queen elizabeth national park

we have returned from a 6-day trip to queen elizabeth national park in western uganda. it was our first time there and it did not disappoint. every day was a 6something am wake up to view game or birds or drive to the next place so i don't have the energy just now to go into full detail, but here are some tidbits:

-click here
-or click the phil's photo blog link to the right
-or type or copy and paste http://philsgoodphoto.blogspot.com/ into your browser
to see some photos from the trip and to read my comments about each.

-the drive was half as long time-wise as we were expecting. good roads all the way to qenp.
-amazing first-view overlook of the great rift valley on the drive there. kinda like seeing machu pichu for the first time from the sun gate.
-we're east african residents now, so we get the good rate for park entry fees.
-in total we identified 50 new bird species on this trip. black bee-eater was a highlight.
-we met up with friends erin & drew for two nights and a day. fun to share our new country with friends from home!
-a hippo showed up at dinner literally within arms reach of the deck with the outdoor dining. it just mowed the grass of the lawn as all the guests oohed and aahed.
-the ishasha sector of the park was my fave, but the road to get there is terrible. i may not go back because of that road, and it had the best landscape and wild life. more cats down there, though.
-lions! we cat people saw our first cats in the wild. we wanted to rub their tummies.
-we were bluff-charged by a huge (is there any other kind?) bull elephant shortly after i said that we were going to make it angry by continuously pulling ahead and cutting off its route. paige is screaming at me to drive as i'm trying to get the photo. in fairness to her, it was on her side of the car though i'm sure his tusks would have reached to the driver's seat, too.
-i got elsie (LC, land cruiser, our car) stuck for the first time. fortunately, close to park hq so it didn't take too long to get a tow. the differential was on a rock, so neither back tire was carrying weight.
-speaking of elsie, the aforementioned road was so rough that the bouncing severed the exhaust pipe from the manifold. we made a lot of noise on the drive home. all the windows open to avoid CO poisoning.
-and while we're on the subject, uganda is in a bit of a diesel shortage. so we had a bit of a tense drive around the south of qenp, running on fumes, tracking down some fuel. if the fourth and final pump that we had come to had been empty, we would have been stuck until a tanker came to town. this is around 100km from the next closest pump.
-that's the most of it. check out pics on philsgoodphoto.

Abyssinian Chronicles by Moses Isegawa

i've been lethargic in my reading lately. i think it has a lot to do with phil being home. i read a lot more when he's gone, which explains why i have a new book review since i read a lot when he was in scandanavia last month.

abyssinian chronicles is one of the few (only?) books written by a ugandan about uganda. uganda is the lesser known sister of the e. african trio - kenya, tanzania, uganda. kenya and tanzania get much more attention in the popular press because of "better" tourism, stronger economy (kenya), or famous islands (tanzania). uganda is known for idi amin and maybe its gorillas. to find a novel set in uganda is rare, especially one that's not all about amin (last king of scotland) or gorillas (gorillas in the mist...sort of uganda and not really a novel, but you get my point).

i really enjoyed abyssinian chronicles. the story was good, but even more fun was reading a book that was set right out my backdoor - literally. minneapolis isn't a hotspot as a setting for novels and neither is kampala for that matter, so any books that are set in either place feel very personal. as if i'm one of a very few who are able to connect directly with the book having lived in that neighborhood, having driven on that road, having shopped in that market. that's how it was with abyssinian chronicles.

isegawa's prose is often reminescent of gabriel garcia marquez - i guess i'm not the only one who thinks that considering the back of the book jacket says "like an african one hundred years of solitude" - with its flowery magical descriptions of everyday events. the beginning of the book dragged for me as it was more the uber-detailed story of a young boy's life than about uganda, but by the middle i was engrossed. i liked reading fiction about the 1980s guerrilla insurgency and later the onset of HIV/AIDS (two seminal events in modern ugandan history) in familiar places like masaka. i could connect to the events on a more personal level, identifying with the places and the characters.

i felt like isegawa sometimes got caught up in his overly analogous, metaphorical language, which left me wondering what he was really talking about for sentences on end, but in the end his accurate portrayal of life in uganda (kampala, village and the in-between) leaves this on the top of my recommended-reading-if-you're-traveling-to-uganda list.

last king of scotland - the movie

last king of scotland premiered in uganda right around the time seth arrived in town...about 5 weeks ago. it was a big deal - forest whittaker was here, there was a red carpet at garden city. we didn't have enough connections - although we do know the bbc correspondent - to get us to the premiere, but i wasn't going to miss the chance to see the film. this is the first movie about uganda filmed in uganda, and i'm in uganda. i had to see it.

i am proud and grateful that the movie was filmed in uganda because years down the road i can watch it again and see uganda as it is. uganda scenery, uganda people, uganda idiosyncracies that are so familiar. i wish it had been a movie with a more uplifting plot, but as seth pointed out there are probably 100 countries that have never been a hollywood filming location. so, i'm happy i at least got something because it's true - some of the scenes, especially in the beginning, are very quintessential uganda.

knowing only the peripheral history of amin (this movie compels me to learn more), i cannot comment much on the in/accuracy of his portrayal. even so, i think the movie does a good job of tracing amin's trajectory from beloved savior to quirky paternalistic leader to sadistic despot. although dr. nicholas garrigan is a completely fictional character, he is a good stand-in for illustrating how ugandans were caught up in and affected by amin's transformation over his 8 years of power. in the beginning, amin brought nicholas into his inner circle, impressed him with his charm and magnetism. eventually, amin drew a line between those on his side and those against, taking care of his own. he terrorized the country, but sheltered nicholas from the bloodshed. by the end, however, very few were sheltered and all were in danger, including his former most trusted personal advisor.

the end of the movie is intense and at turns made me cringe and at others made me want to cry, not because of the torture suffered by nicholas but because of the atrocities suffered by uganda under amin. most understated line of the film: "there is too much hatred. our country is drowning in it."

i appreciated the movie for forcing me to think more closely about uganda's history and politics. the other night at dinner, our visiting friend erin asked my opinion of museveni. i wasn't able to say much other than that i felt he missed his chance to be a leader among african leaders when he rewrote the constitution to authorize himself to seek another term as president. otherwise, i am pretty uninformed. i am starkly reminded of nicholas and his naivete when he off-handedly says to sarah, "right, obote. he was the guy here before, and now it's what's his name? oh right, amin." i have a colleague who grew up in the congo and now devotes her professional career to working in africa. i asked her about her reactions to the film. she said that she felt it was a good portrayal of how westerners unknowningly affect local situations negatively because they fail to do their pre-homework.

prior to discovering npr, i was essentially tuned out of the political scene in the u.s. once i became an npr convert, however, i at least could talk the talk and form my own informed opinions. here, in uganda, i get all of my news and current events from bbc world. bbc world is good and there is a bbc africa segment, but overall the programming is not uganda specific and i continue to be somewhat unaware politically. i don't want to be another oblivious dr. nicholas garrigan, so i am hereby committing myself to investing more time into staying up-to-date. first step, read the local newspapers (there are two: one pro-museveni, one not-so-pro-museveni) more regularly.

today's answer is employment

i recently wrote about the influx of people looking for jobs now that we've advertised the location of our offices. i may have unintentionally sounded frustrated...seeming to say, "please, stop - no more!" then, yesterday i was reminded of the unique position i am in to make a difference. we talk a lot about sustainability in development work - there is a lot of money now to do x, y, and z but what happens when the project funding ends in 1, 2, 3 years? i'm not convinced a lot of the time that all of the money and investment dropped into development produces results. strategies may make positive change in the short-term, but how do we make long-lasting change and truly create a world free of poverty, death from preventable disease, and abject despair?

