We've been here for a whole month now!
on Jason and Anna in Mbarara (Uganda), 23/Mar/2009 06:12, 34 days ago
So, we've now been in Uganda for a month, and we like it so far.I did my first lecture last week, on 'capsule technology' (eg how to make capsules) and I think it went quite well. We are now more that half-way into the semester, and all the Pharmaceutical Technology lectures have finished - and that is the subjectI am supposed to be teaching! The reason for this is that the students are supposed to have a morning of lectures and a morning of practicals each week - but as the lab has no pharmaceutical technology machines or even many chemicals, we have been unable to do any practicals with the students whatsoever. If anybody has any bright ideas of ways around this, I would love to know! I have suggested to the students that we use the remaining lectures as revision time, and they can come to ask me about any problems they have with the module. It seems crazy that they are learning all the theory of the subject, but there is no way we can show them it in practise. One of the students suggested that we arrange a trip to a Pharmaceutical Manufacturer, which is a good idea in theory - but the problem is the university has no funds to give us for travel etc.Outside of work, things have been going pretty well too. Our cleaner started last week, and she is fantastic! As most of you will know, neither myself nor Jason would make a good house-wife, and it's more difficult here because of all the dust and the lack of an automatic washing machine. So Gertrude the cleaner comes to our flat every Monday, does all our laundry (and irons it!), and cleans the whole flat - and she picks fresh flowers for us and leaves them on the dining table!This weekend, we had the VSO's from Bushenyi (a town nearby) visiting us. Unni (a VSO neonatologist from the UK) cooked us fantastic curries at his flat, my colleague Professor Reddy made amazing chappatis, and Jason and I provided the beer! On Saturday we took them into Mbarara to show them around the shops etc, and we bumped into two of the new Dutch VSO's - Erik and Gabriella. They are working in a town about an hour and a half away from Mabarara, and were staying in a hotel here for the weekend. We all went for lunch at the Lake View Hotel, which is relatively posh. It was funny when we arrived, because the place was crawling with security and soldiers - and we got asked if we had any guns! Apparently, the President (Museveni) was coming to visit, so they had stepped up security. We had lunch and a couple of drinks there, which was really nice (they do veggie-burgers!), but the president still hadn't shown up by the time we left.Jason decided to spend most of yesterday afternoon attempting(!) to make bread. We have no oven, so he found a recipe on the internet for some bread you make in a pan - I suppose it was supposed to be a bit like soda bread. Anyway, it didn't turn out very well, and tasted like a scone gone wrong. So then Jason decided that was because we'd put butter into the dough, so he remade it minus the butter and it was like a brick! Jason is adamant that he is going to eventually make some nice bread without an oven, but I have yet to be convinced. I did take some pictures of our baking escapades, but I haven't uploaded them yet.Nearly forgot to tell you the hilarious story of our bin....There is a big skip at the back of our compound where we have to dispose of all our rubbish. There is usually a very dirty looking Maribou Stork sitting in the skip eating the rubbish (Maribou makes the stork sound exotic, but it is one of the ugliest creatures I have ever seen). Anyway, at the weekend the skip had been emptied, so we couldn't see if the stork was in it. So when we threw our bag of rubbbish into the skip, we expected the stork to fly up angrily.....but instead a PERSON popped their head out and said 'OUCH!!' (because our rubbish had hit them on the head!). We felt awful, but the whole thing was so funny that we were in hysterics - you just don't expect a person to be in your skip.