Lynn and Danny's Excellent Adventure

Coming Home #2: Survival, Choice and Opportunity

2009-05-17T00:54:00.000-07:00

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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...

2009-05-08T02:40:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-07T08:06:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-29T23:45:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-27T07:57:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-11T21:56:00.000-07:00

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

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

Top ten things to do with visitors to Uganda

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

Top ten favorties from my evening runs

Endorphins- enough said
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...
The soft dirt roads that are perfect for a gentle jog most evenings
The 5-year-olds who drop what they are doing to run next to me until a better distraction comes along
The sky at dusk- stunning and different every night
The views from the top of the hill behind our house- 3600
The perfect running temperature- always
The offer of barbecued goat as I run past the old market- almost like a marathon aid station, I suppose
The hills- okay, I don't always love them, but I know I should...
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!

2009-03-30T23:15:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-16T00:30:00.000-07:00

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"

2009-02-28T23:41:00.001-08:00

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

2009-02-20T00:38:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-11T11:49:00.000-08:00

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!

2009-02-03T07:56:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-31T03:10:00.000-08:00

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???

2009-01-31T02:47:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-31T02:33:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-05T23:40:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-02T11:00:00.001-08:00

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.

A chat on the way home

2008-12-29T21:58:00.000-08:00

So yesterday I was walking out of one of the many DVD rental stores in town (the films from which are frequently interrupted by a shadow walking across the screen as someone in the movie theater where the film is being pirated goes to the toilet), when I heard the familiar "how are you, muzungu?". The phrase is a complicated one, because it can be taken in many ways. When a primary school child says it shyly under her breath as you pass her on the street, it can be seen as a first brave attempt at English. When the boda boda driver shouts it from his stand, it usually means "can I drive you somewhere?" When a toddler screams it at the top of his lungs from the end of the path that leads to his house, it is hysterical (and even funnier when he gets it wrong and screams "I am fine Muzuuuuuuuungu!!!!"- the phrase his parents have taught him should follow "how are you"). But most difficult is knowing how to take the educated, adult Ugandan who passes you on the street with "how are you, muzungu?". I know I am muzungu, so do I need to be reminded of my race with every interaction? Surely an adult English speaker should be more polite than to greet me by pointing out the color of my skin? Or is it just an attempt at polite conversation in a way that their parents taught them as toddlers, and has stuck as the correct way to say hello? And, why do I care? Like I said, it's difficult to know how to take it.
So, yesterday, as I was greeted by a man walking next to me I responded...

"I am fine. How are you, Ugandan?"
He laughed, "You can not call me Ugandan! I call you Muzungu, because that is the language you speak. The language of the Muzungu. But there is no language of Ugandan."
"Ah", I said "but my language is not called Muzungu. It is English. And I am certainly not English! Perhaps I should call you Ankole, then, for Runyankole is your language". I end with an eye brow raise and a smile (half of my communication now involves my eye brows).
"Okay, then it shall be. You can call me Ankole. Do you know some of our local language? Agande (how are you)??", he said.
So, I responded, "Ndijay (I'm good). Agande sebo (how are you sir)?"
He laughed again, with eye brows raised. "So, what other words do you know in our language?"
"I can count...". And, so I counted to ten with only one mistake by substituting six for seven.
"Why do you know this language?" he asked, probably now curious as to why this strange muzungu woman had not simply answered his first greeting with "I am fine" and walked away.
"I work in the hospital, so I speak a little Runyankole to my patients."
"Do you like working there?", he asked. We are now long past the muzungu-debate.
"Yes, I very much like it, but it is difficult sometimes when we do not have the medicines or the resources that people need"
"Yes", he said knowingly, "money is always the problem".
"But I like my patients very much," I say, changing the subject.
"Of course," he says. It is well known, even amongst themselves, that Ugandans are very nice people.
There was a short pause in the conversation as we continued walking. By this time I was half-way home.
"Me, myself. I am a patient," my new friend says abruptly. "I have 'slim' (common East African reference to HIV)". He looks to me for a response.
I said, "ay" with an eye brow raise. A common response that I have learned here to mean neither shock nor dismissal. Simply acknowledgment.
He continued, "my wife, too, she is a patient. And I have one child. We are all three patients".
"My boy, he is six months. We just tested him and he is positive".
"I am sorry to hear that," I said without eye brows. Somehow it never surprises me to discover someone here is positive, but the thought of a couple finding out that their child only child is also infected seems too much to bear.
"Do you go to one of the clinics? Are you on ARV's?" I asked.
"Yes, and my wife's CD4 counts is 500 and mine is 380. We are lucky. We feel well and are not sick yet. The baby takes liquid medicine."
I said, "that is great. You sound very educated, and are taking your medicines. I suspect you and your wife will do very well for a long time," hoping he does not notice the omission of his son's prognosis.
By now we are at the gate of my house, and I tell him that I am home.
"I have one question for you, doctor," he says. We have now stopped walking. "If I take my medicines on time every day and stay healthy, how long do you think I will last?"
Was it only 10 minutes ago that I was trying to decide between Season 3 of Boston Legal and Season 2 of Ugly Betty? How do people go about their lives with these problems? I have been here 5 months and this continues to be one of the hardest things to get my mind around.
"Sebo, I do not know. But I do know that if you take care of yourself and your family. And take your medicine everyday. And go to the doctor as soon as you have a cough (too many of our HIV patients succumb to TB), or malaria (synonymous with any fever). And eat healthy food. And live healthily. (and, and, and...how are all these conditions ever possible in any setting???). Then I truly believe it is possible that you will live many, many years and become an old man."
With a very formal turn to face me and shake my hand, he said, "Thank you for your advice, doctor," and turns and walks on down the road.

Genocide

2008-12-19T00:24:00.000-08:00

A lot has been said, and even more has been written, about the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. Some blame the Germans for consciously creating a hierarchical difference between the Hutus and the Tutsis, others blame the Belgians for fostering this policy and further aggravating the difference, and then there’s the current Rwandan administration who blame the French for backing the Hutu militias. However, blaming certain groups does not change history and certainly does nothing to change the fact that the entire world allowed 1 million Rwandans to kill each other in 100 days without as much as lifting a finger to stop it. Are the Rwandan’s also to blame? Of course they are, but I’m afraid that, ultimately, privileged society has never understood, nor can they even comprehend today the catastrophic influence they wield over the vulnerable people of the world. The pictures below are of the Genocide Memorial in Kigali. The concrete slabs cover the final resting place for 250,000 genocide victims, only a quarter of the total killed.