you can argue (and i have) about what entry point is the best for solving the development conundrum, whether it's health, education, economic, environmental. obviously i've made my choice, but i don't deny that all are necessary and you can't have one without the other. for example, the longer a girl stays in school, the more likely she is to delay having sex, which increases her age at first birth, decreases the total number of children she will have, which then decreases her risk for maternal death and decreases the risk of her children dying before 5 years. likewise, the older she is before sex, the less likely she is to practice risky sexual behavior, which decreases her risk of HIV/AIDS. all because she stayed in school. plus, now that she has an education, she can find a more stable, more skilled job, earn more money, and have the resources to send her own children to school. the cycle continues.

i work in public health treating communities, but today i am convinced that the best thing you can do for an individual person is to give them a job. employ someone, pay him, and enable him to help himself. income is money to feed his family, send his kids to school, buy a suitable home, go to the doctor when sick. the psychology of dependence that is created thru give-aways compels me to shy away from blatant charity. employment, on the other hand, allows a person to be independent and build pride in his work and himself.

i am proud to say that personally phil and i employ three people - robert, mary, and sam. it probably seems indulgent from a western-perspective to have so many staff. maybe it is - really, we probably don't need all the help we have. we don't see it as self-indulgent, though. yes, we're lucky but the really lucky ones are robert, mary, and sam who have full-time, well-paid jobs working for (we like to think) nice employers.

i wish i could hire everyone that comes knocking on our door, but i can't. we hardly have enough work to keep our trio occupied. we don't need our house cleaned 2x a week (1x per a week is plenty), i don't need someone to drive me around town (i am perfectly capable of driving myself). but, robert is married with three girls, sam is married with three boys, and mary is raising more than 6 kids - some her own, some left behind by her brother who was killed last fall in a road accident. without work from us, what would they do? they'd piecemeal a livelihood together and they'd survive, but it'd be much harder.

i just said they're really lucky and we're just lucky...our luck came in finding such great people to hire. mary came to us through a reference from a friend, both robert and sam took their own initiatives. driving up mbuya hill some months ago on a sightseeing trip, we stopped to admire the view. robert walked right up to our car and handed us his resume. we didn't have any jobs at the time, but were impressed by his courage and remembered him when we did have a job. i met sam within the first weeks we were in the country when i was renting a "special hire" car most days for work. sam drove me a couple of times, the last time giving me his phone number and saying he'd like a job with an NGO if i ever had one to give. when i did, i called him up. we used to have a cook, too. we don't employ barbara anymore, but that's because we helped pay for her to go to cuba where she is studying at university on a 6-year scholarship sponsored jointly by the cuban and ugandan governments.

sam surprised me the other day when he refused to let me pay him. i wouldn't take no for an answer (i was stunned, in fact), so prodded him until he told me he didn't want to be paid until he had his new bank account ready because he wanted to deposit the money directly into the bank. i pay him $145 per month and he pays $60 per term for his son's school fees, and he didn't want to be paid without an open bank account because he didn't want the money in his pockets where it could be spent inadvertently. our short conversation solidified my conclusion that i'd hired the right guy.

phil and i have decided to take our commitment to our staff one step further and have agreed with robert that we will pay his daughter's school fees. kate is 5 years old and just old enough to start kindergarten next term. i am a huge proponent of on-time and consistent schooling, as evidenced by my interpretation of the education-health-employment cycle. so many kids in uganda start school late or are forced to take 2-3 years off here or there due to lack of resources to pay for school fees and uniforms and supplies or because a parent dies from HIV/AIDS or because the family needs that child at home to work. i don't want that inconsistency and insecurity to plague kate in her education.

sam tells me that he doesn't like universal primary education (UPE - president museveni's plan for free primary education for all ugandan children) because the quality of education is low: classrooms have 50+ students for one teacher, the school buildings are run-down, the resources just aren't available. plus, even though the education is supposedly free, you still have to buy the uniform for the child to attend class. robert and i agreed that he should choose the school that he thinks is best for kate and that, although we will be giving him the money for the school fees and uniform, he should be the one to pay the school and purchase the supplies, not us. i want to leave the autonomy and control in his hands. we're just the enablers.

a few days ago, a co-worker from headquarters who was in country told me that her favorite thing to do while abroad is to hire people. she is so right - hiring people is far and away the best thing i've done while living here.

(un)employment

following the tradition of NGOs in africa, we recently installed road signs pointing the way to our offices. added visibility is good for the organization. an unforseen but expected consequence, however, is that the signs bring people knocking at the door looking for a job. robert, our guard/gardener, tells me that in the days since the signs went up he has "too many!" visitors asking for jobs.

when we first moved in, pre-signs, several people stopped by with credentials (resumes, recommendations, employment history) looking for jobs as cleaners, cooks, gardeners. one woman visited with her small daughter asking for school fees. the new mzungus were in the neighborhood and everyone knows that we employ. now post-signs, everyone knows that NGOs employ and they've redoubled their attempts to find gainful employment.

they're even looking for a job at 7:45am on a saturday morning. no joke. the painfully high unemployment here compels people to be excruciatingly persistant and dedicated so that they are the ones that get lucky this time. but, then when i'm hiring for professional positions, i spend months recruiting trying to find qualified people to no avail. it's a dichotomy that i'm grappling with now as more and more people come knocking for jobs i don't have and no one shows for those jobs that i do.

do you value your life?

this happened in december, but it was just before our trip to rwanda, so it got lost in the shuffle of christmas, travel, guests and gorillas. it's probably the story that i tell the most here, though, (now eclipsed by bin laden's urine-mud balls) so i should get around to blogging it.

i enjoy driving around the city and i like the lack of rules of the road, or to put it another way, i like the one rule which is this: right-of-way belongs to the aggressive. actually, aggressive might be too strong a word, i wouldn't describe very many people here as aggressive. assertive. right of way belongs to the assertive. other than that, there aren't really any rules. this is changing, though. traffic lights are just starting to pop up in anticipation of the queen's visit in november. and lines are getting painted on the roads, though they only last a few days.

all around the city, police stand alongside the road and when they want to talk to you they'll take a step out and wave you down. it was my experience that the things they were concerned about dealt mostly with licenses, insurance, paperwork, that sort of thing. "your number plate is mounted too high on your bumper, i can write you a ticket or maybe you can settle this now." 10,000=/ (US $5.50) later, you drive off without having to deal with a ticket, and the policeman has just doubled his day's salary.

anyway. december. in downtown kampala, we dropped off tait and estela at the bank so they could get some cash. we drove around looking for parking or if none was to be found, just do laps until they were done. laps it was. when they came out of the bank, we were on the other side of the street, and unable to get their attention, i did a u-turn at the intersection to get over to the bank. when i stopped at the curb, a policeman came up and started talking, i thought telling me i couldn't park there. as it turns out he was telling us that the u-turn i just did was illegal.

paige pipes up: "there is no sign there!" "yes, but you can not turn there." so i'm getting ready to pay my way out of this and be on our way. but the policeman is young, and apparently hasn't yet realized or been taught that he could walk away 5,000=/ the richer. he tells us we have two options. he can write us a ticket and we can go to court the next day or we can go to the police station now. i spend the next one and a half seconds imagining how impossibly slow a ugandan court must be, so decide that we would go to the police station now. ok, i will go with you. uh, you want to drive? no (big smile) i will ride in back. so paige gets out, he takes off his helmet and ducks into the back seat. we make small talk on the way to the station, maybe six blocks away.

