mbarara (em-bur-ar-ah)

Home is here

We have arrived in the town of Mbarara, Uganda. It's a relatively large town of 80,000 in the southwest of the country about three hours from the Rwandan border. It is wholly more relaxing, friendly and pleasant than the chaos of Kampala. We were supposed to do some sightseeing in Kampala before we left but the three of us looked at each other and said a collective "screw that" and instead made a beeline for Mbarara.

Here is home for the next month. On arrival we met Dr. Wilson, the slightly eccentric British expat with white chest hair flowing out of his shirt. He is the director at the hospital and he gave us the run-down on the town and where to find important mzungu hangouts before jumping in his jeep and leaving for London for two weeks.

We are staying in the guest houses on the university campus about a 15-minute walk to downtown. There will be four of us staying here: Marya, Chris, Joel and I. Joel is another medical student from Edmonton and he joined us in Mbarara last Sunday after visting his family in Rwanda for a week. The bedrooms are large and the kitchen and living room are even larger. Despite the size, this ain't your normal Canadian house in suburbia. Concrete floors, bare walls, and precious few pieces of furniture are the decor. Spiders are chilling in the bathroom and a friendly gecko frequents the kitchen from time to time. Electricity comes and goes and the fridge looks like it was built in the 1950s. It's a great place though and certainly beat out my expectations of what our living arrangements would be. And after seeing how locals live here, there is certainly nothing to complain about.


Kawinkeedink

I mentioned in a previous post the weird coincidence involving my volunteer organization in Mbarara being based in Edmonton. More coincidences followed when we went to the cafe down the road and saw a sign for Healthy Child Uganda, with the University of Calgary emblem beneath it. At the cafe we met up with Nichola, an old friend that Marya and I know from the good ol' days at Boulton Road; she is volunteering here with Healthy Child Uganda, an organization which seeks to make Ugandan children healthier...no mystery in their name choice. Marya had discovered that Nichola would be coming to Mbarara a few weeks before we left via a hilarious text message conversation that went like this:

"Hey, long time no see. What are you up to this summer?"
"I'm going to Africa actually. Pretty excited."
"What??! I'm going to Africa too! What country?"
"Uganda"
"No way! I'M going to Uganda! What town?"\
"Mbarara."
"I'M GOING TO MBARARA. I'm phoning you. This is too crazy for texting."

Turns out, Nichola is staying in the same complex as us in a bungalow about 30 meters away. I can see her front door from our front door. She's staying there and volunteering with a girl named Megan who, via more coincidences, went to high school in Cochrane. We've all come half way round the world and end up a stone's throw away.

It was an absurd set of coincidences that led us all to be living so close in Mbarara, Uganda, and it has turned out to be wonderfully helpful because both the girls have already been here for two weeks and therefore know all the local tricks and treats. Nichola took us to the market in town and made sure we didn't get ripped off by mzungu prices (30 cents for a fresh, delicious mango!). She showed us around town and gave us a similar low-down as Dr. Wilson minus the eccentric British accent and flowing white locks of chest hair. The market is a magical place full of anything and everything you could want from mangos and bananas to pots and pans to cows hanging on meat hooks and chickens which you have to butcher and pluck yourself.

Our bungalow isn't very well stocked with kitchenware but, laden with fruits and veggies from the market, we managed to scrape together a meal on our first night with Nichola and Megan joining the four of us at our place. Our kitchen only has two pots and one pan. We had one massive knife and my pocket knife for chopping. Only one element on the stove works but we also have one element on a standalone propane burner. Cooking for six with only two elements is a challenge in timing and efficiency. Everything takes much longer here: cooking, cleaning, showering, etc. It feels like we are only a few lost amenities away from camping. All we need is a few more campfires and s'mores.

The six of us had a blast and we've hung out a bunch since then as well. Its nice to have some friendly people from home to spend time with here and share stories with especially since all of us are having very different experiences.


Cheating death regularly

My first day of work was Wednesday, June 4th. I will be teaching in the village of Kinoni which is 30 minutes by taxi from Mbarara. I met Loyce, who is the Ugandan director of the Ainembabazi Children's Project and my main contact in the country; she took me to Kinoni for the first time so I didn't have to brave the journey myself as I wandered aimlessly, standing out like a sore thumb: a sore, foreign, mzungu thumb. As an aside, the local language here is called Runyankore and whichever 19th century missionary or colonizer translated the language into the English alphabet did a very poor job. For example, Kinoni is pronounced Chinoni; there is not even a hint of a "K" sound in the word. Other strange pronunciations abound.

