Welcome to Uganda 2012

Even at midnight, the road from the airport to the capital city was colorful and bustling. A poor choice of flight time led me to arrive way too late to enjoy the initial scenery that I often look forward to whenever I first land in a country I've never been to. But despite the darkness, the road just outside the airport had much excitement going on. The insides of houses were lit with either white or yellow lights, including the occasional pink. The sidewalks were filled with women wearing colorful dresses and men wearing the usual business casual attire, which they wear at all times of the day. During the few moments when I was not taking in the nighttime scenery, I was bracing myself for how close from on-coming traffic the driver of my taxi was driving and how close he had almost hit the motorcycles passing us by. We arrived at the hostel after about 50 minutes of such close zigzagging through traffic I'm surprised nobody got killed. I was greeted by a tall, skinny man with one eye at the front desk. This was the type of man who needed to be wearing an eye-patch, but wasn't. As I was staring at his bad eye for a second, he broke the silence and said to me “Welcome to Uganda.”

Monkeys and large pelican's, as opposed to sloppy-looking European backpackers, were the first ones to greet me the next day. Although I shouldn't be saying anything about my European bunk-mates. My T-shirt and cargo shorts would have allowed me to fit in with local Ugandan men as well as I had fit in with investment bankers that time I went to some investment banking info session in a sweater and jeans just for the free food. I met my colleague Albert a few minutes later; he was dressed to fit in. He spent the rest of that morning helping me get set up with a working phone and internet.  Thankfully, he had arrived three days before I did and got himself acquainted already.

Just before we packed up our belongings and took off into the countryside where were to meet our hosts for the summer, Albert and I decided to go into the city to taste some local Ugandan cuisine. The food we saw reminded me of the free vegetarian dinner that is offered every Monday at Duke's Bryan Center. Namely, they had beans, spinach, and some kind of mashed corn, mashed banana or rice. The fast food joints that Albert had seen in the city served chicken that was too greasy for his comfort. For my first meal in Kampala, we went to a Chinese restaurant.

We took a taxi into the countryside. The most noticeable marks along the road were red hills of dirt that were about the height of a person. The taxi driver told me they were created by termites.

Upon arrival in Nkokonjeru, we were greeted by...well...nobody. Our contact, Moses, whom I had tried to get in touch with many times prior to our arrival, turned out to be back in Kampala. None of the colleagues that worked in the credit union in that town knew we were coming. So we turned to our next best option: find the RASD, the hostel we were going to stay at.

Ignitious, the charming fellow who understands my English without me needing to slow down my speech, gave us a tour of the town. We spent most of the tour walking around the hospital, where we anticipate we'll be doing some of our work this summer. The medical fees were listed near the cashier's window. You can get a minor operation for 10,000 shillings ($4), major operations for 35,000 shillings (roughly $14), and a week's stay at the hospital for malaria treatment for 68,000 shillings (roughly $28). Sadly, most people here in this town have trouble affording hospital treatment, so we were told. And this cost of treatment leads to problems with retaining trained medical staff, since they consider their wages to be too low to be worth staying in this town.