The Bats

It is bat season at the intern house is Mbarara! For those who have seen "The Birds", recall the early scenes in which people are curiously looking at the sky at the extraordinary number of birds congregating. (For anyone who hasn't seen it, do see this creepy Hitchcock film.) As the bats started coming a couple of weeks ago, this is what it felt like and, of course, having seen the film, we wondered 'what next?'. On the first day, one of my housemates got lost while running and was able to find his way back by the funnel of bats descending into the trees around our compound! We think the bats are fruit bats. There's a park in Zambia where 8 million bats migrate through. I think it is thousands at our house. The bats migrate for feeding during the raining season here and I'm told they'll leave in November (as I stare into the trees, people frequently stop and chat about the bats). We have been reminded in 'fun fact'-type websites that bats are the only flying mammals and their wings are webs between their fingers. These particular bats rely on eyesight and smell as opposed to echo-location and eat fruit and nectar. They cluster in the trees for much of the day but are very active in early morning and at dusk. The chattering about 6:30am is SO loud. I awaken every morning knowing that the bats tend to stay high up but wondering if I remembered to close my windows the night before.

Lake Mburo

I went to my first national park this week and hope it's the first of many! My guidebook calls Lake Mburo an 'underrated gem' and I think both descriptions are apt as I saw 6 other tourists while there. The park is about one hour from Mbarara- not far but with some logistical difficulties. Public transportation would take hours so we (a housemate and I) booked a car with a driver I've used before. After we started, he told us that most gas stations in Mbarara don't have gas so we spent the first 30 minutes locating one that did. Just outside the park, the landscape is typically agricultural with matoke plots, goats, and herds of Ankole cattle (native cattle with dramatic horns). Once inside the park, there is bush and, astoundingly, we very quickly started spotting warthogs, herds of zebra and impala, and troops of baboons. We took a boat ride on the lake with a park ranger who stayed close to shore so we could see birds and animals. We saw scores of hippos, cooling for the day in the water (we learned that there is one 'bull' and many 'cows' in a group, that they are active on land during the night where they eat 40-60 kg of vegetation each night, that the bull will not accept any other males in the group- even a baby-, and that they lack sweat glands so cool in the water). We saw incredible birds. The most beautiful is called a malachite kingfisher and google images has better pictures than I do. The vervet monkeys on shore were likewise hard to photograph with much detail but added to the sense that 'I can't believe I'm in Africa!' After the boat ride, we took a 2 hour hike through the bush with 2 other tourists and an armed ranger. He told us that the gun is to shoot in the air when water buffalo act aggressively. There are lions, leopards, and hyenas in the park but they are hard to find, especially in the middle of the afternoon. We tried two watering spots before finding animals in a pasture area. Lake Mburo is the only place in Uganda to see zebras and we saw hundreds. They scare easily, as do the many antelope-type animals (impala, elands, topi, bushbuck, waterbuck) and baboons so we didn't get very, very close but at one point on the walk we saw that there were zebras in every direction. The water buffalos we saw were not so skittish but have poor vision and the wind was blowing towards us so no need for the rifle that day. It was all amazing and I felt immense gratitude of being in that place at that time. The photos are of impalas, a zebra, a mother and baby hippo (who separate from the herd), and the lake.

