Round Two and Three

Monday 5/31/10
I woke up tense because I knew that I would have to see the secretary at the UNCST again. First we stopped at the hospital to meet with Dr. Bagenda. Meeting him was actually very nice. He is always so helpful to us and has a good sense of humor. I think at some point we will go have dinner with him and his family. He married an American physician and have a daughter that’s 21 months. He always introduces me to interesting people. This time was the person who was the principle investigator for the Rakai project, which is a major HIV surveillance project that began because this is the area of Uganda where HIV originally emerged. He was one of the first doctors to distinguish HIV as a unique collection of symptoms, i.e. he is one of the people to first recognize HIV. How cool is that?
We talked for a long time, and Meagan was anxious to get down to the UNCST as well. It was funny because as we walked out of the building she said, “We’re taking a boda!” And I laughed because they frighten her so much, but given our time frame we really needed to get there. We did take a boda, and sat down with the secretary for round two. Some of our paperwork was wrong, so we had to fill it out again, and then I was so relieved because we had finally gotten it all together, and then I asked how long it was going to take to process the paperwork, and she said SIX WEEKS. I was so upset, I could barely speak. So I went outside and called Dr. Bagenda right away. He had the same reaction, but tried to encourage us and offering to call the different people that he knew who might could help. We found a place to have lunch. We mostly sat in silence because I was still too angry to speak. And the we proceeded to walk the rest of the way home.

Tuesday 6/1/10
This morning we went directly to purchase an internet modem. The thing is so cool. It works anywhere, and on any computer that you plug it into. You just pay by the month. It makes me wish that we had something like that in the U.S. Grace and Anette came today. Grace cooked lunch for us and it was delicious. She also made some fresh juice. While we were eating it started to rain and then hail. I was mostly impressed that the power stayed on the whole time. We got a call from Dr. Bagenda that was encouraging, he said that the paperwork at the UNCST was already processed and that it would be sent to the president’s office, which was four weeks at the most. Lastly he told us to go by the UNCST again and meet the person who was helping us (round three).
David came by in the evening. David, you might recall, was the student who had been sneaking into school because he couldn’t pay his school fees, and mom and I decided that we would give him the additional money that he needed to finish school. He sat for his exams and did very well. I think he did better than most students that passed. He said that 40% of the students didn’t even pass their exams. What a bummer. Now he is in the process of applying for college. He wants to go to the one in Kampala, Makerere is the name of it.

Wednesday 6/2/10
Meagan got an email from someone at the University of Memphis saying that they would like to do a write up on our project for the Memphis magazine. It was pretty exciting to get some good news. I assumed that they would just want Meagan in it since she is a current student, but they said that they were also interested in alumni, so I’ll get to be in it too. Generally things are starting to look on the up and up.
We went to see the lady, Leah, who had helped us. It wasn’t the one we had been talking to all this time, but their desks were adjacent. We tried to be as polite as possible, but even still she had the attitude of “why are you here again”. Turns out she needed a few things from us anyway, so it was good that we dropped by. That means four more weeks at the most, so it seems that things are becoming a little more manageable. I wish that I could come back in the middle of the year and do some more observations.
From there we had our Wednesday pizza lunch. Always relaxing. The restaurant is really nice because it is all open air, but completely shaded by all kinds of different plants. It makes it really nice and cool. It also blocks out the sound of the street, so it is quiet and relaxing. The only thing is that they play really bad soft jazz. We had another person ask us for our number so that when they got to America, we could help them get a job. I it s so interesting how we don’t even think about how easy it is for us to move to another place to visit or to work if we want to, and it is so difficult for so many people. I know it is important to control the inflow of people, so that the system isn’t overwhelmed, but it makes me appreciate my privileged position.
We had a good meeting at the Foundation. Things are starting to move in the direction. The biggest thing is that we are working with children and that requires parental consent. And they won’t let us send the forms home with the children. So we have to gather the parents together. If we pull it off it will be quite an accomplishment and make the information we gather very uncommon.
When we came home we happened so see the lady Rose, who is our neighbor. Turns out that she is Eritrean, not Ethiopian. I was so embarrassed upon the discovery. Anyway she invited us in, and it turns out that she and her family we just sitting down to dinner. I was so excited to eat with them. They eat very similar to Ethiopians with the njara (njaara?) that looks like a giant spongy crepe. They had cooked chicken that had a thick spicy sauce with it and they just dumped the whole thing in the middle of the njara. We also got served a portion of cooked vegetables on our portion of the giant plate. It was so fun to eat with our hand and pinch some of the bread and then grab some of the chicken. They kept telling us that we weren’t eating enough, but I felt like we had already eaten so much. They asked us a lot of questions about what we have been doing, and America. Rose has a daughter that speaks fantastic English and is extremely social, so we answered a lot of questions from her. They gave us lots of compliments on our hair since it was so much lighter than theirs. Rose’s husband works for the UN in Liberia, but she lives here in Uganda with her daughter, two sisters, and brother. We spoke with all of them on different topics. We were having a lot of fun. The really cute white dog belongs to them, named Dede.
After dinner we had coffee. Rose showed me how she makes it from the raw bean. She showed me how she roasts the beans in a ban over the gas stove. When they are ready you are supposed to bring them out and let people smell the beans. The guests are then supposed to waft the steam coming from the beans and remark at how delicious they smell. So we smelled the beans and they really did smell so good. Then she let them cool and ground them using a modern coffee grinder. Boiled water. Added the grinds. They put the coffee in a special pot that looked something like a gourd that was carved for pouring and sat in a round basket. In the end of the spout she put this confetti looking stuff that was supposed to filter out the remaining grounds that didn’t fall to the bottom. The coffee was super strong, but delicious. I could only have two cups. We drank out of these really small cups that look like what you drink sake out of or sometime green tea. Just a little bigger. After two cups I was already wired.
We graciously thanked them for the coffee and then went to another social engagement with some friends that we hadn’t had a chance to catch up with yet. We ended up doing so much more than we had originally planned for the day.

Thursday 6/3/10

Not much going on, just trying to catch up on the writing and start getting prepared to start doing observations in schools. I can’t wait to work with the children.