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the uganda telecommunications system is hamstrung, clogged, ineffectual (should i go on?) since the three dominant cellphone companies – mtn, celtel, uganda telecom – started their 50% extra airtime campaigns simultaneously two months ago. the headache has caused enough national fervor that the uganda communications commission is intervening. today’s front-page headlines from the main daily newspapers: free airtime suspended (new vision), govt bans 50% airtime promos (daily monitor).

floods cutting off north and east uganda, stagnating peace talks in s. sudan, continued unrest in north kivu (eastern d.r. congo) and this makes front-page news? so, what’s the story? [Read more →]

i spend roughly 75% of my time in uganda in kampala. kampala is the environment and culture i know best in uganda, so tropical fish: tales from entebbe, a novel set mostly in kampala and some in entebbe and los angeles (i still don’t get why the sub-title is : tales from entebbe), gives me a great opportunity to use scenes from the book – as experienced by the main character who is a twentysomething ugandan woman – to highlight some kampala idiosyncrasies. this isn’t a real book review per se; rather, it’s disconnected commentaries on my kampala life. [Read more →]

labor day weekend, the quintessential end-of-summer last hurrah at the lake…normally fox lake (andersons) or lake superior (bowens), but this year lake victoria (anderson bowens). reeling from a week of nastily coinciding work and personal issues, i desperately needed a getaway just me and phil. with just 2+ days and not much money, we headed for ssese islands – a good combination of short drive, cheap camping, and the possibility of new birds.

we had the short drive (3 hours from kampala + 1 hour across the island), the cheap camping ($4 per person per night), and the new birds (little bee-eater, common greenshank, yellow billed duck, violet chested sunbird, tambourine dove). but, the story of the weekend? the ferry. [Read more →]

when i travel, i like to read novels set in that country or region, preferably ones written by locals. it’s my way of learning local history, customs, nuances as told by those who live it. i looked all over for thailand reading recommendations, but surprisingly, i found very few. maybe i just don’t know how to use amazon’s readers listmania function? in the end i found four books, reviewed here in the order that i read them… [Read more →]

…but malaria didn’t kill me. after a year of living in the world’s malaria epicenter (a.k.a. sub-saharan africa), i finally got malaria. the catch is i had to go to thailand to get it. i went to bed late friday night with a fever and complaining that my whole body hurt. the next morning the fever was hotter, the body aches achier. as seth said, in africa flu-like symptoms are assumed to be malaria. in his case, they were flu-like symptoms. in my case, it was malaria. [Read more →]

it’s been some two months since i posted photos, but i have finally updated my photo blog with the last 12 weeks worth of shots. http://philsgoodphoto.blogspot.com/ …if you’re not in to navigating over to a whole nother web site, i will migrate those posts here in the near future as well. thanks for checking in!

we did something crazy last year this time.  we got married then 3 weeks later we moved to africa.  supposedly the “big” events in adult life are marriage, moving, starting a new job, and going back to school.  we did 3 out of 4 in less than a month.  all worked out great, though, and i’d say june 2006 was probably one of the best months ever.  it ranks right up there with may-june 2000 when syzygy won a national championship, i graduated from carleton, and i “met” phil.  so now it’s june 2007 and we’re one year into both marriage and africa and things are moving along swimmingly (did i really just say swimmingly?)…. [Read more →]

i can’t remember exactly where our friends A&G went for their honeymoon, but i do know that it was a tropical island where they planned to snorkel and swim in the clear blue ocean and enjoy the sunshine on white sand beaches. as it turns out, they had maybe one day of sunshine their whole honeymoon? (A&G, feel free to correct my hazy details…) A&G got married one year ahead of us to the day (first saturday in june – the 4th for them, the 3rd for us). june is the most popular month of the year for weddings in the u.s. and happens to coincide with the rainy monsoon season in most of the tropical world, which means i imagine that A&G’s rainy honeymoon in their tropical paradise was not unusual and is probably the story for lots o’ newlyweds.

being a one-year anniversary treat, our trip to thailand fell on the may/june cusp. our friends jordan & frannie who lived in bangkok for 6 years prior to moving to kampala cautioned that we chose the exact wrong time to visit thailand. june is hot in the north and rainy in the south. we couldn’t do anything about our timing since we’d already bought the tickets, but we knew that like a&g rain couldn’t ruin the trip, because rain or no we were going to be on a tropical island in the middle of the gulf of thailand. [Read more →]

we got back from thailand a week ago and i’m working to get all of our travel stories onto the blog. i was out in the field (ssembabule) last week and as is always the case when i’m there i was super motivated to write, so i’ve caught up some on the thailand writing. posted so far, listed in reverse order:
- 20 hours in bangkok
- elephant nature park in n. thailand
- chiang mai
i’ll write more re: thailand soon and will update this post as i do so you know when there’s multiple postings.

we spent two days in bangkok. the first day was a travel day between chiang mai and surat thani (8 hours in bangkok on flight layover), the second day was a travel day from nangyuan island en route to kampala (12 hours in bangkok between train arrival and flight departure).

air travel within thailand is certainly affordable ($30 one-way from bangkok to chiang mai) and easy, but i like the train – it’s more romantic, i guess. the bangkok train station is really nice, i thought. lots of restaurants (including dunkin donuts, who woulda thunk), luggage storage, clean showers. we arrived in bangkok from chumphon on the night train, which was supposed to leave chumphon at 10:30pm but didn’t leave until 1:30am. no biggie. we had 2^nd class sleepers, which is definitely the way to go. you get a full bed with pillow and blanket, a good night’s sleep, travel and accommodation all for $18.

we live in a big international city – okay, kampala isn’t bangkok, but it’s still an international city – so we focused our thailand time outside of bangkok. nonetheless, bangkok is a city to be experienced so we did our best in 20 hours. [Read more →]