Rwanda has made an astounding economic recovery, but I cannot even imagine the physical and emotional scars that will linger for generations from this pinnacle of human tragedy. Kigali (the Capital) is a remarkably clean and orderly city that achieved 10% economic growth last year; they have even gone as far as banning the use of plastic bags in the entire country, both of which are unprecedented on this continent.I am desperately trying to believe in some leader, or some government, here that actually cares about the people more than enriching themselves or their cronies. They are hard to come by and Uganda’s Museveni is certainly not one of them. I have admired the practicality and confidence that the President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, has shown in reviving his country, yet it is almost certain that much of Rwanda’s recovery has occurred through the systematic raping of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s vast mineral resources. Don't even get me started on the idiotic African policies that the United States has implented: pick any corrupt leader past or present, and guaranteed the US has backed him at one point or another. It's truly detestable. The problem with trying to believe in someone or something is that there is always another version of the story that is far less appealing than you wanted or expected. I will keep searching in hopes that other countries and other leaders will follow the example of Ghana, for instance, who is in the midst of completing another free election, the third since 1992, where the former leader actually stepped down peacefully upon completion of the allowable two terms. Go Ghana!!

"It's a small world" is not just a cliche!

2008-12-16T00:12:00.000-08:00

Some people probably ask why I like to travel, or more importantly, why I choose to move to the other side of the world for extended periods of time? Well, there are many reasons, but mainly it’s because I get to meet so many people of such varying backgrounds who end up becoming good friends. When you have friends all over the world, that world sometimes becomes a remarkably small place, as was the case in Lynn and my most recent travels.

This story begins way back when I lived in China in 2000; one of my best friends was a Rwandan guy named Virgile who was dating this great girl, Alyssa. I always talked about how great it would be to visit him in his homeland of Rwanda, but had no idea if or when that would happen. Fast forward eight years, Virgile and Alyssa are still living in Beijing, but are recently married and planning a honeymoon trip down to Africa including a visit to his family in Kigali, Rwanda, which just happens to be a five hour bus ride from where we are living in Uganda.

Meanwhile, my brother Corry decides to go visit my dad in Australia, but take a 4-day detour in Dubai to compete in a surfski race. I figure Dubai is as close as he is going to get to us for a year so I decided to go meet him. Not only did I get to visit Corry in Dubai, but I was also able to hang out with two fun friends that Lynn and I met while climbing Kilimanjaro in June who happen to be currently living in Dubai. Corry paddled a great race considering that he competed against, probably the 50 best paddlers in the world (minus one or two who didn’t show), including 6-7 Beijing Olympic medalists and numerous other national and world title holders and he would have won if not for the 68 guys who just edged him out. I certainly miss racing when I have to witness a race of that magnitude as a spectator, but I did get to take 5 spectacular showers in 3 days at the hotel: sometimes one must enjoy the small things in life. Pictures will be coming later as, unfortunately, my camera (the old one not my good one) was stolen in Nairobi airport by the good folks at Kenya Airways.

I flew round trip out of Rwanda so as to avoid an 11hr bus ride from Kampala and Lynn showed up in Kigali the next day on a bus from Mbarara, so after eight years of dreaming about this, we spent two great days in the beautifully clean city of Kigali with Virgile and Alyssa. Virgile works for the Rwandan Embassy in Beijing, which, it turns out, means he knows a lot of important people in Rwanda. In one day, I met the Minister of Sports who invited us to attend a hugely popular concert that night at the football stadium as VIP guests, and, at the concert, was introduced to the President of Rwanda’s bodyguard. Getting in to the concert was quite a spectacle because the show was one big promotional campaign for a new cell phone company in town. The tickets were dirt cheap so every kid in the city tried to get into this show, headlined by “Sean Paul” who apparently is very popular in the US if you’re not old like me. We showed up at the gate and the police were standing there with fire hoses keeping kids from rushing the entrance as the show was completely sold out. Our group consisted of five locals and five muzungus with Virgile at the head working his magic to get us in while we tried not to get separated. It was quite a wild experience just getting to the front door of the stadium and we decided it was worth it just to get there even if we did not make it all the way in to the concert, but Virgile got us in and we enjoyed a great show with local singers from Rwanda, Congo, and Uganda belting out tunes as hundreds of bats raced around overhead chasing grasshoppers. It was very cool.

My story of a small world ends with the imminent arrival, in Uganda, of my old roommate Kathi who I have not seen in about 4-5 years. She is spending a year teaching in Cairo and decided to come down to spend Christmas with us. Lynn and I will also be spending a week with her in January when we head off on our big trip to Egypt and Ethiopia…and this is why I love to travel.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Mmmm....grasshoppers

2008-12-08T06:25:00.000-08:00

So apparently November in Uganda is when hordes of grasshoppers descend on this tiny nation providing sustenance and quick cash to those smart enough to round them up and sell them by the cup full to hungry neighbors. The way the locals explained the phenomenon back in October, I was expecting a Hitchcock type scene where small children are carried off by thousands of these winged hors 'dourves. In reality, you really don't see that many around except at night around bright lights, but the street vendors are all-of-a-sudden selling them by the hundreds at a pretty good mark up, I might add. They shove baskets of de-winged and de-legged, squirmy delicacies in your face all month. Our friends Pasco and Alicia bravely fried up a batch and brought them over one night and, to our surprise, they were really tasty little guys...kind of shrimpy tasting. All in all a very enjoyable snack, so think about it next time you are feeling a bit hungry.

Someone I met on the road last weekend...

2008-12-03T21:12:00.000-08:00

Queen Elizabeth National Park

Obama-land

2008-11-28T01:00:00.000-08:00

Despite the delay, I want to tell the story of our experiences here in Uganda during the presidential election earlier this month. As many of our friends and family know, for a very long time Danny and I had eagerly anticipated the election with high hopes. And so we found ourselves with a handful of fellow ex-patriot Americans at 3am on election night (7pm EST) huddled around a small television waiting for the polls to close and results to start to come.

As a preface to the rest of this blog, I ask anyone reading to name the president of Uganda, and, for bonus points, state the year of the last Ugandan presidential election. Difficult, eh? Of course many of us (including myself until 4 months ago) don’t know the answer to these questions because Ugandan politics has little effect on our lives. The same cannot be said for the impact of the election of the president of the United States to people in Uganda, thus the race was followed intensely from this tiny equatorial, developing nation in East Africa.

The reasons for the interest in the election varied, but there was one commonality: people here loved Barack Obama. There was the boda boda (a motorcycle taxi) driver who Danny uses daily and spent every trip debating politics in an incredibly sophisticated manner. There were my colleagues in the hospital, who harbored perhaps a more common, educated skepticism of the Bush administration and knew the latest election updates before I did (right down to who won the previous evening’s debate, or how much Palin’s wardrobe cost). There were those who equated the possible election of McCain with a continuation of the war- the war where their loved ones (Ugandans) have been recruited and trained to serve as poorly paid “security forces” for private American interests located in Iraq. And then there were those who knew little about politics, but simply saw the election of a man with East African heritage and dark skin to perhaps the most powerful and important position in the world as a symbol of hope, and a promise for better things to come.

