Uganda Summer 2009 Final Chapter: The Lost Is Found

On my last day in Uganda, I woke up to french toast being cooked for me by the interns: a delicious way to start off 40 hours of travel. They were inspired to cook for me since the night before, I had prepared vodka sauce and pasta for the crew staying at the office (probably because it was heavy on the vodka). I had to feel a little bit guilty about this meal, because it cost more than most Ugandans probably spend on a week's worth of meals, but I wanted to do something nice for these interns, who were spending some of their last days in Uganda working hard on their final reports and helping to clean up our incredible mountain of random items in the storeroom.

After saying many goodbyes, I hauled my two large suitcases down the dirt path towards Igangatown, creating quite a spectacle. "Mzungu, those bags are too heavy for you!" "Madame, let me assist you!" "Mzungu byeeeee!"

It took me so long to drag them around all the potholes and over the uneven ground that I arrived in town at the time when I was meant to meet my ride to the airport, instead of early, as I had hoped. I was planning to stop at the police station to try to pick up some piece of paper to certify the situation regarding my lost wallet, for insurance purposes. Instead, I just waited at the main intersection of town for my ride to show up. After 20 minutes, I was pacing in circles around my bags. After 30 minutes, I had stomach cramps, convinced I had been forgotten but with no more mobile phone to communicate, since I had donated it to UVP. After 45 minutes, just as I was ready to toss my french toast up by the side of the road in a state of panic, my ride pulled up. I decided that I needed to join this man on Africa time, and stop being such an American. I sent him to pick up the other traveling interns, and stopped at the police station.

I walked in to a crowd of people staring at me, which has stopped seeming strange. "I'd like to report a lost wallet." I said. A woman in a police uniform, scribbling in a notebook at the desk, asked "when did this wallet go missing?" I felt rather silly, realizing that it had been nearly a month since the wallet was stolen, though Dad had stopped in the day after the theft and told me that the police did not have it. "Just recently," I said, bashfully. "I know I will never get it back, but I just wanted to make a report." The crowd stared at me some more. A man leaning up against the counter next to me in a suit jacket raised an eyebrow. "Alison, you did not lose that wallet just recently." He said. This time I stared at him. "Do you know something about it?" "We have recovered your wallet." The policewoman said to me. I was incredulous. "We have spent money on your case!" She emphasized, giving me a meaningful look. She led me to a side room in the station, where a man opened a locked drawer and pulled out my wallet. I burst into tears, and then felt even more foolish. "Why are you not happy?" The woman asked me. "I thought I was never going to see it again." I blubbered nonsensically. I had cancelled all the cards inside, and the money was, of course, gone, so I have no idea why I was getting so emotional about my driver's license recovery, except that I was emotional because I was leaving Uganda.

I found out that the local councilman from one of the district villages had arrested a man carrying my wallet just that week and brought him into the station. That man was still at the station and they planned to press charges for the theft. The police claimed that they had had to pay the councilman 20,000 shillings for the return of the wallet. I wasn't sure what to make of this tale, but I was willing to give up everything I had at that point. I pressed the 15,000 shillings I had kept for emergencies on the way to the airport into the policewoman's hands. "Please, take this, thank you." "What about my gift from America?" She asked. "You own me many thanks because I have worked so hard on your case." "Yes, next time I return you can have something from America."

When I finally finished making my police statement, I ran out the door, hopped into the car, and started the trek to Entebbe. We made it exactly 2 hours prior to my departure time despite the hours spent at the police station. I just couldn't believe that from some village out in the bush, my wallet had come back to me. I didn't realize until after I left that I should have urged for leniency for the thief, since stoning to death is a common local penalty for stealing.

Uganda Summer 2009 Part 11: We're Going To Die!

Jinja, the next city west of Iganga, is the location of the source of the Nile River. Though I have visited and paddled around the Source (which is often thought of in capital letters here), as well as spent some time enjoying the vistas of the Nile downstream, I have never taken part in its most famous pastime: rafting! This time I had pledged to myself that even though I was afraid to brave the rapids, I would raft the Nile. So on Sunday, my parents, my brother Brian and I took the plunge. The morning started in Jinja at the Nile River Explorers hostel, where free breakfast and trip preparation took place. I seized the opportunity to eat a mouthwateringly delicious bacon and egg sandwich for breakfast – yes, my vegetarian diet is on hiatus to some extent while in Africa, since most of the farm animals here seem to live a life of pastoral luxury. I still eat rice and beans and bread for most meals, but I have been partaking in the occasional chicken. While we ate, a video showing rafts capsizing dramatically as rafters flew through the air into the raging river played, and everyone watched nervously out of the corners of their eyes.

