can of imported Pringles potato chips
3. 2km Bodaboda ride in and out of town. Twice.
4. A single blood sugar check in the medical ward of the hospital
5. Ten large avocados
6. A week's course of oral ciprofloxacin
7. A single pirated DVD rental (with a vague return date...)
8. A liter of petrol
9. Two large pineapples
10. A large plate of matoke (mashed plantains) and beans

Top ten things to do with visitors to Uganda

1. Boat trip down the Kazinga Channel: hippos, crocs, buffalo, birds galore...
2. Rafting down the Nile- survivable but may leave a mark
3. Seeing the tree-climbing lions in Ishasha
4. Drinking cold (always relative) Nile Special beer
5. Cautiously tasting "home-brewed" banana gin (oogie) from deep in the village
6. Swimming and Scrabble at Lake Bunyoni
7. Chimp trek in the Kyambura Gorge
8. Drinking sundowners on the deck at Ndali, overlooking the Rwenzoris
9. Waiting 30 minutes for a temperamental female elephant to finish lunch
10. Waking up in one of the tents at the Nile Porch- ahhhh!!!!!!!
    

Top ten favorties from my evening runs

1. Endorphins- enough said
2. At least 3 people saying "thank you for the exercise!" as I run by- I take it to mean "good job", but a great Uganda-ism...
   
3. The soft dirt roads that are perfect for a gentle jog most evenings
4. The 5-year-olds who drop what they are doing to run next to me until a better distraction comes along
   
5. The sky at dusk- stunning and different every night
6. The views from the top of the hill behind our house- 3600
   
7. The perfect running temperature- always
8. The offer of barbecued goat as I run past the old market- almost like a marathon aid station, I suppose
   
9. The hills- okay, I don't always love them, but I know I should...
10. The bodaboda drivers who always offer me a ride home in the middle of my run- do I really look like I need it???

Anita's Great Adventure!

Aside from several trips to Mexico and trip to Spain 15 years ago, my mom had not really traveled all that much, so when she decided to come visit us here in Uganda we were very excited, to say the least. Contrary to the naysayer’s who say I should not have, on the fourth day, lead my 65yr old mother into an Impenetrable Rain Forest and forced her to march for seven hours looking for mountain gorilla’s that could kill you with one swipe; I felt it would be a wonderful introduction to this fascinating place we live. Honestly, it was not supposed to take anywhere close to seven hours and the idea was for her to actually see the gorillas, but as we have come to learn in our long stay here is that anything can happen in Africa and what you expect to happen typically does not.






























Her trip started by hanging out in Mbarara with us for a couple of days to get over the jet lag while getting to meet both our expat and local friends. Lynn showed her the hospital and our amazing fruit and veggie market while I took her out to the village to meet some of the kids I coach. We also took her to the famous “Lords Bar” where only goat and chicken is served and the music is either country/western or ABBA’s greatest hits. She loved it! After a couple days R&R we set out on our first journey, and because I have already mentioned the gorilla debacle, I will move straight to the tree-climbing lions in Ishasha. These lions literally lay on the branches of giant fig trees trying to stay out of the sun and usually digesting something. They were amazing! Next, we headed up to Mweya where we were to do a game drive and a boat ride on the Kazinga Channel. The highlight of the game drive was definitely the lions, but we also saw many, many elephants, probably over 100 all together over two days. The boat ride is a favorite because you get to see many of the animal’s cohabitating down at the water. Buffalo chill right next to crocs, elephants share the waterfront with hippos and a variety of other animals and birds cruise around looking for a good time. Mweya is great because we sleep at the cheap (but nice) hostel, yet we spend our free time having drinks by the poolside of the posh lodge a few hundred meters away. We also have sundowner drinks and great dinners at this lodge allowing us to experience the best of both worlds. On our second night at Mweya we were having evening cocktails as the sun was setting when a hippo came walking across the lawn about 20ft from us. The funny thing was is that we did not even notice at first and our bartender had to casually state as he set down our drinks, “oh look, the hippo is coming”. Apparently this same hippo uses the shortcut through the lodge quite often and an employee will just follow him until he has left the grounds. After Mweya we came back to Mbarara for a couple more days before heading off to Jinja to raft the Nile.