Our election night party in Mbarara was a mellow affair, and centered around CNN coverage which luckily was shown on the one and only available channel. The only interruption in CNN coverage occurred in true Ugandan fashion when for 30 minutes the local TV station decided to show footage of people in Kampala at an election night party who themselves were watching CNN (yes, we watched people watching CNN for 25 minutes- seriously). But the coverage returned, and so we huddled around the television in the wee hours of the morning as McCain conceded and Obama was elected president.

Now I’ll admit that I was delighted at the result, but was not prepared for next couple of days… It began as I walked into the hospital, where friends and colleagues were filled with emotional and heart-felt congratulations. As I walked through town, in lieu of the usual “how are you muzungu?” (common greeting to a white person), I instead had shouts of “Obama!!” directed at me from inside shops, from across the street and even from boda boda stands. If I smiled and gave a thumbs-up, an excited chorus of cheers and handshakes would follow. The buzz continued for many days, with such demonstrations as free large Obama posters inside the daily newspaper (we’re definitely bringing one home…). It seemed that East Africa itself had actually won the presidency of the United States.

And, at the end of the day, I admit to really enjoying telling people that I now come from Obama-land.

Golfing Uganda Style

2008-11-07T04:51:00.000-08:00

There is a "golf course" right next to our house and I have been meaning to play it for months now. Last Saturday two friends, Josh and JJ and I finally decided to go golfing Uganda Style.

It's a 9-hole course that is ridiculously cheap(about $2.50USD), but the balls are 4x more expensive than the greens fees and since we are all huge cheapos, we bought one box for the three of us(for those who don't know, that's one ball each). They don't provide rental clubs or bags, but they have a pile of clubs that people have left over the years free to use. All we could find in working order was a 3-iron, 6-iron, 8-iron, 3-wood, and a wooden driver. The putter was bent in half, but we found a fringe iron that worked fine. The manager assured us that we would not be able to find our own way around the course and so hooked us up with a 12 year old local kid, named Joseph, as our caddie. Joseph was a slick dude as he right away called over one of his friends and handed him all the clubs to carry(all 6 that is).

When we got to the first tee we already had six more caddies, which it turns out we really needed. It started drizzling but we teed off anyways. On my second shot with the driver, because my first shot only went 20yds, the wooden head broke off and went flying further than my ball and then it started dumping rain. We were just about to head to the clubhouse when it let up so we ventured on with our 3 balls, 6 clubs and 8 caddies. The next few holes were fine except that whoever set up the course had either never done it before or secretly hated golfers because you constantly have to hit across other fairways directly over the heads of other golfers while other peoples balls are landing around you. You also have to hit across roads about 7 times. I now refer to hole #4 as the bat-hole because the tee box is underneath a tree that is home to about 6000 bats and they never stop squeaking during your backswing...who knew bats were so rude? I almost had to quit on hole #5 because the three of us, our 8 caddies, and several locals walking around could not find my ball, but luckily Josh found another ball in the grass after a 15min search. We ran out of luck, however, on the 8th hole when Josh lost his ball on his second shot and had to disqualify himself from our super competitive Ugandan Skins Game at 100 shillings per hole. JJ and I battled on and I was sure to win a triple skin on the 8th when JJ sunk an impossible 30ft putt that bounced 9 different directions on the uneven grass on its way to the hole. Inconceivable!

We finished up with the 9th hole, paid our caddies and made definite plans to play every week. Golfing Uganda Style was another unique experience that I will not soon forget. Oh yeah, and then I got malaria later that night and thought I was going to die for about two days.....all better now.

The Pearl of Africa...

2008-10-25T07:11:00.000-07:00

… is how Winston Churchill famously referred to Uganda, and based on our most recent travels, we understand exactly how he felt.

Last week we went down to the far southwest corner of the country to a Lake called Bunyonyi. The lake is nestled in a group of variously green colored hills from the dark green of the old forests, to the light green of the grasslands, all continuously dotted by the radiantly, fluorescent green matooke (banana) fields. The locals work their fields while the little kids run up and down the dirt paths laughing and playing. The camera sometimes captures the beauty as it really is, but most of the time does not do it enough justice. Bunyonyi, sittting at about 6000ft, is home to numerous large and small islands and there are two modes of transportation available, the dugout canoe and a few tourist boats with outboard engines. Half of the eleven of us paddled one of the dugout canoes to where we were staying, an island called Bushara, which is practically the only spot that still has all of its old growth forest.

The irony in the beauty of the surrounding hills, unfortunately, is the wholesale clear-cutting of a majority of the old growth forests for fuel and timber purposes. Every square inch of available land is now used to grow food, which makes for a spectacular landscape of multi-colored, terraced fields, but at the same time leaves it vulnerable to massive erosion. Bushara Island has a circumference of about 2k and hidden within the tall trees are 15-16 luxury camping tents complete with beds, a patio, an eco-toilet and even an outdoor shower that they will fill with hot water upon request. Every site is isolated and has a great view of the lake. Lynn and I both agreed that this was the most peaceful place we had ever been as all you ever hear are the birds and some occasional drumming calling the people to church on neighbouring islands.

The great thing about this lake is that we were able to swim in it due to the lack of things that would kill us such as waterborne diseases, crocodiles, and hippos. Best of all, though, was the rope swing which started from a high wooden platform and forced us to swing across the walking trail through a channel cut in the reeds and finally whipped us to a nice high jump into the water. Our group sustained only a few rope burns and one foot-dragging face plant into the water.

On Saturday morning we took a boat to a swamp at the far end of the island- only one large hill away from the Rwandan border- to see many different kinds of birds and quick glimpses of the lake otters. Africa tends to turn the most normal person into a completely nerdy birder and although I continue to deny that I am becoming a birder, I do enjoy using the strength of my camera to zoom in on some pretty amazing winged creatures. We ended up seeing 24 different kinds in only two hours.

As you can see from the pictures, the water was perfectly glassy the whole weekend- only adding to the grandeur of the place. The small island (below) with the lone tree is called Punishment Island, which is where they used to exile woman who committed adultery. Lynn amusingly quipped that she could mess around all she wanted in this place because it would take her no more than 10 minutes to swim back from the island each time.

The second adventure I speak of involved an assignment I am doing for school. The assignment is to assess a community project and since I already have connections at the UN Millennium Villages Project (MVP), I chose their school feeding program for my assessment. A short background is MVP was borne out of the Millennium Development Goals, which was a pact made in 2000 by the leaders of 192 countries to eradicate poverty by the year 2015. In 2006 MVP was created and 12 villages from all over sub-Saharan Africa were chosen as sites to implement a model development program. One of the villages chosen, Ruhiira, happens to be 45 min. from Mbarara and the main office is here in town. I have been volunteering there for a couple of months trying to help them with some inventory management problems, hence my connection. MVP is a huge project so I chose one aspect, the school feeding program, which I found most intriguing. There are 21 schools feeding over 11,000 students in the program and on this past Thursday I was able to ride along with the MVP education officer and the head driver as they delivered food to 11 of the schools in one of the two sub-counties.
Imagine the bumpiest dirt road you have ever been on and then imagine that we drove for ten hours in a truck filled with 5 tons of food on these roads, up the sides of mountains, through endless banana tree fields, and past settlements that surely had seldom or never seen a white person before. I unfortunately did not bring my camera on this outing (I will next time), but it was some of the most extraordinary landscape I have ever seen. Most schools were perched on the tops of these giant hills with views that western developers would die for. One school looked across an entire valley with the border of Tanzania at the far end.
The kids would gather around the truck while the food was unloaded and mostly stare at me in wide-eyed wonderment as I would ask the headmaster some questions. Some of the less shy girls would come and shake my hand, curtsy, and say “pleased to meet you”. It was very cute. The advantages of the feeding program are twofold as it allows more children to attend school knowing they will receive two hot meals, while at the same time allows the parents to spend more time growing food, some of which they can now sell for a little bit of income. There are many challenges also, but I will not go into detail as my main focus for this story is the beauty the place.

