real life Frogger

Although we enjoy a lot of things here in Uganda, there are quite a few things that are not enjoyable no matter how hard we try. Here are a few examples:

·      #1 = food poisoning when all you have is a latrine. Probably the most unfun 5 experiences in my lifetime. Yes that’s Right...5. Food in Uganda hates me. What did I eat? Well, it could’ve been anything but I think I know at least 3 of them. An apple, a chapati (a tortilla like thing they sell everywhere here), and a tomato. My first case was at homestay during the first month we were even here and was by far the sickest I have ever been in my life. Not fun but I’m glad I had Patrick there to take care of me. Brave soul. I’m pretty sure there is an image of me burned in his memory that he will never forget. Bambi (Ugandans say that when they feel bad for someone…its like saying “you poor thing”).

·      Giardia. A little parasite that loves to hang out in water. This and “tropical spores” are Patrick’s sicknesses of choice. It causes stomach issues. I’ve had giardia a couple of times. It sucks. End of story. Patrick’s claim to fame is that he was the first PCV to be diagnosed with tropical spores.  He didn’t enjoy it but he eventually beat it with heavy doses of antibiotics and beer. Typical.

·      There are many things that exist only in my nightmares….and in Uganda. Fortunately, we have not had the pleasure of contracting any of these yet:

o   Mango flies- (many PCVs get them regularly) Flies that lay their eggs on your wet hanging clothes and then the worms burrow under your skin. The only way to get them out is to plug up the hole in the blister on your skin until the worm needs to come out for air and then you get it out with tweezers. Lovely.

o   Nairobi flies- Flies that if you smack them when they land on you give you a 2^nd degree burn with their acid that splatters.

o   Schistosomyasis- this is a parasite carried by snails that only hang out in water.  You basically wind up with worms in your lungs.  Awesome.  I think over 50% of PCVs that go swimming here wind up with it. Yea, not doing that, don’t worry.

o   Worms of all shapes and sizes- I guarantee we will get them at least once. Everyone deworms after a year though. At least guinea worm is eradicated here…if you don’t know what that is, look it up. If it was still here I’m positive I would not be here right now.

o   Ttese flies- Carry sleeping sickness and they bite HARD.  The ones around our house don’t carry the sickness though so no worries! They are just reallllllly annoying and mean. 

·      Anything with more than 4 legs here makes me want to go home. It’s like they are on steroids. We have flying cockroaches in our latrines and spiders that could probably take out a chicken. I would not be upset if cockroaches were extinct. I just hate how they love to ruin your day. Our bathing area is outdoors, which presents many challenges.  One day while finishing up an exceptionally cleansing bucket bath, I was struck by a cockroach running across my feet.  REALLY?! UGH.

·      One of our friends that lives near us found 2 scorpions in her house the day she moved in. FAIL. Fortunately we have not experienced any scorpions or snakes of our own.  We did just recently find a bug in our rain-water tank that was the size of a softball.  It had claws.  Some sort of water monster. We asked our coworkers if it would bite you and they said, “Oh yes! Do NOT touch it.”

·      Public transport. Guaranteed to break down or make you vomit with every ride.  Patrick and I rode in the front of the bus one day and promptly decided to never do that again. You can see the speedometer in the front…you don’t want to do that.  You also get to see all the goats, pigs, and chickens get sucked under the bus.  The road from Gulu to Kitgum is the worst. It’s of course a dirt road but its amazing because the drivers of the buses love to hug one side of the road that is basically curved like a half circle.  So, at many points in the journey, the bus is at a 45 degree angle. Good thing they are bottom heavy, I guess. Often times the bus is completely full so people stand in the isles or children sit on the floor.  You almost always have a puker and at least 5 butts in your face. Many times we’ve been in the back with vomit at our feet. Smells like roses.

·      Don’t even get me started on bridges in this country. I’ll put it this way…the bridge from Gulu to Kitgum washes away every rainy season. Recently, my friends and I needed to get into town while it was raining.  We caught a ride with an employee of the school we were working at. We get in the car and  start going down the road at about 20-30 km/hr when out of nowhere the entire left front wheel falls completely off and flies into a nearby trading center. Woops. He had just gotten the car worked on and they forgot to tighten the lug nuts. Yea, we found another ride.

·      Stuffing small cars with 13 people is not the way I like to spend my days. I had a two hour ride to Kitgum the other day with 13 people in the car, 5 chickens at my feet, and a pony sized goat screaming on the top. They also have these small vans/buses that can (if there is one person to a seat) fit 16 people but usually fits about 25, sometimes more.

