Today is supposed to be the mine and Sacha’s first day as interns at the Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST) and so we wake up early and get ourselves ready with a real sense of purpose. We are due to meet Viola at 10am in her office, and so we set off around 9.45am full of speculations about what the day may have in store for us. We are to be based in MUST’s Institute of Interdisciplinary Training and Research, which is one of the newer buildings on campus. Whilst the building is fairly simple to navigate, we naturally manage to get lost and waste some time sitting outside the wrong offices. Luckily for us this is Africa, and therefore it is not expected that we will ever arrive on time. In the end we stumble across Viola’s actual office a mere fifteen minutes late, and patiently wait outside her office until she is ready for us. This gives us plenty of time to observe our co-workers-to-be and the students attending MUST. I immediately feel right at home – everyone is so glam and well put together, to the point where I’m considering that I might even be underdressed in my colourful maxi skirt (there’s a first time for everything).

I’m not left to dwell on this issue long before Viola is free to see us. She greets us very warmly and introduces us to Charlotte, a lecturer and researcher at MUST, who is to be in charge of showing us around. It’s not long before Charlotte has completely taken us under her wing, animatedly chatting to us about our interests in human rights and development, and she leads us to the office in which we will be conducting most of our work at MUST. Oh god. The ‘office’ instantly reminds me of a cupboard, with no windows, no means of ventilation, and isn’t much bigger than AUC’s project rooms. But, this is Africa, and so had this office been meant for just Sacha and I we probably would have thought nothing of it. However, we are to be sharing this office with five other staff members in a sweltering 30-degree heat. This is definitely going to take some adapting to. Fortunately today seems to be more about the tour rather than working, and so we soon exit the office / cupboard and walk across to the other campus across the main road.

This second campus houses the science and technology buildings, the student dorms, the canteen, and the library, all of which are surrounded by green grass and trees to shelter beneath. It feels like a really peaceful place to be able to come and study, but this could also be due to the fact today is the first day of term and everyone is in good spirits.

We also take the opportunity to be shown around the local hospital, which is just next door to the university campus. As I mentioned previously, this hospital is considered to be in pretty good shape for an African hospital, and for the most part we can see that it probably is. However we also notice that around one hundred families are camped on the grass outside the hospital’s buildings and appear to have been living that way for some time. Charlotte explains that this is because there is a critical shortage of doctors and nurses in the hospital, and therefore it is up the members of the family to nurse their loved one during their time on the wards. This means that the families have to wash their loved one, dress their wounds, feed them, and administer all oral medications. If it weren’t for this system all patients that enter to ward will almost certainly die on the ward, and so families can often stay living on the front lawn for months at a time. It was in stark contrast to the quality of care that Sacha and I have access to in our home countries, and we were left reeling at the strength these people must have. The shortage at this hospital, and many other public hospitals within Uganda is due to the fact that doctors in the private sector get paid five times as much as those in the public sectors. This means that Ugandan medical students are fast-tracked through their education and become doctors by default because there is no-one more senior to look after the patients.

We also got the chance to view the hospital’s HIV/AIDs clinic. This was easily the busiest area of the whole hospital as people of ages either sat nervously awaiting their test results or stood in line to receive their prescribed medications. The sense of despair in that block particularly was probably the hardest to experience, because with the right education and resources HIV/AIDs is perfectly preventable and treatable. Sacha and I both know that if we were ever to end up in such an awful situation we would still be able to live to a decent age, but here the prognosis is so so different. The HIV/AIDs growth rate in Uganda is around 7% making it one of the worst affected countries in Africa, however it hasn’t always been this way. When the AIDs epidemic first broke out here Uganda acted fast and widely promoted safe sex and AIDs education. This was highly effective and the HIV/AIDs growth rate dramatically declined from around 25% in the late 1980s to 4% in 2003. Unfortunately since then things have taken a turn for the worse. Due to pressure from the evangelical Christian population, Uganda has reversed its policy on promoting condoms and contraception and now focuses on abstinence as the means to control the spread of the disease instead. The result of this is that the infection rate is back on the rise.

With the tour over the four of us turned to girly chat, and it seems that the four of us have a lot in common. For starters all four of us follow most of the Kardashians on Instagram and have an unhealthy curiosity with new reality TV programme ‘I am Cait’. Whilst it may seem shallow this nicely lead the conversation onto issues of gender and sexuality, which are currently some very controversial topics for Uganda. It is illegal to be homosexual here; you can be imprisoned for up to three years merely for knowing somebody that is homosexual and not reporting it, and the government is also looking into prison sentences for those deemed to be ‘promoting’ homosexuality. However, whilst Ugandan culture remains very homophobic, it does appear as though it’s youth is taking a more liberal interest in the topic. Mbarara University of Science and Technology currently offers a gender studies course in which topics of sexuality are explored. Charlotte and her friend teach some of the classes for this course and explain how difficult it can be to get the students to engage on such issues due to the massive social taboo that surrounds it; nobody wants to be suspected as a potential homosexual due to the ridicule that it brings. It is for that reason that they are eager for Sacha and I to give a lecture during our time here on the topic of human rights. This is something we’re definitely keen to do so we make a note to follow it up in our next meeting.

It is at this point that the girls leave us with a promise of a further, more fruitful meeting, with Viola and Primrose (our second supervisor) the next day. This means that we’re no closer to knowing what it is that we’re supposed to be doing here, and our feeling of purpose quickly leaves us. After all it is only 2pm and we’ve already explored the whole of Mbarara multiple times already. To say we’re frustrated would be a bit of an understatement, after all we did come here to work on the request of my thesis supervisor, so there must be something useful we can do here?

As we’re venting our frustrations we bump into our neighbour, an American blood doctor here with the Peace Corps who, unlike us, is full of enthusiasm for the place. “Oh my gosh Mbarara is so fun isn’t it? And have you been to the market? Isn’t the market SO FUN?!” he gushes at our less than impressed faces. Seeing as the market is basically the only point of interest here, we have been there every single day so far. Therefore we are not feeling the love for it in the same way as he is at this moment in time. But, that being said, it is hard to keep up such cynicism when faced with extreme levels of positivity and so Sacha and I giggle the whole way home, wondering how on earth all three of us could possibly be experiencing the same place.

A little later, whilst we try to contact our families in the Internet café come bar come nightclub, we are approached by another bouncy American. His name is Matthew and he’s living and working in Mbarara’s orphanage for the next few months. This is his third time in Mbarara and so he is beacon of local knowledge. Curiosity sparked, myself and Sacha spend the next few hours picking his brains about the best places to go in Mbarara and it’s surroundings.

So it turns out there’s a nice hotel with good Wi-Fi and a pool, and a beautiful lake a few hours away that is actually safe to swim in. Matthew also offers a seat each in his car to go to Lake Muburo for safari, and promises to give us a tour of the best local places to eat in Mbarara. Hope for Mbarara has definitely been restored, and so we make our way back home to plan our few months of adventures.