I know you all have been waiting on bated breath as to if I survived my Uganda illness, breathe easy… I pulled through.
When Christine saw me the next day, I was limping and coughing and just in general miserable- and since no one had gotten back to us on meeting with them for the official work stuff, I took the day off and slept most of it away in the hotel room. I walked with Christine down to a corner market where she mothered me into juice, kleenex, fresh fruit, chapstick, and some ibuprofen. She was trying to convince me to go to the doctors but for those of you who know me, I’m pretty stubborn and convinced I can survive anything.
She did call my advisor who was going to be in town the next day and ask her what she thought I needed and they both decided on some gigantic antiobiotics, a full ten day course.
Apparently what I ended up having was a respiratory infection caused by all the dust on the roads and on the safari- particularly on the safari. The animal droppings dry up and then get stepped on and turned into dust and breathing it in can cause issues for some people, lucky me! I was told that the next time I go to Uganda, I won’t get sick again, that’s it’s a one and done kind of thing… but I’ll probably take precautions anyway.
These are my peeps, Caitlin (she has the same name as me… together we’re Caitlin^2) my Advisor Sue, Christine, and Ross– who is going to be my fieldwork buddy in the future too. This was at one of the restaurants at Sue’s fancy hotel down the road from our hotel- Christine made me drink dour tea, essential in Uganda for this type of respiratory junk. It was a ton of ginger and some other things I don’t remember what- it tasted pretty rough, but it did make me feel better. Sue and Christine were both pretty bossy in making me drink the whole pot- and there was more than one pot over the next couple of days.
We then left to go to COCTU, Coordinating Office for Control of Trypanosomiasis in Uganda, the people we were there to meet. It’s a lovely complex and we have an office there somewhere when I go back, if I want to work at it instead of the hotel.
Caitlin is so super photogenic– so I used her picture in front of the COCTU sign, not only do we share a name, but we share an extra office at the University that we’ve comandeered.
After the meeting, we went to the new office building they had built in Jinja, where historically there have been people working on sleeping sickness for years. Eventually this new building will have offices and some treatment facilities.
Next to the COCTU building was a field full of cows- not like the cows we see in the midwest though, and they are most free flowing- some even crossed the busy street, but the cowherd (learned that new word today, just for this post) got them back to the right side. He was calling to us when he saw me taking pictures and we’re pretty sure he was saying we could get closer, but I didn’t want to interrupt them.
Moses was joking with me that the next time I come to Uganda he will find me a farmer to hang out with since I’m so into cows. I said I’d be fine with that, I like cows!
After the meeting and the building and the two hour ride back, it was dinner at a nice Indian place, it had great mood lighting so I didn’t get any pictures but it was delicious, and we had a group of 14 I think eating with us. This little guy was hanging out on the wall in the restaurant eating mosquitoes, I just thought he looked really cool in the lights.
The next day we had a little time in the morning before heading out for our flights to our respective countries. So we went with Moses and Bridget, our new friend and hopefully soon new student at ZJE- for breakfast and some quick souvenir shopping.
I didn’t take pictures of the market where we went shopping, but it was really cool. It was a lot like the markets in China, except less aggressive. I’m not a great haggler, so I just paid for everything full price. Moses bought me a lovely scarf to commemorate my first trip, and it’s got elephants on it– I didn’t take pictures because I thought I was going on a one week trip to Hong Kong and then I would be back to take pictures of it…. so we’re 9 months into our one week vacation. I will update with a picture when we get back to China.
The flight home was surreal- I almost didn’t make my connecting flight from Doha to Shanghai because the gates are on opposite sides of the universe from each other, and when I did, there were so few people on the plane that I got my own row of four seats, everyone in my section had their own rows ( or shared with families).
I got home and crashed again. Mark and Alex were a sight for sore eyes, and I had a lot of unpacking and repacking to do– we left for Hong Kong two days later.
Traveling Expat Family 