Damn Dams

As the clock keeps ticking, I have been spending my last few days on the water – a little teaching and plenty of playing. I went back down to the Hairy Lemon for a few relaxing days surfing on the Nile Special and the Club Wave, and now back to Bujagali. With the big plans of doing a Silverback run this afternoon, we arrived back at NRE and were delighted to read the sign: “Blasting on 18/4/08. Stay clear all afternoon.” I cannot help but wonder the long-term effects of the Bujagali Dam; after completion, it will likely wash out all the whitewater down to Silverback. This will definitely affect the local community, most likely more bad than good. It will probably lead to a decline in rafting and kayaking tourists, and therefore show a decrease in clientele at NRE; most of Kyabirwa village is employed because of this heavy traffic in Bujagali: raft guides, safety kayakers, shuttle drivers, staff at NRE campsite, bar, local restaurants, boda drivers, chapatti stand, etc. After flooding out the river, I would not be surprised to see an increase in malaria and bilharzia because the lake will serve as a perfect breeding site. Of course, there are arguments that the dam will benefit the local community with more electricity; however, my guess is that the electricity will likely be sold to neighboring Kenya and the private dam companies will benefit rather than local communities. Few people in these rural villages actually have electricity anyway. The power of money is disturbing, especially when the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, yet again. It is funny how we have started to remove dams back in the States because of the lack of sustainability; however, back here in Uganda, they keep on building new ones. Someday we will learn.

Another Day of Public Transport

I sit crammed in the back corner of a matatu on a hot Monday afternoon. I can feel the sweat rolling down my back as I sit shoulder to shoulder and count the 23 passengers jam-packed into one matatu. There is nothing unusual about the busy days of public transport; I always laugh when I read the sign painted on all matatus: “licensed to carry maximum of 14 passengers.” I look around the matatu a little closer: a few crying babies, bundles of matoke piled on top of the roof, the smell of fish grilling on the front of the car, young, nursing mothers in the back, or maybe the 3 live chickens squealing and running underneath my feet. There is never a dull moment here. Everything is a bit slower, whether it is from transportation or the healing of a small, infected cut on my foot. Yesterday was pouring down rain and life was on hold here; the roads become muddy and unbearable, bodas are dangerous and impossible to drive, the markets are dead silent as everyone huddles under the trees and just waits until the sun comes out and shines again. I believe laughter has brought me a long way in life; I have learned to enjoy the most of it and a good sense of humor has saved me countless times. I peak through the tiny crack in the window as I try to gasp every bit of fresh air to cool off. I look off into the mountains of green, lush jungles; it almost looks like the Grand Canyon except covered in rain forests instead of the dry deserts of Arizona. It is a beautiful countryside filled with mountains, rivers, farms, and Ugandans who have lived a much harder life than I have. I still have a hard time believing I have been here nearly 6 months; it was not until the other day that I felt ready to leave. The transition phase is a tricky place to be: I had more or less stopped working with Soft Power Health, returned from traveling to Rwanda, and became sick and unproductive for a few days that I finally felt ready to move on (maybe another round of bilharzia for all I know). Maybe it is good that I will be leaving relatively soon; it might be my time to go and find a change of pace and change of scenery.

After living here, I will never forget to just sit back and relax; I have spent too much of my life in a hurry, running from one thing to the next. However, here I am now, sitting in a matatu that stops every 100 meters to add more passengers when I never thought it would be possible to fit anyone else. I laugh at the situation; sometimes the Ugandan logic makes no sense at all, but instead of going mad with frustration I am enjoying every moment while I can.