We subjected my mom to public transport by taking the bus to Kampala because I figured “what the hell, she survived the gorilla trek”. I would say it was an unremarkable drive, but the fact that there were actually empty seats on the bus is truly remarkable. The 25min taxi ride, though, was different story. The bus park is located in one of the busiest and most disturbingly neglected parts of Kampala as well as being adjacent to their soccer stadium. On this day there happened to be a big match between Uganda and South Africa so the already overcrowded streets around the bus park were jammed with people and vehicles jockeying for square inches of space (it was like being in a Chinese supermarket after work), but our taxi driver got us through even though we think he left a piece of the car behind on the first pothole we hit. So after making a quick stop at the bank, we had not proceeded another 25ft when the front tire hit what we thought was a giant pothole, but when the rear tire went in and didn’t come out, we knew we had a problem. We got out and saw that it was not a giant pothole, but in fact it was a 10ft deep open manhole in the middle of the road, which would be shocking to some people, but not us. The driver looked at the tire and then called to some guys across the street that came over and lifted the back end of the car out of the hole. We jumped back in the taxi and off we went only having wasted literally 90 seconds on the whole ordeal. Unfortunately, the hole had not been kind to the taxi’s exhaust system and we slowly lost power accompanied by a distinct burning smell until the taxi died. Luckily it died about 20yds from the place we were staying so grabbed our bags, thanked him and walked on.































We hopped the rafting bus to Jinja the next morning and had my mom in a raft on the Nile by 10am. The Nile River has class 5 rapids to raft, but smarter people, namely my wife, thought it would be best if we opted for the “family float” as opposed to taking my mom down class 5 rapids all day. The family float is nice because it only lasts a little over an hour and you get to experience monkeys, birds and a leisurely swim in the Nile as well as a couple of class 2 rapids that it is impossible to flip the raft in. We stayed at a gorgeous place called the “Nile Porch” that sits 100ft. above the river overlooking Bujagali Falls. The self contained tents are brilliant allowing spectacular views of the falls from in bed, in the hammock, in the shower, or even sittin on the can. We spent two days, including Lynn’s B-day, at this beautiful spot on the river before heading back to Kampala to meet some friends for dinner and then putting my mom on plane to fly home.






























We had a great time showing my mom our little part of Africa and I think she really enjoyed herself also. Most importantly, however, is that she arrived home with the new found knowledge that Africa, Uganda in particular, is not simply a place of wars, deserts, and famine as the media tends to display it, but in fact is a place rich in culture, natural beauty and a resilient people who face up to great challenges on a daily basis.

Birthday on the Nile

My birthday came in with a bang this year. Literally. A spectacular lightning strike accompanied (simultaneously) by the loudest crack of thunder woke me in my tent a little after midnight on the banks of the Nile. The lightning lit the skyline and I was reminded of another thing I would miss terribly next year: dramatic, loud, warm thunderstorms. I drifted back to sleep over the next ten minutes to the loud white-noise of the heavy rain, knowing it would ease up over the next hour, and the sun would greet us in the morning.
We spent the weekend in Jinja- a small town at the source of the River Nile just North of Lake Victoria in Uganda. Danny’s mom was completing her whirlwind trip around Uganda with a few days of R and R in Jinja, complete with a modified rafting trip: the family float. We jumped in a boat on Saturday morning and drifted down the Nile in the direction of Cairo. The trip was filled with monkeys doing acrobatics between acacia tree branches, birds singing and swooping along the banks and periods of jumping out of the boat and just floating down the fast water. It was a lovely end to Anita’s trip with us and a truly memorable birthday weekend.

"People just die here"

is the statement that my, visibly shaken, wife presented me with the other day upon returning home from work at the hospital. I realize that I am bias when I say this, but Lynn is an amazing doctor, and not just clinically. She deeply cares about every patient she involves herself with and she is determined to comfort and reassure every one of them. It was hard enough during her residency to have patients die under her care, but at least she knew that with all the tools of western medicine available to her, she had always made her very best effort possible at keeping those patients alive. So try to imagine now, in Uganda, where she has almost none of those life saving tools at her disposal yet she still cares deeply about every patient and is still determined to do everything possible to keep them alive.