·      To go along with transportation, traveling by any other means is not fun here. I feel like I’m in a real life game of Frogger everytime I cross the street in Kampala. I was always pretty decent at Frogger though. I guess those hours and hours of playing Frogger with Jessica in middle school finally paid off. Sidewalks are definitely not the safest here either. I was walking down the sidewalk once when 10 motorcycles came right for me and had to dodge them.  Also, to keep you on your toes, there are massive holes in the streets and sidewalks that are there for who knows what reason. They are definitely large enough to fall in, about 4-5 feet deep, and always filled with trash and other miscellaneous things that I don’t even want to know about. There have been some horror stories of PCVs falling into them. Yikes. Walking around Kampala during the day is scary, so good luck at night. Here they are:

·      Dry Season. Easily the most lame part of the year. Dust. To. The. Face. Buy a bus ticket and get a free spray tan. I think with the mix between the dry season and Kampala’s diesel filled air, our lungs are working overtime. The dry season is also charming because it turns our house into an oven. Our walls trap heat so it doesn’t cool down in our house until around 3 am. I read on our alarm clock/temperature gauge that one night around midnight that it was 94 degrees in our room with the fan on. The good thing about having solar lights during the dry season though it that due to the beaming sun all day, we usually have power all night…usually. Two more good things about dry season = your clothes dry in 15 minutes and its only exceptionally awful January-April.

·      Dry season also brings bush fires and bush fires bring black snow. The grasses are burned so farmers can hunt the edible rat with their bows and arrows…not even kidding. So the grass burns and floats in the air like long pieces of black snow. And if your washing your clothes you are guaranteed a few black ash spots if they are burning the bush nearby.  It’s ok though because they probably still weren’t clean anyway.

·      It is amazing the things we will now pick out of our food before we eat it. Before we came here it was typical of me to yell at Patrick for cutting the mold off the strawberries, but now I’m right there with him. Weevils, little mini caterpillar like things, usually find their way into your food somehow. Especially in beans. I’ve probably eaten hundreds of weevils by now…inevitable. Oh and ants…brush em off. We also have a mouse that likes to make his appearance every night around 8 pm when our window is open. He apparently just likes to hang out without eating our food though. We actually don’t mind our new roommate since he doesn’t really bother us. We named him Mouserson. I think we got lucky because we have heard some pretty bad stories about PCVs having tons of mice in their house.

·      Bees right at the hole of the latrine are definitely not funny. I don’t even want to think about how that could end up. I’d have a one way ticket home that’s for sure. Usually, the latrines on the way when traveling are the worst. You know it’s bad when your eyes start to burn. One of our friends in our group got locked in his homestay family’s latrine once. The kids thought it would be funny to lock him in from the outside. He then had to climb his way up and over the (spider infested) small opening between the 2 latrines to get out on the other side. Bambi.

·      Not funny = multiple people in the village telling me I will have twins one day.

I’m sure I could think of some more but I will save them for when we come back to America in TWO DAYS!!!!!!!!

To leave on a funny note: Patrick, our friend, and I are staying at the Entebbe Zoo near the airport. They have small places to stay inside that give you free access to the zoo at all hours. Needless to say, it has provided us with much entertainment. They have camels you can ride and when the camels aren’t at work they roam around the zoo causing trouble. We were walking down this small path and a HUGE camel turns the corner and starts walking towards us. We thought we could peacefully pass each other without making eye contact but we thought wrong. He went straight for us. We promptly turned and starting briskly walking the other direction. Luckily, a worker was nearby to corral the beast back in an enclosed space. Ha!

Other adventures at the zoo thus far include petting/feeding the rhinos and feeding (definitely not petting) the lions with the workers. Probably top 5 most intense things ever is standing about 10 feet from a huge male lion and hyena fighting about meat through a fence. There will most definitely be pictures soon. While taking a picture with the rhino, Patrick apparently got a bit too close and the rhino was about 3 inches away from spearing Patrick’s bum. It was the hardest I have laughed in a long, long time. Trust me, he learned his lesson.

Tomorrow, we fly to London where we have an overnight layover. Fish, chips, and good beer here we come! Then, the next day we head to Raleigh, then Indy. We are SO excited to see everyone at home! See you soon!

Our next blog will be about camp. It was AMAZING! I've never met a group of girl more determined to have a successful future. Truly Inspiring. Here is a video of the girls singing our camp song!