Land of a Thousand Hills

After a beautiful drive through the endless hills of Rwanda, I understand why this tiny country in East Africa is known as the “Land of a Thousand Hills.” I had plenty of time during the 10-hour bus ride from Kampala to Kigali to enjoy the scenery. Along with the travel was the madness of being in a new country again: new language I do not understand, different currency, which of course, I found myself converting into shillings rather than dollars as a reference, driving on the right side of the road, all boda-boda drivers wearing helmets and even having helmets for their passengers, paved roads, rubbish bins throughout the city, pedestrians with the right-of-way for crossing the street, the list goes on! I believe people can even get a ticket for jaywalking. It was relieving in some ways, but I was ready to come back home to Uganda where I know how much a certain boda ride should cost, the normal price for food, and I am not expected to understand French. This trip to Rwanda made me realize, again, that I have been here in Uganda for quite some time and it does feel like home. Today, the 6th of April, marks the 14th anniversary of the beginning of the Rwandan genocide. It is still hard to believe that such a massacre occurred, killing 800,000 people during this 3-month period in 1994. And it all started as an ethnic cleansing of all Tutsis, or anyone married to, employing, or befriending a Tutsi. I walked through the dark halls of the Kigali Memorial Museum, looking at the photos, video, interviews of the survivors, and the remains of the murdered: leftover clothing, skulls, bones, and chains. The hardest part was seeing photos of murdered children with their names, age, favorite sport and food, best friend, last words before death, and the way each child was killed. The most common cause of death was “hacked by machete,” along with “shot in the head,” or “smashed into wall until stopped screaming.” I wonder where some of these kids would be today – maybe finishing up secondary school or being 22 and working at a rural health center. I always thought I had some hard times in 1994, but now I am reinforced of the insignificance of my own memories; I was not gang raped and butchered by a machete, or watching my family slaughtered in front of my own eyes. Sometimes it is hard to believe that every Rwandan over 14 years old has his or her own version of the story to tell.

It is scary that human beings have the ability to perform such violence and hatred toward each other. While looking back on all the genocides, it comes down to ethnic cleansing, religious segregation, poverty, or civil war: the Holocaust, Bosnia, Armenia, Cambodia, Namibia, Rwanda, and now in Darfur. It is funny how organized religion seems to have caused more war than peace. And now, outside the Kigali Memorial Museum, numerous massive graves bury the corpses of thousands of unidentified bodies from 14 years earlier.

My “Not” Going Away Party

I was supposed to be sitting on a plane flying to London right now. However, I realized I was not ready to leave and extended my ticket last week. It sure is a common theme here in Uganda; I have come across countless people who have extended their stays. I am sure that a month down the road when I am currently scheduled to leave will feel similar in my fear and dread of coming back to the States. However, I decided to make the most of it and enjoy another 4 weeks here in Uganda. Instead of having a “not going away” bender for my supposedly last night (as everyone else seems to do), I made the most of the high water here and went down to Malalu, another great big-water wave that rarely comes in. After a good sunset session with some friends, we headed back to the Hairy Lemon and then had a good session on the Nile Special this morning. I am glad I am not sitting in London right now waiting for another plane to catch to Seattle. Someday it will happen, but another month here will not hurt.

I have not been working with Soft Power Health as much as before, which may be obvious by looking at my last few entries of trips to Murchison and Bwindi. I guess it is from a combination of reasons: plenty of new volunteers coming and handing off the work to them, or mainly running out of time to fit in everything I have been hoping to pack in during the last 5 months. I am trying to make the most of my time before the huge culture shock and reality check of coming back to the States.

Western Medicine & Witch Doctors

Sitting at the International Hospital of Kampala on another rainy day, I try to give this 11 year-old girl some words of comfort; however, the language barrier continuously gets in the way. She has been sick for 6 months and suffered multiple convulsions, which led to her loss in ability to walk, see, and control her bladder. I knew deep down that the results from her CT scan would not be good; at least we might be able to figure out what has been going on for these painful months. She came into our clinic some days back, and it did not take long to decide we needed to head to IHK.

The moments, hours, even days, of waiting are too familiar. Of course, the CT scan was done on Friday morning, which means results were not interpreted until late Monday. The weekend of waiting seems like years. After multiple phone calls to IHK, I learn this girl has been suffering from increased ICP and cerebral edema secondary to multiple abscesses in multiple lobes of her brain. I held her CT scan into the light before she was rolled off into the operating room; these 4 large abscesses overtook most of her frontal lobe and part of her right temporal lobe. I was surprised that this dear friend was still fully oriented and could hold normal conversations (aside from my inability to speak fluent Lusoga). A few days later, I would see her lying in the ICU after her second surgery to drain the abscesses. It turns out that the abscesses were filled with fluid soon after the first operation, and they went in again to repeat the same procedure. We are still waiting on the pathology report and the doctors are unsure of the source of the abscesses or have much reasoning behind the diagnosis.