the police station has posters depicting car wrecks, smokers' bodies made up of a collage of photos of smoking-destroyed organs, and blackboards with grids showing the week-by-week number of accidents, fatalities, hit and runs, etc. hint: don't be a pedestrian or ride a motorcycle in kampala. our policeman, who had donned his white helmet immediately upon exiting our car, dropped us at the motor vehicle office and it was at this point that i realized that tait and estela were still at the bank and this could take just as long as a day in court. though no sooner had i thought it, than someone said we could see the chief now.

if our policeman looked young and green, the motor vehicle chief was at the other end of the spectrum. not that he was old, but that he looked like a uniformed african official that you didn't want to f with. we sat down and he said,
"what is your problem?"
"well, the policeman told us that we made an illegal u-turn, so we came here."
"where were you?"
"on kampala road, opposite barclay's."
"there is no sign there."
paige pipes up: "that's what i said!"

the chief proceeds to draw us an incredibly accurate map of the intersection and exactly what happened, which other lanes of traffic were stopped, which were moving, when i made the u-turn to the right, the works. he nailed it, i didn't have to describe a thing.
"there should be a sign there. there is no sign."
a pause while he marks the spot on the map. looking up,
"do you value your life?"
not the question you want to hear in a ugandan police station.
"so many drivers here, they do not value their lives. going here, there, it is dangerous."
the grids on the blackboard prove that last point. i tell him that i am a careful driver and that i do in fact value my life. he hints at a smile.
"you can go".

and we are off. i bet it was maybe 15 minutes from when we almost picked up tait and estela to when we actually did get them. by far the most efficient example of ugandan authority that we have encountered here. and i was pretty psyched to see that there were police that were playing by the book and not content to just pad their pockets. hopefully (though i doubt it) they're getting paid enough now that they aren't looking for extras.

on assignment

i have started taking on some photo and design projects. it's nice to get some income (new lens, trip to scandinavia) and i imagine that international experience will look ok on the CV and help round out the portfolio when/if i apply for photo jobs. really though, it's just a big learning experience all around. there are technical issues - black skin and equatorial sunshine is a difficult combination for correct exposure. there are political issues - a sudanese mentioned that "if you want us to relate to the photo promoting mosquito nets, you better show it hanging from under a truck, because that's where we sleep." there are cultural issues - in uganda alone are there a large number of tribes with different dress and language, and promotional and aid materials need to have relevance to each. and on and on.

my first big project was a family planning calendar for paige's organization. they had a number of sayings to promote family planning, so my job was to photograph scenes depicting those sayings and put a calendar together with the photos. their main health educator did a great job of setting up the shots and getting the models together and all the other things that would have been way over my head. he took care of things like making sure that the skin colors on the husband/wife and child made them look like they were related and from the right tribe, making sure the settings fit the income level of the people we were trying to portray and the target audience, getting the costume right. he has worked for some 10+ years in the communities that this calendar will target, so he knew what would work and what wouldn't in terms of getting the message across to the audience. all i had to do was make photos. which is as it should be i guess. i had fun with the models - a lot of community-based health education here is done with drama troupes, so we had a great group of actors to play the scenes.

here is a .pdf of the calendar. it's 4MB so you and your connection speed can decide if you want to just open it or right click and "save as".

over the past week i did two days of photoshoots for a health commnications NGO working on a campaign on malaria prevention education. especially after how smoothly the calendar project went, this definitely seemed like an exercise on how not to run a photo shoot. coming in to it, i thought i was just going to be shooting pregnant women, children and families of different ethnicities sleeping under a mosquito net. as it turned out, there were a number of different scenes to shoot, many involving young kids, and many outdoors. getting a kid to not stare at the mzungu taking his picture with $3000 of shiny camera equipment is yeah a challenge. i had to shoot outdoors in sun directly overhead, in clinics where they tried to shoo the actual sick people out of the waiting room so we could use it, all while trying to accurately depict africans of 11 different nationalities and who knows how many ethnicities.

to put that last point in a perspective americans might relate too: "you need a photo of a sioux indian in his home? here is an inuit model, that's the same right? they're all native americans."

the boy child was completely out of control and never made it in to any photos. one of the actors took to calling him bin laden. "he is a little terrorist!" bin laden's crowning achievement was wetting himself while playing in the dirt parking lot, making mud balls out of the urine-soaked dirt, and then throwing them at us. it was hilarious i think in part because it was so completely opposite the demeanor or behavior of every other african child i've seen or met. the happiest kids anywhere.

the shoot coordinator had come from a commercial advertising background and definitely didn't have the experience that paige's health educator had in depicting accurate scenes. i was taking the stance of "i'm the photographer, i just take the photos." that attitude was great for the calendar because the director knew his stuff, but this time i didn't trust that what i was shooting was correct. i spent the day thinking that i was going to have to re-shoot all the scenes with competent art direction or that the photos i took were actually going to get used and would have no positive effect at all. lose/lose.

i got through it unscathed and am happy, visually, with enough of the photos but i'm still not sure whether they will work for what the NGO has in mind. we'll see.

a couple photos from the days of shooting are over at philsgoodphoto.blogspot.com

rafting on the nile

uganda's main tourism attraction in terms of people and dollars is the wildlife and landscape and safari sort of thing. but there is also a bit of new zealand-esque adventure sport scene centered around jinja, the source of the white nile on lake victoria. last weekend was our first foray into this scene, and definitely a memorable one. jinja is only an hour and a half from kampala, but we hadn't been there yet even though there is a well-reviewed mexican restaurant there (none in kampala).

we did a one-day trip with nalubale rafting company and i would recommend them again, for sure. the trip is 29 km and goes over some 12 rapids, equal parts class 3, 4 and 5, and at least one class 6 that we have to portage around because it's not legal for commercial groups to run class 6. for good reason.

in terms of whitewater, one of the nile's defining characteristics is how safe it is. it's really deep so rocks generally aren't a problem, and it's dam-fed so the water level never really fluctuates seasonally. no crocs, hippos or sketchy parasites, either. that's all hard to remember when the raft flips and you're being tossed around underwater, feeling like you're at the whim of the river. we wear helmets though, and as long as you don't panic and can hold our breath for 5 seconds, the life jackets do their job of getting you back to the surface.

we had two rafts with 6 folks and a guide or two in each. the guides were canadian and just as you would expect career river rafting guides to be. they quoted south park and team america. there were also a few ugandans in the entourage in river kayaks and a raft fit with oars. these were the safety boats, and these guys had unreal upper bodies. i felt safe. midway through the trip i asked our guide, who had seven years experience guiding, what the gnarliest injury one of his clients had had. he said, "you mean besides dying?" oh.

the not-so-fun part of the trip was before we had even left the bay where we put in to the river. we were practicing our paddling and doing some capsizing and rescues and stuff. so it was the very first time that i was in the water and learning to get back in to the boat by grabbing the line that runs around the gunnel (if you call it that on an inflatable raft) and hoisting yourself up like getting out of a pool while someone pulls the shoulders of your life jacket. anyway, i went in the boat, but my wedding ring did not. i didn't tell paige because i didn't want to make the trip sad for her. but we're somewhat over it now, and i like to think that my ring will be found by a hobbit and make some kind of journey that changes the course of the events of our time.

when we left MN for africa, i finished the insurance paperwork for our wedding and engagement rings in the MSP business office just before we boarded our flight. between my two knee surgeries (among other things medical) and now this, i'm definitely beating the house at insurance. just my little way of sticking it to the man.

back to rafting, paige and i each exited the raft 3 times and only one of those times wasn't entirely fun. the last time i went under i was really glad that i had been under a couple times before because it was deep and it felt like a long time. but i just hung out knowing that life jackets float and it would do its job. one kayaker documented the trip on video and we will have a dvd of the action. we stopped mid-day for an excellent lunch at a somewhat posh lodge and i think paige and i will definitely go back there for a little vacation. watching some of the ugandan guys running class 5+ in river kayaks was awesome. river kayaking had never appealed to me until seeing that. they were doing all sorts of rodeo moves, too, that looked like a lot of fun.

