Uganda - The series

April 29th and 30th
Today was official travel day to Africa! I stopped by the house so Haley could drop me off. My car had been having some problems so she helped me get it over to the mechanics so they can check it out while I’m gone. This made me about 45 minutes late meeting my group at the airport. I received a worried call about my absence and am pretty sure I’m viewed as the irresponsible one in the group. Oh Well. I realized tho why this is (besides being late to the airport) I’ve never been put on the mailing list for this Uganda prep. So I’ve been showing up at meetings having no idea what I was supposed to have prepared to present. I realized it today when Anne mentioned she was excited that we were going chimp watching. I asked her how she knew that and she mentioned an e-mail, then she mentioned something about emergency contact numbers that I knew nothing about. I feel a bit better knowing that I really was out of the loop not just not paying attention.

The flight to Amsterdam was pretty okay, but after that 10 hours flight we had a four hour layover and then an 8.5 hour flight to Entebbe. That flight was brutal physically. Everything hurt, back, shoulders, tailbone and for the last two hours my neck was on fire. I’m not sure how I could have made it any better. I did get to sit next to a nice Ukrainian couple mid-sixties who knew three words in English and I none in Ukrainian. They drew a picture asking me how long my flight from USA was to Amsterdam. I told them I flew from California (better known than Oregon) and it had taken 10 hours. Then the gentleman said “Oh…California….Schwarzenegger…..the terminator” And I smiled and said “yes those are all words that could be put in a sentence used to describe California.”

On top of my body pains the meds they make you take to ward off malaria make you feel like crap. If you take it on an empty stomach its bad, or with dairy I learned. We landed around 7pm Saturday having left at noon Friday and my Ukrainian friends decided to start the clapping off that follows a successful landing. Our lonely row seemed to be the only folks that knew the tradition.

We’re staying tonight in a large guest house run by the Catholic nuns in the area. We each have our own room and bathroom. I think above my shower there is a water heater and I found a red button on a wall that has a wire running to the water heater so I’ve pushed it and am hoping for hot water in the morning for my shower. I am secretly hoping I’m the only one smart enough to have figured this out so I can brag about my nice steamy shower to everyone. Sounds mean huh? Must be the malaria meds acting up.

My favorite part was after we got to the airport the group was standing in line to exchange their cash. I hadn’t brought any so Steph and I started looking an ATM. Finding one that didn’t reject our cards took some time, but finally we lucked out with the help of a taxi man. Funny thin was we knew nothing about the currency rates there. So the ATM has a 5000 ugx minimum withdrawal limit. We of course realized that couldn’t mean 5000 dollars but at the same time had no clue. I quickly remembered my roommate Heidi constantly figuring out Ugandan rates in her head for rent payments for her orphans, but I never asked her enough to really understand. In the end we both decided 75,000 ugx sounded like a good amount and we crossed our fingers hoping we weren’t accidentally overdrawing our account. On my receipt it listed that I had 1.4 million ugx in my savings account-I knew that equated about $750 so we did a quick calculation and determined 2000 ugx is equal to one us dollar, with that info we realized we had only withdrawn about 36 bucks. So we went back for more.

The drive to that catholic compound had 14 of us stuffed in a van-o-gen type vehicle followed by a Toyota truck full of our luggage. Half the luggage we brought contained supplies and donations for the clinic we will be working in, but I’m pretty sure they guys who had to load it were thinking we had brought way too much luggage. We got our room keys and then briefly met for dinner prepared by the nuns. It was a yummy chicken and rice deal with perfect gravy.
I just brushed my teeth with bottled water and will now sleep as long as possible!
Goonight!