California Christmas?

First off, that last post 'bushara blues' really was terrible. I seem to have lost my touch. Lots of stuff happened that week, I don't know why I thought it was so boring. To recap: the girls there have an amazing rope swing that carries the swinger way above the water for a fun drop. We had a good time on that swing, and even learned that when the wooden handle gets wet, the swing becomes dangerously slippery. I was the first to experience this unfortunate effect. Luckily, I just missed the reeds when I slipped off and landed in pretty deep water.

I'll put in a nice healthy rope swing progression first:

I've got great form here. Notice my tucked legs, just passing over the SHARP reeds below.


Here I've cleared the reeds and am now preparing for my release. At this point, timing is everything.



One leg down and one tucked. True Bushara form, this was a perfect 10/10. As graceful as a maribou stork.


And look at that. Barely any splash at all. Bravo Graeme, bravo.



Now that you've seen what a beautiful swing looks like, let me show you my botched attempt:


Observe my legs- fully extended, ready to slam into the reeds.


This zoomed in shot shows me just after slipping off of the handle. I tried to maintain form to make the fall seem graceful. I think I succeeded.



A large splash accompanied by a reed-scratched body and a water slapped chest and face. Lesson learned.


Aside from the rope swing, I was also treated to 1st world conveniences like an oven! Still no electricity or running water, but at least we were able to cook Western food. That was pretty sweet actually. Bryony and Emily sure make a mean mac and cheese (which uses an entire wheel of gouda) and a pretty delicious cocunut milk curry as well. Some members of our little threesome even managed to taste their curry twice, sharing it with the brick patio after some poor decisions. And no, for once, it was not me!



Another fun aspect of Bushara was all the insect life. Emily and Bryony have a permanent shoes policy, which pays off whenever you hear a big CRUNCH. Centipedes, spiders, cockroaches were the main culprits. I made sure to do a bug sweep before bed, but Bryony is the one that should have been concerned. She found a nasty spiders nest in one of her skirts one morning. yuck!



On the drive back from Kabale to Mbarara, we were asked by ACTS to check out a medical facility that would potentially act as the hospital for ACTS staff in emergencies. Good things had been heard about Kasiizi hospital, so we agreed to have a look. We drove for about 1/2 hour or 45 minutes outside of Kabale, then turned onto a dirt road. We bumped along this road for about 1.5 hours, stopping often to ask locals if we were going the right way. As usual, most had no idea what we were saying, so we continued along hoping that we were headed in the right direction. We finally did reach the hospital, and when we turned the corner and it came into view we were all amazed. It was by far the nicest hospital I'd seen in Uganda. It had multiple wings, one which was two stories tall! It boasted a maternity ward, operating room, dental clinic, and most impressively, a mental health clinic. That amazed us as the care for mental health in Uganda is essentially non-existant. Moses (who I will tell you about in a minute) told us a story about a man who was chained up in a shed because he had a mental health problem. The community didn't know what to do with him, so they chained him up and threw him food (sadly, a lot of the world deals with menatl illness in this way). But, thanks to the Kasiizi mental clinic, the man was councilled and given medication and is now pretty much fine. We were guided around the facilities by a 75 year old British nurse named Hazel. She had come to Uganda to work for 6 months, but had stayed for 8 years. She led us to meet with a Ugandan man named Moses, who was the administrative director. When I introduced myself, his first question was if I spelld my name graham or graeme. I was stunned. Most of you people think 'graeme' is a ridiculous way to spell my name, but this Ugandan guy knew all about it. Turns out he was UK educated, so his english was great and we had a good visit with him.

That week wasn't so bad afterall. I'm now back in California fighting off jet lag (11 hour difference is pretty rough) and trying to ignore the crazy holiday madness. It's a bit of reverse culture shock, coming from a place so poor and being dropped back into our Western consumer culture. I saw an ad for a plastic christmas tree with fiber-optic needles and an eiffel tower shaped base equipped with an MP3 player. Only $295! What the hell? Light switches are taking a little getting used to. It's amazing to walk into a room and summon light at any time. Magical! Showers here take a ton of water. I can't believe how much water comes out of my shower here, especially since I used to consider it a shower with very low pressure. Not to mention I can control exactly how hot or cold I'd like the water throughout my shower. Our toilets have perfectly clean drinking water in them. Today (when I woke up at 5:00am) I started to look for matches to light our stove, then quickly realized we have electric burners. I saw a box of bottled water and wondered why we have any bottled water at all. Perfectly clean water comes right out of the taps! Carpets feel amazing to bare feet, no more cold, sticky, dusty cement. Coffee! I got crazy shakes when I had a capuccino at Heathrow, so I'm working my way back up, starting with decaf. I have meal jet lag as well. This morning I really wanted a big plate of vietnamese food. The place didn't open till 9 though, so I was four hours too early. That was kind of wierd. Cars drive on the right side again! Most cars are newer than 1995, and there are no boda bodas anywhere! I had to pay $25 for a cab in London, where as in Mbarara I would have paid 70 cents for a longer distance on the back of a motorcycle, with the added benefit of sunshine and open air. Take me back to Uganda!

