Last post from Africa!

I've been sort of busy in the last few days and also lazy, so I
haven't had time to post. Which means I have to talk about rafting
the Nile River, the Murchison Falls Discount Safari, my trip to the
equator, and leaving!

Last Saturday, over a week ago (!), I went with another volunteer to
raft the Nile River. We hit up to class five rapids and the last
class five, called The Bad Place, had me thinking I might drown for
a few seconds, but it was a thrill. The crew in my raft was great,
mostly British and then an Irish brother and sister (the brother, on
my recomendation, came on the Murchison trip Monday). This crew
of British guys were doing really interesting things - two were
interning at hospitals and two were doing research for their theses.
Between those two and some people on the Murchison trip and talking
to Leslie and reading the paper, I've got a lot to think about
regarding Ugandan politics, African-Western relations, and the
value and role of international organizations, especially the ICC.
But the Nile. The rapids were great fun, the lunch was excellent,
but my favorite part was probably laying back on the raft chatting
with the rest, or jumping into the Nile for the long stretches of
flat water to go for a float or swim down the Nile frickin river!!
It was quite exciting, and absolutely gorgeous. Fields on the banks,
people washing clothes etc, and long stretches of incredible scenery
plus all sorts of beautiful birds up close.

Sunday we went to see Madagascar, which was a great little bit of
the west here in Uganda, but also good fun because we knew we were
about to see many of those animals in the wild. We stayed in Kampala
at the Red Chili Hideaway, which runs the budget safari, and left
Monday. Our driver, John, was quite a speed demon, and he's the only
man I've met in Africa who will leave exactly when he says he will -
which meant we were first in line for everything, very nice. He had
20 kids from 4 women, not atypical here. The drive up to the falls
takes quite a while and for lunch I had the best sambusa in all of
Uganda. That afternoon was the hike around the waterfall, which
until 40 years ago was a 12 foot wide area that all of the water
pouring into the Victoria Nile went through. It broke out into
another tumbling mass but the falls are still incredibly powerful.
The accomidation was nice, tents with beds in them! Comfortable.
We had a great group of people on the trip and that night we sat
around the camp fire singing to the guitar, though nobody knew all
the words to anything the guitarist knew all the chords to.

(It brought back a good deal of camp nostalgia, and of course he
didn't know any of my camp songs! Hard to believe this was the first
summer in half my lifetime that I haven't been to camp!)

Tuesday we woke up quite early and went on the game drive. We only
saw one lion out of the pride of 11 in that area - the other cars
saw the rest - but she was gorgeous. Just chillin in the shade while
the antelope and deer roamed around. We must have seen 4 or 5 types
of deer, plus water buffalo. There were packs of elephants 15 at a
time, or more, and one got a bit angry at our car and started to
charge! He was shaking his head, flapping his ears, stamping his
feet, and threw his trunk over his tusks. The driver revved the
engine and the guide had his gun cocked. But he didn't actually
charge. Those things are HUGE. We also saw lots of giraffes which
are the most magestic animal I've ever seen. Absolutely gorgeous.
It was a scorchingly hot day up there on the savanna. And the
scenery was great too.

Then there was the afternoon boat ride when we saw plenty of crocs
and hippos. But the great excitement in the hippo department
was that night. I'd gone for a walk to look at the stars - I've
never seen the milky way so clearly! - and was back at the fire,
about 10:30 or so, talking politics of Uganda and accademic
philosophies of interationally focused grad programs (I'm so ready
to get back to classes!) when somebody mentioned that there was a
hippo in the campsite. Hippos are not small animals, mind you. They
are as long as a car and as high as I am and they will charge people.
It was chilling by my tent, munching the grass, and lumbered around
the camp site for quite some time while everyone snapped pictures
of it. She didn't even seem to mind the flashes, or the Italian
tourists who'd all emerged from their bandas in the tightest boxers
you'd ever seen - we had a good laugh at them.