So many problems compound each other here that by the time most patients make it to Lynn’s ward they are so sick that no amount of medical knowledge or care is going to make a difference. For example, most villagers will simply live with symptoms until they become unbearable. When they become unbearable, most will first seek a traditional healer. Then they will finally decide to go to the hospital, but many cannot afford the transportation so they wait until someone can eventually get them there. Patients arrive in the back seats of cars and probably even on motorcycle taxis and then proceed to the medical ward where they either get a bed or just lie on the floor because all of the beds are full, which is most of the time. Finally, Lynn and her team get to diagnose the very sick patient and then determine how to proceed with the little resources they have. This is where the countless stories of death begin and I know for a fact that she only tells me about a quarter of the stories. The saddest part is that most of the patients are very young, under 35, and have these terrible viruses, diseases, and cancers that are both preventable and treatable in the west but, sadly, not here. Lynn is a very confident doctor, even though she doesn’t think so sometimes, and I cannot fathom the turmoil she must feel on a daily basis watching patients die in front of her knowing that in another place more could have been done.

With that being said, she has also saved a great many people and, more importantly, she is teaching the next batch of local doctors every method possible to save lives once she leaves. In the end, this experience is surely going to make her a better doctor and I greatly admire the resiliency and compassion she continues to exude while going to work everyday knowing that “People just die here”.

Ethiopia part II – Tim and Kim’s Village

The moment I met Tim and Kim Otte I felt right at home. They are a Dutch couple a few years younger than me who have done a lot of traveling including a trip to Lake Tana about eight years ago. They fell in love with the place and decided that they wanted move there to build a lodge that would cater to travelers like themselves…and me, low maintenance. They are halfway through a very impressive project that started with them creating a foundation back in Holland, finding board members to volunteer their time to run the foundation and then raising a substantial amount of money to fund the project. They removed themselves from the board of directors and moved to Ethiopia a year and a half ago to start the construction of the lodge. They worked a deal through both the Dutch and Ethiopian governments that provided them with about 8free acres of prime land right on the waters of the lake, found a reliable contractor and went to work. When it is all done it will consist of 8 fully contained cottages, 4 thatched campsites with stone patios, a place for overlanders to stay, and a full kitchen and dining area. When I showed up Tim stopped what he was doing and gave me a tour of the whole place for about an hour and then Kim made me pancakes for lunch. I met Tim’s parents who were visiting for two month helping out and they invited me back for a traditional Dutch dinner later that night and since the place I was staying at was pretty much crap, I was more than happy to come back. When, a few hours later, I found myself eating imported Dutch sausage with sauerkraut, mashed potatoes and gravy, while listening to Metallica blasting on their solar powered ipod, I knew where I was going to stay for the next four days.



This place was amazing. The sun rises right out of the lake and the weather was Mexico hot everyday, but would cool enough at night to even make it a bit chilly. I was the only customer because the lodge is not even half done so they treated me like one of the family the whole time. We ate and hiked and Tim and I would go swimming in the lake every afternoon to cool off and “shower”. I also paddled papyrus canoes, read books, and sometimes just chilled in the sun. The only bummer was knowing that this would have been Lynn’s dream spot and that she could not be there to enjoy it with me.



Tim and Kim have a remarkable work ethic that is seldom seen. They are also very in tune with the community of Gorgora. They are well educated, seasoned travelers who understand the difference between a beneficial development project and outright exploitation therefore they have gone to great lengths to involve the community in their project, for example, learning the local dialect. They buy all the materials they possibly can from the surrounding area including the islands. They employ villagers and are training the locals to eventually manage the place for them while they scout other beautiful places in the world to expand. I probably should have explored a few other places in Ethiopia, but Lake Tana was just too perfect and Tim and Kim and his parents were just too hospitable for me to leave. They even gave me a ride back to Gondar so I wouldn’t have to endure the TB express again.


