Grasshoppers, ants and Hangover II

Last Friday was work as usual, I worked on my project with the clinic and check up on some grant applications.

Saturday I headed into Kampala by myself, but I had my phone so I couldn’t get too lost. J I went and saw Hangover II, it was pretty funny. It felt like most of the day was spent on a taxi, the traffic here is crazy. I suppose that is why boda-bodas are so popular, they don’t need to wait for the traffic to go, they just dodge and weave through the traffic.

Sunday Ishmael and I went to an area of Kampala called Old Kampala, this was the origional center of the city when it was colonized. Now the main building there is the Gaddafi Mosque…yes that Gaddafi. There was a mosque that had been there for several decades, but in 2007 Muammar Gaddafi supplied the funds to build a new one. It was open about a year later. The building is huge, definitely the largest open space that I have been in whilst here. We went on the guided tour of the building, and I was good to go with a Muslim because there was a lot of information that I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. With the tour we got to go to the top of the minaret, from which you can see most of the city. In the afternoon we walked through another near by market.

Monday was a work day, I am getting pretty far on my project and am excited to start the next one. We got a visit from some people who work for an organization called Shanti-Uganda. It is a Canadian organization that focuses on natural birthing methods. The offer nearly free pregnancy care for mother, from conception to 6wks post-natal, near the city of Luwero. They are relatively new to Uganda, but already have a great care network built.

Tuesday and Wednesday were both at the field school, as per usual. On the way we stopped by a natural forest area maintained by the National Forest Authority to harvest seedlings for the nursery project. Mpanga forest is more or less of an eco-tourism sit with a guest-house and several other sleeping areas. They site is home to many species that are only found in Uganda, we saw several monkeys there. While walking though the forest we came to this grove area, which looked like a plantation. I was following one of the staff members and she just walked over a pick the plant. It turned out that they were peanuts. I found out that peanuts are call G-Nuts here, I had been offered G-Nuts several times but didn’t connect the dots that they were in fact just peanuts.

Wednesday I observed class two, it was day two of “head problems and in the afternoon went to the clinic to observe the patients that came to visit. There are several returning patients, so some of them remember me. Several of the kids walk over to me and try to give me a high-five or take my pen and start to draw in their notebooks like they’re taking notes.

Thursday and Friday were both work days. On Friday afternoon Medi took me to a nearby town and bought tangela. They are shoes that are made from tires…they seem very durable. The only problem was that most Ugandans don’t have feet as big as mine, so it took a while to find a pair that fit. I am still amazed at how resourceful Ugandans are; I guess you make due with what you have.

Saturday I went to some more of the places I wanted to see in Kampala with Hamdiah, She needed to visit some family members before we went to the city, so we went to a smaller village on the outskirts of the city. I got to see the city dump. I learned that Uganda is starting to use their refuse to make biogas, they collect the rain water that has filtered through the garbage which is often acidic. This “water’ is then subjected to several other chemicals and bio-gas results. From what I understand, this is still a new project but sounds promising in the long run. We also went to the National Museum of Uganda, which is the oldest in East Africa. I really enjoyed the exhibit on human evolution…anthropology is definitely the best field. They had several fossil casts and many examples of atl-atl (look it up). After the museum we went to Nakasero, the biggest fruit/food market in Uganda. They had just about everything you could imagine, so many spices and new kinds of fruit. Every stand that we passed tried to get me to buy their vanilla, I guess that most foreigners go there looking for it. Oh yeah, I also tried grasshoppers. They are a delicacy here. I also found out that they eat ants here, fried with just a bit of salt, and just my luck the season for them is just starting but the market was out that day.

Sunday I went to Kampala in the morning, nothing too unusual happened. It is just funny how many looks I get when I order food or talk to a taxi driver in Luganda, its usually good for a laugh. In the evening I went to dinner with David, one of the Makerere interns. He wanted to take my to the next borough, it was fun to go out at night as I hadn’t done that before.

Today we went on an exchange visit with Shanti Uganda, it was only about an hour and a half car ride to their compound. I enjoyed looking at all of the things that they had put in place, it was also good to get the view of another organization in Uganda that had similar goals to PROMETRA.

On my way some I was walking in from of my apartment building to see a bunch of kids jumping around trying to catch thing that seemed to emerging from the ground. When I asked what they were catching they told me ensue, which is the name for the ants that they cook then eat. It turns out that they only eat the ants that fly…more meat I guess. Hahah

Sorry about there being no pics, the internet is super slow today.
I’m about half way already, I cant believe how fast time is going.