Africa is a huge, diverse place and we are lucky to be living in the tiny pearl that is Uganda.

Some friends we have made...

2008-10-03T03:44:00.000-07:00

I have done a lot of reading since arriving here and Lynn and I have met a quite a few locals. One thing I notice more and more is that the personal stories of locals we have met often mimic the very story of Africa itself. This is a story typically rooted in misfortune or tragedy yet, at the same time, full of promise and potential and hope for the future. My story is about four friends we have met in our short time here who all have their own stories to tell that are extraordinary from our perspective, but unfortunately, all too common from theirs.

David is the first local I met here and he has been mentioned in our blog already. He is a 31 year old who has devoted a large part of his life to reaching out to kids in need. He does this because, as a child during the Idi Amin years, his parents were thrown in jail and he became a street kid. He lived on the streets for several years before a Nigerian missionary took him in. Luckily David’s story does not become more tragic as his parents were released from jail when Amin was exiled in 1979, but that experience convinced him that he needed to do everything possible to keep other kids out of that situation. He moved to Nyamitanga village three years ago because he heard that it was a chronically under served area of Mbarara. He rented a house and opened it up to the kids as a place to come and socialize, have fun and stay out of trouble. He has taken in eight orphans; two of which were infants abandoned on the floor of his outdoor latrine. His mother was kind enough to take the infants to her home to raise them as hers was more accommodating to such young kids. The other six live with him and are part of a group of about 40 boys and girls that make up the “Nyamitanga Kid’s Club”. This club is the beginning of a dream that David has to eventually build a clubhouse/orphanage to accommodate either abandoned or orphaned children as well as any kid that just wants to come and hang out. Lynn and I have a rule that we don’t like to give out cash for a couple of reasons: First, is that we don’t have much and second is that giving out cash sets a bad example that fosters a complacent attitude of entitlement. We, instead, like to help in other ways. We give them soccer balls, I help coach them and Lynn gives the girls health talks. David and I are currently working on how to acquire funding for the long term dream and we recently submitted a proposal to the local Rotary Club to help fund our research. We look forward to hearing from them.

Moses is a 24 year old kid who is the official coach of the “Kid’s Club” boy’s soccer team. I help him out and, as of late, I have starting coaching the girls. Moses grew up in the Capitol city of Kampala. His father had many wives and many kids and Moses often lost favor based on which wife was in favor. He was treated very badly and so he took off to live on the streets. He ended up in Mbarara where David found him and counseled him to get off the streets. David found him a job with a friend and Moses became the kids’ coach because he is a good soccer player. Unfortunately, as is typical here, the friend employing Moses shut down his business a couple of months ago putting Moses out of work. With no education and few skills, he is now living off of David, which means he walks 10K round trip to David’s house for one or two meals per day. Surprisingly, Moses’ English is very good and he was telling Lynn a couple of weeks ago that he was very interested in learning how to use computers. Lynn and I felt that with his English skills he would be able to find a job as long as he had another skill to go along with it, so we are funding him to take computer classes at a place that will also try to help him find a job.

Dennis is a 22 year old kid who is actually from Rwanda. His father was killed in the 1994 Rwandan genocide which forced him, his mother and siblings to flee to Uganda to live in a refugee camp just outside of Mbarara. These camps still exist today and his uncle continues to live in one. His mother was finally able to repatriate and go home to Rwanda in 2004 after ten years in the camp. It turns out Dennis is a pretty smart kid and he was given a scholarship through a UNHCR (United Nations High Council on Refugees) program to go to college in Kampala. He started veterinary school there, but decided that he would rather do pharmacology and so he ended up back in Mbarara where I met him at school. Receiving a scholarship is obviously better than not receiving one, but I could not believe the small amount of money given to him and how he manages to live off of it. He is given 590K shillings per semester for books, room and board. His books and room cost 450K leaving him with 140K to live and eat for four months. 140K is about $90USD so typically he eats one meal per day at a cost of 800-1000 shillings (50-60 cents) and then supplements that with some fruit and juice, and yet he always manages to bring us at least one pineapple when we have him over for dinner. Dennis is a great kid, very friendly and outgoing and determined to make his mom proud by finishing college.

Finally, we have Henry. The Henry situation has been a difficult one for us as well as our other expat friends living in the compound. Henry’s tragic story is a recent one that involves his sister. She had traveled to Kampala to do some shopping and was robbed not too long after getting off the bus. Unfortunately, these robbers not only took her money, but for some deranged reason also threw acid on her, which severely burned her face, arms and upper chest. This was almost a year ago and she has not been able to come home from Kampala because that is where the best hospital is. Henry has been on a mission ever since to raise money for her surgeries, but she mainly just stays there waiting for foreign doctors to do free procedures when they come through town. Henry is very persistent in asking every new white face for money which becomes everyone’s dilemma. This is a case where you realize you cannot solve every person’s problems and you have to just be OK with that. So we stuck to our money rule and, instead, have turned him into our banana bread connection. His other sister makes unbelievable banana bread which he typically gives to some of the newly arrived expats as a friendly gesture before asking for money. We love this banana bread so I asked him how much it costs his sister to make one and he said it was 5K, so I told him we would pay him 8k per loaf and order one per week. Banana bread day is easily my favorite day of the week and I have convinced 3 other people (after tasting it of course) to set up the same deal with Henry. This way he makes some extra money for his sister and we get a weekly treat. I work on every new arrival to help Henry expand his business and we are adding eggs to his delivery route this week. My next goal is to convince him that it can become a small business and that he should pressure his sister’s suppliers to sell her cheaper ingredients. So much for getting away from business….oh well.

The kids of Nyamitanga

2008-09-20T07:08:00.000-07:00

I tease Danny that he had an entire social network established in Mbarara before I even arrived, but have to comment on how amazing one of these particular connections has been- The Nyamitanga Kid's Club.

Danny met the kids while out on a run during his first week in Uganda. He came across a field of kids playing soccer. A week later was one of their coaches. A month land a half later he is regular in the village, and spends a few days a week hanging out at the kids club, which doubles as a home for four orphans. I've joined him on a few occasions, including last Saturday, and took a couple of pictures to share.

