Blogus Interuptus......

Hi There!

I would need all week to explain why I haven’t posted anything since June 7th. There’s no way i could adequately convey all the absolutely mind-boggling experiences I’ve had since landing in Uganda on June 6th.

So I thought I’d take the easy way out by simply saying I'm typing this post from a dining table in the tidy little compound on Plot 26, Samuel Doe Rd., in Gulu Town, Uganda. There are 2 structures on this plot….the main house with four smallish bedrooms where several Internews staffers and guests will stay….and my tiny, tidy, lovely little cottage out back. It has 2 bedrooms, so come on over to Gulu and visit any time you want.

(Full disclosure: Come on out any time you want to have the flesh picked off your bones by voracious African mosquitoes. I finally stopped clawing at myself this morning, after I remembered the Bendryl capsules I’d brought. They're helping a bit, but PLEASE SEND POWERFUL ANTI-ITCH MEDICATION AT ONCE!!!)

Other than that minor nuisance, I wake up each morning to the sounds of birds chirping. There’s even the obligatory rooster crowing. Last night there were thunderstorms, and listening to the sound of rain on the corrugated tile roof is more soothing than a fistful of Valium. Check back with me 3 months from now, but at the moment, I am totally digging the solitude of this place.

In my first week, I’ve spent some time in both Kampala and Gulu. After my beloved Addis Ababa, Kampala was a bit of a let-down. It's huge and congested like your average African capital, but Kampala has little of the cosmopolitan attitude you can find in Addis. It felt much less urban to me. (However, the Speke Hotel has the best goat curry you will ever taste in this or any other lifetime, period. Yeah, I never thought I'd find myself admitting to having eaten goat meat, but life is full of unexpected twists and turns.)

A word of advice: if you EVER happen to be in this neck of the woods, puh-LEEZE don’t drink a lot of fluids before setting out on the 5 hour drive from Kampala to Gulu. I kept a vise-like grip on my bladder during the trip down to Kampala last Sunday, because I figured toilet facilities would be primitive at best.

But on the way back up to Gulu Wednesday, I couldn’t hold out. 4 hours into the trip, I had the driver pull into a Shell station before I whizzed on myself. A polite young lady handed me the key and waved me toward the toilet.

If you can, envision the 9th circle of Hell, perfumed by the acrid stench of urine. Imagine a square hole cut into a concrete floor, inside a dank, coffin-like stall. I’m gonna stop there, because I think you get the drift. Once my eyes refocused and the horror subsided, I resisted the urge to run screaming down the road back to Kampala and manage to do my business.

Have you seen “The Ten Commandments” with Charlton Heston? If not, check it out. The scene where Moses comes down from the mountain after receiving the golden tablets captures how I felt exiting that stall. My hair wasn’t lily white and flowing in the breeze like old Mo’s, but I had the same glassy-eyed stare, the same bone-chilling numbness, the same profound sense that I had just seen something that would change the course of my life forever.

Basically, from now on I’ll be wearing Depends during every road trip I make in Africa.

Anyway, I’ll try to get caught up on experiences over the next few days. The weekend looms ahead like a long vacation, with nothing to do and nowhere to go, and cool breezes and rain to keep things cozy. I’ll probably do some exploring at the local market and in Gulu, and catch up on my reading. (It took me long enough, but I've finally bought both of Barak Obama's books in Kampala. I want to see if they get me inside the brother's head like other folks have claimed.)

My biggest challenge to blogging these days is processing everything I see….everything that happens is sensory overload right now. But now that my initial orientation and training phase is finished, I’m thinking this blog will be the only way for me to creativelywork through this experience, to figure out why I’m here.

I mean, I don’t think I came here solely for the purpose of being de-fleshed by mosquitos, but maybe that’s what the fates had planned for me all along…..

Naaaaaaah. I got work to do.

Hugs,

Rachel

P.S. I’ve finally figured out how to use my new camera, so I'll send a few pictures of my lovely little compound soon. Nothing fancy, but peaceful as all get out.