The ride to Kinoni is not for the faint of heart. It is a potholed, single lane piece of asphalt full of trundling trucks, zippy motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrians. Oh and it also includes the most reckless and fearless taxi drivers I have ever seen in my life. The only way for me to get to Kinoni is, of course, by taxi. There were 8 of us crammed into a Toyota Corolla including a kid who was balanced precariously on my lap. The car was a manual and the driver had to reach through a sea of bodies in order to shift, or alternatively he would ask one of the passengers to shift for him. The speed limit on the road was between 30 and 40 because of the potholes, construction and large trucks. The speedometer always read 90 km/h whenever it (rarely) flickered to life. The rest of the time, all the gauges on the dash were dead. The driver flew over and into the potholes with little regard for the cars decrepit shocks. The trunk of the car didn't close and it would flap around like a kite every time we entered one of the potholes. Wham, wham, wham! It would pound the car, chomping away like a rabid animal.

In the distance, a massive truck was barreling down on us on this single lane highway. The taxi driver accelerated. Still closer the truck came. It flashed its lights. It honked. The taxi driver honked back...and accelerated. I closed my eyes as he jerked the wheel to the left and we went flying over the 3-inch lip of asphalt into the dusty gravel beside the road. The truck blew by us, mere inches from the open window where my arm had previously been hanging out of. The car fish-tailed wildly in the gravel and the driver jerked the wheel right as we careened out of the dirt and back up the 3-inch lip onto the potholed asphalt. The trunk slammed: wham, wham wham!

Another truck was approaching. And the taxi driver employed the same method of avoidance all while never removing his foot from the accelerator.

I am teaching there for three weeks and I have to take this road twice a day.

Thankfully the ride back that day was not quite as life threatening as my first experience. The driver drove 80 km/h instead of 90 and the trunk actually closed on his car. There were only 7 of us in the car which opened up a whole bunch more space. The potholes took their toll on this poor Toyota and we got a flat tire. Judging from how fast the driver put on the spare, I determined that this is a fairly regular occurrence. With a rickety and rusty spare tire in place, we careened back to Mbarara as I wondered how I would survive the next three weeks. Every day brings a new and bizarre experience on this road.

Prior to the drive, I was most nervous about teaching. After the drive and after meeting the headmistress of the school and various teachers, I think the drive is the more worrisome aspect of my volunteering experience.

I will write more about the teaching experience in the next post!

welcome to africa

First impressions

I stepped off the plane in Nairobi and took a deep breath. Whenever I travel to a new region of the world I always have this small, irrational worry that there will be some foreign pollen or dust that my body will reject and I will quickly die of a serious allergic reaction. I'm told that this is unlikely. But nonetheless it always goes through my head when I step off a plane.

Since I didn't immediately die of anaphylactic shock, I proceeded to pick up our bags. We were going to spend a night in Nairobi before flying to Kampala the next day. Marya and I were traveling with Chris, a fellow medical student from Edmonton who would be working with Marya at the hospital in Mbarara. He had never traveled to a third world country before but, surprisingly, Nairobi was relatively tame in terms of pollution, garbage and chaos. Maybe he - and I along with him - started to think this Africa thing wasn't going to too much of a culture shock.

Capital chaos

Kampala, the capital city of Uganda, certainly choked out those thoughts. Kampala was a "bustling city" on steroids. They took bustle to a whole new level. The centre of town was just a traffic jam. Cars didn't move. They just sat there. Maybe they were parked. I don't know. The streets were full of throngs of people. Music was blaring. Horns were honking. People were yelling. Loaded down with bags and guitar, we just had to focus on putting one foot in front of the other as we shuffled through the crowds from A to B.

Our main goal in Kampala was to buy a cell phone so we could phone our contact in Mbarara. I'm not sure if Kampala has figured out supply and demand yet but it seemed that there was definitely a supply-heavy market for cell phones. Every second store in the city is a cell phone shop. I have no idea how each shop turns a profit. I also have no idea where you go to buy anything else. If we had arrived in Kampala needing ANYTHING ELSE, we would be left helpless in a sea of cheap cell phones.