We donned helmets and life vests and joined the crew of Aussies, Americans, Brits, and muscle-bound Swedes for the trip to our starting point. Swedes love to show off their awesome abs, or so I have concluded after meeting several representatives of that country on this trip. We rumbled on a ‘lorry’ down the dirt road to the rafting start point. Although the kids who live along this road must see busloads of us being carted past every single day, they still run screaming like banshees towards the bus, crying out “mzunguuuu!” like it was their job. This adds evidence to my theory that we need more anthropological research on what compels the “mzungu!” phenomenon.

Upon forming a group with 2 Brits and a nervous Tanzanian, we met our rafting guide, Peter. Peter was a muscular Ugandan local with a penchant for dark humor and the use of a falsetto voice. Actually, I really need to conduct more anthropological research into why men in eastern Uganda find falsetto voices hilarious. I think it’s similar to the way Britons can’t get over transvestites in comedy. Anyhow, Peter introduced himself by saying “Nice to meet you all. I’ve never done this before, but I watched the video at the hostel very carefully, and it looks pretty easy.” The Brits looked at him with eyes like saucers. “REALLY?” Peter kept a straight face.

We floated down the peaceful initial portion of the river while learning all the rafting commands: “Forward! Harder! Lean in! GET DOWN!!!” “Get down!” means that you crouch in the bottom of the raft, clutching the side rope and your paddle. As we approached the first set of rapids, we learned that Peter’s favorite catchphrase is to scream “WE’RE GOING TO DIEEEE!” in his best falsetto just prior to the raft entering the rapids. For those who have not encountered the Nile Rapids, the class 6 rapids which are considered too dangerous to be run on a raft have names like “the Dead Frenchman” and “the Dead Dutchman”. The lower class rapids that we take on in the raft have more warm and fuzzy names, like “The Bad Place” and “Vengeance”.

Each large rapid, as we approached, was simply a crashing noise and a spray of whitewater that appeared just at the horizon line. Then just prior to falling down into the maelstrom of waves, you could see the entire rapid in front of you just in time to yell “this looks crazy!!” and be terrified. It was thrilling. As we cascaded down one of the falls, the raft crumpled underneath us and we were all thrown into the water. I felt like I was thrust down 20 feet into the water, and struggled mightily to no avail to reach the surface. It was the scariest portion of the trip, because although I could perceive through my closed eyes that the water was getting lighter, and therefore I must be approaching the sun, I had the horrible feeling I had no idea how far down I was. As my face surfaced, I tried to take a large gulp of air which became a large gulp of the Nile. I was submerged again and swirling downstream uncontrollably, unable to do anything but try to keep my mouth above water and flail and sputter and cough. Although rafting is amazing, flipping is not enjoyable to me.

We had several nice stretches of calm water where we could swim in the warm water, or observe the bird life: rows of cormorants in different colors diving underwater, stately herons and egrets, and little yellow birds that dart between a hundred nests hanging from the branches of one tree, like a hundred orbs of twigs. Of course, the bird life was punctuated by groups of women doing their laundry in the river. In most cases, it seemed to be one person doing the laundry, and twenty idle children spectating at the riverside, hoping to catch a glimpse of mzungu madness. We ate pineapple and buttery cookies called “Glucose biscuits” for our midday snack as we floated.

Finally, our group elected to walk around the last rapid, an unbelievable cyclone of water called The Bad Place, which is partially a class 6 rapid. Peter laughed at us and called our route the “chicken line”, clucking, of course, in his falsetto. We had a few regrets as we watched the rafts fly over the waves, but I did end up glad I was not trapped underneath again.

After rafting, we were taken for a banquet to the rafting company’s campsite. They had an array of amazing looking food, including – a tray of pasta! Would it surprise you if I told you I had a can of Parmesan cheese in my backpack for just such an occasion? Mmmm…. What a day.

Training For All

My last workshop was a resounding success. Aside from starting almost 3 hours late, which we can easily discount as expected, we had good turnout, we were able to get through the entire curriculum including all the hands-on skills stations, and the participants seemed to learn a lot. I noted at the beginning of the workshop that there seemed to be quite a wide spectrum of knowledge and skills amongst the participants. One participant in particular seemed to have a poorer command of English, so I tried to ensure that he had understood each point before moving on. I spent extra time with him at the skills stations. At the end of the course, I was gratified to see that his score had increased from about 20% on the pre-test to 55% on the post-test. Despite the language barrier, he had learned a significant number of the objectives of the course.