Lynn and I met back in Addis after a week and were able to get a couple of more days of vacation together before heading back to Uganda. The trip was better than we even imagined and although Lynn missed out on the part of the trip she was most excited about, she was very happy to be able to see her family.

Ethiopia

You know how when people visit a certain place, they sometimes say, “I felt like I stepped back in time”? Well, when we visited Ethiopia we literally did step back in time because Ethiopia is the only country in the world that still follows the Julian Calendar as opposed to the Gregorian Calendar, which means they are officially 7 and a ½ years and 6hrs behind the rest of the world. It’s no joke, you have to make sure, when making plans with a local, that you ask whether you are meeting at 2pm local time or farenji (foreigner) time because they probably mean 8pm. It’s very odd, but then again Ethiopia seems to have spent their entire history choosing the road less traveled.















We arrived in the Capitol of Addis Ababa after an amazing trip to Egypt, unfortunately though, Lynn had just heard that her grandmother had passed away so the next day she flew to Scotland while I hopped a flight to Gondar in the Ethiopian Highlands. Just before we left Egypt I began reading a new book called ‘The Chains of Heaven: an Ethiopian Romance’ by Philip Marsden, which is an extraordinary account of how he walked from the famous city of Lalibela to the even more famous city of Aksum. Along the way he enjoyed many tales from locals and visited more than thirty monasteries, of which Ethiopia is famous for. Ethiopia actually has over 130 monasteries each one distinct in its own way. In Lalibela they are carved right into the mountains and in other places they are perched high on cliff tops that require hand over hand climbing of chains or ropes with no safety mechanisms and hundreds of feet of nothing but air below, hence the name of the book. I did not make it to Lalibela or the mountain top monasteries, but I was able to visit several monasteries in Gondar and on the Islands of Lake Tana some of which were built in the 13th century and still have original paintings inside that look like they were just painted.


















I think the combination of being away from a big city, reading this book and visiting monasteries gave me a unique perspective of how genuinely faithful Ethiopians are to their respective religions, especially the Christians who make up 45% of the population. Being someone quite cynical of religious faith, I found it interesting that I was very much aware of their devoutness even the subtleties of it, such as a priest blessing random people on the street as he walks to the store. And, although I am a cynic, at the same time, I love history and the history of Christianity in Ethiopia is fascinating.


















Christianity arrived in Ethiopia in the early 4th century right around the time Constantine had declared the Roman Empire to be Christian. The powerful Aksumite Kingdom took to it right away and it became the state religion. Here is where things begin to differ from the rest of the religious world, because as Europe and the Middle East fought religious wars for the next 1000yrs, Ethiopia isolated itself and practiced its own form of Orthodox Christianity for a millennium. One ruler, who was clearly a bit crazy, even introduced the branding of crosses on peoples foreheads and wrists and to this day certain groups of faithful still tattoo crosses on their foreheads and wrists using ash from sacred fires. The biggest celebration in Ethiopia is called Timkat and is celebrated every January 19th. This wildly popular festival commemorates the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist. In every city, every church elects a group of priests to guide the chosen monk, who carries a piece of the Ark of the Covenant on his head, on a long procession typically to some pool of water where the entire town parties all night and then, at dawn, jumps in the water to baptize themselves. The next day they proceed back to their respective churches. I was able to witness this celebration in the tiny village of Gorgora where they only have one church and, hence, only one parade, but that allowed me to get an up close and personal introduction to this great event.

















I spent a day and a half in Gondar visiting some old ruins and monasteries and then took a short drive to the beginning of the Simien Mts. to see some gorgeous views and the famous Gelada baboons before heading south to Gorgora on the north shore of Lake Tana (refer to previous blog entry for bus ride story). My plan was to check this place out for a day or two and then continue south to Bahir Dar, but I had missed the weeks only boat and was not about to get on another bus just yet. I hired a boat to visit some monasteries on the local islands. The monasteries were built in the 16th century and some of the monks who live there have been on the islands for 30-40 years. They subsist by growing their own food and fishing and I was able to sit down with some of them and eat injera while they boiled pumpkins for a later meal. On my second day I was lucky to meet a guy from Addis who turned out to be a building contractor working on a traveler’s lodge being built by a Dutch couple about a 20min walk down the coast. We chatted for a while and then he asked if I wanted to see the jobsite so we walked over to Tim and Kim’s Village.