The last few weeks have been filled with familiar days of waiting in a hospital, knowing bad news is coming our way. I have had more moments of frustration and helplessness, wishing I could trade places yet again. The outcome for this 11 year-old girl is not looking so good, but she remains a strong fighter, unwilling to give up so easily. Her case is rather unusual, and on top of that, she is here in a 3rd world country where I was even surprised to see a neurosurgeon on staff at IHK. I wonder whether I am helping by trying to talk to the doctors and family, or just getting in the way. We had another boy with nephroblastoma from a few weeks back who failed to show up to the clinic for his ride to Kampala for further care. I spoke to his father a few days later and he said they did not come because he is getting treatment at another place. I was hesitant to give up so easily or trust the care he was getting if it was near his rural village. As I learned the other day, this 3 1/2 year-old boy died 7 days ago; his family was bringing him to a witch doctor instead of coming to Mulago Hospital in Kampala.

Maybe IHK or Mulago would not have had much else to offer this young boy; however, it is hard not to wonder if the outcome would be any different. Here in East Africa, there are still plenty of Ugandans who would choose the witch doctor over any health center or hospital. People still believe sleeping with a virgin can cure someone of HIV. I suppose it does not help if the South African president tells his people they cannot contract HIV if they shower after every time they have sex; he then fired the South African health minister for disagreeing with him. It is a scary world we live in, and hard to know my own boundaries of whether I am helping or just invading traditional practices.

Acting Career Begins

I am not so sure how it all happened, but I ended up heading out to Bwindi to be an “extra” in some Swedish reality show. It was a last minute decision to go, but the producers called up Kayak the Nile saying they needed 5 extras to come out to Bwindi for one day of reality show acting; all food, board, and transport would be covered, plus some easy money for a day of acting. Without much knowledge of what we were getting ourselves into, 5 of us piled into the Delica at 5:00 AM Saturday morning and headed off on our 13 hour drive. It was a perfect excuse for a road trip, easy money, and plenty of time to enjoy the company of the 5 mzungus from 4 different countries: Wales, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, and the States. Basically, the filming we did is for the 10-minute pitch for a Survivor-like show where 13 people will be sent out into the bush for 21 days in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest in search of the gorillas. Their main goal is to show the similarities in behavior and interactions of humans and gorillas. Reuben was the “silverback” of our group and had plenty of his own women to put to work, whether it was building a shelter, gathering supplies, or leading the way through the jungle with machetes. Becks and I tried as hard as we could to have our “girly talks” by braiding each other’s hair multiple times while sitting by the creek with a camera in our faces. Hopefully they will be able to use 2 seconds of the footage for something. It was a fun road trip with easy money and a good excuse to make it back to Bwindi and spend an extra day at Lake Bunyoni on the way home. Of course, it is no true road trip without some car trouble. Overall, it all went smoothly. I never thought I would see myself getting into acting, especially reality television, but life has plenty of surprises.

Murchison Falls

We just returned from a trip up to Murchison for the weekend. We were joined by Anna’s parents, who just returned to the States after being here for a quick 10-day visit. It was great to meet the family and a good excuse for me, Annie, and Anna to go up to Murchison and see some more countryside in the northwest corner of Uganda. We managed to not get eaten by hippos or crocodiles, which was a plus. Standing at the top of Murchison Falls was incredible and another moment where I felt so small and insignificant; it was great. Aside from seeing the hippos, lions, and amazing waterfall, I was disturbed by seeing signs of instability in northern Uganda. The remains of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) attacks were not hard to miss; we passed by hundreds of homes for Internally Displaced People (IDP) and saw the remains of deserted burned trucks attacked by the LRA a year ago. Although things have settled down in northern Uganda in the last few years, the aftermath is still here. I spoke to a woman working with young victims of the LRA who were kidnapped for sex slaves or forced to be in the army at the age of 12. The disturbing past cannot go away that easily. It was just over 2 years ago that the owner of Red Chili’s (a hostel where we stayed for a few nights) was killed by the LRA. The sad thing is that, of course, the killing of one mzungu gets much more media than the killings of thousands of innocent Ugandans.

We sat around the fire one night at our camp in the delta. Maybe the lions would come visit later in the night, or maybe the hippos walking up from the water. I looked across the lake as the sun set into the distance. As beautiful as it was, I could not help but look into the wild lands of the DR Congo and wonder what is happening. Images of the IDP camps and burned trucks kept running through my head. The deserted lands remain a home of instability and violence. The LRA may have fled most of Uganda, but remains a problem in the neighboring DRC and Sudan. It was another reminder that I have lived an easy life.