The kids are incredible. My husband is amazing.

Surviving Malaria

2008-09-20T06:26:00.000-07:00

I suppose it was to be expected. When you spend time around sick people, you will get sick. So, yes, I spent most of this week suffering through a nasty upper respiratory infection. A typical virus that came in with a sore throat and left with a stuffy nose. Although, if you ask anyone around here, it could have been malaria...

I survived my cold without any trouble, but got a great insight into how deeply held the common, "catch-all" diagnosis of malaria really is. It makes sense, I guess, if you live in a village where most women aim to have at least 5 kids, as they know that there is a good chance they may lose 1 or 2 to malaria before the age of 5. Although tragic that these women are probably correct with their diagnosis, the subsequent common labeling of every febrile illness as malaria goes undisputed in day-to-day life. The examples are endless. In an article today by the BBC about the violence in Northern Uganda, there were only 2 reported reasons that people died. They were either victims of the LRA, or... "malaria". Another example came from some of the residents in the hospital. These doctors can list every malarial symptom, stage in the parasite's lifecycle and side-effect of the treatments, but still admit to putting themselves on empiric anti-malaria medication at the first sign of just about any illness. Who can blame them, I suppose. The stakes are high, and the treatment is cheap.

In any case, I survived my cold and am feeling much better. But maybe I'll stock our bathroom with some new medication. Just in case.

Runyankole and other mind numbing tidbits

2008-09-14T12:48:00.000-07:00

I’m pretty sure “Wasibota” means good afternoon. I was very excited to arrive in Uganda and continue working on the little bit of Swahili I picked up in Tanzania and Kenya. To my dismay, however, it turns out that no one speaks Swahili in Uganda. Several native languages are spoken in Uganda including “Runyankole” which is spoken here in the southwest corner of the country where Mbarara is located. Runyankole is no where near as easy as Swahili appeared to be, hence my confusion in using Wasibota. As a matter of fact, after being here for 5 weeks, I am still not sure exactly which hello to use in the morning, afternoon, night, or in general for that matter. I bought a cheap phrase book in town, but it was useless because it taught me how to say things like “my leg is paining” or “my neighbor is thievery” yet still did not give me a word for hello. Lynn and I have decided to find a tutor to try to teach us a couple of times a week for a month or so to see if we pick it up at all or to at least learn some of the basics.
In addition to trying to figure out the language, we have been very busy meeting new people, expats and locals alike. I already have about 25 contacts in my phone including the kid who promised to ride me on his bicycle any where I wanted to go. The locals here have been great; everyone from the students and teachers to the doctors and medical students at Lynn’s hospital. We have at least one dinner party per week, and sometimes more. Overall, the locals have been very kind and easy to talk to. However, aside from the constant Mzungu…Mzungu (white person in Runyankole and Swahili) we do get the stares from some people which are neither curious nor friendly, but instead say, without the need of words, “What are you doing here whitey?”

School (pictured above) is going well and looks to get more interesting as we progress. There are 10-12 of us in my class and we complete the year in 2-4 week modules. For instance, I just finished my first three week module, which was Intro to Development and now move on to a two week module in communication skills with a different professor. Going to school here is a quite a different experience than when I lived and studied in China. In China I was one of three hundred foreigners from all over the world living and studying together. Here I am the only “Mzungu” enrolled in the entire school. I’m hoping they get bored with that fact real soon. The other difference is that here I am involved in a serious and complicated program, development, which is fraught with myths, perceptions, and misconceptions on both the “developed” and “developing” sides of the issue. Already, after my first three weeks of class and having lived here for five weeks, I have had to totally transform my own definition of “development” and learn that the word can at times be presumptuous and at other times downright arrogant. However, the greatest part of the class is that as a group we get first hand knowledge from each other regarding our respective countries socially, politically, etc… so there are less assumptions being tossed around. Oh yeah, and one other difference, there are no textbooks here; at least in my program as far as I can tell. We get "a" handout or "a" book to look at, but we have to pay to make photocopies for ourselves. The other day my change for the photocopies was paid to me in candy. We love it here!
Well, I could write for hours about the things we are doing here, but I know that no one would come back to the blog if I did......so more later.

Lake Mburo

2008-09-11T08:57:00.000-07:00

So, after a rough 2 whole weeks in the daily grind of life in Mbarara, we decided we needed a vacation... We escaped to the beautiful Lake Mburo National Park for a couple of days wildlife watching, hiking, boating and generally enjoying the beautiful surroundings.

Mbarara Hospital

2008-09-03T08:08:00.000-07:00

You just have to be comfortable not knowing.

This is the most important lesson I have learned in my first week of work at Mbarara Hospital, and one that I suspect will cause me strife throughout my time here. It's really unnerving to be making important clinical decisions about a patient's care with virtually no hard information outside of my clincal exam. In the US, I frequently didn't even meet my patient until after I had the results of a complete blood count, a renal panel, a liver panel, an Xray, often a CT scan and sometimes an MRI. Things are different here. But let me start at the beginning, by describing the hospital...

Mbarara Hospital is a public hospital, meaning it is funded by the Ugandan Ministry of Health and general care in the hospital is free. It is affiliated with the medical school (MUST), one of only 2 med schools in the country, and so the hospital is staffed by med students and residents. The med students are good, and the residents are really excellent.

There are a few different wards in the hospital: a pediatric ward, an OB ward, an emergency ward, a surgical ward, and our medical ward. The medical ward is split into a men's and women's side and there are a total of 56 beds that lie in 2 rows about 2 feet from each other. Despite there being 56 beds, the ward is usually over capacity with many patients in spaces on the floor. There are 2 nurses for the whole ward, and very few other staff.

One of the most unique aspects of the hospital that struck me on my first day and continues to astonish me as I go to work everyday, is the presence of "attendants". Every patient is expected to have family tend to ALL their non-medical needs. This includes feeding, toileting, laundry, providing bedding. Everything! As you can imagine, a hospital full of patients creates the need for many, many attendants, and so the grass outside the ward is filled with women doing laundry or preparing food, other family members sleeping, and many just sitting. Waiting.

As a place to work, the hospital is great, but this is in part due to the rather sad dichotomy between the well-read, very intelligent, hard-working med students, interns and residents and the stark lack of resources, medications, and investigative abilities of the hospital. For my purposes of trying to gain broader clinical experience, my past 2 weeks have been the richest of my short career, but the tragic disparity between the impressive brain-power that you find in a good clinical training program such as this and the lack of tools available is apparent everyday, with almost every case. Having said that, no one here sits around complaining! They are creative, resourceful and able to provide impressive quality of care to the whole ward for the cost of a single ER visit in the US...

