I wouldn’t call myself a hypochondriac. I’d call myself a realist. Who goes to Africa planning on getting malaria? And twice? Really? So time to call it a day. Or rather, six weeks. Time to get on a plane, head for home, recuperate, and make a plan. A plan that does not include any of the countries colored in red on this map. Which are, by the way, all of the places I have any interest in seeing.
When I got to the airport in Kampala at 4:30am, ready to hop a flight to Nairobi and then London, I had a headache. I never get headaches, unless there are margaritas involved. Since we’ve now established I’m a realist, I wrote it off as another bout of malaria. I didn’t have a headache either of the last two times I had malaria, but who knows, maybe each iteration brings its own special characteristics as my body builds immunity. Maybe this is some new strain of Malaria that rewards its victims with super powers, since the third time’s the charm after all. Perhaps this is the ESP setting in. Maybe next I’ll be able to turn invisible at will or gain the power of flight. All I needed to do was take Tylenol to control the fever, buck up and get home.
I had a layover in London, and got to see my friend Lyndon, who rode, on a motorcycle, for three hours in the rain to come and hang out with me. Talk about super powers. Friends are an amazing thing in this world. We went to the pub, had a beer and some good, familiar food. Goat did not appear on the menu, and neither did matooke. It was a good night. But I couldn’t seem to kick the headache. Fingers crossed for ESP or maybe even x-ray vision.
I got on a plane headed to Denver the next day. The entire flight, my headache was getting worse and worse. I couldn’t seem to get it under control. I was so so relieved to step off that flight and take a deep breath of brown cloud, mile high air.
Until I came down the escalator into the pit of hell. OK, so maybe it wasn’t actually hell, it was just the US Customs and Immigration Hall at DIA. But the line for immigration was very, very, gaspingly long. I thought I might pass out. They guy about 20 people in front of me did. It was a sheer act of will that got me through that line. And the loss of any sense of queue propriety. Everyone would shuffle a few feet forward and stop. Shuffle, stop, shuffle, stop. Shift from foot to foot, strike up a conversation with your neighbor. I would shuffle, stop, sprawl shamelessly on the floor with head in hand, or stare vacantly at the ceiling and wish I were dead. Good thing every one was too busy looking at the guy who passed out to notice me being very un-American by sitting while in line.
Finally, the front of the line.
Immigration officer: “Welcome home. What countries have you traveled to?”
Me: “Uganda, Kenya, UK”
Immigration officer: “Africa, huh? Interesting.” Stamp stamp stamp on my passport and customs form. Weird. I don’t remember getting that many stamps on my customs form before.
It took me another two minutes to realize that those extra stamps meant extra special attention in the customs hall. Meaning every single check available. Wait in line to xray every bag I brought, followed by waiting (and waiting and waiting) while every single bag was hand searched by the customs official.
Now a note about the customs officials. I was grumpy. I was sick (literally) and tired. My gripes that day didn’t hold a candle to the gripes of that poor, put-upon customs official. Imagine that your job, 8 hours a day, is to search through the dirty underwear of tired, grumpy, hungry travelers who have just sat in coach for the last 10 hours and have nothing better to do but take out their frustration on you, whose job is to keep our country free of drugs, weapons, and unfriendly bug species that want to ravage our crops. I felt very bad for her. And tried, through my headache, to let her know, as politely as possible, that I understood she had a job to do, but could she maybe search a tiny bit faster so that I could sit down before I fell over and made her job even more difficult by making her call the paramedics. She, unbelievably, smiled a real smile, chatted pleasantly with me, and searched just a little faster. Thank you customs lady. Or maybe I just really did look that bad.
When I stumbled out of the customs hall nearly 2 hours after my flight had landed, still waiting for my x-ray vision, I was completely exhausted. And my parents were there, ready to take my luggage from me, bundle me in the car, and take me home. Home. Something so familiar and yet so different than where I’d been the last several weeks, and had planned on being for many more. So much to process through this splitting headache. All I could do was tumble in to bed and try to sleep it off. And hope to wake up with my new power.