community health workers

This week I was able to walk with community health workers (CHWs) as they did their rounds. Each one has about 200 households (all officially identified, by the way, with the male head of household) and visits them all in a three month period. Some families, e.g. those with children less than 5, a pregnant woman, or a child with a fever, are seen much more frequently. For those of us struggling in the US health care system with tracking indicators and follow-up, the system here utilizing the CHWs is great and getting tighter. They work for several hours six days a week. They walk from household to household during afternoon hours because mornings for them and the other villagers are spent in their gardens (translate that to matoke plots), especially during rainy season. So on each afternoon, I met one of the CHWs at the nearby health center and we started off on foot down steep hills along barely perceptible paths in the matoke plantations until we reached a house. Until this week the houses all looked roughly the same to me- small houses built of mud-ash-dung on a wood frame with corrugated iron roofs. I am now seeing the details- those people who have planted avocado and peppers or flowering plants, those whose houses are pristine despite packed dirt yards and packed dirt floors, those who have plastered the walls with a clay-lime mixture. Most of the houses have a main building with a small living/eating area (as small as 4 X 6 feet) with either wooden benches or seats with cushions and sleeping areas. Light comes from the open door and sometimes from small windows. Other buildings include the kitchen, which has gaps along the upper walls but without a chimney to let out the smoke from the wood or charcoal fire, a latrine, and an enclosure made of matoke leaves for bathing. Once inside the house, the women and children were welcoming and hospitable (of course laughing at my limited Runyankole and the presence of an omuzungo in their house). The CHWs know their families well and had preplanned what topic to discuss- child growth, family planning, or fever (they carry malaria kits). I'm currently helping to organize a project in which Ugandan Christian University community health interns, CHWs, and clinicians will visit every one of the 1050 households in the Ruhiira parish (1 of 8 parishes in the project area) starting Monday to test as many people as possible for HIV, promote family planning (to include bringing and implanting a 5 year contraceptive), encourage deliveries in the health centers, provide bed nets for anyone who lacks them, and reinforce the many other public health messages of the project- so I'm sure I will have ample opportunity to do more visits. The pictures are of Edward, a senior CHW, measuring a child's arm to monitor growth with Josephine, one of the interns, and Edward in front of the kitchen.

the rains have come

The rains are eagerly awaited here and they have arrived. They come in August-September and again in the spring. The people in the village are now busy planting crops other than matoke, which grows year round, and the dust is being replaced by mud. When it's not raining it can be in the 80's but the temperatures have generally cooled. Many of the villagers wear parkas and wool caps (though I haven't seen mittens) when it's in the upper 60's and I think it gets to the 50's at night so people talk a lot about how cold it is. The rains are intermittent, though occur most days. Last night there was an outside showing in the village of health films sandwiched between Ugandan music videos- the first was an entertaining film about a clean water supply and the second a graphic film about sexually transmitted disease which was less amusing- and despite thunder and lightening throughout the films, the rain held off till the end. The rain can be intense, pouring buckets for 30 minutes and then blowing over. On one 15 minute walk from the trading center to the health center during a driving rain, I arrived with shoes almost unrecognizable from the splattered mud and mud half way up my legs. So this weekend I'm in the market for gum boots (which I think is a generic name for knee high rubber boots) since next week I'll be accompanying community health workers as they walk from home to home and I plan to be fully prepared with umbrella, rain poncho, and my gum boots. The hail that fell is not obvious in the first photo; the second photo is what the Ruhiira countryside now looks like much of the time. Thanks to all who post comments, and Peter, I appreciate your faithful responses!

bus to Kampala

After six weekends in Mbarara, it was time for a change of scenery this weekend so I boarded a bus yesterday for the 5 hour trip to Kampala. My guidebook and Ugandan contacts told me that I should use one of two bus companies, but after locating where they board (which is by the side of a road instead of my first two guesses- the two bus yards in town) I found out it would be hours before they left. So with some trepidation I got on a different bus that was heading to Kampala. Other companies have reputations for frequent stops, drivers who drive fast and pass frequently on the narrow roads, long delays as the bus waits to fill-and overfill- completely before moving, and frequent breakdowns. I did get a seat (after the driver called out "Omuzungo!"-(white person) and led me to it) and, although the bus stopped about 30 times on the way, we got to Kampala safely and without breakdown. In Kampala, the bus ride ends on a jampacked street that has a bus yard, two minibus yards (which my guidebook calls the two most chaotic taxi parks in Africa- which I suspect is saying something), and markets shoehorned in every vacant lot and alley. I was completely disoriented, but after declining rides from at least 10 boda-boda drivers dangling keys in front of me, I asked for directions to the city center. A crowd gathered to discuss the best way to get there and a man eventually told me to follow him as he led me briskly through alleys and markets to a main street leading to my hotel (thankfully he was wearing a bright green hat, shirt, and pants which allowed me to keep him in view as people inevitably pushed between us). The stay in Kampala itself was somewhat less exciting than the trip there but I started exploring the city, went to the National Museum, and had my first great cup of coffee since arriving. I can vouch that Kampala is a city that never sleeps (at least the street that my hotel faced; I learned too late that the inside rooms are the best bet). The pictures are of the gridlock at the bus yard (a still photo doesn't capture that fact that vehicles are supposed to be moving but aren't) and one of the many roadside stops (like an outdoor rest stop with long lines of grills and people rushing up to and onto the bus with grilled meat and maize, samosas, sodas, and gum).