there is probably more that i'm not thinking of, but for sure a good time was had by all. that all included me and paige, seth who is here for some months, chris who is about to do his PhD vive voce, lindsey who will soon be leaving us, emily who we may convince to stay, and simon who is on the lake vitoria tour researching the world bank for his PhD.

carleton in the embassy

i was at the embassy today for a meeting at usaid. being in the embassy is a crazy experience because as soon as you pass thru security you are in the u.s. no joke. familiar things everywhere – the soap dispenser in the bathrooms, the library with a wall poster of mlk, the standard office furniture. i got to my meeting 30 minutes early, so i had time to kill. i’m a punctual person by habit, a habit that can’t be broken by the standard ugandan habit of being late to everything, and i never know how long it’s going to take to get thru the multiple layers of security. supposedly the u.s. embassy in uganda was also on the list of targets when the dar and nairobi embassies got bombed some years back; the embassy here was relocated and is now a fortress on the hill. you need an escort o get thru the final layer of security, but interestingly enough the security guards and marines didn’t mind me wandering around in the embassy waiting for my escort. i found a cool (literally cool – the embassy is one of the only climate-controlled buildings in all of uganda) hallway with lots of art pieces from the embassy’s permanent collection. my wandering eventually took me to an offshoot hallway dedicated to u.s. colleges. there were four wall-sized maps of the u.s. (south, northeast, midwest, northwest) showing all of the cads (whatever that is) colleges/universities in those areas. also on the wall was a poster board advertising specific colleges. looking at the seven colleges that made the selective board i was thinking to myself how cool it would be if carleton was there. to my pride, sure enough there was carleton front and center. there i was standing in the middle of the u.s. embassy in kampala unexpectedly staring at a picture of the skinner memorial chapel in autumn. if you know carleton, you know the picture. of all the colleges in the u.s. seven (seven!) had posters hanging in the embassy and carleton was one of them. i’ll brag about that.

the 1st annual 7HC

we talk all big about posting 100 times in 7 months, then we disappear. sorry 'bout that. no excuses except that i got consumed with planning the 7even hills classic (7HC) ultimate tournament and didn't feel too guilty about not blogging since phil's been holding to his promise of posting 1 picture a day for 31 days (see www.philsgoodphoto.blogspot.com). if you haven't been following phil's photo site, you should. enough said.

i haven't been too public about the 7HC other than my one post way back when talking about the fact that i was planning a tournament. my trend toward the DL was purposeful so that if the tournament was a total disaster i could save face in the fact that no one from home really knew about it so wouldn't ask about it. my fear of doom was fed by my friends lindsey and kristy who recently held their "playing for awareness" sports tournament, which in their words, was a complete disaster. teams recruiting ringer players, showing up 3 hours late, commandeering a pitch and refusing to leave until they got their way, etc. the grand prize was a bull (yep, a bull) that no one won because the tournament ended in near fisticuffs. uganda is a totally different world and this horror story definitely heightened my stress level and potential for meltdown leading up to the 7HC in fear of the disaster that awaited me.

my thought is that linds and kristy took one for the team by using up all the bad tournament karma clearing the way for a successful 7HC. i owe them one big 'cos i got lucky and the 7HC (feb 10-11) was a hit.

if you're not interested in how to host an ultimate tournament in a developing country, stop reading here. if you are, read on.

teams
no teams, no tournament. how to recruit teams? i knew that i could create 3 teams from the players who regularly attend our sunday afternoon pick-up games. 45 players = 3 teams of 15 players. the crucial task was generating other teams to create a tournament worthwhile to run. the nairobi team backed out on me because i chose the only weekend in a 3 month span that they could not attend. bummer, there went the "international" tournament i was hoping for.

like any other ultimate tournament, i set a bid deadline (jan 31). 150,000/= per team before the deadline, 225,000/= per team after the deadline with the idea being if i could get a team to pay, i could get them locked into showing up for the tournament. classic africa is for people to say they'll be there, then not be. the peace corps paid and committed early, so did a team of youngsters from ISU. i had a 6th team all the way up 'til 2 days before the tournament. i had the format all set, games scheduled, everything trusting the captain's word that they'd be there. i should've known better - they hadn't paid. no biggie going from 6 teams to 5 as far as formats, but still. it was the principle of it all.

i highly highly recommend requiring pre-registration and payment. if nothing else, if the team doesn't show up at least you have their money. the headache caused by scrambling last minute is made up for by having more cash to put toward your budget.

in the end we had 5 teams with about 15 players each = 75 players. big ultimate tournament by africa standards. my goal was to have a competitive tournament with spirited teams. the underdogs (team white) were a mish-mash of young'uns who'd never played before and some ringers from the KUFC crowd - they didn't win a game, but increased their points scored throughout the weekend from 4, 5, 6, 7, to 9. it's always fun cheering for the underdogs and the kids were a great addition to the tournament. the three KUFC teams - chapati rollers (blue), kabakas (red), karoli superstars (yellow) - could not have been more even; there was only a 4 point differential in their 3 round-robin games on saturday. i was super happy about that.

organization
i was smart enough to know from the beginning that i wasn't going to be able to make a tournament happen on my own. i know what an ultimate tournament should look like and how it should be run, but i don't know how to do that in uganda. ugandans do. we put together a planning committee that included veteran ultimate players, resourceful mzungus, and committed, locally knowledgable ugandans. it was a good combination of talents and seemed to work out. i did my best to not micromanage - some people will say i did well, others will surely disagree.

budget
having never organized a tournament before, specifically never having organized a tournament in uganda, i didn't know what to expect as far as expenses. queenie, the past organizer, gave me everything he had, but (me having a propensity toward detailed budgets) it didn't give me enough of a picture of anything. that's always how it happens though - you never truly know until you've been thru it yourself.

the total tournament cost was 1.5M/= ($850), which included fields, jerseys, championship shirts, discs, lunch, fruit, water, transport to/from fields, tournament party, and maintenance staff. teams paid 150,000/= ($85) to play and individuals paid 10,000/= ($6). late fees jumped to 225,000/= and 15,000/= respectively. seems like a pretty good deal to pay $6 and get a jersey, lunch 2 days, fruit, water, a ride to/from the tournament, a party, and a chance at a championship polo shirt. even so, $6 is still a big deal to the average ugandan. many of the players struggled with the tournament fee and were graciously assisted by teammates who could afford it. we purposely set the entry fee low so that everyone could play. ultimate is a welcoming sport, everyone should be welcome. problem with that strategy was that expenses equaled $850 and income equaled $590, which included donations and some merchandise sales. ouch.

sponsorship
sponsorship is always tricky for ultimate since ultimate isn't a "mainstream" sport. add in the africa factor and ultimate becomes even more obscure and sponsorship even trickier. we had no luck with out-of-the-blue contacts, but had enough success thru personal connections. one player is the parent of an ISU student so got free fields at the ISU campus; another player sweet talked rwenzori water into donating 20 cases of water; another player got his friend to donate complimentary passes for his club as the party venue; i was able to get donated discs from my fellow UPA board members.

what you really need though is money. it's the same thing in development work. people want to donate money to your organization to do HIV/AIDS work, but what your organization really needs is unrestricted funds to hire staff, pay rent, buy health insurance...operating funds. thank goodness there were several KUFC players willing to contribute cash to the tournament to help me get it off the ground.