So then I wanted to go see the stars again before I went to bed,
and the hippo had wandered off into the corner of the campsite and
disappeared. As I start down the same road I'd gone down before,
out of the bushes she comes. I kept my distance, but she got mad
and made the angry hippo noise and flapped her ears so I backed
off and waited a good 10 minutes. I then continuted down to this
junction and took the same track I'd taken before to get away
from all the light polution. I figured with 4 main roads and all
the bush I wouldn't run into her, but sure enough there was a pile
of fresh hippo shit on the track. I proceded with caution to a
clearing with huts which had a brilliant view of the sky, but I
was a bit nervous due to the hippo munching noises I could hear.
I didn't get charged, and I made it back OK, but it was a bit scary.

The next morning was even earlier; we left in the dark. We drove
about an hour to a forest reserve where we went chimp trekking.
My god those things make incredible, hair raising noises, it's so
cool to hear them chatter. We could see them on the ground and
in the trees, and the guides took us off the paths to get close. It
was really cool, a good compromise for the $600 it would have been
to see the famed gorillas.

Thursday I went into school one last time. I was a bit disturbed
because Sarah told me that Tuesday, one kid had gotten every exam
question wrong and the teachers had made him beat himself to the
point of drawing blood while they sat around and laughed. Exams
created chaos in the school so I didn't get to say goodbye to all
the kids. Friday I went out to a village just to kind of get more
of a taste of that side of Uganda. And yesterday I was a big dorky
tourist and went to the equator. We brought bottles of water with
us to try and see if it would go different directions and straight
down on the line. Turns out there were funnels and buckets of
water there! And it does drop straight down on the equator. It
was my first time in the southern hemisphere besides the stopover
in Nairobi when I didn't get off the plane.

(Skipped the sese islands - oh well, I'll have to come back to see
Lake Victoria and a variety of other things. But I wanted to spend
a bit more time seeing real Uganda, not tourist Uganda. Don't know
how the equator trip fits into that logic...)

I'm currently shitting myself over British Airways who have sent me
an email saying that as of Friday they have no idea which fights to
and from Heathrow will be cancelled or delayed. Well, I've always
wanted to get bumped so I could get 600 Euros to travel with, but
now is NOT the time given that I have to be back at school Thursday!
So I'll stick to my current plan, leaving here (Mukono) after lunch,
going via public taxi into Kampala and then Entebbe, staying at the
place Leslie always does for airport pickups, and showing up at
the airport at 7am. I'm also fairly certain I'll be over my cabin
luggage limit, but they will have to deal.

What's really concerning is that the last Entebbe-London flight didn't
leave so all those people will be trying to get onto my flight. Gulp.
And I have no desire to get a delayed bag with clothes I need
delivered to Boston after I'm in Philly, full of dirty laundry.

On the bright side I've just seen the baseball standings for the first
time since Wednesday and boy are they pretty.

Anyway. Leaving. I'm certainly excited to get home, but there will
be many things I'm going to miss, even if I can't identify them all
right now. It's definately going to be shocking to be back in the
western world, and as much as I've missed many things it will be a
huge adjustment to make in a very awkward period of time, what
with having to go right back to school. I will not miss the latrines,
or having to walk with my head down to avoid the men, or the polution
that's so bad it makes LA's air seem pristine. I'll miss little
things, probably it'll be a very hard change to get back out of Africa
time and the "it's OK" attitude about everything.

And as I have only 4 minutes left, having spent an hour online, and
I haven't really packed at all, I'd better sign off. I'll definately
be posting a decompression post, maybe a post about adventures with
British Airways (hoepfully not!), and I do have a lot to say about
the politics here and international missteps and the difference
between the out of touch whites here and the on-the-ground local
NGO network...

Brief Update

I've just returned from my 3 day budget safari. The group
we were with was great fun and we saw lions, hippos (very
up close...more in my next update), crocs, giraffes,
elephants, and a variety of deer/antelope like creatures.
Plus some beautiful scenery.

And rafting the Nile on Saturday was great fun as well as
being one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. But as
I'm using limited internet at the Backpacker's place that
ran our safari, I'm going to cut myself off there. More later.

It's almost over!

