Right now, I'm sitting in the lounge of the Shangri-La hotel in Kampala, Uganda, enjoying the fact that the internet connection is working at the moment and drinking a cold Nile beer. I've been a little slow at starting this blog, and our first two days have been so busy - I have so many stories and pictures to share (aka lots of cliches and self-important rambling to catch up on!) so... here we go!
A brief introduction: I'm here with three other Public Health students from Columbia (Elizabeth, Leigh and Megan). We'll all be working on different projects at the Rakai Health Sciences Program in southern Uganda for the summer, but for now we're in Kampala for a week of orientation.
We landed at the Entebbe airport around 10 pm Tuesday night, after a 6.5 hour flight from New York, a 3 hour layover in Amsterdam, and a 12 hour flight with a stop in Kigali, Rwanda along the way.
Our flight was met by a crowd of drivers all holding signs for different travelers - overwhelming for a second, until we spotted one that said 'Columbia University visitors to Rakai'. Godfrey, a driver for the Rakai program, loaded all of our luggage into a van, and we drove for an hour from Entebbe to Kampala. It's hard to even describe - it was warm and we drove with the windows open down a two-lane road which was surprisingly busy for a Tuesday night, not just with other cars but people walking, motorbikes (called boda-bodas here), trucks overflowing with burlap bags, a pickup truck with a guy riding on the roof... All this happening on a road where lanes and traffic laws are apparently more like suggestions. Near constant use of turn signals and flashing lights indicates everything from 'get out of my lane' to 'speed up' to 'i'm passing you' to 'sorry I just almost ran over you'. Along the sides of the road, people were hanging around outside bars and stores - small, one- or two-story buildings, many of which looked like they had been thrown together out of whatever construction materials happened to be available. In some, music was playing; fires were burning in many of the yards and the air smelled like smoke. We passed through two police checkpoints - Godfrey told us that since the election earlier this year and the protests in Kampala last month, the police presence here has been much stronger and they are "keeping an eye on things". There are posters for Museveni, the president, promising "prosperity for all" everywhere.
The buildings started to get taller and suddenly we were in Kampala - we drove by huge modern shopping centers, office buildings, and eventually pulled up in front of our hotel.
It's a very nice hotel - clean, relatively new, and surrounded by palm trees and a manicured lawn. I slept very well that first night on my bed which is about as soft as concrete with a layer of blankets on it.. woke up for about two seconds to a bird or monkey screeching outside my window at 6am.. then passed out again until 9. Here's the view from my window when I woke up:
Had a cold shower, followed by a nice breakfast, which involved fresh mango juice and fresh pineapple.
And that is, in graphic detail, my first 11 hours in Uganda.
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