schedule
uganda, like all of africa, is notorious for tardiness. nothing starts on time. the classic ugandan phrase in response to being late: "it is okay, i am on my way coming." on my way coming could mean anywhere from 5 minutes to 5 hours, you never know. for example, saturday lunch was scheduled to arrive at 11:30, actual arrival time was closer to 2:00. combine this affinity for tardiness with "frisbee time" and you have yourself a disaster in the making.

there were a few strategies i used to offset this malady. first, we provided transport to/from the fields. ISU (international school uganda) is outside the city, so is a difficult place to get to for most ugandans anyway because it's expensive transport. yes, i was concerned about people being able to afford the transport, but more importantly i was concerned about people getting there on time. transport left the meeting point at 8am sharp on saturday morning. if you weren't there, you didn't get a ride. players had the incentive to be there because they had already paid to play and if they missed the ride, they missed the tournament. this strategy worked okay - phil still had to make a run back to town to pick up stragglers. second, the first 4 teams to show up played in the first round, the 5th team got a first round bye. third, i padded the schedule with lunchtime full well knowing that we'd get started late. smart move. 'cos lunch arrived late, we ended up switching lunch with the 3rd round, but it all worked itself out in the end. i was really proud of the fact that we ended saturday's round-robin (5 rounds) only 45 minutes later than scheduled.

format
i used the UPA's formats manual to make the 6 team format. when the 6th team bailed, i handed the formats task off to phil. creating as many games as possible for 5 teams in 2 days requires more creativity than the formats manual gave me and formats have never really been my thing (power pools, what?), so i was happy to delegate to phil. he decided on saturday round-robin and a sunday championship bracket that included a pre-semis. imo, good format for 5 teams.

games were 1 hour 10 minutes to 13 points. players here are used to 20 minute games, so 1:10 was plenty o' time. i decided on a simple cap since learning the rules has been a struggle enough and any sort of complicated cap would have been a nightmare. at one hour 10 minutes finish the point in play. game is over at the end of that point unless the score is tied. if the score is tied, play one more point to determine winner. even so, we had a cap issue. the karoli superstars (team yellow) were up 10-9 against the chapati rollers (blue team) when the cap horn went. yellow doesn't know why game isn't over at horn. blue scores point making it 10-10. blue scores double game point to win 11-10. yellow accuses me of cheating by not stopping the game at the horn so that my husband's team (blue) can win. yeah, we had a discussion about cap after that.

SOTG
the only disappointing part of the tournament for me was the overall level of spirt and maturity on the field. ultimate is a self-refereed sport governed by the spirt of the game (SOTG). yet, game one on saturday between karoli superstars and the kabakas nearly imploded due to overly aggressive fouls, yelling, pouting, whining, threats, players walking off the field. it was ugly. i was disheartened especially since on the adjoining field i had just been watching a really spirited game between the chapati rollers and the peace corps (team grey). i put myself in the thick of it laying down the law about what is and is not allowed in ultimate, but that's not what you do in ultimate. disagreements are arbitrated among players, not by an outsider even if that outsider is the coach, TD, whoever. that's what's so special about ultimate.

i had a rude awakening really. i had talked about spirit of the game and personal responsibility and all that, but obviously not enough. i don't know if it's because there are a few "problem" players or because it's hard to switch to ultimate from sports like rugby and soccer or because it's impossible to envision a sport with no refs when you've never seen it in action or that being able to self-referee requires a certain maturity that many of the players don't have yet. that last argument doesn't really hold water, though, since the youngest players at the tournament - the underdogs - had some of the best spirit. whatever it was, i had failed to teach spirit of the game. of course, most of the games this weekend were super spirited - i'd even venture to say a majority of them. but, the one bad apple definitely ruined the bunch for me and reminded me that i have a lot of work to do on teaching the "culture" of ultimate in uganda.

in the end, the kabakas won in the finals 10-7 over the chapati rollers in an exciting, spirited game. they got their championship polo shirts, i got doused in water, and smiles all around. everyone's asking for another tournament of this magnitude soon, but that's why i made it an "annual" tournament because there's no way i could do this more than once a year...maybe in 6 months we'll have a hat tournament.

if you find your way to east africa next february time, come to kampala and play in the 2nd annual 7HC - it's guaranteed to be bigger and just as good as the 1st annual 7HC.

on the phone

in the states, i have this aversion to making phone calls. it's not a phobia - ok, maybe it is. i like calling people i know, but making calls to get information or to arrange things isn't my cup of tea. anyway. here it's even worse because the first minute (i am not exaggerating. 60 seconds) of the call is spent figuring out who is on the other end of the line and establishing some sort of foundation for the conversation to actually start. so i don't make calls here. literally. paige makes all the calls. luc and majo asked paige the other day how i could be reached while she was gone because they thought i didn't have a phone.

here is a recent transcript. hiring a night guard for our place. paige dials the number:
tight security: hello.
paige a bowen: hello?
ts: hello?
pab: hello?
ts: this is tony at tight security. (paige hears unintelligible ugandan english)
pab: hello, is this tight security?
ts: this is tony at tight security.
pab: i am interested in hiring a night guard.
ts: what?
pab: i am interested in hiring a night guard from your company.
ts: which company?
pab: tight security. is this tight security?
ts: yes, this is tony at tight security.
and so it goes. i don't think any actual comprehension occurred until the second call. that was the day that paige left for the states. i was supposed to call them back to continue the process. yeah, that's gonna wait until paige gets back.

a while back at the shoprite grocery store, the incoming phone calls had accidentally been transferred over the store intercom. i was in hysterics listening to conversations broadcast across the store. 30 seconds of each party trying to establish whether there was in fact someone on the other end, whether they were fine, and why they were calling.

which brings me to my new favorite, the call ins on the local pop radio station that i listen to. all the above rules apply here, too. so far all the call ins that i've heard have been for contests. today you could win 100K shillings for correctly identifying the noise. it still takes 30 seconds to establish a connection, identify the caller, and finally get to the part where they make their guess. that is if they were calling about the contest. i'd say 30% are wrong numbers or were calling about something else or are answering an earlier contest.

it will be good when paige gets back, we'll finally get something done around here.

christmas 2006, part 2: the rest of the story

t&e arrived in uganda just before christmas as our first visitors from home. i prepared, i planned, i looked forward to their visit. as to be expected not all of the visit went as planned, but as my grandpa used to say “if everything went right, we’d never have any stories.” so, this is “the rest of the story” from christmas 2006…

our time in kampala with t&e was great. our mold escapade had just unfolded, so we were all graciously put up in luc and majo’s house next door who were on holiday with the kids in rwanda. t&e had the master bedroom, we were in the back suite, and we spent our socializing time with uno in our apartment – it was an ideal set-up. phil and i were happy to show off kampala; the places, the stories, the idiosyncrasies we’d learned after 6 months of living. you don’t realize what’s fallen into the background of recognition until you are with someone from home of your ilk, your family with whom you can share it. having visitors is an interesting cross-over of two lives. the one there and the one here momentarily overlap. it’s easier to be here when you don’t think about there, but then again it’s tons of fun to share here with there. that was new for us here and something i really enjoyed.

we hit our favorite kampala hot spots – nakasero market, the old matatu taxi park, the bugolobi indian restaurant, café pap (awful name, good coffee), the ba’hai temple (the only one in africa). i recommend all of them…if you’re looking for a quite, green-space reprieve from the dust, traffic jams, and boda craziness, go to the ba’hai temple. don’t forget to bring your binocs – it’s great for bird-watching and a picnic.