Later, I was entering in the data into my spreadsheet of participants, and I burst out laughing. Everyone working nearby stared at me. I helplessly continued to giggle while re-reading the sign-in sheet from the workshop: the participant I had struggled to train in neonatal resuscitation was the health center’s security guard.

Post-script: we had also trained the lab tech and the lab assistant. The lab tech scored 30% both before and after the course, but the lab assistant finished the course with a score of 80% (!)

Uganda Summer 2009 Part 10: The Fun Fair

As a final event to conclude my dad’s summer soccer camp for orphans, he organized a tournament between the two orphanages he worked with. The hosting orphanage has a fantastic property, a large farm with several buildings of classrooms, several dormitories, an art room, a volleyball court, and a soccer field. It houses about 40 orphans. The visiting orphanage has over 80 residents but has significantly smaller space, as well as the prior pictured soccer field, which is definitely not fit for bare feet, much less a ball that always tends to roll downhill.

Dad had an ambitious plan for teams to be made and split the day into time periods which the teams would rotate through to score points for their team by playing games against each other. Translate that into African time and African style, and we had 120 kids with a variety of colored ribbons on their heads running around squealing and having a good time and playing. The day opened with many welcome songs, so many that we started to think we would be watching performances until lunchtime. The performers basically had to be stopped to go play the games they had come to play. Mom was busy cooking banana bread on a sigiri, a small round charcoal stove. This is accomplished by placing the banana bread pan on top of two empty tuna fish cans placed inside a large metal pot, with another large metal pot placed on top to create a Dutch oven. This banana bread came out fantastically, but it took several hours to bake each loaf, so by lunchtime only one loaf for the 150 of us was cut into tiny bites of banana bread for everyone.

I was assigned to the four square station, which wasn’t a real station, it was just a four square court I drew with chalk on an uneven area of concrete and then tried to recruit wayward children. I realized as I looked at it that the squares were warped and 2nd square was far smaller than 4th square. I had to sweep the stones and goat detritus off the court before starting to play with a broom made of twigs. (The orphanage has a goat named Jennifer) After going to all this trouble, I was excited to gather several girls who had been pushed out from the volleyball court, until I realized I was trying to teach a fairly complex game to young children who did not speak my language. It took at least 45 minutes to establish rule #1: the ball can only bounce once in your square. I gave up and led them to the face painting table, where about five kids were getting each cheek, each hand, and their foreheads decorated with butterflies and hearts.

The day was a resounding success, and when it was time for farewells, we got a wonderful sendoff with many “weebales” (“way ba lay”: thank yous). Again we had singing, but this time we had special personalized songs and dances. “Mr. Dick Weebale, Mr. Dick Weebale!” was my favorite. The next best was “Mr. Dick, we are very sorry, that you are leaving, keep on remembering us!…” This was repeated verse by verse for “Maama Linda” and “Mr. Aa-rin” (which must be Brian, but we decided this might be some weird fusion between Alison and Brian since only 3 names were mentioned. We finished with some folk music and dancing, for which I would have loved a translation, since it really appeared to involve a man beating his wife with a stick, and then some children acting like monkeys and dancing in a circle. Overall, one of my happiest days in Uganda this summer. Mr. Dick weebale indeed, weebale nnyo.

Uganda Summer 2009 Part 9: The Delivery

Our resuscitation workshop started today despite only being able to rouse 2 midwives for the lectures. The positive side to this was that I was able to give them nearly one on one instruction. The negative side was that one of them was on duty and got called away to an imminent delivery, and the other one got called in to the district health office for some unknown reason. Rather than sitting idly in the classroom, I decided to attend the delivery to see what it was like. The patient who had just arrived was a woman having her 8th child. Most women do not give birth at health centers, preferring to give birth at home with a traditional birth attendant because of the cost of transport and the costs of the materials required at the health center. There is no charge for public healthcare in Uganda, but those who give birth at health centers are meant to bring mama kits, made up of things like a plastic sheet, a razorblade, clean cotton cloths, and ties for the umbilical cord. I have no idea what they do to substitute for these items if they give birth at home.

