Over the last couple weeks a lot has been going on between getting a new roommate, sending people off on their holiday travels, good and bad news at work, and experiencing more and more of life here in Uganda.
Rugby - Our new favorite spectator sport, which our friends here have turned us on to. We are learning the rules and getting better at heckling each time we pack into Bubbles for a game. We watched a heated Ireland vs South Africa game after which our SA friends disappeared and the Irish bought multiple rounds of shots for everyone in the bar and displayed some fine Riverdance and obnoxious acapella Irish ballads.
Holiday desertion - The expat community is slowly dwindling as the holidays get closer, and it seems to be the goal to send each one off to the airport hungover, or better yet, still drunk.
We are out with Gareth for a "quiet beer" the night before he flies home to the Kingdom of Dundee for the holidays. This is also the first foray on Bubbles for our new roomie Allison...and her first flaming Sambuca shot, whoops.
Uganda/MN exchange - Just before we left MN, two Ugandan medical students arrived in Mpls to do clinical rotations at Hennepin County Medical Center. Francis and Joseph came over to my house in NE and out to dinner with us in Cedar-Riverside as they settled in. A few weeks ago, they arrived back in Kampala beaming about their experience in MN. We are grateful to our friends for showing them a good time, and for Dr. Stillman for really making their hospital experience worthwhile (Francis does a spot-on impersonation!). They want our experience in Uganda to be just as rewarding, and they took us out for pork last week where we talked at length about some important topics - health care and beer.
Fembots - Grant did mention last time that we went to an Austin Powers party while he played in a poker tourney. But what he missed was the work Miriam and I put in to make those costumes! We went to THE Owino market, Pioneer Mall, and all the shops down by the taxi park to find each piece - from lingerie (trying them on over our clothes), to fuzzy material aka winter hats (explaining "fuzzy" turned out to be harder than we thought), to formal gloves (wedding shop, obviously), to wigs (no blonde to be found), to tinsel and bulk cotton. After relaxing for a minute with an expensive Cherry Coke from Ranchers, we went home and assembled it all. I wish we had pictures of us cutting and sewing and stuffing and turning Miriam's living room into a sweat shop.
Quiz night - Again. Fortunately, we did not win this time. But...interesting questions answered correctly by us:
Where do Panama hats come from?
Ecuador - still reaping royalties of my previous expat life
Which is the only river in Africa that does not eventually reach the sea?
Okavango - our friend Glen just left Kampala for Botswana and left us with this timely little factoid.
Pantomime - Myself, being so well-versed in forms of theatre, had no idea what a pantomime was before arriving at the Kampala Amateur Dramatic Society's holiday play. It turns out that guy sitting behind us, with his lewd comments and actor-bashing, was more informed than I was. When I figured out what was going on, and had time to read a summary of the plot during intermission, the second act made much more sense. A few friends and their children were involved in the production, so a group of us girls went to support and do something different on a Friday night while our male counterparts were at the casino.
Dinner under a mango tree - Our friends Martin and Mar-Louise Maybergh invited Grant and I out to their house in Bugolobi for dinner on Saturday. It was a beautiful night (I think there was a snowstorm in MN that day) to sit in their yard, under a mango tree, with amazing food, cold drinks, and wonderful conversation.
Luganda - This is a hard language to learn - there are 21 verb classes! We had an "exam" last week and realized just how far I have come in the past couple months...
Work update - Someone once told me they could never be a farmer because so much of your livelihood depends on unpredictable factors, like the weather. Well, 'tis the world of research where everything depends on grant funding. The research team Grant and I work with has a few grants pending with various institutions across the globe, all relating to HIV/AIDS patients and Cryptococcal meningitis (a nasty infection that is quite common in our setting). Good news is that we received a perfect score on a grant application to do neurocognitive testing on these patients! Grant is working on developing the exam and materials to be used in testing these patients. Hopefully, he will be able to start seeing patients as early as March! However, the grant application for the project I have been working on, when to start antiretroviral therapy in the same group of patients, did not get as high of a score and will likely not get funding before we are set to leave in June. What this means is that I will still be working on preparing for this trial - developing forms, revising operations manuals, and piloting the process - but I will not be around when it actually starts. Kind of a bummer that I won't be able to do the patient-care part, which is a great learning experience and the part that I really love about clinical research, but now I am able to devote some time to other projects. I want to finish the project I started the first time I was here - addressing patients' and families' bias against lumbar punctures to improve patient outcomes. And now I am very interested in getting some information on the burden of Cryptococcal meningitis here in Uganda. I actually have a list of 7 or so projects that I may work on, so although things have changed, I will still be contributing to the big picture. And let's face it, do things ever go according to plan? The beauty is in the journey and all the twists and turns that guide us to where we ultimately belong, and I am thankful for every step and every opportunity.
Grant and I in front of Mulago Hospital and the IDI in our short white coats
We have just a few days of work left before our holidays officially begin and we leave for Tanzania on Sunday! We will be visiting our friend Imee in Dar Es Salaam for a few days and then spending the rest of the time in Zanzibar with Maiken, Phil, Katie, Ryan, Christine and Brandon! Before we take off though, celebrations every day this week...Melissa's bday lunch at Javas, Mar-Louise bday dinner at Mamba Point Italian, and IDI end of the year party.
I am rounding up lots of beach books to bring with to Zanzibar because that is what I plan to do for the next 2 weeks! We should come back well-rested and ready to attack those projects in full-force. I am also starting my public health coursework in January, online, and looking forward to some formal training in such an important area of medicine!
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