Jesus, Iza & Gorillas

A day in the life of Bwindi (Part 1)

2009-12-20T09:39:00.000-08:00

It's 6 am and the sounds outside are changing. The noisy cicadas give way to a myriad of songs from the wide range of Bwindi's birds. It's time to come out of the lethargy of the night and that, indeed, happens very quickly. By 6:30 am, when the sun rises over the mountains the place has come to life and all the residents of Buhoma, Mukono and nearby areas are engaged in their daily activities or on-the-move to somewhere.

Alarm clocks aren't needed here, nature and human beings are as accurate as the Swiss watches they can't afford. So... it's time for us to get up and get out of the safety of our mosquito bed-net and initiate our morning routine - including freshening up with a 'bucket-and-cup' shower and preparing some breakfast. The most basic activities take their time in rural Africa. Heat up a bit of water to make the 'shower' bearable - not to mention fetching water from the communal tap 100 meters away, and we are lucky it's so near - boil a bit of water for drinking, prepare breakfast followed by bucket-driven dish washing outside the house... By the time all this is done, it's almost 8:00 am! Time to switch on the walkie-talkie (another technological wonder in the hospital) and go to work!

Every morning goes the same, we hear the African drums being played to summon the staff, and whoever wants to join, to the Out-Patient Ward's waiting area to start the day with morning prayers - as you may know, religion in Africa is still very deeply ingrained in every aspect of life. However, it isn't an exclusive exercise; within the staff there are presbyterian and catholics (together being the majority) but also Muslims, animists and those not professing any religion, but they are all encouraged to attend so we can start the day together. After the brief prayers, it's time for announcements; teams going to difficult-to-reach areas for periodic clinics, events within the hospital, welcoming of new staff members...

Anyway, time to go and do some real work!
And there I am, walking to the tent (yes a tent!) where part of the Administration team sits, me included, to plug in the lap-top and load my emails while I step outside to check how the preparation of vehicles, power generators and other equipment is going so the clinics at the hospital can start and the teams going on out-reach clinics can leave as soon as possible.

Nothing is straightforward in a remote place like Bwindi, and in Uganda in general, and last minute improvisation is the most common business technique! That's the main reason, I believe, why, in my 3 months here, there haven't been any two similar days.

(This is all for today! The lap-top battery is flashing so... All the best! and talk soon)

Uff, almost Christmas without finding the time to write!

2009-12-04T07:53:00.001-08:00

It's almost Xmas and ages since I last wrote something!

So many things have happened to us that I don't really know where to start... Routine has taken us by surprise, as well as, a huge amount of work and finding time to write is quite difficult.
Overall, the experience so far is being really good, with its ups and downs, of course, but very rewarding altogether. It's now over 2 months here! Who could have told us a few years back...

In these 2 months we have done many things, including making our lightless-waterless house a 'home'. This country is so beautiful; wherever you go you have a view (no need to pay extra for a room with a view!). I don't get bored of looking outside the house to the ever-changing hills.

Work here is tough but very rewarding for the very same reasons. Nothing is easy when you are so far away from anywhere - logistics has an entire new meaning - but little by little you see improvements here and there. These months we've been trying to get to know how things work (or don't) here and, actually, work a lot; Iza working with the Community Team analysing health data from surveys carried out by the hospital in the sub-county to enable the planning of activities within the community and I turning upside down the drugs' procurement process to ensure that the most common word in these countries, 'out-of-stock', is removed from Bwindi's dictionary, as well as, acting as Principal Hospital Administrator during some periods - That's a rocketing career... I'm happy it's now over!

But there has been a bit more than work (which it isn't easy as we work Mon to Sat every week) and we have had the chance to enjoy amazing places; that's the beauty of Uganda, on our way to work from another district, one day, we saw lots of wild elephants crossing the road in front of our nose, as well as buffaloes, bushbacks, elans and tonnes and tonnes of monkeys. And, here you go... last Sunday we went for a walk around the area and we saw gorillas, yes, gorillas! It was for a brief moment but we saw 5 of them, including a mother with a baby, which had gone just outside the park as they seem to do every now and then. It was brief, but, I can tell you, they are amazing to watch!

