More on Kampala

My hotel room overlooks a large outdoor tiled area, two floors below me.  The windows in my room open and they are screened, so unless it's too noisy, I open them, and use the fan for a breeze.  For the past two days, a man has been working to clean the tiles (they look much like Mexican saltillo tiles, but are Ugandan clay tiles), with a broad blade scraper by hand--why I don't know.  I don't see any mortar on them, or dirt, and what he's done doesn't show much, but he might have 1/6 of them done after the two days.

Jane and I went to Mukono to see the lawyer at Uganda Christian University about the Memorandum of Understanding to allow diplomas to be granted at Uganda Nursing School, Bwindi.  We were moderately successful and will have the MOU completed within a week or so.  The traffic out of Kampala was very bad, but not as bad as the traffic coming in.  Drivers are civilized, but very aggressive, and the motorbikes downright suicidal.  The picture below was taken yesterday, and is of the parliament building--it doesn't do the traffic justice.  There's also the exhaust to breathe in, and the heat and himidity

Kasule, the taxi driver, is a hip-hop artist who wants to go to New York, that being the source of music (according to him), but in the meantime, he plays at local clubs.  He has become an expert on Idi Amin, due to driving tourists around who are fascinated by the dictator and want to see some of the history.  He was full of information, some I already knew, and lots I didn't.  I find all Ugandans remarkably aware of their history, of the politics of their own country, Africa and the world, including the US.

Today's hire car driver, who took me to Mukono to meet Jane, told a horrific story of having a pain in his side and going to a hospital in Kampala where he was told he needed to have his kidney removed (we started by discussing flying in a small plane and he was telling me of his first and only plane ride). He got a referral to Nairobi for a second opinion from a local doctor, and consequently went on his first plane trip.  He was looking for an alternative to surgery because he couldn't afford it, even though it was a modest price of 1.5M UGX.  ($600).  After spending a week and a half in Nairobi, he was told that his kidney was fine, and he was, in fact, better.  No treatment was done except some pain pills.  And his pain was gone.  He's firmly convinced that his kidney would have been sold to someone needing a transplant.  My only advice was to hold on to all of his body parts, and to go to Bwindi Community Hospital if he needed care. Or maybe he just had a kidney stone and passed it by himself.

We went to see a furniture procurer in a town close to Kampala, and he agreed to provide a quote.  It took a couple of hours because he had to write every single thing down, and draw detailed pictures.  I thought of my remodeled kitchen, and how I had a computerized print out within 24 hours, showing detailed pictures with various views.  Maybe our furniture woes will be over.  Jane and I have struggled to find sources for classroom, dormitory, staff housing, kitchen, and lab supplies and furniture, that will include transportation to the remote location where it's needed.  I can only hope.

Jane is getting ready for her wedding and like any nurse, is doing most of it herself.  We came back to the city center where I have my hotel, and she, coincidentally, was going to have her hair done.  We had a late lunch, with time she could ill afford, she's scheduled to meet relatives to help them purchase genuine African clothes for her wedding, a brother of her fiance's (new brother in law) to go over last minute details of the ceremony, a visiting nurse from Johns Hopkins who will be traveling with us to Jane's village for the wedding, and friends who want to see her while she's in Kampala.  I offered her to stay with me tonight so she doesn't have to travel back to her sister's, by bus outside Kampala.  She agreed, since I have two beds in my room, and she's totally exhausted and frazzled (not that it shows).  So I'll have company, and will have her helped in some small way.

The power just went off, but the hotel has a generator, which fired up almost instantly.  Amazing Uganda. The housekeeping supervisor comes around daily to make sure that everything has been done in the room to my satisfaction--the housekeeper today was about to give birth (8 1/2 months) and looked absolutely miserable--her first.  Little does she know that her misery has not yet begun.  She really didn't want to make the bed, but I knew I'd have to give the supervisor a report, so I had her do it, but not change the sheets.  No one knows but us.

I've decided that I don't need to see the source of the Nile, or the gorillas or the Queen Elizabeth Park, unless an opportunity arises that I can't turn down, or I am in the neighborhood.  The stories from the people and the kindness of humans living their lives here is enough to experience.  I'll tell you one more.  The taxi driver yesterday had to drop me off to get money from the ATM because I had spent all of mine at the African arts mall, and there was no parking anywhere.  I was a little nervous getting out of the car in the middle of traffic.  There's no going around the block here because it could be two miles and an hour to get back.  So we agreed to meet back at the hotel, which I could see from the bank.  He got so nervous at leaving me that he came to the hotel and then left again to go back to the bank to pick me up.  Of course, I had gotten my money and came down to the hotel by the time he got back to the bank.  He left his cab and talked to the security guard, who told him I'd left.  It took him a half hour to get back to the hotel, where I was waiting in the lobby.  That's Uganda, too.

I don't have a picture of a gorilla,

but I do have one of a red-tailed monkey...taken from the Guest House backyard.  I leave tomorrow for points east for the wedding in Jane's village.  More later.