All aboard the TB express!

Now I’m not saying that I have tuberculosis, but if it turns out that I do sometime in the near future, then it was definitely from this bus ride.

My intention was to simply mention my bus ride from Gondar to Gorgora as part of my larger story of my trip to the Ethiopian Highlands, but the spectacle that ensued became a story all its own. Our often handy, but sometimes horribly mistaken, Lonely Planet said that the 67km bus ride to Gorgora, on Lake Tana, was a cheap 1.5hr trip which sounded great so off I went. I arrived at the bus station and was directed to the bus headed to Gorgora. I was surprised to find quite a few open seats and for a fleeting moment thought I might get to ride a bus in relative comfort for a change, but in true African fashion, my fleeting moment was snatched from me as we were moved to a smaller bus. This bus, of course, filled up over the next hour and when we finally departed we had already consumed the Lonely Planet’s hour and a half. It still was not too bad as we headed off because we were only at full capacity and I had the very back seat next to a large window that I could keep open. However, as soon as we cleared Gondar we made our first stop to load on extra people. I thought it was a joke, that first crowd of people who ran up to the bus, but they all managed to cram on and my big window proceeded to be the entry and exit point for all newcomers’ stuff including bags of clothes, food, jerrycans, and very small children. For the next four hours I watched a scarily overloaded bus drop some people off but always manage replace them with even more people as half the goods in Ethiopia moved across my lap and, without fail, at every stop the folks who needed to get off would be all the way in the back of the bus with me. After more than five hours, having devoured an entire stalk of sugarcane and watched 3 million Ethiopians, many whom were coughing and hacking, get on and off the bus, I was literally the last person to disembark. My day ended well, though, as I was able to sit back with a cold beer, a big plate of goat & injera, a TV airing the BBC news and slowly digest another day in Africa.

Cairo, Alexandria and Luxor

After surviving our initial contact with the Nile we hopped a flight to Cairo, the biggest city in Africa. Unfortunately, we had to endure a brutal 10hr. overnight layover in Addis Ababa and even though the good folks at Ethiopian Airlines had 10hrs. to make sure our bags were on the right plane, we still showed up in Cairo sans luggage. The whole luggage debacle was actually a very strange sort of Twilight Zone situation that Lynn and I have yet to figure out. We showed up on a full flight of about 150 people, made it through immigration and bought our visas in under ten minutes (which is a miracle in itself) and then went straight to the baggage carousel. While Lynn went to the bathroom I saw one woman from our flight walk up and take the one bag that was on the non-moving carousel. Aside from her, not one other passenger from our flight was anywhere to be seen. We stood there for 15-20 minutes hoping people and bags would show up, but neither ever did. We finally asked for help and while the guy ran around trying to locate our bags, I couldn’t shake that mysterious feeling and kept pestering him as to where the hell all the other passengers from our flight went. His limited English left it a mystery and we, thankfully, received our fully intact bags about 12hrs later. I have concluded that the other 147 passengers from the flight are either still missing or they were all, coincidentally, very light packers.

We were very lucky to be able to have a place to stay in Cairo with my friend Kathi who is a math professor doing a 2yr stint at the American University in Cairo. She had joined us down in Uganda for Christmas and was now poised to show us around her part of Africa. Cairo is worlds away from the Africa that Lynn and I know and, in fact, the more reading I do the more I come across references of the real Africa, Nubian Africa, beginning with or south of Khartoum, Sudan. Cairo reminded me of New York City, minus the kraut dogs, much..much cheaper and full of Mosques. It’s a city of 12 million people deftly dodging 12 million taxis while presenting an impressive infrastructure and first rate manners and customer service. I am now keenly aware of customer service because, sadly, the rest of the African service industry, as far as we have encountered, tends to eagerly ignore or dismiss you as a nuisance to their goal of becoming the champions of laziness.