Ok, ok, the lady is calling me to get ourselves ready for dinner so I better attend the call.

All the best to all. I promise a bit more writing from now on

Hasta pronto

First day in Bwindi... A bit of an anti-climax!

2009-10-26T11:58:00.000-07:00

So here we are! After a 11-hours journey and a car breakdown we finally arrive at Bwindi! Now the word 'remote' has a brand new meaning... the closest settlement that could be awarded the category of town is about 5 hours behind us.
An amazing fact is that during our journey we met hundreds of Ugandans walking on the side of the road heavy loaded with water jerrycans and other goods in complete darkness and the same applies to all villages we passed by; not one single lighted house. Yes, these guys must have a special compass or high-tech infra-red glasses... this is something I still struggle to understand. The only ones with a tiny light-point were those with mobile phones on their hands! Welcome to the 21st century! Walking many miles to fetch clean-enough water but always reachable on the phone - this is just the writer taking it a bit too far as network coverage is close to none around this remote area.
Anyway, we arrived to what would be our home for the next while to find a nice house with a bed, a small table and two chairs. Absolutely exhausted and facing the crude reality of not having electricity we collapsed in bed. At 6:00 in the morning we were waken up by a myriad of sounds; life here starts as it finishes, in complete darkness before the sun rises over the beautiful hills. So there we are, having slept less than 3 hours ready for our first day at work! We met our boss, got a brief induction and were shown all around the hospital where we were introduced to all the staff (the word 'colleague' hasn't reached this far yet).
As per the title of this post, the anti-climax was about to happen... We left work early to walk to the trading centre and buy some stuff so we could have a coffee the following morning, to realise that whoever chose to call that thing a trading centre must have had a very dark sense of humour! The village, Buhoma, and the trading centre are the very same thing, consisting of a few tiny shops selling almost nothing and, most remarkably, they all sell almost the same 'nothings'. Not knowing whether to laugh or cry we bought a few bananas and little more (if I remember properly) and we decided to go back to our empty and light-less home.
I'll leave it here for today, but please don't despair, life in Bwindi isn't what we would call comfortable but the place and our work compensates for most of the hardship.
Best wishes
J&I

Finally... we got to write something!

2009-09-29T15:35:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,
Welcome to Uganda! Welcome to Bwindi!
It's now one month since we arrived - yeah, we arrived late due to issues with our visas in the UK... never mind.
We spent the first few days in Kampala getting a brief introduction to the country, programmes, etc and preparing ourselves for the real adventure! So there we were trying to find good rechargable lamps, gas lamps, gas cylinders for our cooker and so on.
Although we had read a lot about Uganda, our first impression was still quite shocking; it reminded us to Kerala in SW India! So green and with same type of vegetation and climate.
Now, there are two aspects that didn't surprise us at all;
1- how nice everybody is and how willing to help - yeah, we, muzunghus, literally white people and they do say 'hello muzunghu', are asked a slightly higher price for some things but we think it's not as big of an issue as in other places.
2- how crazy the traffic in Kampala is! I thought parts of India were crazy but nothing compare to this. In India it was chaotic but you could kind of see some sort of pattern but in Kampala is just chaotic chaos. Anyway, we were amazed by the fact that after 3 days we were kind of used to it already.
The real adventure started when we travelled to Bwindi. We were lucky that my boss had to go to Kampala on business so he could drive us down rather than us taking the bus and enduring it for 12-hours. We knew where we were heading to when just outside Kampala he stopped on the side of the road, bought bread and said, now we are sorted, we have water, bread and another few things in case something goes wrong and we find ourselves having to stay overnight in the forest! And yes, having a very good 4x4 we had to stop in a little village to fix an issue with the car and, indeed, for around 4-5 hours we drove right through the Queen Elisabeth Park and other forested areas. In summary, with a great car and using the best road we left Kampala at 16:30 and arrived at Bwindi at 03:15!!! completely knackered and, pity, making most of the journey at night so we couldn't see much (Although the sounds were amazing).
I'll leave it here for today but I promise I'll write every few days from now on and I'll upload more pictures and let you know about them - Internet here is great for email but takes ages to upload pictures.
Best wishes to all
J