Plan A: 6 months in Uganda

“The rainy season started yesterday,” said Vincent, proprietor of The Republic of Uganda Design Center - General Mental [sic] Craft and Civil Works, a metalworking outfit at the end of our road. His statement took me by surprise. Conventional wisdom - espoused by guide books, tourist web sites, all those who don't live here - brackets the rainy seasons between April and May, and October and November. The hottest, driest weather of the year? Well, right now. At the time, I was crouched inside the tiny shack which serves as the office for General Mental Craft. Crouched, to make headroom for the umbrella Vincent's assistant Robert thoughtfully fetched for me as water began to find its way through the patchwork of corrugated metal above us. Rainy season? An official declaration, no, but hard to refute. The night before we awoke to the crisp smell of ozone and the din of rain attacking neighboring roofs. It has rained once or twice every day since, unfailingly at the very m...

Ostensibly, we were headed to Jinja to visit the hospital. A few months ago, Emily was contacted by the family of an American woman who found herself in Jinja Regional Referral Hospital after her boda (a motorcycle taxi, ubiquitous here) collided with a mini-bus in the main traffic circle just outside of town. She was lucky: there are no 911 dispatcher here, no ambulances, no parametics; but a bystander put her in a car and drove her 2 km to the hospital, and she was eventually attended to by a Dr. Dean, who treated her for a concussion and then drove into town to find her family, who were riding ahead of the woman on separate bodas when the accident happened. Grateful for the care and kindness they received in Jinja, the woman and her family wanted to make a donation to the hospital. Since cash would likely disappear, they asked Emily if she would pay a visit to Dr. Dean, determined how best to spend $850, and arrange for the supplies or equipment to be purchased and delivered to ...

It's hard to believe I've been here just a week. It feels like a month, maybe more. Which is to say I'm getting to know Kampala and the way things work. My proudest achievement may be cracking the inscrutable taxi (or matatu) system. (More like a bus system....for a great description of how it works, read Emily's blog posting .) I know the basic routes and I can distinguish the hand signals the conductors use to indicate which direction they will go. I know the etiquette of loading and unloading, the best seats to have, the right words to say to request a stop at the next street corner vs. the next taxi stand. And, I'm starting to get a feel for what the fare should be from this point to that point. The challenge of knowing what to pay for things isn't limited to transportation. Outside of larger stores and restaurants, prices are rarely posted. There are some unwritten rules that generally hold for commodities: a samosa 200 shillings, a Coke 600 shillin...

I spent over an hour inside a sweltering internet café in downtown Kampala just to get those 4 tiny pictures uploaded to my last post. Emily likes to say the entire country shares a single dial-up connection, and I'm starting to think she might be right. I would look into it if I could get online. More to come when I get this situation sorted out.

Well, already I'm behind on my blogging. I've been here 4 days, and there is so much to talk about, I'm really not sure where to begin. Right now I'm sitting in O'Leary's Irish pub, a popular destination for the ex-pat crowd on account of the familiar environment and free wireless internet. Other than the patio adorned with flowers and palm trees, it looks like any Irish pub at home - a well-worn bar with a wide selection of whiskey and Guiness taps (not working today), sturdy wooden furniture, cricket on the television, a clock that doesn't work. I'm told the Irish stew (2-for-1 on Mondays) is excellent. Emily is back to work, so today I set out on my own with a modest goal: take public transportation to Nakawa, the site of one of Kampala's larger open-air markets, and buy a chain and padlock for my bike. Open-air markets like this one are where many Ugandans fulfill everyday needs - food, clothing, livestock, housewares, small appliances, hardw...

Until today I didn't really understand duty-free shopping. The guilty pleasure of shorting the government a few bucks never seemed worth the hassle of lugging around a bag full of items I could buy right at home - maybe even for less. But here I am, buying $87.53 worth of cheese in a duty-free shop in the Amsterdam airport. How quickly your perspective changes when home is a place where the small luxuries you enjoy routinely are harder to come by. In a few hours we'll be boarding a flight to Entebbe, the main international airport in Uganda. Emily has spent the last 4 months in Kampala, Uganda's capital, working with a local health and human rights NGO. This city of around 2 million people, and scarce little good cheese, will be my home for the next 6 months. Just a few weeks ago I left my job, my friends, and the majority of my possession in Seattle and began a journey that has been in the planning since May, when Emily accepted a fellowship with Physicians for Human R...