Our first day in Cairo we visited the overwhelmingly artifact filled Egypt Museum where we witnessed the famous mummies of the Pharaohs and their Queens, but the highlight of the day was perusing the Khan al-Khalili bazaar that evening in Islamic Cairo where traders have conducted business continuously for the last 1500 years! The buildings that the bazaar weaves its way through are astounding works of art.



















The next day we went to Giza to see the Pyramids & Sphinx. Kathi had set us up with a guide for a half day tour which turned out to be a great idea. Tamer was a well educated, budding Egyptologist and practicing Christian which made for some very interesting discussions. He explained to us his ongoing Masters Thesis which involved a discrepancy between the Bible and the Koran and how he was trying very hard to conduct unbiased research so it was amusing when Lynn asked him which book was correct and he immediately said, “Well, of course, the Koran is wrong”. His lack of bias was as clear as the Nile waters. He was a mountain of information though and also just a really nice guy as he treated us to lunch and sugarcane juice (my new favorite drink) after the tour. The Pyramids were, of course, phenomenal as was the Sphinx and I was a truly proud American to see that KFC and Pizza Hut shared my enthusiasm for history by setting up shop right in front of the Sphinx…almost as great as the Starbucks in the Forbidden City. Seriously, these monuments along with all the ruins we saw in Luxor are so ridiculously enormous and aesthetically pleasing it makes you wonder if ancient Egyptians were actually freakishly giant, exceptionally skilled artisans who could carry 5 ton stones on their backs. Of course, the 5’3” mummies at the museum totally contradict that theory, but who knows, maybe you shrink when you’re mummified.


















Lynn and I took the train to Alexandria for a short 24hr trip. The shortness of the trip was a shame as Alexandria was the quaintest city of 4 million people I have ever visited. Our hotel overlooked the waters of the east harbor and our taxis scraped side mirrors as they wound us around the narrow streets of this famous city. Alexandria is famous for many reasons, but mostly because it was home to the ancient Alexandria Library which it is said, at its height around 1st century BC, contained all the known literature in the world. Today there is a modern library in its place that sets a standard for libraries that I think will never again be matched…unless, of course, those freakishly giant Egyptians reappear and then all bet are off. We took the bus back to Cairo, picked up Kathi and flew to Luxor.














Luxor is not only home to the Valley of the Kings, but also to Karnak and several other dramatically beautiful temples. We chose, what I feel is the best way to see all these spectacular sites, to rent bikes for the day. We immediately jump on any chance to avoid mingling with typical tourists and a typical tourist would never dream of breaking a sweat or getting too dirty. For example, the Valley of the Kings has incorporated six-car golf cart trains to haul lazy tourists the apparently unbearable distance of 500yds from the ticket office to the beginning of the tombs.



















Anyways, bikes are definitely the way to see the west bank of the Nile because, unlike the more built up east bank, the west bank still provides a sense of what the area looked like 2-3 thousand years ago. It only takes five minutes to clear the town and soon you are riding past cultivated fields and sheppard’s tending their goats. Within 15min you are treated to your first massive monument, the Colossi of Memnon, thousands of years old and just sitting next to the road seemingly inviting you to continue on to the tombs in the Valley of the Kings deep in the distant mountain. Being able to descend into the tombs in the valley is very impressive, but what was even more impressive to me, however sad and inevitable it may be, was how the ancient tomb robbers were able to burrow themselves into these “impenetrable”, grand burial chambers and pilfer a majority of the treasures. In the end I left Egypt awestruck by the brilliance of the engineers, laborers, and skilled artisans of the time and, once again, humbled by the fact that I was lucky enough to witness more of history’s momentous achievements.

White-Water Swimming???

Because you can’t really call it white-water rafting when your raft flips in every rapid and the crew emerges from the other side having to swim back to the raft. It reminds me of the days before my wife taught me how to really surf when I would tell friends that I had just gone “surfing”, but technically what I had actually done was gone paddling, falling and swimming for several hours.
Even though we did not professionally navigate the rapids on this day, we still had an amazing time with a great group of people, although, it was a bit ironic that one of the guys in our crew was a less than confident swimmer. In the end his timidity convinced him and the other two girls to walk around the last rapid of the day leaving me, Lynn and one other guy to forge the turbulent waters on our own. Witnesses from the shore said we went into the enormous rapid cleanly, but then our raft bent in half sending us flying in all directions and so we finished the day swimming just as we had started it, but had a great time nonetheless.