So what do I actually do? I am formally a volunteer teaching attending in the department of medicine (Yes- I actually have my Ugandan Medical License- can't wait to put that on a CV!), and am assigned to one of the 4 medical teams. It is surprisingly like any other residency program in the US or the UK, in that we have post-call intake rounds every morning, and I lead a combination of bedside teaching rounds with medical students and work rounds with the whole team when we see every patient together. The resident I work with is wonderful, and steers me back to Uganda when I fly off on a diagnostic tangent that is feasibly impossible.

As I said, you just have to be comfortable not knowing exactly what the diagnosis is. Be thorough. Make your best guess. Then treat, treat, treat!

Holy Thunderstorms Batman!!

2008-09-02T04:46:00.000-07:00

I had to write a quick comment as I sit through (one of the few I haven't been caught in) our third or fourth consecutive, unrelenting, afternoon downpour. I have never lived anywhere before that actually had a "rainy season." Uganda has two. This one officially started yesterday, but it really started three days ago. It's pretty wild as each day starts out very nice, then gets hot in the middle of the day and then, sure enough, each afternoon between 2-4 you see a dark cloud coming in from the east and within minutes it's dumping sheets of rain....enough in each storm to drown Santa Barbara, but doesn't even phase Mbarara. It will rain, thunder, and lightening for 30min to an hour and then clear up beautifully in time for me to head off to school. You can imagine how green it is here and we will never have to worry about water conservation. I also get to use umbrellas for the first time in my life, which my Scottish wife thought was totally obnoxious.

Life in Mbarara

2008-09-01T07:49:00.000-07:00

After a week here in Uganda, it is surprising how much today felt like any Monday anywhere. We had a great weekend, with no work or school for either of us, and spent time shopping for our house, playing soccer with the girls in the local village of Nyamatanga, eating out with a couple of our neighbors on Saturday night, and lounging by the pool at a “fru-fru” hotel just out of town on Sunday afternoon. It could have been Santa Barbara- well, almost…

For anyone we haven’t bored with our pre-trip lectures… Mbarara is a bustling town on the main road between the capital of Uganda, Kampala, and the Southwest regions of the country, and Rwanda. The presence of the university and medical school, means that there are plenty of students around, although the vast majority of Mbarara’s population of 100, 000 has no tie to the university, and outside of the immediate city center, life is very rural and centered in small villages. Thanks to these local farming villages, there is an absolutely amazing vegetable market where we are able to fill our bags with huge avocados, tomatoes, eggplant, bananas, cucumbers, papaya and bell pepper for less than five US dollars total!

We are living on the campus of the university (Mbarara University of Science and Technology) in a set of houses reserved for visiting ex-pats to the university. By East African standards the houses are great with running water, toilets and a reasonably well-equipped kitchen. The location is fantastic, and my “commute” to the hospital is a 50 yard walk, while Danny’s development classes are held in a building 50 yards in the other direction. We are about a mile from the center of town, so also have easy access to shopping and the market. Our neighbors are wonderful, and although we feel well and truly submerged in African life, the presence of a few fellow-Mzungus (Swahili word for “whitey”) has definitely made the adjustment easier!

Despite being virtually on the equator (check out Mbarara on Google Earth and you’ll see what I mean!), the climate is really quite pleasant. The middle of the day is usually in the high 80’s, but most of the time the temperature is in the 60’s or 70’s. And yes, most importantly, I am able to sport my Yater hooded sweatshirt in the evenings! The region is at an altitude of around 4500ft which helps keep things cooler, as well as reducing the number of mosquitos- although they still seem to find poor Danny, and I never seem to get bites. (For all my teasing I’m sure I’ll be the one who comes down with malaria!) As for rain, we are now entering the rainy season and have had a few spectacular afternoon thunderstorms, during which seemingly impossible quantities of rain seem to come from the sky. Okay, maybe not much like Santa Barbara afterall…

Soccer can save the world!!

2008-08-25T00:49:00.000-07:00

For decades now soccer or futbol has been considered the most popular sport in the world, except in America of course…go figure. Well it has proven to me, once again, to easily live up to its reputation not only as a popular sport, but also as the easiest way to bring different people and cultures together without any political ramifications. I have played pick up soccer games next to temples in China, on the beaches of Thailand, on the steps of a 500 year old cathedral in Peru, and now with some kids on a field in Uganda in a little village I happened to be jogging through. Lynn had the great idea of bringing some balls over here to give out to kids who could really use them so I brought 4 soccer balls, a volleyball, and a basketball. My friends Matt,Helen and I ended up playing with these kids for about an hour and, of course, the ball they were using was on its last legs so I told them I would bring them a new ball the next day. I brought the ball as promised and met their two coaches David and Moses. They were all very excited and David explained that he didn’t actually know a whole lot about coaching soccer so less than a week into my stay I have become the unofficial third coach of the under 14 boys team from Nyamitanga village. The kids are amazing, full of energy and excitement even while they share uniforms and play barefoot, but play just as hard and have just as much fun as any other kid around the world. Playing a game of soccer should be required during any political round table or negotiation as there is no better method of diplomacy that exists today.

Back to Africa....

2008-08-13T02:16:00.000-07:00

Well, after 3 amazing weeks of semi-retirement in sunny Santa Barbara, I am back in East Africa, unfortunately without my lovely wife for the first 2 weeks, but i'll get by. Before I dive into a description of our new home in Uganda, I want to comment a bit more on the whole retirement thing. First of all, I highly recommend it, but you have to do it right. Lynn and I were very adept at retirement which was constantly confirmed through the outright jealousy of our friends and family. The trick is to get your errands done in the morning (of course after first watching a couple of hours of the Tour De France) so that you can be swimming or surfing by the afternoon followed by a cocktail and then a nice dinner while perusing your netflix. We knew we had hit the apex of retirement when one Tuesday afternoon we found ourselves sitting in the cottage sipping white wine and eating fresh peaches after a great bodysurfing session at Haskells beach. I don't think we really deserved to have a three week retirement, especially after a month long honeymoon, but it presented itself nonetheless and we took full advantage of it (on second thought, Lynn did deserve 3 weeks of retirement after perservering through 3 years of residency).
So back to reality. After 23 hrs. of flights and a very bumpy 5 hr. drive, I arrived in our new home for the next 10 months, Mbarara (which is pronounced Mbarara). It was so much easier to arrive in Uganda after having been in East Africa the month before. The drive was brutal as I kept getting woken up by gigantic potholes and sometimes cows blocking the road. Halfway to Mbarara you cross over the equator where you can actually stand with each foot on one side Then you buy a coke and move on. Driving through the little towns and villages I was struck by how much they reminded me of movie sets, western movie sets in particular. A typical village consists of anywhere from a half mile to a mile of store fronts of various colors and various stages of disrepair. The road and the store fronts are always bustling with people and commerce, and cows, but there is usually nothing behind the row of stores except for miles of hill and tree filled land. The other striking aspect is that there is clearly not enough commerce to keep everyone milling around busy and so I noticed many folks just lounging around trying to stay cool in the hot sun. Although, maybe they were indulging in some early retirement as well...I don't know.
Mbarara is a medium sized city with about 100K residents. It sits at about 4500ft so the weather is very moderate considering how close to the equator we are. It is a very hilly city with some nice views when not too hazy. From my limited knowledge so far, I believe it is a trading town (I think they export some coffee and vanilla but not much) and a big stopover for folks who are headed to the beautiful national parks within hours of the city. It is a bustling city with boda boda's (scooter taxis) zipping around everywhere spewing their toxic 2-stroke oil clouds. The city seems to be a bit more on the developed side due to the presence of the University (which I will be attending) as well as the medical school and hospital that Lynn will be volunteering at. I am in a temporary cottage right now where several other expats live who are either volunteering with Lynn's organization or doing collaborating research projects with schools such as Berkeley and UCSF. I have someone looking into securing a bigger place for Lynn and I and hope to move in and get it set up before she arrives.
I spend my days navigating or shall I say circumnavigating the supposed requirements, which literally change minute to minute and person to person, for me to register for school. After stapling my picture to 100 separate forms with the same information on each, I believe I finished registering yesterday, but one never truly knows. My sleeping pattern is totally screwed up because I keep taking naps in the middle of the day...I have to quit doing that! There is a tennis and basketball court close by and some locals play soccer every evening in the field right next to me so there will be plenty to do activity wise as well as jogging the hills.
Well that's about it for now...I'm gonna go buy some fish and try to figure out how to cook it.