t&e came to us overland from kenya where they’d spent a week exploring on their own. we didn’t know when they’d arrive in kampala and i didn’t know if tait had received my hurried, last-minute email with directions to our apartment. they’re some of the more experienced travelers i know, so i didn’t need to worry about them but i did anyway. family will do that. i definitely did not need to worry about them adapting to africa, though, considering their travel track record, and i certainly did not. i had enough to eat up my allocated “worry time” making sure our planned trip went as planned. in my life planning leads to expectations; expectations very rarely live up to reality thereby often leading to disappointment. this is a personality trait i’m working on adapting so it doesn’t affect my life so much. anyway…

t&e decided in aug/sep that they would be visiting us over christmas. i like their system – they swap every other year’s christmas between being in the u.s. with family and traveling. we got lucky this year to be their chosen destination outside the u.s. not knowing what they’d want to do, we spent time in the fall scoping out tourist destinations in uganda to uncover some of the lesser known, more primo spots. then, in early dec tait emailed saying they wanted to see the gorillas. great, gorillas! oh no, gorillas! phil and i had easily decided that the gorillas were on our must-do list, so “great, gorillas!” but, i knew that gorilla permits were virtually impossible to come by last-minute during the christmas season considering permits are normally booked 6-12 months in advance, so “oh no, gorillas!”

i scrambled to get tickets, going to the uganda wildlife authority where they looked at me like i was crazy and calling all the tour companies in town where they talked to me like i was crazy. i responded as non-crazy as possible and kept calling, emailing, pestering until i finally found someone who said “sure, we can do that.” maybe i should’ve suspected something fishy about the only tour company left with gorilla permits 2 weeks before christmas? but every time i questioned, they came back with excellent customer service, so what was i to do but trust? the real crunch-time in the suspicion/trust tug-o-war was when i sent our tour guide to kigali on a bus with $1600 cash to purchase the only remaining 4 gorilla permits in all of east africa over christmas. the evening of the day he was supposed to pick the permits i got a call from rwanda saying no one showed up and if the permits weren’t picked by the following day, they would be forced to give them to someone else. i hung up and called our tour guide immediately, but couldn’t get thru to him for…2 days. can you imagine what was going thru my mind? i imagine you can imagine. luckily our imaginations most often land at the worst-case-scenario and in reality nothing bad came out of the snafu and our tour guide showed up in kampala a few days later with 4 rwandan gorilla permits in hand. whew. phil told me i was getting too involved as a middle-man in the trip planning. he had a point, but it’s hard for a control freak like me to let go sometimes.

FYI: if you purchase gorilla permits from a tour company, you do not need to book a tour with that company. i didn’t know that initially; i thought you could only do DIY if you purchased directly thru the uwa or rwanda office of tourism. nope, you can DIY. regardless of what’d i’d know, though, we still would’ve rented a car + driver since we’d decided that elsie (our landcruiser) wasn’t big enough for 4 people and gear and a 12+ hour drive. knees in chests on a bumpy road isn’t so comfortable.

the benefit of having a tour guide is that he removes the questions of travel – how do we get a car across the border, where will we stay, how do we get to the park? funny thing is our tour guide didn’t know the answers to any of those questions. it makes me laugh when i think about it. no matter though, we figured it all out. we made it thru uganda and rwanda, saw the gorillas, spent time on lake bunyonyi, hiked in lake mburo national park. we did it all and enjoyed it all….can’t ask for much more, really.

we used to always tell the syzygy kids that there’s nothing wrong with making a mistake, it’s what you decide to do with it that matters. i’m still learning to apply said mantra to my own life. phil chastises me for my coulda/woulda/shoulda mentality. it does no good but create regret over the past…apply the experience to change future behavior the way you want. he’s right, of course (but don’t tell him i said that). and, so is my grandpa – the events gone wrong are the ones we talk about for years.

i suspect that t&e, phil, and i will talk about this for years…

- driving 10 km in 3 hours around lake bunyonyi on one of the worst, but most scenic roads in uganda. coming around the corner to find a petrol tanker nearly on its side in the rain, muck and mud leaning on the uphill side of a one-lane road that hugged a steep drop into the valley below. how to pass? fishtail and gun it uphill in the mud while being pushed by a group of industrious teenage boys as the edge is so close on one side you can’t see it and the tanker is so close on the other you can kiss it (if you’re into that sort of thing.)

- racing to the border at cyanika to make it across before it closed (no crossing, no gorillas the next morning) only to learn we can’t get our van across. the sun’s setting and we’re stuck at a border with no vehicle to make it the rest of the way. ah, travel. we load our earthly belongings onto our backs, walk across the dead space between countries, and climb into a rattling, shaking rwandan matatu. we speed thru the dark rattling along on the best road i’ve been on in months (rwanda has real roads!) watching the colorful display of people filing past on the traditional christmas eve processional. no question we were in a new country. as simple as a line on a map and so much changes.

- staying at the overland camp at lake bunyonyi with the intent of enjoying a day of quiet r&r in a scenic locale. it was scenic and relaxing, but not at all quiet. our r&r happened to coincide with an all-out, all-day party replete with music, dancing, and shouting into microphones in typical “ugandan party” style. enough cacophony to disrupt the whole lake. tait, phil, and i opted for a walk up and around the hills. bird-watching, flowers, views, villagers, a chance to chat. make lemonade out of lemons, right?

(for more trip stories, see phil’s post.)

i wanted t&e’s visit to be perfect, but travel isn’t about perfection. travel is about the adventure. i know that, t&e know that. at a certain point, i was smart enough to remember that axiom and actually apply it to our trip which made all the difference ‘cos then i was able to enjoy rather than worry. i’ve traveled a lot in my time (latin america, europe, new zealand, asia), but after 6 months living in uganda i’m learning one fundamental difference between living and traveling. when you travel, everything contributes to the experience – the good, the bad, the ugly. you experience for 2 weeks, and then go home stocked with pictures, adventures, and stories galore. no matter how things turn out, it’s good. living is different. you don’t leave to go home…you’re already there.

i had many expectations wrapped up in this trip, but now no regrets. sure, it didn’t all go as planned, but big deal. i spent 5 days with family in a beautiful place talking, laughing, experiencing, adventuring. that satisfies my christmas 2006 wish list.

**footnote: i wrote this blog by hand on my flight from entebbe to heathrow, which is something i do a lot more of now that i live without reliable electricity. transcribing it from paper to computer happened while sitting in the very place that phil and i killed 9 hours on a layover en route to uganda for the first time a long/short 6 months ago.

sick building syndrome

you may recall my dismay at our chronic sickness over the last month and half and my corresponding excitement when i felt we were finally on our road to recovery after a successful visit to the international hospital kampala. sorry to disappoint, but it wasn’t as smooth of a road to recovery as i had anticipated. we visited the IHK twice, which included blood tests and chest x-rays. both times we walked away with antibiotics and penicillins and the assurance/confidence that we would be healthy soon. it wasn’t until about a week after we started the second round of drugs and the sickness was status quo that we started to suspect something fishy.

around the time phil got home from the states in early november, i had issues with flooding in our apartment. turns out that the water pipes broke in the vacant upstairs apartment. being empty, no one noticed the overflowing water until it started running from our ceiling. this happened twice because the solution to the first flooding was to turn off my water. (gotta love the short-term, stop-gap solution.) that lasted oh about a week before i ran out of water, complained, had my water turned back on, and within 24 hours the apartment was flooded again. lucky for phil this happened the day he arrived from the u.s.

we mopped up the floors, the maintenance staff finally fixed the water (turns out the water pipes were mislabeled), and didn’t think too much about it all except that it was another “adventure” to add to our african experience. then a week later, we found mold in phil’s closet. we bleached it and didn’t think too much about it. then we found mold all over the house on our houseplants, baskets, cupboards. we bleached it and didn’t think too much about it. then we were sick for 6+ weeks and didn’t get better. that’s when we thought about it.