The votes are in, (I’m talking bugs here, not Obama) and overwhelmingly in favor of trying nsenene. Lucky for me, the FSD designated driver (designated because he’s a local, not because he’s the only sober one around) brought by an entire bag of de-legged and de-winged nsenene, ready to cook. So Sarah fried them up with salt, garlic and onion. And lots and lots of oil.
Ned walked in with a heaping plate of nsenene. And man oh man, it smelled good. Like salty oniony goodness.
But it’s not really easy to try that first bug. I mean, it’s a bug. And it looks like a bug, little beady eyes and all. Since I had an audience of everyone, it took me a while to actually try it. I’d say “overthinking” would be the word of the day.
I stood there, I smelled it, I poked at it.
Took off the head, still couldn’t eat it, even headless. Threw that one away. Amie gave me some sage advice. Try the small ones first. They’re more crunchy, and less…gooey. Mmm, gooey bug.
Finally, everyone got bored of staring at me not eating nsenene and dispersed. Now’s my chance.
Just put it in your mouth and chew. Oh boy, here goes (crunch) I’m eating a bug (crunch crunch) I can’t believe I’m eating a…wait a minute (crunch crunch) this is pretty tasty. Actually, it’s really tasty. Like fried onion and garlic. In fact, I think I’ll have a few more…
Real time update: Amie, Ned and I wanted to watch the US election coverage with the minimum chance of power or internet outage. So here we are, holed up in the Sheraton in Kampala, where there is a giant generator, direct TV satellite coverage, and a nice hot shower. This election is different. The excitement in Kampala is palpable. More to come…
In the category of strange food is the Ruspolia Nitidula:
That’s right, your eyes do not deceive you, that’s a grasshopper. And right now, it’s grasshopper season here in Uganda. Or as they are deceptively called here, nsenene. I say deceptively because nsenene sounds like a really nice, musical thing. And when people talk about something with the level of excitement that they talk about nsenene, how bad could it be?
The locals set up nsenene trapping sites that look like this:
You’ll have to excuse the very dark picture. They only set these up at night, after it’s good and dark, so no way to get a good picture during daylight hours. To give a sense of scale, each of the aluminum sheets is about 14 feet long. The light attracts the nsenene, who fly into the metal sheets which are nice and shiny, then knock themselves senseless and fall into the barrels at the base of the sheets which are filled with water. They are then deep fried and enjoyed by people of all ages. Including Ned:
Supposedly, they are delicious and not to be missed. I, however, am not so sure. So time for a readers’ poll:
[poll id="1"]
I’ve never lived near a mosque before, and the call to prayer always brings up thoughts of far off places and exotic people. Well, now I’m in the far off place living with exotic people with not one but two mosques in my neighborhood, and the 5 times daily call to prayer has become one of the many beats in the daily rhythm of life. Uganda is a spiritual country, where it is not uncommon to be asked on first meeting about your religious background. My sense is that this question is meant to simply give the person asking a fuller understanding of what category you fit in, without any deeper context implied. For example, my host mom converted to Islam when she married her husband, but her family is Catholic. So I was asked on my first day with the family about my religious preferences, and when I explained I was raised more or less Protestant, my spiritual well-being was handed over to Juliet, the Catholic matriarch of the family. Protestant is closer to Catholic than Muslim, so the understanding was that I would attend mass with the Catholic side.
This rather funny and cavalier deposition of my spiritual care started me thinking about the differences between these religions. At its core, both Islam and Catholicism ask what many religions ask. That each person take responsibility for their actions and try, every day, to be a good person. Most religions simply provide a structure within which each person can check in at a regular interval that they are being the best they can be. Each life, after all, is made up of a series of moments. But I’ve realized whole years go by in which I don’t check myself for humanity in any official way.