Cheers from Uganda,

Some wedding pictures...

2008-08-10T22:45:00.001-07:00

After a humbling few weeks of trying to navigate all the "modern", but not so lynnie-friendly media software and websites, I'm gonna just post a link to a small set of wedding piccies. Enjoy! (I'm hoping that after a few weeks in Uganda, I will be better friends with my 3-year-old Mac, and will be able to do something more creative...maybe). Lynn.

www.flickr.com/photos/29500483@N08/

The island paradise...

2008-07-13T01:56:00.000-07:00

Jambo everyone! Thank you for all the nice comments- amazing that people are actually reading the crazy things we write! So lovely to hear from everyone...

We are now back in Nairobi after an indescribable week on the Island of Lamu in the Indian Ocean (Kenya). I actually just finished reading Danny’s entry from last week, during our first layover in Nairobi and after the Kili climb It seems like a decade ago. On our flight from the coast to Nairobi yesterday we had a cruising altitude of 18000 ft, and after take-off saw only a bed of clouds far beneath the plane... until the twin peaks of Kilimanjaro, Kibo and Mwanza, appeared to the South. It was an abrupt snap back to memories of the incredible climb, how challenging summit day was, and how long ago it all seems after Lamu. (And yes, at 18000 ft, we were cruising at an altitude below Uhuru peak).

I think the summit day was the single hardest physical thing I've ever done (yes, including marathons, ironman, half-ironman). Jules was a champ but probably walked 1000 ft higher than she should have given the nausea she started having at about 17000ft. My guess is that she got to almost 18000ft (yes- the same height as our cruising altitude!) before the dry heaving and overall feeling terrible finally convinced her that it was time to turn back. She's convinced that she took on Kili and Kili won. I, on the other hand, think she took on Kili and she won 18000 of 19300 of the battle, which represents 93% and clearly a victory for little-J. (you have to put it into numbers to convince these stat-types...) And I don't think that a tendency towards altitude sickness above 17000ft will limit her future travel plans substantially... (!).

Anywho, we were all destroyed after the summit day, which involved an ascent from 15,100ft to 19,300ft over 7km, followed by a descent down to 10,200ft over another 23km.And Jules, who did all but the top 1300ft, and 2km, had to do it all despite the nausea and illness. So...yes, we were DESTROYED! We slept one last night on the mountain then returned to the town of Moshi where a trickle of luke warm water at the hotel felt like the greatest shower of our lives, and beer never tasted so good...

But still no real rest as we were up at 5:30am the next day to catch a bus to Nairobi. We decided it was worth taking the earlier one so that we would arrive in Nairobi during daylight hours- well worth it. Beautiful bus ride around the base of Mount Meru, then across the Tanzanian/Kenyan border (complete with storybook-type African border-official drama...), and then into the city center of Nairobi. Danny had booked a hotel within spitting distance of the shuttle stop, which was a fantastic base for the 24hours that we spent in Nairobi until our flight to Lamu.

One scary aspect to our time in Nairobi last week was the discovery that the Gap Fire was within a quarter mile of our parents’ home in the Goleta foothills, and that they were evacuated for several days. The good news to report at this point seems to be that although the hillside behind their home burned in a spectacular fashion, all the homes on the hill were saved, and they have mentioned how overwhelming the kindness of friends and neighbours has been over the past week. And so, after sitting in cyber cafes in East Africa during a somewhat terrifying few days last week, it seems I should say THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU. To the firefighters, to the Goleta/Santa Barbara community that has been so kind to my family, and to the Independent for keeping us up-to-date from Kenya. Thank you.

And finally, the challenge of trying to describe our last week... I should start with my best friend from high school, Alice, who lived in Kenya as a young child for several years (actually the birthplace of her sister, Heather). Her parents maintain a close bond with an old group of friends from those days, as well as with the island paradise of Lamu. So...to celebrate Alice’s 30th birthday, her mother, Sally’s 60th, as well as the recent addition of Heather and Taylor’s engagement (woohoo!!!!) and Julie Nis’ 26th (wooohoooo!!!!!), Alice arranged a week-long party on Lamu. We rented 3 huge, beautiful houses, complete with staff and cooks (crab, lobster, shrimp, calamari... with EVERY lunch and dinner!), and 36 people made the trip from California, Washington, New York, England, Nairobi, Macau.... for the most indulgent week of my life! 80 degree water, white sand beaches, ancient Swahili architecture in tiny villages, a floating bar, a dhow regatta (of which we were on the winning dhow!), wind surfing, and drinking continuously for a week... I think the pictures will tell a better story than I ever could, so I will wait until next week when we will post our trip pictures (with a link from this blog-site).

As for what is next- we have returned to Nairobi for a quick layover before flying home (yes, home- crazy thought...) on Monday and Tuesday. We had a final hurrah at a fantastic, and very unique restaurant in Nairobi last night named appropriately, Carnivore. I’m not sure I have ever seen my husband enjoy a meal so much (and let’s be honest- danny enjoys his food...). We were first served with a pyramid of dipping sauces, and the “carvers” proceeded to circulate with a variety of beautifully cooked meats on stakes. Beef, lamb, sausages, chicken, pork ribs, ostrich meatballs, and even crocodile! All-you-can-eat! Yes. Danny enjoyed it.

And so, we are on our way home. So many more stories to share and pictures to show you all. It’s been a once-in-a-lifetime adventure- but we can’t wait for the next one!

Luv, Lynn

Pole Pole!!!

