First week in Kampala

Each day that passes makes writing this blog post more and more challenging.  How to encapsulate all that the last week has included—it’s too large a task.  I must try to write more often than this, so that I’m not caught in this position again.

I was set to fly from Kenya to Uganda early last Friday morning, but I awoke at about 3am with a strong discomfort in my stomach.  Over the next several hours it developed into a piercing pain, and I found myself running to the bathroom, where I resided for the next several hours.  When the time for our departure to the airport arrived, I knew I could not make it.  As unnerving as the idea of missing my flight was, I was in too much pain and had too constant a need for the toilet to go anywhere.  My future roommate, Shira, encouraged me to call a healthcare consulting alliance to which AJWS offers membership for its volunteers.  I described my symptoms to the nurse who answered, and she insisted I go to the emergency room at Nairobi Hospital.  With the help of the hotel staff and one of the NGO partners staying at the hotel, I managed to get into a taxi and head to the hospital.  I spent nearly five hours in the hospital, having my temperature taking via my armpit, lying on a hospital gurney, and receiving shots for the pain and to settle my stomach in a part of my body that hasn’t been the recipient of an inoculation since I was a toddler.  I asked the doctor who suggested the shots if they used new needles.  She stopped what she was doing and glared at me, stating, “We only use new needles.  We don’t boil our needles.”  I felt embarrassed but still relieved to be so clearly assured that they would only stick me with uncontaminated needles.  Having slept the majority of time my there, I felt a bit faint and achy but pushed myself to return to the hotel, so I could take the final flight of the day with the Uganda-based AJWS representative.  None of the other volunteers, all of whom had eaten at the same restaurant I had the night before, fell sick—it must have been my initiation into the international travelers club in which the rest of the volunteers already have membership. 

When I arrived in Kampala, Flavia met me.  She is an administrator at my placement NGO.  She is one of the warmest, most hospitable, people I have ever met.  She lives next door and has done everything from cook for Shira and me to traipse all over Kampala helping us find clothing, our offices, several country clubs, open markets, cell phones, sim cards, and modems.  

Flavia giving a presentation at our orientation.  She and I are the same height!

The major mode of transportation in Kampala is the public taxi.  There are also plenty of people who walk to their destinations, and there are also the dangerous, quick and cheap boda bodas, which are motorcycles that are most often driven by men without helmets and can be found weaving in between cars and the wrong way down one-way streets.  Public taxis are 16-seater Toyota vans, and Shira and I believe they serve as a testament to the indestructibility of Toyota vehicles, despite the debacles they faced in America this year.  Each taxi boasts both a driver and a conductor.  They work in tandem, soliciting potential passengers at every conceivable moment.  The conductor shouts out the window in lightening speed, akin to an auctioneer’s monologue.  Each passenger pays according to the distance she travels, though most routes are a fixed price (fixed, that is, unless it rains or is exceptionally busy, which allows the conductor to charge much higher prices for his route than usual.  Most routes cost between 300 and 1500 shillings one way, or about $.25 to $1.40 American.  It often feels crammed and usually carries the pungent odor of too many individuals who were just contending with the equatorial sun. 

Trying to acclimate to a semi-normal Ugandan life has been challenging.  We have lost water and power several times, and everything feels simultaneously familiar and foreign.  We have cars; they have cars.  Except their cars travel on the other side of the road, they have no stop signs, lights, or other traffic accident abating mechanisms.  We have cows; they have cows.  Except their cows graze on the curb by my house, in the median of the road, in people's front and backyards... Every day I am so inundated with newness and challenges so that I feel like a week has passed by the time I come home.  There is poverty here I couldn't have fathomed, and there are stories of struggle that are beyond comprehending.  It is overwhelming.

Waiting in the car as the long-horn cattle meander across the road

More ambling cows

And a little brown heifer was winking at me...Oy what a beautiful day in Okla-I mean, Kampala!

I need to write so much more.  I want to describe my job here, as I experienced it last week during an entrepreneurship training for 20 women, ages 18-22 or so, who were all recipients of scholarships that allowed them to attend high school.  I also spent a day at the school the previous AJWS volunteer who worked with my NGO founded, and fell in love with the 60 or so students, ages 8 to 15, that I met there.  I want to share about the unique Ugandan fruits (and the fruits that are familiar but taste very different than their north American counterparts, like oranges and pineapples).  I want to describe the way people react to Shira and me, the “muzungus,” as they (unabashedly and often) call those of us with white skin.  That will all have to wait—after an exhausting day trolling shops in an open air market and buying three work skirts (I also have to describe the way people dress here!) for a total of about $8 and brushing past what must have been at least a third of Kampala’s 3 million person population, I need to get some rest.  Here of some pictures of my humble Ugandan abode.  More tomorrow!

My huge canopied bed, in all it's misquito-netted glory!

Our "compound"

Our unit, which is marked "blue."  The unit upstairs, which is currently inhabited by a lovely Canadian couple, is labeled "beige."  Interesting color selections!