So what am I? More or less Protestant doesn’t really answer that. I realized the question always seemed to pop into my head when I heard the call to prayer. What I started to shape was that the question was less about what am I and more about who am I. A dear friend of mine once said that one of the marks of a quality person in his book is if they show courage in their convictions. I feel he hit the nail on the head, but when I ask myself about my convictions, I begin to wonder. How do I find this courage? What are my convictions? Do I need to find a dragon to slay, an evil to fight? An oppressed people to stand up for? How do I know what I believe?
So I find that the call drifting through my window frames my days now, and every time I hear that call, I take a moment to think about who I am in practice. Have I represented myself to the world in a graceful manner that my family would be proud of? Have I treated every person I’ve come into contact with with dignity? Have I done anything that I would not want to be on the receiving end of? I’ve found space in my life for five moments a day in which I have a frank discussion with myself. The only requirement is complete honesty. And as I become more and more honest with myself, I become more honest with the world. And I find that this is courage in my convictions. This is exercising my moral muscles. The interesting thing is I don’t find a dragon. I find a world full of people, a collection of individual personalities bound together just like individual moments are into life. And I hope to carry this call to prayer with me wherever I go.
Welcome to Uganda, where fuel is leaded and pedestrians live in fear. Coming from the US, I’m used to a certain level of order in my traffic patterns. Having traveled to Africa once before, I knew not to expect the same here. The first day in Kampala seemed like chaos. Blue and white mini-buses competing with SUVs for the same 5 feet of tarmac, wildly smoking scooters zipping everywhere ludicrously loaded with people and goods. And among all the chaos, here’s me, trying to cross the street. How hard could it possibly be? I feel like every time I successfully cross the road here I’ve (barely) avoided death yet another day.
So here is what we’re contending with:
The Taxi
Called a taxi, but not actually what we would think of as a taxi. More like a community mini-bus that travels a fixed route. In the case of Masaka, there is one main paved road that goes through town. The taxis drive that one road (see picture below). Some go as far as Kampala or the Rwandan border, others just go from one end of town to the other.
In the picture below you can see the guy in the orange shirt. He’s the conductor. He’s responsible for yelling at the top of his lungs at all times. I have no idea what he’s saying. Nor do I know what he actually does. Besides yell.
The Special Hire
This is what we would consider a taxi in the US. It’s a car that you hire to pick you up where you are and drop you off exactly where you want to go without stopping in between. Unless you want to be picked up or dropped off on any of the non-car worthy roads. Which is almost all of them. So most of the special hires end up driving the same routes as the taxis cramming as many people into them as possible. I’ve been in one with eight people before, and that’s not at all unusual. As a sidebar, the butcher gets his daily cow delivered in the back of a special hire. Just line the trunk with banana leaves and let the legs stick up in the air, no problem.
The (Infamous) Boda-Boda
Note to my Mother: I know you’re reading this entry.
STOP HERE
You will give yourself a heart attack.
There are two types of boda bodas: bicycles and motorcycles. The name comes from motorcycles that originally would drive from border to border, so through heavily accented English, the name became boda boda. The motorcycle variety is by far the most popular here because it’s too hilly to manage a bicycle. Some are scooters, some are dirtbikes, all are two stroke, none are more than 100CCs. Think lawnmower.
The bodas are a cultural experience par excellence. Every time I’ve ridden a boda, I can’t stop giggling uncontrollably. Ask Amie, she thought I was going to fall off the back I was laughing so hard. They are just so ridiculous. And yet so much fun. And so freaking dangerous. And wearing skirts as often as not, and traveling with other women who wear skirts, I’ve ridden on the back of a boda, side saddle, with another woman, also side saddle, and the operator. Women are actually encouraged to ride side saddle because if the boda driver takes a “wrong turn” (think human trafficking) you can just jump off. Yeah, that’s not safe. And by the way, I’ve never actually heard of anyone being trafficked here. This is mostly urban legend, I’m told.
And the beauty of the bodas are that they go anywhere. I routinely ride bodas that will take short cuts down foot paths. They are far more practical than most vehicles on the road. They also make up a fair number of the traffic related fatalities that occur in this country. And by the way, traffic accidents kill more people in Uganda than infectious disease. For a country that has weekly reports on the number of people dying of infectious diseases published in the newspaper (the number is in the hundreds), that is a big statement.