Here are a whole bunch of pictures. I put them at the bottom so you'd all actually read the text. I'm back in boring North America now, so the blog will come to a close. Hope everybody enjoyed the posts, and I'll let you all know when I get to go on another crazy trip! Lastly, I'd say to everyone reading this that if you haven't had a chance to go to a place like Uganda, do it as soon as you can. I learned way more in the last couple months than I have in years here!



Above is me in Kikagati with one of Ezra's kids (I think....).




This is Joel, our Quebecois, bartering over a mutatu ride in Kigali. He was surrounded by everyone within one square mile. They all needed to hear his beautiful Quebecois french....or maybe they were mesmerized by his carefree golden curls...




This is a picture of downtown Kigali, and was the view from our hotel room.




We saw these kids near the border of Tanzania. The game was to drag the kid around on the jerry can sled (or maybe wagon?). Pretty cute. Behind them you can see a goat hanging from the tree, ready to be grilled up and served on a stick.




A common sight around any of the rural areas. Little kids hanging out with mom.




One of the precarious crossing. On either side of the truck's wheels was a huge drop into a stream. It took some creative driving to get through that one.





Here I am gardening with the Rubingo widows group. They think white people using hoes is absolutely hilarious. They're probably right.




This is a pile of garbage on a truck in Kampala. Sweet!




Here are a couple people banging on big giant drums to call people to church. If I remember correctly (which I do) this service was at Kashenyi, near Rubigno, and lasted close to 8 hours. I also remember eating lunch here, and my goat still having its fur.

The Bushara Blues

I'm back from a week spent on Bushara Island, a little resort on Lake Bunyonyi near Kabale. It was super nice lounging by the lake for a few days, although I did do a little work here and there. Everyone travels by dug out canoe from island to island, and the two interns I was visiting do the same. Each canoe is hand made from big trees, and each has its own eccentricities. The one that Emily and I took to Bwana Island (where the agro-forestry program is) had a definite tilt to the left. So much so that I found myself leaning waaaaaay over to the right just to try and correct it. We managed not to flip, which is nice because all of the locals already stare, point, etc... at the mzungus paddling a dug out. The agroforestry program there seems to be centered around reforestation. They have a huge tree nursery, and grow all sorts of different types of trees, then give them to the communities for free. It helps a lot with erosion, especially because the lake bunyoni area is all steep hills. Not much crazy stuff happened over the week though. Turned out to be a pretty relaxing time.

I will make sure to post a bunch of pictures when I make it back to California for all of you who don't get a personal show. For now, here is a nice picture of a handsome bird.







This is a Maribou Stork. They are absolutely vile. They're enormous, probably 3 or 4 feet tall, and all over Kampala. I would hate to be shat on by one.

Those Pictures I Promised

Here is a pic of us on the Nile. I am the one in the front right. We are pretty screwed in this rapid already.







These two are a before and after on a giant rapid called The Juice. There is an enormous hole right in the middle that we aimed straight for. You can see me in the front right of the boat about to get launched. I didn't really realize it at the time, but when we watched the video you can see me get shot up into the air a few feet, then fall back onto the raft right before it flips completely. The swim on that one was smooth but loooooooooooooong. There is a lot of power in the river, and it loves to keep you down.





Above is a picture of the whole group of us enhoying our Nile Specials after a long day on the river. Eleven of us came over with ACTS and the two tall guys in the back are friends from Canada who are starting up an NGO that establishes libraries in East Africa.




Above are the live critters, and below is me enjoying my very first fried hopper.







Look at all of them! This is the end product. It takes sooooo long to strip them of their wings and legs. At first we felt pretty bad doing it, but everyone got desensitized pretty fast. It was just preparing food, kind of like shucking corn.

The Last Chai Time

Yesterday, I had to sadly depart from my beloved Rubingo once and for all. We sipped our chai (the 90% whole milk, 10% tea deliciousness they drink here) and said our last goodbyes in the Rubingo dining hall. I have one more week here in Uganda, and I'll be spending most of it on Bushara Island, a succesful eco-tourism project ACTS started years ago. Imagine, a success. I will be spoiled there for a week where I can eat somewhat Western food and even have hot water delivered for showers. I have a big fat book to read, and I plan on sitting around doing nothing for a full five days.

