Nets, Nets, and More Nets...

Sorry it has been a while. The last few weeks have been filled with net sales and long trips. Our hope has been to get people to buy nets for the holidays, and so far, it has been pretty successful. A few weeks ago, we made a trip out to Bwindi rainforest, the southwest corner of Uganda, for a few days of net sales. This area of Uganda (near the border of DR Congo) has no access to mosquito nets and is one of the poorest regions of Uganda. Just outside of Bwindi are the Pygmies; the Pygmies were kicked out of the area when the land became a national park for gorillas some years ago. The Pygmies are now the poorest population in Uganda and cannot afford nets. In years past, we have traded nets for jars of honey, but this year’s trading goods had quite the range: wooden carvings, bundles of matoke, sugar, and best of all, 2 eggs. It was interesting to say the least.

It was great to see some new countryside of Uganda; I think I felt cold for the first time in the last few months. I actually pulled out a warm hat at nighttime (yes, I know this is very lame). It felt like a whole new place though, and since Lusoga and Luganda are not spoken in this area, it was fun to watch Francis and Joseph (our drivers) get completely confused with the dialects in the southwest region.

It was an interesting trip, and definitely a fun experience to exchange nets for all the goods the Pygmies brought with them. It was good to get out and see some new parts of Uganda; the 14 hour drive out to Bwindi provided us with plenty of downtime to enjoy each other’s company.

Best wishes for the end of the year.

Nile River Festival 2007

Things have been a bit busy out here on the Nile. Although everything still seems to happen on Uganda time, I have managed to cram in as much as possible. Aside from working at the clinic and seeing patients with malaria, right heart failure, hypertension, or other tropical diseases such as Filariasis and Schistosomiasis mansoni (trematode eggs), it has been productive. We have had more outreach net sales, follow-ups, adventures searching for referred patients at Jinja Hospital, and a little playing on the river, too.

This weekend was the international Nile River Festival; we had people from all around the world: USA, Canada, Ireland, Scotland, England, Sweden, New Zealand, South Africa, and best of all, local paddlers from our dear Uganda. It has been quite an event, and definitely a great 3 day weekend filled with plenty of competitions: the big air freestyle on the Nile Special, a 45 km endurance race from NRE down to the Hairy Lemon, and another 10 km paddle to Silverback followed by a boda-boda race back to NRE (of course the finish line for this race was through an obstacle course of rafts and a funnel of the sponsoring Nile Special beer for the final touch). The best score of all 3 events was the big money maker and the men’s champion was Ibra, our local Ugandan. It was great to watch him take home $2,000 as the grand prize. It was a good turnout though: there were about 40 men in the freestyle with fewer in all 3 events, and 12 women (I think it is the biggest female turnout yet). It was a fun weekend filled with plenty of worldwide kayakers and lots of locals here to compete and support the event. The flat water in the 45 km race was pretty entertaining, but luckily this part of the festival was done in partners, so Anna and I kept each other laughing and motivated throughout our 3:29:24 sprint. Good times. The best part is that CDC had a table at the finish line and they were waiting for all the dirty kayakers’ blood to test for S. mansoni (bilharzia). They are working on a study to see if S. mansoni is here in Uganda and were very surprised when I told them we had a case of S. mansoni at our clinic the week prior.

We have 2 malaria outreach sessions this week and a meeting with AIDS Information Center in Jinja to discuss continuation of free HIV testing in secondary schools around Jinja.

Check out Jaime's write-up on the Festival at http://www.kayaksession.com/nile-river-festival.php