Chris and I each bought a phone and then the three of us shuffled through the mass of humanity to a nearby restaurant. We sat down for dinner and soon realized my cell phone had been stolen. Taken right out of my backpack pocket within ten minutes. It was my first time being pickpocketed. But, as I said, cell phones are EVERYWHERE. I feel like trying to pawn off a stolen cell phone in Kampala is like trying to pawn off a stolen doughnut in Tim Hortons.

We fell asleep that night to the pitter pattering of a mouse running around our room and thumping bass outside our window. Welcome to Africa.

the travel bug has bitten again

The Bug

For the 4th time in 6 years, I am pulling out the 60 L backpack, getting poked with needles and rummaging through a crisp new Lonely Planet travel guidebook. On the shelf in my bedroom lay the remains of previous travel guidebooks after they have been scarred, squished and soaked across the countries they describe. East Africa is the new destination and this book will hopefully get ripped and trampled across Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya.

My parents gave me the travel bug when they took me to India. I was 3 years old. I don't remember much, but to this day I think honey is bitter and love the smell of diesel. I have been very fortunate and lucky to see places and do things all over the world largely because of my parents willingness to let me. My mom bravely never says a peep when I explain to her (always after the fact) that I have gone and done something ridiculous, dangerous, reckless or all of the above. But I think the travel bug has gotten significantly worse in the last few years. Starting with the epic 10-country, 5-continent trip I went on with Josh in 2008, the bug has shown little regard for responsible financial planning or prudent career development. The graph below highlights the issue:

The time between each major trip appears to be getting smaller and smaller. Using the powers of extrapolation, I should be in Australia by December and Antarctica by mid-February. And from that point I'll just slowly turn into a perma-traveling hippie who sells all his possessions and devotes his life to his dreads.


How did this Africa thing happen?

After our honeymoon in Peru and Bolivia last summer, Marya and I were pretty convinced that was it for traveling for quite some time. I had just graduated and was going to be starting a real job with, like, you know, commitments and responsibilities. She was going into a grueling few years of medical school which would likely cost the equivalent of the trade deficit of a small nation. We'd be lucky to get in a road trip to Saskatoon, let alone a two month trip to frolic with zebras and leopards and elephants on the dusty plains of Africa.

But then Marya heard about this cool thing called a 'global health elective' in Mbarara, Uganda, whereby she could go work and learn in a foreign hospital and receive school credit through the University of Alberta. It sounded like a good opportunity to learn about a different culture and different medical practices as well as potentially ease some of the burden on a poorly-funded healthcare system. (Fun fact: Canada has 2.1 physicians per 1000 people. Uganda has 0.08 physicians per 1000 people. If it all scaled up equally, that means a 4 hour emergency room wait in Canada is a 4 day wait in Uganda).

Anyway, we were thinking about it and, even if she did go, it seemed unlikely that I could join her because of limited vacation days. But then I got laid off from my job after only having worked there for two months. (To be clear, it was a company-wide layoff that didn't have to do with behavioral misconduct; I just want to quell any rumors that I was fired for beating some guy up at the water cooler because he was hogging the colour printer.)

Vacation days were no longer an issue as I was free from the bondage of stability. However, I did have to figure out what exactly I would do if I joined Marya in Uganda. I couldn't just hang around in Africa while she went and saved lives. So, I did what anyone does these days: I googled 'Mbarara Uganda volunteering' and then, because I'm lazy, clicked on the first link. The only volunteer organization in Mbarara listed on that linked page is an organization called Ainembabazi Children's Project. The website looked pretty cool and, since it was the only option, I didn't have much choice. I went to the "contact" section of the website expecting an anonymous contact form to some anonymous person in some anonymous faraway place. By some serendipitous and highly unlikely chance, the organization is based out of Edmonton (and I would later find out has no affiliation with the University of Alberta). I was able to go for coffee with the president of the organization the next week. She lives just across the river.

That sealed the deal. We were going to do it. Jump in and seize the day. Carpe diem and all that stuff. Marya finalized her medical elective. I finalized my volunteering program. Flights were booked. Travel books were bought. Passports were renewed. Needles were poked.

We leave May 28th. We are excited to see what Sub-Saharan Africa has to offer; a place so often associated with war, poverty, corruption and disease. Sadly, I'm sure it has all those things, but I'm excited to see the good stuff too. I'm excited to learn from the people and gain new perspectives from a foreign culture.