Our first full day as African Residents

After a fairly disturbed night’s sleep (our bedroom is next to a busy road with plenty of speed bumps) we raise our groggy heads and discuss plans for our first proper day as honorary Ugandans. Our priority is to get a local number so that we can contact, and be contacted by, all the people we may be working with here. Mercedes has promised to take us into the city centre when she gets back from the hospital, so until then we think it might be nice to explore our surroundings.

We decide to have a quick walk around our compound first because we hadn’t really seen that much on arrival. However, as we soon discover, this could be because there isn’t actually that much to see in our new community. There are merely a few other buildings like ours housing doctors and NGO workers. So we decide to turn around and make our way towards the gate in order to see what the street has to offer. As we walk back through the compound we quickly notice that our path is blocked by a human sized part-heron, part-flamingo, part-crane type thing. Literally terrifying. I didn’t even know things like that existed in such huge sizes, nevermind know how aggressive they might be! Luckily for us it seems far less fazed by our presence than we were by the presence of it, and so it carries wandering slowly across the road, eventually leaving us free to walk around it. Phew. Potential disaster averted. (I am attaching a picture here, but it really doesn’t do its size justice, when I dare get closer to another one I’ll try again but don’t expect that to be anytime soon. As I said, they’re the same size as me).

With our exploratory walk back on track we make our way out of the compound and venture further up our street. After about five minutes we are rewarded with the most beautiful panoramic view of the countryside surrounding Mbarara. Cue much photo taking with the panorama apps on our phones (thanks Apple), and noises of appreciation. Honestly it is views like this that make you realise why so many people say that Africa gets under your skin. Who wouldn’t want to sit back and see something like that every day? The rest of our walk continues in much the same manner until a small group of young children bound up to us wanting to greet the strange Muzungu (white people), and so we happily chat away until they start making demands for money at which point we politely excuse ourselves. Whilst God may love a trier I don’t think it will serve us well to

become known as the white-skinned money trees around these parts, especially as we are trying to live on a budget…

Mercedes is home from the hospital by the time we make it home from our walk and so, as promised, we venture towards Mbarara city centre in search of phones, money, and food.

Well it seems our luck is in, as not only does Mbarara cater for all of needs, but it specialises in them, in fact it doesn’t seem to see much requirement for anything else. Everything is a bank, or a phone shop, or a market of some kind, so whilst this is great news for right now I’m sure the novelty will wear thin at some point.

A few hours later, our bags full of phones, money, and food, we make our way back home to the news that Viola is ready to see us and that she will come pick us up and take us somewhere to eat with her children. Overall our meeting goes well, Viola is exceptionally lovely, and she reassures us that there will be plenty for us to work on during our time in Uganda. Whether that is plenty of work in the sense that AUC alumni like ourselves understand plenty of work to be, or plenty of work in the sense that Africa generally understands it to be remains to be seen. Nonetheless it seems like there are some very interesting projects involving refugees currently being worked on within the university, and that we will be provided with the opportunity to get involved in some of the fieldwork by going into refugee camps ourselves and conducting some interviews.

Now, so many people already have been asking me what Ugandan food actually consists of, and if I’m going to be honest I really don’t know. All the places we’ve eaten in Mbarara thus far literally serve meat / fish and chips, and it seems you have a choice of chicken or goat if you go meat, and no choice if you go fish. So there you have it. The food situation here remains to be seen. I guess it’s a good reason for you all to keep reading this blog, there has to be some suspense after all.