Africa Time

I got my first introduction to Africa time early on in my stay here in Uganda while I was waiting for my bags to arrive from London. The first hints of the leisurely (lethargic? sluggish?) pace of work came when ordering food at the local hostel. Meals routinely took over an hour to be served even if I was one of the first people ordering food and somehow they still took forever even after I began to alter my orders to try to speed the process of getting calories into my hungry stomach. Eggs and toast can’t take that long can they? How about 1.25 hrs plus or minus a few minutes? In my two days at the hostel, I started to mentally adjust my day’s schedule to factor in waiting at least 1.5 hrs for each meal and tried to decide whether I needed food badly enough to spend that much time waiting.

When my bags arrived, I called the baggage delivery company at 8 in the morning to confirm they were there and see if they could deliver them right away. I was quite ready to get my bags since I had been waiting for two days and was rather scruffy and smelly from wearing the same clothes in the hot equatorial sun and not showering for all that time. Plus I wanted to get a decent start in heading north to the hospital that day. The hostel was only 10 minutes from the airport so I thought it would be easy for them to send a driver over with my bags. They said that they could deliver the bags but told me to wait for the driver to call regarding the delivery time. An hour passed with no call so I called them back and was told again they would contact the driver and he would call me. 45 min went by with no call and as it was now close to 10:30AM I finally called them and told them that I would pay for a taxi and come and pick up the bags myself. So ten minutes later when I was getting ready to leave for the airport, the delivery driver called the hostel to say that he was going to deliver my bags sometime around 11. I told them to not touch my bags as I could see visions of chasing my bags all around Entebbe and dashed for the airport before my bags disappeared.

I was reminded of Africa time today as I was waiting to be picked up for a community medicine day. I was riding along with an HIV counselor on a motorcycle doing home visits with HIV positive patients while he checked in to see how they were getting along and offered nutritional advice, encouragement and saw if they needed to come into to the hospital for new or worsening symptoms. My ride was supposed to arrive at 10 so I went back to the guest house a couple minutes early in case he arrived right at 10. I had a suspicion that it might not be 10 sharp so I sat down on the porch to read the The White Nile by Moorhead while I waited. Around 10:20, I walked over to the office to make sure they had actually told the counselor I was going with him since this was the first time I was supposed to go out. He assured me that the counselor knew so I resumed reading and didn’t concern myself with the time since my book was quite good and I had no idea when to expect him. Right around 11, the motorcycle arrived and the counselor said he was ready to go, so less than a minute later we were off. I was glad to finally be off and excited to get to visit some local people in their homes. The excitement dimmed somewhat when scarcely two minutes into the ride, the counselor mentioned he had some business in town to do so after our rapid exit we promptly parked at a storefront office on main street and proceeded to sit for 20 or 30 minutes waiting for one of the city government workers to arrive.

In both cases things worked out fine as I did get my bags and the community visit went off more or less as planned. We eventually made it to the community and it was interesting to meet the people who lived scattered around the area in their small mud houses and who were facing the daily struggle of subsistence farming while also dealing with the reality of being HIV positive. These events did clearly demonstrate the considerable cultural differences in expectations regarding promptness and work efficiency and it was a good reminder to me to always factor in more time than I think when planning my schedule in Africa and to always have a good book or soccer ball around to fill in the time.

Kiwoko

Got to Kiwoko (“Chuhwoko”) almost a week and a half ago after making my way up from Entebbe via taxi, microbus, and motorcycle. Kiwoko is a small town about 13 kilometers down a bumpy dusty road off the Kampala-Masindi road. It’s an agricultural area with lots of banana and mango trees, skinny cows and a few brick huts scattered here and there. The area is not a tourist hot spot to say the least. It merits zero mentions in either the Lonely Planet or Bradt guides and is primarily known in Uganda for its central role in the civil war in the 1980’s. The Luweero Triangle, where it is located, was the epicenter for the uprising in the 80’s that eventually unseated President Obote (who succeeded Idi Amin) and placed the current president Museveni in power. As a result of being the headquarters for the rebellion, the Luweero Triangle was the site of brutal fighting between the government and rebel forces and many atrocities against the local population were committed. It is estimated that 250000 people died in the area, many of whom were innocent civilians falsely accused by one side or the other of aiding the opposing forces.

Today Kiwoko is known locally for the hospital which provides the highest level of health care available for many miles around. It was started by a Christian physician from Northern Ireland who visited the area in the immediate aftermath of the violence of the 80’s and felt led to establish a health center and provide care to the traumatized and medically under-resourced area. From a small health center, it has grown to a hospital with 230 beds, providing OB, surgical, medicine and Peds care to thousands of Ugandans a year. The physician staff is a mix of Ugandan and expatriates and an ever-rotating group of visiting expatriate med students, nurses and resident physicians. Currently in the guest house where I’m staying there’s a Brit, two Germans and myself.

Internet access has been spotty here but hopefully I'll be able to post a little more regularly this week. Occasionally however the internet goes down in the whole country so that makes blogging a little bit harder.

Splashdown

The flat snow-covered plains of France swept by underneath the plane mile after mile as I gazed out the window on the flight south from London to Entebbe. Suddenly the farmland was replaced by the sharp teeth of the Pyrenees which guarded the passage to the sunny climes of Spain. The Mediterranean next came into view followed by my first glimpse of Africa which was unexpected to say the least. Looking down as the coast came into view, I saw the shoreline rise up to a range of snow-covered mountains that extended many miles from the coast. After all my mental imagery of Africa as the land of the steamy jungle and hot desert sands it was surprising to see North Africa with significant amounts of snow and looking quite wintery to say the least. Eventually though the Sahara won out and the snowy ranges gave way to hours upon hours of sand and darkness fell.

Flying into a new third world country at night is always a bit of a disconcerting thing I have found, whether you experience the unsettled feeling before the fact or when you actually arrive. Coming into a poorer seemingly less safe country alone where you don't know the language, geography, or customs always seems to provoke some moment of anxiety during the preparations for the trip when some of your worst fears float in and out subconsciously and you picture yourself being mugged by thugs as soon as you step outside the door.

This moment came and went a few days before I left on this trip and as our plane banked over Lake Victoria to land in Entebbe I had no apprehension only a desire to get off the plane after too many hours of being stationary. Two hours later, after unsuccessfully searching for my bags that decided to stop and see the sights of London, I was riding in a taxi breathing in the humid air of Lake Victoria with a moon hanging languidly in the midnight sky amazed that I was actually in Africa.

3 days until launch

It's Wednesday evening in Winston-Salem and time to get this blog started with an inaugural post. My flight leaves for Entebbe on Saturday afternoon and I've been scrambling around trying to get all the loose ends tied up before heading out. One of those loose ends is this blog which is required for my rotation, and will provide me with a good forum to share some of my experiences. I'm headed to Kiwoko Hospital in Kiwoko Uganda which is a couple hours north of the capital of Kampala. It's a fairly large hospital (250 beds) in a rural setting about 20K from the nearest town of Luweero which has a population of 30000 or so. For those who don't remember where Uganda is, it's in the heart of Africa and has the Equator running right through it. Kenya is on the east, Sudan to the north, Congo to the west and Lake Victoria/Rwanda/Tanzania to the south. Anyway more to come once my feet hit the red dirt of Uganda!