We were warned by our program that the boda drivers do not have licenses, there is no safety monitoring of the vehicles. It is not unusual for the drivers to be drunk, stoned, or who knows what. Having a trusted boda driver here is worth his weight in gold. Fortunately, my host mom’s brother is a boda driver and is trusted to take the 4 and 5 year-olds to and from school every day.
There is no limit to what you can carry on a boda boda. Note the sugar cane, useful for pole-vaulting over any particularly large potholes you may encounter.
Need to take the family to town? No problem! Might take a little while, but that’s what first gear is for!
I’ve seen pigs strapped to bodas. Live pigs.
And finally, the most treacherous form of transport.
Your feet. Dangers include open sewers, goats, chickens, the most slippery mud I’ve ever experienced (helped by all the motor oil that leaks everywhere), manure, bodas, taxis, special hires, other people, little kids yelling mzungu, grabbing your hand and not letting go.
People say getting there is half the fun. Here, it’s all the fun!
It has come to the management’s attention that the demand for photos on this site outstrips supply. When the original Western Imperialist Nations referred to Africa as the Dark Continent, they were not referring to the people, nor the vast unexplored mystery of the interior. No, they were referring to the lack of regular electricity.
And so, as I am forced to upload photos at the only internet cafe in Masaka with a generator, the process is not unlike giving birth to a whale. It is very slow, painful, and smells funny. Well, the whale smells fine, the cafe however…
Just kidding. It’s more like trying to fit something very large through a very small hole.
So I beg your patience, dear reader, and leave you with this parting thought:
That’s right, nothing at all to do with Africa, or whales, but was already loaded onto the server, so is instant gratification.
Enjoy!
Sincerely,
The Management
One of the things you never, ever see here in Uganda is ice. No ice cubes in drinks, no slushies, no milkshakes. Transportation here is slow at best and refrigerated vehicles are too expensive. If something frozen does get here, the power is off almost more than it’s on, so nothing stays frozen for long. Ice cream from the grocery store has been thawed and refrozen so many times that the cream separates from the flavor and the water and you end up with a crystalized, not very tasty mash.
So when Ned walked into the office with a snowball, there was great excitement.
Where did that come from? There was a good deal of arguing over who should throw it at who. But since Ned is over 6 feet tall and bigger than everyone, he decided the best place for it was down the back of Amie’s shirt.
Chaos ensued. Ah the joy of a good old fashioned snow ball fight.
I found this tucked into a notebook I brought with me from the US. Just thought it belonged out in the world at large:
Please note in the photo above what is printed at the bottom of the receipt for the local health clinic. I did not mean to take them seriously.
Karen vs. Malaria, round 2.
I thought I had it beat, but it was just biding its time it seems. Almost exactly a week after my “all clear” test, I woke up with a fever and a terrible stomach ache. We’d had Pork Fest 2008 the day before, so I thought perhaps I was sick from that. I dragged myself into the office and headed to the clinic with Amie in tow. Or rather, Amie headed with me dragging behind. Checked my temp, 99.9 as of my departure. I’ve now been to the clinic often enough that they recognize me. That’s a sad statement. I was in good spirits, joking with Amie “wouldn’t it be funny if I had malaria again?” Right, I should watch what I say. That didn’t work last time, either.
They pulled my file and sent me straight to the lab for a malaria test. And by “straight” I mean:
- See the receptionist for my file
- See the pharmacist for the lab order
- See the cashier to pay for the lab order
- Proceed to room #6 (the lab). Lab is closed. Wait. Prick finger, smear on slide, wait.
- Proceed to line for doctor in #2. Wait.
- See doctor, get prescription for IV quinine drip
- Repeat steps 2 and 3
- Proceed to room #5 for a nurse.
- Proceed to room #9 for quinine.
So malaria is such a humdinger because it lives both in your liver and in your blood. Think queen bee malaria parasite lording from the liver, and all of the worker bees out in the blood. The worker bee malaria is what a malaria test looks for. But it can’t detect if there are still parasites in your liver. So, in true ninja style, malaria was just waiting for the moment to strike.