The midwife was a strong woman with a commanding voice. I had met her on a previous visit to the health center, when she politely requested an update in every aspect of emergency obstetric care. I liked the fact that she was so open to learning new things, and she also had a very entertaining way of using the Lusoga exclamation “eeh!” as she made stinging indictments of the Ugandan healthcare system. “No soap, no medications, eeh!” She said derisively. “At times we are just like a TBA.” (Traditional Birth Attendant) The midwife put on an apron, large white rubber boots, and gloves. I got the feeling that she was nervous that I was observing her.

The patient crawled onto the bed, which had a plastic mattress and metal frame and no further covering. She crawled clumsily. She was fully dilated. She didn’t make it into good position on the bed, and her head was propped up on the bare metal bar at the head of the bedframe. A plastic sheet like a garbage bag was laid underneath her. Her eyes were squeezed shut and she appeared uncomfortable, but she made no sounds except breathing heavily. The midwife grabbed her thighs and pulled them up towards her head, shouting “push!” in Lusoga. I grabbed a thigh, assuming the ‘husband position’ in American obstetrics and held the patient’s hand. The midwife continued to shout as she ruptured the membranes and tried to help the baby’s head down. “Push! Push more!” Her tone sounded like a drill sergeant’s. A few other patients peeked their heads around the screen to watch. The fluid from the ruptured membranes splashed everywhere. “You see the conditions that we are dealing with.” The midwife said, angrily looking at her wet arms. “She is a victim, eeh!” Meaning that the patient has HIV. The baby’s head got close, and the midwife grabbed onto it and started maneuvering it out. The cord was loosely around the neck. The midwife’s shouting reached a fevered pitch, and then she reached over and whacked the patient in the thigh as she yelled. The baby slid out, looking blue and limp. The midwife turned the baby upside down and gave it a little shake to get fluid out, then put her finger in the baby’s mouth and tried to sweep out anything remaining. I looked at the bulb suction sitting next to the bed, unused, which the midwives had told me they no longer utilize due to infection risk if it is reused. After some vigorous drying, the baby ‘pinked up’ and started crying, though not lustily. Perhaps he sensed that the circumstances in the room were less than joyous.

The baby was wrapped in a cotton cloth and placed on a nearby bed. The onlookers from the other part of the ward were still watching. The woman finally sat up and took her head off the metal bar it was resting against as she climbed out of the puddle in her bed to get dried off. The whole thing had taken about fifteen minutes. As I walked back to the classroom, I thought of my Ugandan teammate’s pronouncement that “women have to be strong, because they must endure labor.”

The midwife cleaned up and returned to my workshop, having sent the mother and baby to a bed in the maternity ward. “How was my technique?” She asked politely. “Can you give me feedback?” She has been a midwife for something like twenty years, and I felt a bit ridiculous, but I ran through what I had seen, starting with her protective gear, mentioning the Apgar score and what she had done after the baby was delivered. “One thing I would like to emphasize, though – please don’t hit your patients.” I said carefully.

Local Brew

The description of the trip to Sipi Falls would not be complete without including a postscript regarding the “local brew” experience. Our group purchased basically a vat of this concoction called “local brew” and held a bonfire with the Crow’s Nest staff to sample it. We were in a rather indignant mood, having just waited 4 hours after ordering dinner for our food to arrive. Seeing the mysterious local brew made us forget about dinner and gather around staring. It was a plastic bucket nearly filled with a substance that on first glance, was very reminiscent of vomit. The fact sounds so unpalatable that I hate to use it as a mental picture for you, but it really was an accurate description of this liquid. It was tan with some chunks of material floating in it. There were a number of multicolored long plastic straws in the bucket, which from our local group’s demonstration, you were meant to dip up and down in the bucket as you sipped it.

At first I swore to myself that I was not going to even sample the brew, but when teammates assured me that the taste was fairly inoffensive, I gave in and tried a bit. Hearing about an alcoholic beverage referred to as the ‘local brew’, I tend to picture an extremely alcoholic liquor that might cause severe burns your esophagus on the way down. This local brew only tasted sort of like warm beer. The other flavor was of strong yeast, giving the impression of drinking liquid bread. After everyone had tried the brew, we left it to the local group, who were pleased to help us drink it. We sang local songs, heard folk tales about why the chicken scratches the ground and why the eagle eats chicks (because the chicken lost the eagle’s needle, and the eagle couldn’t mend her clothes when she wanted to go for a holiday). We danced by the bonfire, and debated the relevance of cultural imperialism to the practice of female genital mutilation. It was worth every penny of the ten dollars we paid for our twenty liters of local brew.

