I left early the next morning and boarded a plane which stopped briefly in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, before touching down in Entebbe, Uganda. Max, a prospective UofR PhD student was waiting for me (we had communicated through email) and he helped me get from Entebbe to Kampala, a drive which took about an hour, and helped me to a decent place to exchange money and purchase a wireless USB modem. Sweet. Max was awesome, very cool and friendly, besides incredibly helpful, going quite far out of his way to help me, including having booked me a room at a good hotel. It was too late in the day to make the journey from Kampala to Kagando. I slept. Sort of. Early the next morning, Max and I went to catch a bus to Fort Portal, where I would be meeting up with someone from KARUDEC to bring me the rest of the way. The bus company we took was called Kalita, meaning speed or swiftness or something like that, but this was no express. The packed bus bounced along through villages and pot holes at probably an average of 35-40 miles an hour.
The bus would slow down in some of the villages, and people with woven baskets of grilled corn, chapati, and chicken or goat on a stick would come and hold their goods up to the windows. If people seemed interested (aka reaching through the windows or shouting) the bus would stop and let the vendors on. Having had very little for breakfast, I was very hungry and it was delicious, each time. And cheap. $ 1 US is about 2240 Ugandan shillings, or was when I got my money exchanged. These snacks were less than 1500 shillings.
The ride took much longer than expected, mostly due to poor road conditions or construction, and finally we arrived and met Mercy, the director of the IT department at the Kagando Hospital and who I would be working with, and her husband and 3 year old son, Martin, who was adorable. Also they had just got a kitten while waiting which was sitting in a box in the car, also adorable. From Fort Portal we drove about 2 hours, I think I fell asleep for a bit.
When I arrived at the guest house where I would be staying I met Geoff, a delightfully entertaining old chap from Manchester, England, who had been at KARUDEC working on a project introducing bio-sand filters for turning river water into perfectly clean drinking water, free of E. coli and everything else. Its really quite incredible actually, you just run the water through SAND and a few rocks in a large pot with a drain from the bottom and it cleans it of everything. I cannot imagine a better solution exists for those who live in these conditions.
After resting for a bit, dinner was ready at 7:30, and it more or less hit the spot, consisting of rice, goat? stew?, and creamy chunks of avocado. We were joined by John, another older gentleman from the UK, who was here working with an orphanage near by. Everything the kitchen at the guest house where I am staying is safe to eat. Jolie and Alice, who run the guest house and prepare the food, are probably only a few years older than myself. The guest house is part of the hospital and is one of its few revenue sources. I think all of that revenue comes from foreigners volunteers like us.
There happened to be a party going on that night at the Clay House, the other living center where some of the medical interns/volunteer nurses etc. were staying. It turned out to be a going away party for some Belgian nurses, but at least I got to meet the other volunteers there.
And so, finally, my journey had ended. For three weeks, I will stay here and do what I can to help a number of electrical and IT issues impeding the development of the hospital and school here.
[Pictures coming soon...]
No comments:
Post a Comment