When the FSD doctor came to discuss health with us in our orientation, I distinctly remember an ominous tone when he discussed malaria treatment. It was something like this: “We start with a pill to treat, and if it comes back, well, then we discuss the details later. No point talking about that now”. I found out why he didn’t discuss. I can say with a fair amount of certainty that I don’t remember ever having been so sick in my life.
By the time I had my malaria test and was in to see the doctor again, my fever was at 37 C. Now I’m switching from Fahrenheit to Celsius here because I’d been taking my temp with a thermometer I brought from the US. Once I arrived at the clinic, it was all Celsius. This was just as well, because I’m not very practiced at that conversion in my head so the situation was somewhat muted. He prescribed an IV quinine drip as step 1 of treatment. The quinine has to go slowly into your blood stream, so I was on the drip for 6 hours. There are two main side effects of quinine. One is tinitis, or ringing in the ears that drowns out everything else, the other is insomnia.
In the clinic, each person you visit is in a different numbered room. The room where I had my quinine drip was #9. Now the fact that “quinine” and “number 9? rhyme was not lost on me, especially since tinitis, insomnia and fever are the perfect breeding ground for singing very annoying songs to yourself over and over. And since I’m also a Beatles fan and had been listening to the White Album just the day before, “Revolution 9? is the perfect thing to repeat…over…and over….and over…
In my case, I also tasted the quinine very strongly, and no amount of OJ or water would wash it away. Now quinine, for those boozers out there, is what gives tonic water its distinctive flavor. I love gin and tonics. I will probably never drink another one for the rest of my life.
As the afternoon wore on, my fever went up and up. The doc stopped in to see me about half way through the treatment to take my temperature again and check on me. The most memorable statement from the doctor as I’m getting sicker and sicker: “Think of quinine and malaria as elephants. When two elephants are fighting…” I had to fill in the rest: “the grass will get trampled?”.
I laid there. I stared at the ceiling, stared at the other people in the ward with me, stared out the window at the rain dripping from the roof. My bed was directly in front of the door, so every once in a while someone would come in or out and I would get a little clip of life happening in the clinic at large. I would make up stories about the scenes I would get in those 3 seconds. And I thought about being a foreigner in a clinic in Africa. No family for thousands of miles in every direction. And how very, very lucky I am that I have such an extraordinary group of friends here, especially Amie, willing to sit in the clinic with me all day, cook for me, get water, get juice, and above all, make me laugh through it all.
Late in the afternoon, I lost a few hours of memory. Or rather, I remember very strange things. I remember someone standing over my bed saying my name, calling me over and over. (number 9, number 9) No one I knew, and no one that was actually there. (number 9 number 9) OK, that’s creepy. (number 9…) I remember dreaming I was falling out of my bed and waking with a start to realize I wasn’t actually sleeping. (number9number9….gaahhh!)
And at some point, perhaps the most scary in hindsight, the bone-rending achy-ness went away. In all of the stories I’ve heard of people freezing to death, they simply stop feeling cold. They get sleepy, doze off, and never wake up. I have to wonder if that isn’t a similar small mercy that nature has built into the brutality of death. And that’s when the doctor asked when the last time I had a shot in the hind end was. Uh, no thank you. He suggested I be admitted to the hospital. I refused. He told me I needed a shot to bring my fever down. It was at 39. I refused again. Amie told me I didn’t get to refuse and I was getting the shot whether I wanted it or not. So I did. I left the clinic, not on my own power, and was put to bed. Within hours my fever had come down to a manageable level, enough for me to do the math on my fever. 39 is somewhere around 103 F.
I’m continuing treatment now with a not-very-nice set of pills that cause dizziness, loss of appetite, all the stomach issues you can imagine, and insomnia so you don’t even get to sleep through the worst parts. Four days and counting, about 6 hours of sleep, and I can’t wait to be over this. Thank you Byansi Clinic, I will not come again.