Winter break

When Lynn and I began the planning for our big three week winter vacation we did not purposely use the Nile River as a theme, but when you live in the vicinity of the longest river on earth, it somehow creeps in to your plans anyway. We chose to visit Egypt to satiate my hunger for history and we chose the Ethiopian Highlands to quench Lynn’s desire for remote, natural beauty.
About two weeks before the trip Lynn had the brilliant idea that since we were flying to Egypt out of Entebbe, we might as well go a day or two early and raft the Nile in Jinja. Now, most people have heard that the Nile is the world’s longest river and that it is somewhere in Africa, but many might not know that there are actually two Nile Rivers, the White Nile and the Blue Nile, which merge into one giant river in the city of Khartoum before continuing north to the Mediterranean Sea. The source of the White Nile is in Jinja at the north end of Lake Victoria in Uganda, while the source of the Blue Nile is Lake Tana in Northern Ethiopia whose waters I am listening to lap against the rocks as I lay in my tent writing this passage. So even though we did not plan it this way, our trip has allowed us to start at the source of the White Nile, visit the mouth of the Nile in Alexandria and end at the source of the Blue Nile, something I feel not many people have done in a single trip.
Sadly, however, Lynn’s Grandmother passed away while we were in Alexandria so Lynn flew to Scotland to attend the funeral leaving me to explore Ethiopia on my own.

Please stay tuned for the chronicles of Lynn and Danny’s excellent Nile adventure!

Rafting, pyramids and monasteries

After a busy holiday period, we finally set off on January 4th for our much anticipated trip- Kampala (embarrassingly my first trip to the capital in 5 months!), Egypt and Ethiopia.
We took the bus from Mbarara to Kampala, the highlight of which was the pharm sales rep who junmped on on the outskirts of Kampala and gave us a thrilling 30 minute lecture about his deworming medicine in a flowery combination of English, Runyankole and Luganda. It worked. He sold about 10 packages of overpriced anti-helminthic meds.
We arrived at the bustling bus station, and were greeted by a crowd of energetic taxi drivers- even before the bus stopped moving. After picking the closest driver who wuold charge us a reasonable price, we headed off for the Red Chili hostel in a quiet neighbourhood on the outskirts of town. The following morning we were picked up and taken to Jinja- the town at the head of the River Nile and the site of some incredible, world-class, white-water rafting. The experience was absolutely awesome. While there were about 20 of us rafting that day, we were lucky enough to be in a boat with 4 other really interesting people: a Candadian who was teaching for a year outside of Masaka, her sister, and 2 Indian soldiers who were on leave from the UN peacekeeping force in the DRC- having been deployed following the CNDP's approach on Goma 2 months ago. It was a really fun day, about half of which we spent in the water. The highlight was the last rapid- a grade 5 which looked too daunting for half the boat, so Danny, myself and one of the Indian soldiers braved alone. The best description I heard from the banks afterwards was that our boat launched vertically then made a complete taco. Awesome. I came up about 40ft downstream and spent much of the time at the barbecue later trying to get the Nile out of my sinuses... The barbecue was delicious and the 2 large beers went down well before we jumped back on the shuttle to Kampala.
The next morning we caught a ride to the airport with another Red Chili guest (an interesting woman from Ireland who had spent most of her adult life abroad running preschools in places like Jordan, Saudi Arabia and now in Azerbaijan). I can't bear to write about the journey from Entebbe to Cairo because it brings back memories of Addis Airport... Suffice to say that on this evening I spend the first 10 of about 30 hours spent waiting in the departure terminal over the next 3 weeks!

Queen Elizabeth National Park

Having taken my friend Kathi to the park last week, both Lynn and I have now visited this beautiful place and wanted to show you all some pictures. We are yet to see lions, but will keep trying.