we're definately going to make it

June 2

We have this clock in our house that plays an electronic version of Fur Elise at eight in the morning. That is what I woke up to this morning. I always think it is the door bell. I had toast and honey for breakfast. The honey tastes just like cane syrup. I find comfort in a lot of unusual places like this. It happens all the time.
There are so many children here it is unbelievable. Everywhere you go there are children and every couple hundreds of yards there is a primary school. It seems like there is always one screeming within earshot of the house.
We were supposed to meet with Rev Obed today, but he has been ill, so today we were on our own. We weren’t brave enough to try the taxis because we still don’t know exactly how to tell them where we want to go, or how to negotiate the price. Instead we decided to walk down the main road in each direction for a while. It was very much an act of participant observation. It was not too warm to walk even though we got a lot of sun. So far the weather has been warm and sunny, but not overbearingly hot like it is in Memphis. People are surprised to hear that it is hotter at home than it is home.
Back to our journey along the road, we found a grocery store, bought a paper, found a baker, had coffee, and used the internet (That is when I made my last post). It is hard to explain how these things are such an accomplishment, but they very much are. The coffee we had was delicious, and I had a meat pie to go with it. Dustin and I had each drunk a small pot of coffee before we realized that we had drunk the local water. However, 24 hours later we are fine, so I think we will be fine, but it is hard to always be thinking about those sorts of things.
The internet has been really difficult and slow. It is REALLY slow, like going back to the dial up days, and it gets really frustrating. It was pretty funny to watch Dustin get frustrated with the internet while he was all hopped up on the caffine and it was going so slow. Because we want to maximize our time, we type out everything ahead of time and then just copy and paste it into the spaces so that we don’t waste our time on the internet typing. We have learned to economize a lot of things actually. All in all we probably walked about four miles. The closest internet is about one mile in one direction. I hoping that we will have an office with an internet connection soon, so that we don’t have to work so hard to get on the internet.
Today was the first day that I noticed how much people stare at us as we walk by. We are really out of place. People dress fairly nicely here even thought it must be so hot. Men always wear pants and often long sleeve shirts. Women also wear pants or long skirts. As we passed along the different nurseries the children would run up and wave to us. The children are really the only ones that will talk to us on the street. Even the toddlers know how to say hello and goodbye. I think they are just excited to see someone so different.
The biggest event of the day was that Dr. Muhumuza’s brother came by the house today. He is our age and is in college. I think he has been assigned to work with us and look after us at the same time. However, I was grateful to talk to someone my own age, and he has a very easy personality, as do most of the people here. He was very concerned as to whether we were comfortable or not.
I person also came by to bring us a phone, so we will be able to make calls now to all of the people we will be working with. This is very good for us, but we will not be able to make international calls from this phone. We finally figured out where it is that we live: Bokoto. It is more like an area of the city like we do in the states in the way that I live in Midtown in Memphis.

June 3, 2009
Today was also an eventful day. We are trying with much difficult to finish a draft for our research proposal. Reading the paper has been very informative and interesting. There is a lot of discontent with the government here, but that isn’t really a huge surprise, but the perspectives that people have are interesting. You often don’t hear about African peoples speaking out on their own behalf, but it is happening all of the time. I believe that one day, they will get to a better position. I’m not nearly as fatalistic as I was before coming here.
Andrew came over today to take us to the SAS foundation and the clinic, which were in two different areas. It was nice to meet the different people that are working for SAS. Everyone was very interested in talking to us. I met one person who had been to Memphis. I certainly did not expect to meet anyone who had been to Memphis. He did say that everyone was so nice there, which is very good to hear. People seem to like Americans here, as opposed to Europe, where they think Americans are heathens.
Andrew is very interested in working with us, so we are going to add him on to our research team. I think he will be more of an asset to us than he realizes. We have so many questions about the way things work, but he is very patient in answering all of our questions and providing us with information. I do think he gets a good laugh out of us every once and a while, especially when we try to pronounce words in Lugandan. Lugandan is the language that most people speak here, and it is the preferencial language of everyday life, although most people speak some English. I have also realized that we have much common ground in that we are all students. We were laughing about how students here try to sneak in kegs to the dormitories like we did.
My stomach is finally all better. The antimalarials were giving me terrible heart burn for a while. It is nice to be able to eat whatever. There are so many foods I want to try. But the biggest excitement is that I can drink the fruit juice. It is SO delicious. I wonder if there is crack in it because I drank almost an entire container of it today.
Tomorrow we are supposed to be meeting with the rest of people who are helping us with our research. I’m very excited to be moving forward, and ready to get into a routine. However, we are still needing some time to adjust. I find that the maximum amount of time that Dustin and I can tolerate in the city is about four hours. There is just so much going on, and everything is so different, and we have to make so many adjustments in the way we act even though we aren’t even talking to anyone. People don’t really make eye contact on the street, you only make eye contact if you want something, and it’s weird if you smile at anyone on the street. We are still getting used to the currency which is done in thousands. Often we pay people the wrong amount, but they are nice enough to give the money back when we pay them too much. But they laugh at us. There’s just too many zeros.
However, it is amazing how cheap different things are. We can take a taxi all over town for about 3, 000 shillings which is a dollar and fifty cents. Our stop at the bakery cost about 8,000 shillings. We got to small pots of coffee, a personal veggie pizza, and a meat pie. Less than four dollars in American money. In our research we have read that the majority of Ugandans live on less than 1 US dollar a day and around 90% on less than 2 dollars a day. It makes a lot more sense now. We are living pretty lavishly compared to the rest of the population, but we are probably only spending about 5 dollars on a regular day. Cheers! I miss you all.