June 7th: After arriving in Entebbe late last night, my dad (who is traveling with me to Uganda, but leaves Wednesday) and I bunked at a small hotel near the airport. Eager to shower off the airport grime, I discovered that the "full force water pressure" was a more like a "fountain trickle." I realized that I need to accustom myself to living in a country where clean water is not readily available (meaning that you must keep your mouth shut while taking a shower and only brush your teeth with bottled water) and where items that are considered "regular" in the United States are rare. Adjusting to the customs here will be challenging, but I must remind myself to "stay positive" and embrace the different style of life (oh gosh, I am sounding just like my mom).
I woke up at 4:30 a.m. (guess you can call that jet lag) and spent my early morning reading and making sure I had all of my materials together. Cheeza, our cheerful driver, drove my dad and I to the Entebbe airstrip, which is where small, domestic charter planes fly in and out of. On the drive to the airstrip, we passed through the city of Entebbe. Everyone we saw was on their way to church: mothers holding their babies, groups of school children in their uniforms, and men riding their boda bodas (aka motor scooters). Smiles were ubiquitous on faces, and I could already sense a strong community among the people. As we approached the peripheral parts of the city, the paved roads turned into dirt roads, and the houses appeared more dilapidated. This transition zone was to be expected, but I was still moved by the conditions in which these people, families, and children live in. The car rumbled its way along the roads, and pedestrians would stop and stare at our unfamiliar faces, and curiosity would drive some brave children to follow the car that held the "foreigners."
Once at the airstrip, my dad and I unloaded our four large bags from the van and entered the small room where the bags are weighed. When the pilot began to calculate the weight of our bags to the nearest tenth of a kilogram, I started to become nervous...how small was this plane that we were riding? I sat down as the pilot conducted weight calculations, and my dad, being the person that he is, peered over the pilot's shoulders, making sure that the pilot was adding the numbers correctly.
After fifteen minutes, the pilot looked up at us and said, "Well, we are over the legal weight limit, but all is good. We put all of the heavy bags in the plane." My dad slid me a skeptical look and said to the pilot, "Let's be safe and not exceed the legal weight limit for this plane. I'll just send one of the bags on the next flight." The pilot looked at his calculations and began to reconfigure the setup of the luggage. Now, when the pilot has to meticulously plan the placement of your hand baggage, plus the passengers and suitcases, so that the plane does not tip over, I find it appropriate to worry a little. We walked to the plane, which looked as perilous as I had imagined (a two door, four seat, five-foot wide plane). The pilot told us not to fret, and before we knew it, we were off, soaring in the sky to Mbarara.
I had forgotten how beautiful and lush Uganda's landscapes are. Up in the clouds, I could look down and see rolling green hill after rolling green hill. Red-roofed houses spotted the ground, and I glimpsed a view of the vast Lake Victoria in the distance. I almost forgot about our precarious little plane until we began our descent. As the plane was about to touch the red-dirt runway, it caught a wind wave and tipped to it's side, its wing almost brushing the ground. The pilot was cursing upon the landing.
When the engine petered off, I jumped out as quickly as I could, wanting to place my feet on hard ground. I was met with a pleasant breeze of air: I was now in Mbarara. Lucas, our driver, drove us through the wild streets of the town of Mbarara (and when I say "wild", I mean cars, people, and boda bodas everywhere). We arrived at the Massachusetts General Hospital Guesthouse (MGH Guesthouse) in time for a warm lunch with Noortje (a young woman from the Netherlands who works with MGH and has been a tremendous help to me throughout the process of setting up this program). During the afternoon, I unpacked and read my book until dinner time. For dinner, Noortje and Sarah (an American living in Mbarara, who works with MGH as well) cooked a yummy soup with steamed vegetables and brought over homemade bread. *What you can eat here is limiting (no fresh produce unless it has skin), but there are definitely some good cooks! I will have to start cooking some of my own meals, but Noortje set up a much needed Ugandan cooking lesson for me and a couple other people for next week.
I woke up at 4:30 a.m. (guess you can call that jet lag) and spent my early morning reading and making sure I had all of my materials together. Cheeza, our cheerful driver, drove my dad and I to the Entebbe airstrip, which is where small, domestic charter planes fly in and out of. On the drive to the airstrip, we passed through the city of Entebbe. Everyone we saw was on their way to church: mothers holding their babies, groups of school children in their uniforms, and men riding their boda bodas (aka motor scooters). Smiles were ubiquitous on faces, and I could already sense a strong community among the people. As we approached the peripheral parts of the city, the paved roads turned into dirt roads, and the houses appeared more dilapidated. This transition zone was to be expected, but I was still moved by the conditions in which these people, families, and children live in. The car rumbled its way along the roads, and pedestrians would stop and stare at our unfamiliar faces, and curiosity would drive some brave children to follow the car that held the "foreigners."
Once at the airstrip, my dad and I unloaded our four large bags from the van and entered the small room where the bags are weighed. When the pilot began to calculate the weight of our bags to the nearest tenth of a kilogram, I started to become nervous...how small was this plane that we were riding? I sat down as the pilot conducted weight calculations, and my dad, being the person that he is, peered over the pilot's shoulders, making sure that the pilot was adding the numbers correctly.
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| Plane |
I had forgotten how beautiful and lush Uganda's landscapes are. Up in the clouds, I could look down and see rolling green hill after rolling green hill. Red-roofed houses spotted the ground, and I glimpsed a view of the vast Lake Victoria in the distance. I almost forgot about our precarious little plane until we began our descent. As the plane was about to touch the red-dirt runway, it caught a wind wave and tipped to it's side, its wing almost brushing the ground. The pilot was cursing upon the landing.
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| View of Uganda from Plane |
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