No Electricity and Too Many Mosquitos!

I itch all over! My arms are literally covered in mosquito, and possibly spider, bites. I'm not suffering any ill effects other than the misery of constant itching, but the $40 worth of Avon's Skin So Soft Bug Repellant is not doing its job! My room for right now is not rigged with mosquito netting even though that's what most Ugandans use, or they "takes their chances" with malaria.

Malaria is apparently a big problem here for the unprotected. Just prior to my arrival, my hostess Carolyn Wade spent 3 weeks in bed with it. And many native Ugandans get sick routinely from malaria, because they're not taking (and probably can't afford) any type of anti-malarial medication. Fortunately for me I have a year's worth of anti-malarial medication that I must take daily. Once it runs out, if I haven't returned to the states yet, I will be a prime candidate for malaria. Once you get it, treatment requires a daily injection of some kind of medication to knock it out of your system.

So that's one challenge I face here. The other is the issue of electricity, or rather the lack thereof. Since I've been here, there has never been a full day with electricity. It might be available during the day, but go off in the evening, or off during the day and turned back on in the evening. Or it can be sporadic, going off and on throughout the day, which does wonders for the computer equipment in the office. Tonight (Friday evening) is the first time in 36 hours we've had electricity. And who knows whether it'll last through the weekend.

I haven't talked specifically to anyone about the problems with stable electrical power, but I get the feeling that it's not always an issue of just generalized power failures, although that has to be part of it. Apparently this is also a big political issue. I haven't been here long enough to understand all the politics in Uganda, nor do I really want to know or understand. But my friends were laughing the other day because apparently the government has not been paying its own utility bills and to make a point the power company shut off the electricity during a legislative session. Whether the perceived randomness of the power outages is political or simply a case of just not enough electricity being generated for everyone, it's darned annoying! But like my brother Michael said on Facebook - that's why they call it pioneering!

Photo Frustration

I've posted a few initial photos at the tail end of the blog. However, being a little slow I'm just now realizing that I can indeed insert photos within the text of the post - which is what I wanted to do anyway! So scroll all the way down to the end of the blog to see some photos, and on my next post I'll know what I'm doing! To prove it, here's a photo that shows a local street side fruit market.

This isn't Tennessee!

So I have survived my first week in Kampala. But I must say, "survive" is not a term I should use. I have been treated so well since arriving that I haven't had time to be homesick! I've already fallen in love with the people, the weather, the general surroundings. I feel like I've landed in paradise.

All of the fears and anxieties I or any of you back home may have had about this experience have gone completely out the window! There is nothing to be afraid of here. The Ugandan people are sweet, kind, and polite; the children are taught to be respectful of their elders, and walking down the street or shopping in a market here is no more dangerous than any other place - even the United States. In fact, in some ways I feel safer here than I did in the U.S.

But to back up a bit - I'm going to insert here some notes I made on landing in Addis Ababa Ethiopia. We had a bit of a delay for that plane and so I had some time to do a little writing -and remarkably was awake enough to do it and be relatively coherent. These paragraphs give my very first impressions on arrival, and then I'll take up the narrative again:

July 19, 2011 - It’s 8:45 a.m. Ethiopian time and I’m sitting in the waiting area for my flight to Entebbe (Kampala!) I’m in Africa! However, to look out the window right now, given Americans expectations of what Africa is like – they would be shocked. When we landed it was raining and probably about 60 degrees! Looking out the window all I can see are the runways, so I don’t feel like I can claim that I was even in Ethiopia. It looks like any other airport in the U.S. on a rainy day!

I’m exhausted. It’s around midnight-1 a.m. Nashville time and I’ve been flying since 6 a.m. Monday. And needless to say I didn’t get much sleep the night before. Between being last minute (and only with Kathy’s help) with finishing packing and with the general anxiety of it all, it was well after 1 a.m. before I fell asleep, and then slept fitfully until the alarm went off at 3:45 a.m. The last evening in Nashville, Kathy, Sue, Dan, Alessandra and Laura gathered at Sue’s to say prayers and sing songs in order to calm me down And it worked. The love and friendship I felt with these dear souls who went out of their way to come see me one more time just because I asked really meant a lot to me. And between Laura and Dan’s beautiful voices – the evening was definitely touching, bittersweet, but so meaningful.

The journey overall was pretty uneventful. The two short legs from Nashville to Cincinnati and then Cincinnati to Washington DC were on tiny cramped planes, but gratefully the flights were only about an hour. In DC I was shocked at the number of people – mostly Americans – who were flying to Africa. I gleaned that Ethiopian Airlines apparently is a major carrier to Africa and Addis Ababa is a hub. Just in hearing people talk and seeing young people with special t-shirts, most of our flight was going to places like Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, Zimbabwe, and other points. There were a lot of young people in groups and it appeared that these were either school or church groups coming to do some kind of short term service project. Then there were the “MKs” – the missionary kids who after spending the school year in the U.S. were coming home for summer vacation. There were other families that seemed to be missionaries, as well as a number of businessmen. But there were plenty of “just tourists.” I was surprised at the number of women my age and older who were traveling on their own or with another woman, apparently just on vacation.  

7:30 p.m.  - Holy Cow I’m tired but Holy Cow I’ve landed in paradise! The flight from Addis Ababa to Kampala was delayed an hour but we finally arrived and after running the gauntlet of customs and retrieving luggage I was able to meet Carolyn Wade, my hostess for the next couple of months. Boy is she a Godsend! She’s been here almost four years, has made her home here and so bought a beautiful roomy house where she lives with four other people, plus the occasional long term guests like me. I’ll likely be staying here until September or October at which time I’ll move into my own little bungalow on the National Bahá’í Center property – mere steps from the House of Worship and the offices where I’ll be working!

As tired as I was when Carolyn picked me up, I was also so excited that she drove me around a bit and took me to the House of Worship right away. What an amazing place! I know it’ll be so amazing working there and being in that environment all the time. I’ve met a few of the other Bahá’ís already and they’ve already recruited me to the Temple choir! When I’m rested and have my bearings, I’ll definitely look at doing that. I was able to say my first prayer in the House of Worship and again I stood in awe that I’m actually where I am. It still feels like a dream.

So those were my very first impressions. My first week was so full and I've been overwhelmed with sights, sounds, meeting new people, getting a phone, getting the internet set up, getting a bank account set up, etc. that it's gone by like a flash. While everyone thought I would have a few days to rest and recover from the trip before starting to work, circumstances were such that by Thursday I was in the office of the National Baha'i Centre after having just arrived on Tuesday! I've literally been dropped in the deep end of the pool, and while challenged a bit with it all, I think I'll make do just fine.

I'm going to post some pictures here for those friends who aren't on Facebook and can't see what I posted there. My plan for future posts is to spend the first part of the post talking about Ugandan life in general and sharing those experiences, and then of more particular interest to the Baha'i friends (although of course anyone can read it!) I'll have a section that is specific to Baha'i community life, work at the National Center, etc.

So I'll stop here, but hope to post more regularly since I'm "connected" now.