i made the big mistake of researching mold on the internet. diagnosing your disease on the internet is always a bad idea – invariably you connect your symptoms to some combination of leukemia, black lung, or brain tumors. within 30 minutes i was in full-onset panic mode as i had diagnosed us with fungal exposure to mold or mycotoxicosis (systemic mold infection). some signs of mycotoxicosis are…
-respiratory distress, coughing, sneezing, sinusitis
-asthmatic signs: wheezing, shortness of breath, coughing
-headaches
-chronic fatigue
-rash or hives
sound familiar? yep, we've been in this symptomatic loop since early november. of course, the list of possible mycotoxicosis symptoms is much more exhaustive and people suffering from mycotoxicosis usually show at least 8 of the symptoms, including very commonly lose of balance. we didn’t meet the 8-symptom threshold nor did we lose our balance, so no full-blown mycotoxicosis for us. not wanting to get to the full-blown stage, though, the night i had my internet-induced mycotoxicosis panic attack we moved into our neighbor’s house and the following day we met with a real estate agent to begin our new house hunt. i wasn’t going to waste any more time not being healthy. i don’t care if i overreacted, i was getting us out of here. (in my overreactive defense, since sleeping outside our apartment both of us have stopped coughing til choking and have cleared up breathing and sinuses.)

it’s now been just over a week since our sick building syndrome saga began. we have a house lined up and are hoping to move in before i head back to the states next week for a quick business trip. our exposure to the mold was relatively short (2 months compared to years for some people unaware of the mold in their homes), so no long-term health worries. the house is an upgrade from an already super nice apartment. the biggest upgrade is that for the first time we’ll be living in a house…with a garden, patio, garage, view…it’s going to be great. added bonus: we have an extra bedroom for all our visitors. double bonus: no mold.

happy 2007

the big party in town for new year’s eve was at the sheraton hotel on nakasero hill. 2000 people, maybe? open stage concert with all the big names in ugandan music – peter miles, raggedy, chameleon – and the requisite gyrating skimpily clad fit female dancers. the women were often joined by male dancers doing their choreographed moves. the guys were professionals, but most everything they did on stage our friends do regularly in dance clubs around town. not to say the professionals were bad, but that our friends our good. ugandan men are born naturals on the dance floor.

the party and the music were good, but the fireworks were the best attraction of the whole night. cities in the u.s. put on a good show for the 4^th of july and americans dutifully ooh and aah. spectacular pyrotechnic display met with a subdued, reposed-on-the-picnic-blanket reaction. in kampala, it’s a semi-spectacular display greeted with jumping, screaming, dancing, cheering, laughing, whistling, and all out excitement. i’ve never seen a fireworks display anything like it. phil and i joined in and by the end of it my cheeks hurt from smiling and laughing so much at the spectacle unfolding all around us. all fireworks should be that fun.

tourney in february

the group i coach on sundays forms the kampala ultimate frisbee club (KUFC). last wednesday a small organizing committee met to begin planning a tournament in kampala. goal is to have 5-6 teams from uganda plus the nairobi team. any others willing to make the trip?

i have a lot of experience in ultimate, but this is my first time in the tournament director role, so i'm learning as i go. i'm big into delegation because (1) i don't know the standards for african ultimate tournaments as well as my ugandan counterparts, and (2) there's no way i could do all the organizing myself. i'm hoping that delegation is the first right step of many i take as a tournament director. so far, the tasks i've delegated: sponsorship, liaison officer (a.k.a. visiting team host), advertisement, tourney set-up (including fields mgmt), jerseys, format, registration, treasurer, medical, food, saturday night party, team recruitment, score/timekeepers, prizes. did i miss anything?

if you have any lessons learned, suggestions, advice, please share via comments. i've been using the upa's ultimate organizer's resource manual, but it's targeted toward leagues not tournaments. question: how do you set a reasonable tourney team entry fee? what do you do with players who show up day-of without a team?

details of the tournament...
dates: feb 10-11, 2006
location: international school uganda (entebbe road, kampala)
contact: kampala (dot) ultimate (at) gmail

we're looking for a good name for the tournament. any suggestions?

an american christmas in kampala

the u.s. ambassador - steven a browning - hosted his annual christmas open house for american citizens on friday night (dec 15th). we went with no expectations except to not know anyone. i should've known better. not more than 10 yeards into the gate and i'd already seen a large handful of people i work with plus those that overlap into our ultimate community. kampala is a very small world and i'm struggling with the nonexistant division between my work life and personal life, but that's a topic for another time. back to the ambassador's christmas party...

security was present but not strict. entry required a u.s. passport or embassy badge, but if you made the metal detector beep no one stopped you. somewhat refreshing considering the suffocating flavor of international u.s. security these days. despite all the people, food, and drinks being in the expansive yard, we made a beeline for the house wanting to see how the ambassador and his family lived. we walked into the house and we could've easily been walking into any upperclass home in america...just like that and we were no longer in africa. we decided we'd wander thru the house until someone stopped us. nobody did, so we kept wandering. some observations of note: (1) the ambassador is texan, as evidenced by his "have a merry texan christmas!" tree ornament, (2) the candlesticks in the china cabinet aren't real silver, (3) the christmas cookie spread rivaled any i've seen.

it's a week before christmas and friday night was the first and only time it's felt like christmas to me. we ate christmas cookies, there was an american style christmas tree, santa claus made a visit, and we sang christmas carols. subtract out those couple hours of christmassy socializing, and i'd say it was still the middle of july. living on the equator means there are no seasons to track the passage of time - to me we've been here for a summer and the christmas season is still months away. the air needs to cool, the leaves need to change colors and drop, the snow needs to come before it's christmas. i thought i would really miss christmas living here, but it's hard to when there's none of the traditional signs of christmas, like snow. what's christmas without snow? if it's christmas, i should be knitting by the fire at the cabin chatting with my mom and sister watching the snow fall outside getting ready for our annual anderson family christmas hockey game on the lake. it's not christmas when i can walk outside my door to sunny skies, 75 degree weather, and sit by our pool sunbathing and reading a book. not that that isn't nice (because it is), it's just that it's not christmas.

ugandans say that christmas is a big holiday here and i believe them. uganda is a heavily christian country, so a big christmas is logical. what's interesting to me is the influence of westernized christmas chintz on uganda's holiday season. the street peddlers on kampala road sell fake christmas trees with garlands, retail store employees dress up in red velvet santa costumes, music kiosks play metallic-sounding versions of traditional christmas carols. christmas is coming earlier and earlier in the u.s., for sure by thanksgiving time. i was surprised to see the same in kampala. the first christmas retail influx i remember seeing here was the end of october. october?! i was hoping to see some unique ugandan christmas traditions, but so far i've seen more of the same from home and the stuff i have seen doesn't fit at all - christmas tree ornaments with fake snow in uganda? doesn't make sense.

christmas is a big holiday for my family and, although it's been easy leading up to the holiday, i know it's going to be hard to be away from them on the actual day. good thing that my brother tait and sister-in-law estela are coming to visit us in a week. plan is to go to rwanda to see the gorillas. if you can't be at home, the next best thing is to be with the gorillas on christmas day.

an apple a day

phil and i have been sick for the better part of the last month - phlegmy coughs, sinus congestion, fevers. major respiratory breakdown, really. phil was feverish when he first came home from the states, then my hacking, choking coughs took center stage for a while, then phil regained the sicky limelight with his chest-rattling cough. all of that to say it's been a month of ill health in the anderson bowen household.

neither one of us is much of a drug-taker (except for the ubiquitous ibu during ultimate season) living by the i'm-young-and-healthy-i'll-get-better-soon philosophy. our philosophy suffered this time around...being sick for a month isn't normal. so, last week i instigated and got us to the surgery. you'll remember the surgery from phil's 9-stitch hand injury in august. positive experience then, so we assumed positive experience now. oh boy, were we wrong.