I've just finished my last day of teaching. Thursday, between
the safari and the island in Lake Victoria, I'll go in and say hi,
but today was my last full day. Since Wednesday my replacement,
Sarah, has been shadowing/helping me. I've done some cool things
with the kids this week. Yesterday was my HIV/AIDS lesson complete
with a wooden penis to put a condom on. The kids were surprisingly
mature. I did the lesson for P6 and P7 which means ages 11-18 or so,
mostly 12-15, and I was quite angry that despite arranging it with
the headmaster, two thirds of those classes had gone to a sporting
competition. I wish he'd told me about that so I could have done
the lesson last week with all the kids. But Sarah is going to do
a revision/repete of the lesson in a few weeks. I've also done
some writing activities with the P5 and P6. P5 today I had write
a paragraph about themselves, age, where from, favorite foods and
activities and such. Also what they'd do or not do if they could;
surprisingly many of them seemed to enjoy doing clothes washing.
Yesterday I did an excercise with P6 on the board, calling on them
to come up with the who, what, when, and what happens of a story and
then I had them all write the story in their own words. It was
about a mother and her daughter, and the motehr was the daughter's
teacher. Today I had them write a half page to page about what
they would do if they had a day to do anything, what they would eat,
and also what they wouldn't do that they normally do. It was
interesting to see, they said they'd play or go to the zoo or spend
time with family, but they also included their normal chores. Some
didn't understand and just wrote about a normal school day which
was also interesting.

The language here is very interesting. I'd finally fell into the
Liberian and Ghanaian vernacular, adding an O to the end of certain
words (namely "stupido") and saying things like "small small" or
"plenty" or "alight" and other tiny little adjustments to sentence
structure and diction. Here I had to get used to a whole new
accent, where they annunciate such that the ends of words often have
an E added to them, and where vocabulary is again slightly different.

The two new volunteers are really nice, it's been a house full of
girls. We watched Hotel Rwanda last night on Sarah's computer, a
bootleg borrowed from Leslie (prog. director) on a tape that also
includes Franken Fish and other such pieces of garbage. It was
intense to watch it right next door. Esther, the house girl, also
watched, and I was relaying a lot of the dialogue to her because the
sound was bad but I knew what they were saying. it was interesting
to see her reactions to the movie. Also, watching it after 9 weeks
here, I could pick out the little details they got really right or
wrong. For the most part they did an excellent job with the little
things.

Sarah got hit on in the funniest way in Kampala. A man asked if
he could make her his asset.

Now that the vegetarian in the house has gone, the food has been
excellent. Esther really is a good cook but you don't appreciate
that if you are eating the same thing every day. Now we've gotten
incredible chicken and this mince meat spagetti sauce...mmm.

Wow looks like despite the commotion with Manny my Sox are going
good. It's always a relief to be off the internet for 4 days and
return to a headline about an 8 game winning streak and a rather
high number in the games ahead column.

So I've got a week of adventures ahead of me, seeing Uganda, and
then it will be hopping on a plane. I am definately excited to
get home, excited to get to school, and excited for this next week,
and I will be sad both to leave Uganda and Africa. The first wave
hit me as I was leaving school today, even though I've still got
10 days left.

August!

And so it's August. I've passed the 2 month mark a few days ago,
I'm 4/5s done with the trip (yay! I want to go home!) and halfway
done with Uganda (sad...I like it a lot here) and I've been in Africa
four different months. While I've been away London's gotten
attacked, a supreme court judge retired but not the one I expected,
the sox have made it to first place and Manny yet again is still on
the team, I've missed and will miss a variety of parties and
gatherings of friends at home, I've been homesick as hell (more
in Ghana but also here with new triggers - the guy who brought his
computer, etc), I've become ready to go back to school and read
and write papers, I've read a ridiculous amount of books here, I've
loved the experience, I've learned a lot about travelling in general
and Africa and refugees and poverty and sustainability and reality
versus our western impressions of the world..... Time's gone by
impossibly, unbearably slow and also unbelievably fast. In Ghana
the last two weeks flew by; here they probably will as well.