Uganda Summer 2009 Part 8: African Life

Sipi Falls is part of a series of sudden mountain ridges that jump out of the ground just east of Mbale, near the Kenyan border. Up to that point, the eastern Ugandan countryside has some gentle rolling hills, but these mountains are like a wall built to block anything from passing further. The waterfalls have carved a steep valley into one of these ridges, and the Crows’ Nest faces a dramatic panorama of green cliffs and spectacular jets of waterfalls cascading down over rock caves. The Crows’ Nest is a tourist hostel catering to the tourist at the level of ‘village luxury’. It has electricity and quasi-Western food, so it is marvelous, but it also features pit latrines, giant larval-appearing moths, swarms of ants, rats, bats, a horde of skulking tail-wagging dogs, and a series of rickety huts that seem like they were constructed using some twigs and a stapler. I loved it. It was peaceful, cheap, and rustic. And it serves spaghetti (though the sauce is just cooked tomatoes), which you can eat as you contemplate the beautiful falls.

I elected simply to hike as much as possible, so I signed up for the ‘long hike’ as well as an afternoon ‘coffee tour’. As we set off on the long hike and I saw the tiny specks representing members of my group abseiling down one of the waterfalls, I did not regret my choice, though I think they enjoyed it. The hiking is very physically challenging because the valley basically drops straight down and then juts straight up. We carefully picked our way down one side, then crawled, climbed, and puffed our way up the other side. This is the rainy season, and the ground was mud. The trail was about as wide as a footprint, though it is frequently traveled, there are tiny tropical green shoots trying to overtake it every day. There was a lot of sliding and falling in the mud, and sweating in the heat. Little children would shame us by scrambling past as if the cliff were merely a swingset ladder they were scurrying up. We were basically hiking through many different properties, and I enjoyed this because we met many farm animals (I never seem to tire of greeting cows and goats as we go by), saw innumerable lovely traditional Ugandan banda-style huts, and basically got to wander through as the families were digging, harvesting, drying, sorting, and variously working on their crops, stopping to smile at us as we passed. Strangely enough, the children in the falls area do not say “mzungu bye”. They say “hello”! It was novel to be followed by cries of “hello”, though it is a more difficult word and often I heard “eh lo! Eh lo!” or “hewwo! Hewwo!” coming from toddlers. The native language is quite different from Lusoga, and it is frustrating not to be able to use this to communicate.

The falls were of course wonderful, particularly the final highest waterfall on the ridge, where you can approach it almost to the point of standing in the waterfall, and the mist engulfs you and soaks you if you stay to admire it. There is a local man with a little receipt book who stands in front of the waterfall and makes you pay a waterfall fee to get closer. We also stopped at a swimming hole on the way, and when we stuck our feet in, we were shocked to find that the water was frigid. It was not just cold, it was arctic. The guide estimated the water temperature at 10 degrees C. Despite that, myself and my teammate went for a full-on polar swim, which felt incredibly refreshing and fantastic, even though it was so cold I got pins and needles after about 30 seconds, and was painful after about 1 minute to the point I had to hop out. The water was rushing through the swimming hole, so I figured it was probably safe, though after I got out, I asked the guide "Do you ever see guinea worms?" "Oh yes! Guinea worms!" He smiled jovially. "They are there."

After a rest at the hostel, I set off again to learn more about coffeemaking. Myself and two other team members wandered through some of the fields where the coffee plants grow, and then visited a local house where the coffee is processed. They took the beans and pounded them with a mortar and pestle. The outer shells would crack off, and then the remainder gets shaken away from the chaff (is it still chaff if we’re not talking about wheat?) until only the beans are left. The beans are then roasted in a pan, we helped to roast them over a charcoal fire inside the home’s small, mud-floored kitchen hut. I think we burnt our batch badly. The hut was tiny and filled with thick smoke that was irritating to the eyes and throat. We huddled low on chairs, as our hostess bustled around the hut hardly seeming to notice. She grabbed the roasting coffee pan with her bare hands, dropping it after a few seconds and clapping her hands to dissipate the pain. Outside, rain was pouring down and washing through the courtyard (and leaking through the roof onto my head as well). She served us a pot of freshly brewed coffee, which we at first tasted doubtfully, but found to be delicious. As we quietly drank our homemade coffee, she came into the mud hut, soaking wet from the rain, and was drying her dripping face with a cloth as the smoke billowed around her. The rain was pounding on the tin roof so loudly that holding a conversation was impossible. She smiled ebulliently and looked at me and said “African life.” She hardly said much else during our lengthy visit, but her one simple phrase seemed to summarize the whole episode perfectly.

To be continued…