Sunday, March 14, 2010
10 days in Kampala; a week into my assignment. My office is in the Makerere University campus. Makerere is the oldest center of higher learning in East Africa, the heart of its academe, and I am deeply appreciative of the history of the place and the opportunity to work here. The week was mostly taken up in introductions, orientation, meeting faculty members including the clinical pharmacy faculty at the Mulago hospital campus and a visit to a local pharmaceutical manufacturing facility with final year undergraduate students. I’ll consign work-related posts to the monthly journals that are posted on the GHF website…you know where to look for them if you’re interested. This blog is a log of my rambles in this city that will be home for the next six months.
I find Ugandans in general to be friendly, curious, intelligent and easy-going. I like them. I met other HVO volunteers —mainly doctors, medical students and nurses from Canada on their community practice rotations—at a dinner at the home of my NGO host, Josephine, last evening. Every volunteer I’ve met has been impressed by the resourcefulness of local doctors and health care workers in accomplishing as much as they do with the sparse resources at their disposal.
In addition to knowing just about everyone in Kampala, Josephine is a superb chef and gracious host. The evening was a feast of reason and flow of soul...It was also a feast for the taste buds--the eggplant and spinach-kale were to die for. I must get Josephine to teach me how to cook. Dream on, Swaminathan!
10 days in Kampala; a week into my assignment. My office is in the Makerere University campus. Makerere is the oldest center of higher learning in East Africa, the heart of its academe, and I am deeply appreciative of the history of the place and the opportunity to work here. The week was mostly taken up in introductions, orientation, meeting faculty members including the clinical pharmacy faculty at the Mulago hospital campus and a visit to a local pharmaceutical manufacturing facility with final year undergraduate students. I’ll consign work-related posts to the monthly journals that are posted on the GHF website…you know where to look for them if you’re interested. This blog is a log of my rambles in this city that will be home for the next six months.
I find Ugandans in general to be friendly, curious, intelligent and easy-going. I like them. I met other HVO volunteers —mainly doctors, medical students and nurses from Canada on their community practice rotations—at a dinner at the home of my NGO host, Josephine, last evening. Every volunteer I’ve met has been impressed by the resourcefulness of local doctors and health care workers in accomplishing as much as they do with the sparse resources at their disposal.
In addition to knowing just about everyone in Kampala, Josephine is a superb chef and gracious host. The evening was a feast of reason and flow of soul...It was also a feast for the taste buds--the eggplant and spinach-kale were to die for. I must get Josephine to teach me how to cook. Dream on, Swaminathan!
The Makerere university campus is about an hour’s walk from where I live..in traffic…….it’s a 15-minute cab ride when there’s no traffic (i.e., 6 AM on Sunday mornings). I walked to my digs last Friday afternoon from Makerere and was reduced to an adrenaline-suffused mass of seared protoplasm from negotiating the numerous obstacle courses in traffic in the scorching heat. Did I say Ugandans were an easy-going, relaxed people? The exception is when behind the wheel of an automobile. My conjecture is that each driver takes a solemn vow to dispose off as many pedestrians as he (or she) possibly could while fully indulging his fantasy of racing in the Indy 500. All drivers in Kampala are good drivers –surely the bad ones have all been killed!
Traffic jams, clouds of exhaust fumes and the heart-stopping proximity of half a dozen trucks, matatus (mini buses that are the mainstay of public transport) and boda-bodas (motorcycles /public transport) jostling for the same space in a roundabout at any given time is a daily occurrence that still takes some getting used to.
My cabbie, Jingo James remains unmoved by all the pandemonium…..he has attained the ultimate state of Nirvana….he gives me lessons in Luganda while attempting impossible feats of navigation in getting the taxi around potholes that could hold their own against any crater, and through trenches that have ambitions of becoming roads….all in heavy traffic.
Thanks to Jingo James’ tutelage, I can muddle my way through greetings in Luganda, much to the amusement of my co-workers, although they politely insist it is pleased surprise! Everyone I’ve met speaks English very well; I have no difficulty understanding them or being understood.
