Safari Photos

Following up on my pictures from yesterday, here are some long-overdue pictures from the Safari we took in Murchison Falls in February :)

Baboon! We stayed one night in an unfenced camp in the park, and there was a baboon causing all kinds of trouble the next morning. This one is sitting in recently burned parkland - during the dry season, the savannah burns (either naturally or intentionally - this might have been a controlled burn inside the park). People will burn their lands to clear away the brush and prepare it for cropland - though doing so isn't necessarily the best thing for the soil.

 

This is a Ugandan Cob - only found in Uganda!

I don't remember the name of this bird, but isn't it interesting?

A watering hole! You can see warthogs (look at their tails!) and cobs in this picture. It was the dry season, so there were quite a lot of animals around these.

Somehow I managed to take this awesome picture of a giraffe.

I decided that I want to live just about here. What you can't see is the lake in the distance (is it Lake Albert? We weren't sure). And this picture doesn't quite capture the way the sunlight caught the grass at this moment. It was pretty nice.

We made it to the lake! Those bumps in the water are hippos. We played frisbee for a while, until it started getting dark and the hippos started moving closer to shore. Then we decided it was time to go.

In summary - I was sorely tempted to break out into songs from The Lion King several times.

I'll end with a picture of Murchison Falls - though a picture doesn't really do it justice. 

Some pictures!

Hi, friends!

I'm feeling better than I was last week - though I still needed a nap after work today. Anyway, I figured I'd share some pictures with you, because I've been pretty stingy up till now.

Here's a shot of inside our compound, standing from my front door. On the right is our avocado tree (no fruit yet, though there are some small ones); in the center and to the left you can see some banana trees (I think some of these are matooke, a cooking banana, and some are ndizi, a small sweet eating banana). Behind the bananas in the center is a mango tree which has no fruit whatsoever. But right now all the mango trees are producing and our friends in the village have loaded us down with more mangoes than we know what to do with.

There's this really nice path that leads from our door out across a ridge. It's become one of the places I go when I want to decompress and just enjoy being outside.

This path is really nice, because it's peaceful, and I get some solid nature time in. But there are also people along it, and I can have conversations with them if I want. Sometimes they'll wave me over, but I've never felt trapped, like I feared when I first got here. Usually we don't know enough to say to each other, and the conversation is pretty short. Once I ran into a group of kids who started teaching me random words in Luganda, which was pretty fun.

This walk also has fantastic views of Lake Victoria:

And to finish us off today, I offer this picture of a herd of cows that I encountered while walking around with Tyler, the other US intern. No way but to go through them, which we did.

I hope this made up some for my lack of pictures...more to come!

-David Wit

Sickness

The doctor sat me down with my test results in his hands. “Looks like you’ve got a big one,” he told me, checking my eyes. What this turned out to mean was a flu – but presumably not a garden-variety flu, but a flu that deserves numbers and letters. I was kind of relieved – I was sure I had malaria, after my persistent fever and strange weakness, and the flu is a little more familiar. But, on the other hand, it’s pretty easy to treat malaria. Flu, on the other hand, just gets ibouprofin and rest. So that’s what I’m up to right now – ibouprofin and rest.

That has turned out to be a surprisingly good combination. I haven’t been out of bed today for more than 2 hours at a time, and I feel a lot better than any of the other days I’ve been sick. And the people here at EMI have been so kind to me. This weekend Maggie, our EMI grandma, cooked me fish chowder, and yesterday she drove me to and from the doctor’s. I was worried about what I was going to eat this weekend, and then, starting today, what I was going to drink: we have no running water right now. But the office sent me lunch, and one of the survey practicum leaders sent me down a huge bottle of water, and we got our regular boda guy to get me another 5L jug, and Maggie cooked us dinner, so I’m pretty set. Also, as I’m coming to realize, there is still plenty of water stored in the small cisterns around our property and accessible by jerrycan.

So at first being (very) sick in Africa was a frightening prospect – I’m so far from home, I don’t have all the usual routines and comforts, I don’t know if they have the right medicines, etc., etc. But it turns out that right here with EMI is a pretty good place to be sick, after all. Besides, the weather is still beautiful. It rained this morning, which made it perfect for sleeping in, and then it cleared up by the afternoon; and if I ever need more than two blankets I know it’s because of the fever and maybe I should take more ibouprofin. Like they told us during orientation, I would have likely gotten sick at home, too (true - I get at least one bad cold per semester). And here they are taking very good care of me - better than I would have taken care of myself at home.*

So there you have it. I’m sorry – I have more exciting things to write about, like the church I’m going to or the 5-day trip we took to Western Uganda, but those will have to wait. It’s almost time for bed :)

Here's a picture I just took to assure you I'm alright. Keep in mind it's on my low-res webcam, so don't go inferring a lot from my skin tone.

-David Wit

*Actually, it's interesting to notice this: here I absolutely have to rely on people to take care of me. There are no pre-packaged meals (except maybe cup noodles), no easily accessible pizza joints, no CVS down the block where they stock all the medicines I know. And like I said above, the water's out. In Columbus**, I pretty much assume that I have to take care of myself, and by and large I do. But seeing how impossible that is here (at least for me) has forced me to rely on - and appreciate more - the kindness of the people around me. 

**Boy, I'm not quite sure the last time I was sick in New Hampshire, but I'm sure Mom and Dad took care of me. Thanks, Mom and Dad, for doing that for like all of my life!