A quick recap on the week's events. I worked in the aid station at our camp in Rubingo for a couple of days this week, which was eye-opening (but then again, most things are here). Most people who came through had malaria, which we can easily treat with drugs supplied by the government. It becomes pretty easy to tell who has malaria because the symptoms are always the same; really hot fever, joint pain, some nausea. The cute little kids who come into the clinic always chew up their pills, which is absolutely disgusting. Apparently they don't really understand the concept of swallowing it whole, or maybe they're just not capable quite yet. One five year old decided to chew his up, then wash it down with water, then vomit it back up all over the place. I don't really blame him, if I was chewing cloroquine, I'd probably barf it back up too.

One challenge in the aid station is filtering out who is actually poor enough to need our help and who just thinks the mzungus have endless pockets. It sucks to send people away who may really need our help, but the policy is if it's not an emergency they don't get much besides advice.

One day in the week Tanessa and I decided to go observe in the Bugamba health clinic, which is kind of the main hospital (and I use the term very loosely) in the area. By the time we got there, most of the normal patients (50% malaria) had been seen, so we were allowed to observe the antinatal care. An extremely qualified midwife showed us how to figure out how many weeks pregnant a woman is just by using your fingers on her belly, and also to figure out how the baby is positioned in the womb. She is confident that she is more accurate than even an ultra sound machine, and I can't say that I would challenge that. It turns out you really have to knead (sp? not a word i type much) those bellies, and smoosh the baby around a whole bunch. I was appreshensive at first, but gained confidence and eventually was pushing and prodding pretty darn hard. The baby usually gets pissed off and starts kicking at the disturbing hands, which helps in locating its appendages (which were referred to as nodules). When the woman is super pregnant, you can feel a very definite head just below her belly button, and you're even supposed to move it around a bit to make sure.

Yesterday we hopped into the truck (who's passenger window just shattered, the reason still a mystery) and drive to a World AIDS Day event in a neighboring subcounty. When we arrived, we were welcomed and asked to sign the guestbook, then left to ourselves. We tried to figure out what was going on, but couldn't so just sat down in some seats. Someone eventually handed us a program, and it showed that most of the day was done by about 12:00, and we hadn't arrived until about 1:00. Whatever events were left looked like they weren't going to happen for a little while, so after grabbing some lunch (beef stew and matooke) we came back and had a seat again. We sat back down, and watched a few school groups perform some songs, which was pretty cool. Then it started to rain and everyone ran for cover. It was in that cover that we found out that none of the events for the day had started, even though it was past 3:00 at that point. In true African style, a 9:00am start time had turned into a 3:00pm start time. On top of that, we overheard one of the coordinators yelling on his phone at the Guest of Honor, who had completely failed to show up, and was not planning on doing so. At this point, we quietly took our leave, and guiltily drove away. It was like a junior higher's birthday party that nobody showed up to; awkward for everyone. I write it here as an example of how things function- or fail to function- in Uganda.

After the AIDS day, we went back to camp and were going to leave, but decided to give Melanie, another intern, a malaria test since she wasn't feeling well. Turns out she was (and is) positive, so we decided to take her back to Mbarara, where there are much better medical resources. The private clinic in Rubingo was a tiny building with many rooms with sheets as doors. There was no electricity, and it was dark by the time we could head out, so we walked through pitch black halls to find her room. The health worker at the clinic had decided to put her on a quinine IV, which seemed a bit extreme, but is a pretty quick way of treating malaria. The only problem was that the IV would take about 4 hours to empty, and we had an hour and a half drive back to Mbarara. So, we decided to bring the IV along with us in the car. I was elected to drive while Tanessa (a nurse from vancouver) would monitor the IV and make sure it didn't flow too fast. We covered the broken window with plastic, rigged up a sitting place for the IV bag with some hockey tape I had in my backpack, and turned on some Christmas music. Driving here sucks all the time, but at night is absolutely horrible. We had to opt for the "shortcut" to Mbarara, as it is all dirt roads with little traffic. Going out onto any paved road at night here is a death wish. So we bumped along over crazy dirt roads on the edge of giant cliffs, Tanessa watching the drips with her cell phone light and me singing along to Christmas carols while trying to keep us from plumetting to certain death and trying to make a road made of boulders as smooth as possible for our sick friend. I have to admit I was smiling the whole time.

So that brings us to today. We made it home to Canada House in Mbarara, and we've gotten Mel some oral quinine (screw the IV, she can swallow). Tomorrow takes me to Kabale, which you can see on the map on the last post. I should get one more good one in before I fly home!