I wake Sunday mornings to the soul-stirring harmony of beautiful voices in the local church choir raised in glorious song.
This place is unlike any other I have visited: desert cacti grow beside tropical palms… here, the opposites do not merely co-exist; they thrive. It is a botanist’s paradise. And an ornithologist’s- with over a thousand species of birds. Marabou stork (kaloli) dominate the Makerere landscape….these scavenging birds with their bald heads and necks, and angry red gular sacs , look like pre-historic relics --
throwbacks to the age of the dinosaurs. They fear nothing and seem completely unfazed by the proximity of humans. When they are around, instinct tells me to wave my arms or keep moving…anything to let them know I’m alive and thus be spared their attention. (Wikipedia has a good photograph of this monstrosity of a bird @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marabou_Stork). In their defense, they help keep the place clean……..it does take all sorts to do the world’s work.
Visited the Baha’i temple last weekend; it is an oasis of tranquility amid the chaotic bustle of the city and its immediate environs. It is the only temple of its kind in Africa and dates back to 1962. The grounds of the temple are immaculately maintained; fruit trees (I recognized jackfruit and mango), palms, flowering shrubs and orchids abound; they are home to several species of bird, notably, eagles. Kaloli were conspicuous by their absence here …No rotting organic matter in this well-tended landscape! Five of the seven hills of Kampala were visible from the hilltop on which the temple is located. This is a place I must visit again…and linger awhile, perhaps with a good book, one weekend. This time around, I filled my lungs with as much clean air as they could hold before heading back to town.
Traffic jams, clouds of exhaust fumes and the heart-stopping proximity of half a dozen trucks, matatus (mini buses that are the mainstay of public transport) and boda-bodas (motorcycles /public transport) jostling for the same space in a roundabout at any given time is a daily occurrence that still takes some getting used to.
My cabbie, Jingo James remains unmoved by all the pandemonium…..he has attained the ultimate state of Nirvana….he gives me lessons in Luganda while attempting impossible feats of navigation in getting the taxi around potholes that could hold their own against any crater, and through trenches that have ambitions of becoming roads….all in heavy traffic.
Thanks to Jingo James’ tutelage, I can muddle my way through greetings in Luganda, much to the amusement of my co-workers, although they politely insist it is pleased surprise! Everyone I’ve met speaks English very well; I have no difficulty understanding them or being understood.
I wake Sunday mornings to the soul-stirring harmony of beautiful voices in the local church choir raised in glorious song.
This place is unlike any other I have visited: desert cacti grow beside tropical palms… here, the opposites do not merely co-exist; they thrive. It is a botanist’s paradise. And an ornithologist’s- with over a thousand species of birds. Marabou stork (kaloli) dominate the Makerere landscape….these scavenging birds with their bald heads and necks, and angry red gular sacs , look like pre-historic relics --
throwbacks to the age of the dinosaurs. They fear nothing and seem completely unfazed by the proximity of humans. When they are around, instinct tells me to wave my arms or keep moving…anything to let them know I’m alive and thus be spared their attention. (Wikipedia has a good photograph of this monstrosity of a bird @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marabou_Stork). In their defense, they help keep the place clean……..it does take all sorts to do the world’s work.Visited the Baha’i temple last weekend; it is an oasis of tranquility amid the chaotic bustle of the city and its immediate environs. It is the only temple of its kind in Africa and dates back to 1962. The grounds of the temple are immaculately maintained; fruit trees (I recognized jackfruit and mango), palms, flowering shrubs and orchids abound; they are home to several species of bird, notably, eagles. Kaloli were conspicuous by their absence here …No rotting organic matter in this well-tended landscape! Five of the seven hills of Kampala were visible from the hilltop on which the temple is located. This is a place I must visit again…and linger awhile, perhaps with a good book, one weekend. This time around, I filled my lungs with as much clean air as they could hold before heading back to town.
