June 2009
on Random Uganda (Uganda), 05/Dec/2009 11:55, 34 days ago
Some first impressions of Uganda… 27 June… the ICT1 (first week of in country training, of which I missed the first half because CUSO-VSO Canada insisted I take their skills in working in development (acronym SKWID…) before they’d fly me over here) is winding down and everyone is excited about getting started with there placements…also everyone is excited about moving out of the Lwewa training and conference center and into their new housing situation… but I have been informed that my housing isn’t ready yet, so I will be going to ‘temporary housing’, but as all the fresh new volunteers are hugging goodbye and heading off to various parts of Uganda, Rose (VSO program admin) pulls me aside and tells me that even my temporary housing isn’t ready yet. It’s being cleaned. I’ll be spending the night at the shalom guest house and ‘someone’ will be picking me up in the morning to take me to my temporary housing…so I hang out all morning. But I don’t have an idea of who is supposed to be picking me up… and I couldn’t call them if I did, because I haven’t got my phone sorted yet. Finally at 2pm a beat up looking SUV rumbles up the drive and a kid who might be 15 gets out and starts loading my bags into back. He doesn’t speak much English, and my Lugandan stops at what’s your name (ggwe ani?, literally, who you?), but he doesn’t seem to recognize that as a question, or even a manifestation of his language…we pull out of the shalom and head up the hill toward… oh, I don’t have a freakin clue, ‘cuz noone’s given me an indication as to where this temporary housing is going to be, somewhere away from town and from the hospital, but otherwise into uncharted territory as far as I’m concerned. About half way up the moderately steep hill, the SUV dies. Traffic backs up as the bota-botas swarm around both sides and the trucks behind start honking… the kid puts on the e-brake, gets out of the car, and runs off down the hill.so I’m sitting in the passenger seat of a car stuck at the front of an ever growing line of pissed off drivers… some of them are putting their heads in the open window and screaming at me, others, more entrepreneurial, are trying get me to move my boatload of crap into their trucks and come with them, which is tempting, except that I have no idea where I’m going… meantime, I’m getting shouted at and not having much luck with my limited lugandan—wasuze otye ssebo (how did you sleep last night sir?) and the ever important oosela ssebo (I believe you are overcharging me, sir)…about 30 minutes (I was keeping an eye on my watch, figuring I’d give the kid 30 minutes before I really started to freak out) later the kid comes back on the back of a boda-boda (motor cycle taxi and kampala’s leading cause of head trauma) holding 2 liter water bottles full of petrol. He empties the bottles into the tank (carefully discarding the plasticin to ditch) and, surprisingly enough, the car starts and we proceed up the hill…28JuneI’m staying in Muyenga, one of kampala’s many posh suburbs that dot the hilltops (Kampala, like rome and seattle was built on seven hills, but has expanded since then) while the slums fill the swampy valleys below. I’m staying in the guest house of a Ugandan family, or maybe the servants quarters (hope they don’t mind sleeping in the shed while I’m here). It’s a cute little place—one large room that doubles as bedroom and living room, a small bathroom with toilet and shower (but no sink, and no hot water), and a small kitchen with a two burner gas stove. I’d love to say therewere cold beers in the fridg, but there isn’t one. All in all, pretty livable. Compared to some of the volunteers in the villages who have to haul their water from the communal pipe in jerry cans and have no electricity, it’s pretty posh. When I ask where the help is sleeping, my land lady Sanyu says, ‘you know, its africa, what can you do?’Muyenga has many large white stuccoed houses with terra cotta roof tiles built to take in the views of the hills and Lake Victoria. Most of them have high walls strung with concertina wire or set with broken glass. My house, I think because Ugandans live there, doesn’t have any concertina wire, but the wall is still there. Many of these large white mansions behind high walls have tastefully small signs denoting one of the numerous NGOs that work in Uganda: Holland War Child, Danish Refugee Association, Save the Children… Makes you think about what Paul Collier said in the ‘Bottom Billion’ about aid not getting to the poorest of the poor because aid workers don’t want to go there. And wonder about your donations to X charity when they say that X% of your donations goes to work in the field—does that mean building a fortified mansion somewhere in the third world?Went for a run this morning (Sunday) that, through my generally poor sense of direction, took me off the hill and down into the namuwongo slum. Don’t really know if this is advisable or not, but figured better on Sunday morning when they are putting on their best clothes and heading to church than on Saturday night. Didn’t really feel particularly threatening, everyone smiled at me and gave me the ‘stupid mazungu’ look. (mazungu is lugandan for single white man, bazungu would be plural, just like mantu would be man and bantu would be people) Maybe it was ‘cuz I was wearing a Liverpool FC shirt and they are all Arsenal fans. Figured I didn’t really have much on me worth chasing me down and mugging me for, but I suppose in adollar a day economy, even a beat up pair of asics have some resale value.29Junespeaking of resale value… Dr. Hamsa (sp), one of the ‘young doctors’ (we would call them interns or 2nd year residents) that I met the other day is in the ICU this morning on a ventilator. Apparently he was mugged outside his house in Makerere, for his cell phone. Frontal epidural hematoma. At least he was able to get a CT scan and a burr hole. But doesn’t really look too good from my cursory glance. Makerere is across town from here, over near the university and the Mulago hospital(the large state run hospital in kampala). Apparently not as nice a neighborhood as Muyenga. The Ugandans assure me thatviolent robbery seldom happens in Kampala, and certainly never in my part of town, BUT, as they say with a shrug, ‘this is africa, sometimes things happen…’cell/mobile phones are everywhere here, so you wouldn’t think that they’d be worth braining someone for (or maybe that is precisely why?). The other day in the market where a man in fairly beat up, dirty attire (which is unusual—most people here in kampala are dressed better than I am) was shoveling the bones and waste left by the fish sellersonto a rudimentary handmade wheelbarrow when a jazzy ringtone went off. The fishseller checked his phone then looked at me, while the fishgut shoveller wipes off his hands on his shirt and pulls a little nokia out of his pocket… my in-Uganda calls on MTN cost about 400 /- (Ugandan shillings) a minute, or about 20 cents… A third of Uganda survives on less than a dollar a day… So if you were living on a dollar a day (or even $8/day which is what my stipend works out to, and is what, I’m told, a doctor at mulago gets paid), would you be willing to spend 1/5 of your income on a minuteof airtime?Met Ian Clarke today (or Dr. Ian, as almost everyone in Kampala knows him). The man with the vision and energy behind the IHK (internatl hospital of kampala), as well as 13 Internatl Medical Clinics, the Internatl Medical foundation (the charitable arm, providing free care), the IAA (internatl air ambulance) which is actually kind of an hmo selling‘subscriptions’ to employers, and a construction company (for building these things). Talking with a couple of our language teachers… they think Dr. Ian has gone over to the dark side (‘he used to be one of us, now all he thinks of is’) also the Ugandans are already leery of the hmo thing ‘if you are on the subscription, they give you the cheaper drugs…’Dr. Ian assures us that the hospital and its various subsidiaries are broke…(and to judge from his shabby dress and beat up Seiko watch, he may be telling the truth) he’s just returned from trip to china where he’s been looking at Chinese icu monitors and trying to find donors.We’ll see.