As I was walking down the side of the road to the internet, a herd
of cattle came at me. This guy was getting his 20 cows to cross
the street and I was walking by as there was a gap in the traffic.
There was an old woman right in front of me too, and I couldnt'
tell if she was just as unsettled as me or if she was laughing at
the herd of cows running at the muzungu being beaten by a guy with
a stick.

Anyway, this weekend lasted forever because of the day off Thursday
for the "election" which is in no way democratic or meaningful and
was held at a cost of 30 million US dollars to please overseas
donors. Meanwhile the president last week very very quietly
abolished the two term limit as he's served his two and the next
election is next spring. While he seems to be popular and he has
done a damn good job cleaning up Uganda from the mess Idi Amin made
of it, having no term limit is a damn bad idea in general and in an
African country especially (where, as a guy in med school here
whom I met on a metatu (taxi) was saying, a leader or wanna be
leader will often not concede that he has lost an election).

School's been good. I've done more art with the kids which is just
a blast - seeing them have a chance at creativity, handing out
stickers, etc. Today I tried to have the third grade illustrate
the stories I'd read to them, though many didn't remember most of
them. It was still fun to see them draw, and a whole bunch of boys
started doing football players from a newspaper they had and
"aeroplanes" which were actually helicopters.

We always have a break from 10:30 to 11 when the teachers have
snack and the kids are fed. The snack is an option of peanuts,
chapati (very fried, somewhere between fried dough and tortilla, that
they like to wrap around an egg and I like to put sugar on),
casava fries, and my favorite, sambusa or samosa - fried, delicious,
full of peas and crunchy around the edges and greasy as hell. The
teachers talk away in Luganda so I usually read a book though on
occasion they'll pull me into a game of Uno with a deck of cards.

I really enjoy my walk to and from school. After I convince myself
to get out of bed in the morning it's a really pleasant walk rambling
through beautiful scenery and I always want to keep walking when I
get to school. The walk back at 1 is a bit warmer usually so I am
glad to get into the cooler house and have something to drink, but
it's very relaxing and enjoyable. There's always animals to see
and kids waving and such.

At first I was really glad to be living in the flat in town and
having such a light schedule. I needed the break after Buduburam,
and getting imersed in a village at that point may have been too
much for my nerves. But now I kind of wish I was in one of the
closer villages. There's still opportunity to go to the pool
and come into town or go to Kampala for the weekend, and having
been out to Nagalama (half an hour's drive) this weekend it's
really nice. Leslie, the program coordinator here, has made
sure that even in the village volunteers have their own nice space,
a room or two in a compound, and it seems that in the village with
the outreach organization out there, there's a lot more to do and
a lot more impact to be made. Then I tell myself that someone
needs to be doing art and stories and games and creativity and
giving encouragement to the kids I'm with as well. And I do love
my cute little kids.

Adventures with African public transportation:
Friday I went to Kololo to meet up with a Swattie. Kololo's a suburb
of Kampala, so I got on a taxi at 8:15 on the side of the road.
Well it was empty which meant that in the next town it stopped to
fill up. After sitting there for over 20 minutes I wanted to get
off and pay just for that leg and they tried to put me back on the
damn taxi. A nice guy who had gotten on but also thought it was way
too slow helped me get off and we caught a taxi into Kampala. He
was the medschool guy who talked to me about politics and malaria.
At the first roundabout into Kampala I got off and got a bodaboda,
fixed the price, and told him wehre I wanted to go. I asked him
if he knew the place (it's a pretty big landmark in Kololo) and he
assured me he did, but of course he didn't so we rode around the
hills of Kololo in the dark for a while until I convinced him to
stop so we could ask a security guard for directions. Then he wanted
more money cause it had taken a long time. But I got there safely.

Then yesterday, coming back from this village, the guy who is
volunteerign was sitting in a window seat of the metatu with his
elbow hanging way out. All of the sudden we here a crashing noise
- the side mirror has just been taken off by a car passing the taxi.
I don't understand how in the world his elbow didn't get taken off
as well given that it was sticking out as far as the mirror.

Anyway, I'm enjoying my last week of teaching and then it'll be off
to raft the nile river, do a brief safari and then Banda Island on
Lake Victoria and then home!