dr. stockley, a brit, is the main figurehead of the surgery. everyone knows him in kampala, an easily recognized face at the local pub and a regular contributer to "the eye," kampala's monthly chamber of commerce-esque publication. we went to see him in all good faith in a time of need expecting greatness, or at least competency, and walked away thoroughly disappointed and, at least for me, disgusted. four words: rude, arrogant, unconcerned, uninformed.

the first 3 expats i complained to following our doc stock visit said, "let me guess, bilharzia?" bilharzia must be his communicable disease of choice these days. you get bilharzia (aka schistosomiasis) thru contact with contaminated freshwater. we know this. that's why we don't swim in freshwater in uganda. phil got sick in the states before coming home. there isn't bilharzia in the u.s. yet, doc stock ordered a full blood test to diagnose bilharzia and discharged phil saying "if it's not bilharzia, then it's just something you're going to have to get over with time." huh? you told him that his airways are so constricted that he has the lung capacity of a 55-year-old, but that doesn't matter because he has bilharzia? i don't think so.

after talking around town some, i learned that general consensus is "don't go to an expat doc if you're sick." no level of scrutiny is directed their way because it's assumed they're good - they're european or american or whatever, they must be good. right? wrong. the longer they're here the more time they have to slip, to stagnate. besides, expat patients will continue to come to their clinics regardless of quality of care simply because they're an expat provider. following our visit to the surgery, i could not have been more convinced by these theories. (of course, none of this applies to providers on short rotations in the country. they maintain the high-level of professionalism and technical know-how required for successful practice anywhere. case in point, the swedish doc that stitched up phil's hand.)

phil suffered a few more days, before i decided enough is enough and got us to the international hospital kampala (an "international" hospital primarily staffed by ugandans) with a specialist recommendation from a friend.
1st reaction: they have specialists!
2nd reaction: wow, nice facilities. helipad included.
3rd reaction: IHK is where it's at for kampala healthcare. no more the surgery for us.

we didn't wait more than 10 minutes to see dr. olok, a ugandan ENT specialist on staff. he did all the things dr. stockley didn't - asked questions, listened to answers, examined thoroughly, diagnosed, prescribed drugs, cared, established doctor-patient rapport. i was impressed. final diagnosis: sinus infection, chest/lung infection, not bilharzia. we walked away drugs in hand, $40.55 poorer to cover the consultation/meds x2, and (finally...hopefully) on our roads to recovery.

lunch for two = 85 cents

there's two levels for cost of living in uganda, the expat cost and the ugandan cost. if you're an expat living the expat lifestyle, it ain't cheap. kampala has it all - movie theater, haute cuisine ethnic-specialty restaurants, clubs, pubs, shops, technology - and it can all be yours if you're willing to pay the (hefty) price. an illustrative short list:
dinner for two at the local sushi restaurant = $60
ikea poang chair = $335 (retail $79 in the u.s.)
parmesan cheese = $8.90 for 200 g
box of muesli = $6.65
petrol = $1.32 per liter = $4.99 per gallon
2-bdrm apt = $750-$2500

these prices are unfathomable when compared to the outrageously low cost of living for a local ugandan whose day-to-day expenses could include:
matatu ride into town = $0.25
newspaper = $0.55
500 ml coca cola = $0.45
fresh avocado = $0.05
branch of bananas (not just a bunch, but the whole "fist") = $6
of course, you have to look at these prices with a grain of salt that is an excruciatingly high unemployment rate coupled with an average daily wage of approximately $3.50. also to consider is that this "grain of salt" effectively prices 95% of ugandans out of the expat market.

if you put an expat salary with the ugandan cost of living, you can seriously live cheap. phil and i live somewhere in between. we can't survive on matooke every meal (a typical ugandan will eat 1 kilo of matooke/bananas a day) and admittedly enjoy our semi-regular cappuccinos. we're not willing to spend $6.65 on subpar muesli, though, and make our own granola as an alternative. when we splurge on sushi for a friend's birthday, we counterbalance with lunch for two from the local restaurant next door for $0.85. rice and beans and chapati for 85 cents. you can't beat that.

as international staff, my employer pays for most everything: flight to/from, rent, utilities, car, phone. no major monthly expenses, 85 cent lunches, and we'd be doing unbelievably well on saving for a down payment on a house when we moved back to the states if it weren't for all our travels and tourism, which ain't cheap either. for example...
round-trip ticket u.s. to uganda = $1950 (we bought two)
permits to track gorillas in rwanda = $375 per person (we just bought two)
but, when your best friend gets married and your sister has her first baby, how can you not fly home? and, when you live in uganda, the pearl of africa of all places, how can you not travel?

the pantomime

an annual christmas tradition in kampala is the pantomime (the "panto"). it's a play, musical, theatrical experience staged 6 times over 5 days in early december. as the stagebill for this year's pantomime says: "for those of you new to panto, it represents an integral part of british culture, requiring certain very specific elements. the hero (the principal boy) must be played by a woman; the leading older woman's part must be played by a husky man (the dame); there must be at least one animal (in this production we have two - a dog and a gorilla); and the audience must participate at every opportunity. yes, this chaos has been carefully designed. it is also traditional for pantomimes to be based on well-known children's stories."

we went with open minds and a sense of humor, as recommeneded, to this year's panto, "tintin goes bananas - what's happened to all the matooke?" the panto is traditionally directed toward the kids both in the cast and in the audience, but no matter. we were sucked into the atmosphere like everyone else; booing and hissing when provoked, cheering when urged. imo snowy stole the show, and big hits of the production were cleverly rewritten lyrics to popularly recognized disney/broadway songs. my favorite was a kampala-centric version of "part of your world" from the little mermaid. no chance that i'll remember any of the lyrics except the one that replaced "what would i give if i could live out of these waters" with "what would i give if i could live in bugolobi." bugolobi's got it going on and the rest of kampala knows it. the 24/7 electricity doesn't hurt our public image, of course.
101paige 101africa
the panto was staged at the national theater, which supports a good theatrical scene in kampala. the kampala amateur dramatics society produces most of the shows (most recently fiddler on the roof) and attracts quality talent. for example, the musical director orchestrated a tony award-winning broadway musical before coming to kampala and being the one responsible for the good music and clever lyrics in the panto. kampala's like that. the year-round predictibly good weather, high quality of life, and active social/cultural scene attract good people.

murchison day 3

since we couldn't bring our car across the river and hiring a ride on the other side was cost prohibitive, we decided to do the next best thing and take a walking safari instead of driving. a little boat brought us the couple hundred yards across the river where we met up with dennis and set out in to the bush. we have yet to meet a ugandan wildlife guide who doesn't really know their stuff, and dennis was no exception. we learned a lot about flora and fauna alike and added some new birds and beasts to our checklist. most of our walk was along the banks and bluffs of the nile, and dennis was really careful about checking for water buffalo or hippo that might surprise us. it was the first time that i realized that we were not in the safety of a zoo. apparantly hippos kill more people than any other animal in the world. and water buffalo are no picnic. it was great to get such a personal view of the area and the wildlife, made all the more clear once we were on a boat with 10 other people which felt a little more like a canned tour.

back to the camp for lunch and cokes and shade to sit out the mid-day heat until our boat launch began at 2.

the trip upriver to the falls was very cool. tons of animals and birds. dozens of schools of dozens of hippos, red-throated flycatchers and kingfishers by the dozens, water buffalo, huge crocs, water buck...and elephants! africa for real. there was wildlife galore and this was during the wet season when animals don't have to come down to the banks of the nile to get a drink. a highlight was seeing a water buffalo walking up the path that we had been on with dennis only three hours before.