2008-07-05T01:56:00.000-07:00

We will never forget this, oh so very important, Swahili word for the rest of our lives. Pole Pole (pronounced polay polay) means SLOWLY in Swahili. It was this reminder spoken by the guides, the porters, and even the cooks at least a hundred times a day that got 7 of the 8 of us to the top of the highest mountain in Africa…19350ft! Julie unfortunately succumbed to altitude sickness at about 4:30am at approximately 18000ft on Summit day. She, nonetheless, had an incredible experience on Kilimanjaro as did the rest of us. For those of you who are not aware, Kili is the tallest free-standing mountain in the world so the sight of it from the town of Moshi where we started is truly awe inspiring. Of course Moshi is overcast most of the day so we did not actually get a glimpse of the entire mountain until after we had climbed all the way to the top and come back down.

The 8 climbers I speak of included myself, Lynn, Julie, Julie and Todd (a couple of Lynn’s friends from CA.), two girls we met in Moshi, Angela and Dipps, and a Japanese guy named Ochi, all three of whom now live and work in Dubai. Together we set out with one guide, three assistant guides, one cook, and 15 porters to go higher than any of the eight of us had ever gone. The climb begins at 6000ft. The entire first day is spent hiking up through a gorgeous rain forest that barely lets the sun shine through in some parts. Right from the beginning the guides stress “Pole Pole” and at first it seems crazy that we are going to walk and climb 76km over 7 days at a pace of one step every two seconds, but it truly saved us all from our massive egos and allowed us to go on day after day without too much negative effect from the mountain.

The other tactic that helped, which was different from Corry’s climb 5 yrs ago, was that we spent two extra days on the mt. where we would climb up to say 14000ft. and then back down to 12000 to spend the night so by the time we made it to summit base camp at 15000ft. we were pretty well acclimated. Nothing, however, really prepares you for summit day which is 6hrs of gruelling, freezing, dark, pole pole (at this point we are taking one step every 3 or 4 seconds) up to the summit beginning at 1am. You actually reach Stella point first where that amazing sunrise photo was taken and which almost cost me some fingers to frostbite. From there the summit is another 45min of half conscious, foot dragging over ice and rock all the while passing people who are already heading back down who look so mangled, you wonder what the hell we are all doing at the top of this bloody mountain. It's definitely worth it though.

You only stay up top long enough to take some pictures with forced smiles before a 3.5hr descent back down to base camp where we were able to recover a bit from the first 10hr hike before continuing on another 3.5hrs of toe jamming, knee hammering descent down to about 10200ft where we spent our final night. We almost ran down the rest of the mountain on the final day, picked up our summit certificates and proceeded to the hotel for the greatest showers of all time. We were very fortunate to have an amazing guide, Jacob (the grandfather of the mt.), who is actually a bit famous as he was the guide for the crew that filmed the IMAX movie Kilimanjaro. However, the true heroes of the mt. are the porters who carried all of our crap up the mt., always had the tents set up, hiked extra km’s everyday for our water, served us our meals, and did it all with smiles and friendly, positive attitudes. All in all an unforgettable experience and now we are off to Lamu for some well deserved R&R on a beautiful beach.

84 Cups of Tea

2008-06-26T01:55:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone! Sorry for the delay between blog entries. I actually spent an hour describing the second half of our trip to Scotland including pictures and all (!) but the hostel computer decided that after hitting “post blog-entry”, I actually meant “delete blog entry irretrievably”. And so, alas, I write this next entry from Tanzania…

To sum it up, the second half of the Scotland trip was filled with family visits, and trying not to spread what we will now label “the California-summer-death-upper-respiratory virus” that has spread from Lynn, to Julie, to Danny, further. We left Edinburgh after renting a car and headed up to Dundee, where we did 4 relative visits in 2 days (read as- 84 cups of tea between us in 2 days). After the final cup of tea, we drove across the River Tay to St. Andrews which is famous for two things- golf and the university where Mary and Roger met (thus an entire town which can be blamed for creating Lynn, Clare and Julie). Danny chilled at the Museum of Golf, and then we walked around the cathedral and castle before having a very good fish supper (fish and chips), irn bru and an early bed.

Our last day in Scotland was spent driving through to Glasgow via Stirling, the home of Stirling Castle and the Wallace Monument. After checking out the Wallace Monument, including the stunning views over Old Stirling Bridge where the English army were defeated by a clever tactical move led by William Wallace in the 1290’s (a common theme in any Scottish history- “here is the site where we fought/killed/made-fun-of/embarrassed the English”- but always fun to hear about, nonetheless…).

So, we said goodbye to Scotland on Wednesday morning and arrived at Kilimanjaro airport in Tanzania 12 hours later. A classic introduction to Africa began with our inability to find our ride to Moshi amongst the 50 or so touts, taxi-drivers and legitimate drivers at the arrival hall in the airport. Kudos to Danny for finding a little sign, held by a little guy reading “Todd, pax 2”, which we clearly should have recognized as being for us…

And so, we are here. In Africa. In a crazy little cybercafé with slow internet. Weather is nice. Overcast. Not too hot. The climb up Kili begins tomorrow and seems to be looming over us both psychologically, and literally (it’s 19000ft height is impressive from our current position at it’s base). My friends Juli and Todd join us this evening, and then we are off tomorrow morning. So, no blogging for the next week- but will be in touch again on the flip side. Hope you are all well. Lynn

Drinking tour of Scotland

2008-06-21T09:49:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone, we made it to our first destination, Scotland, yesterday and wasted no time getting around the capital of Edinburgh. Lynn booked us in the coolest hostel literally directly below Edinburgh Castle which you see in several pictures below. After touring the castle, we checked out the Royal mile and then ended up at a Scottish Ale Festival where we had 120 beers to choose from. From there we headed over to a bar to watch the Turkey/Croatia Euro 2008 soccer match where very drunk scottish folks were buying us beers to celebrate our marriage...good times. This morning I wandered around while the girls slept off their jet lag and then we met up with Lynn's Uncle and his family and did a short hike which let us look down on the entire city. We finished our visit with them over a beer at the oldest pub in Scotland opened in 1360. Very similar to Joe's, but 600 years older! We're having fun but not sure the drinking is preparing us properly for Kilimanjaro...oh well.

Off we go: Africa part 1.

2008-06-18T10:19:00.000-07:00

So... the pseudo-honeymoon begins today. The adventure begins with a few days in Scotland to visit family and to give my grandmother an obscenely large wedding photo album, followed by a flight to Tanzania with an attempt(!) at climbing Mount Kilimanjaro with friends Juli and Todd and finally a lovely week in Lamu, Kenya to celebrate Alice's 30th, Julie Nis' 26th and Sally's 60th birthdays.

Rather than filling everyone's mailboxes with mass emails, we'll be updating this page every few days with the latest news (and pictures if we can figure out how!). We'll also be checking our email regularly, so please keep in touch.

Last piece of news to report today is that we found out today that we'll be heading to Portland for Lynn's fellowship in infectious disease when we return from Uganda in the summer of 2009- so if you can't make it to Uganda next year, start looking into flights to Portland!