Uganda

Not content with visiting 3 countries in one month, I thought I should better make it four, this time Uganda. I had a vague idea that I would visit Uganda at some point, but Mum made it much more imminent by saying that she knew of a team of medical volunteers going to Jinja in a couple of weeks to provide free medical care to Ugandans, and did I want to join them? Well yes, I do believe that Uganda would benefit from my vast medical knowledge, so I signed up.

Initially I looked into flights, but the price tag put me off so I went for the cheaper option of the 24 hour bus. It actually wasn't so bad as it sounds, especially as some friends gave me some sleeping pills to take to ease the journey (in the blister pack, if you are thinking that anything odd is going on). So I actually got about as much sleep as normal, albeit on and off.

I arrived at 8.45am and was picked up by Satish, whisked straight to the camp and put to work. Was I squeamish, I was asked? Well, yes, a little, but I've never fainted, so should be alright.

Good, then my job would be dental surgeon. And the dentistry in question was tooth extraction, mixed in with a little mouth tumour extraction where necessary. I thought I would be doing admin somewhere and wasn't quite prepared for holding a bucket whilst people spat up blood and bits of chipped tooth. All good though, and it turns out that I am not that squeamish after all! I probably won't go in for a change of career though, even though the dentist from Stockport did assure me that this is not how they do it at home. However, we were using single use needles, sterilised instruments and clean cotton swabs, so by the sounds of it that is better treatment than they would normally receive.

After that I had the slightly more relaxing job of counting pills into bags in the pharmacy. A slightly crazy tent where 14 people work around a small table whilst a woman with a loudspeaker shouts out the names of the people who have had their prescriptions filled out. Unfortunately she shouts they names out repeatedly, like 18 times or so until they say there are there. Imagine registration at Ferris Buellers school, but all day long.

An Indian lunch followed (most of the volunteers were Indians who were born here and then emigrated, presumably during the rule of Idi Amin), then back to the pharmacy for the rest of the day.

It's much hotter here than in Arusha, and I was still wearing my jeans and boots from the journey, along with a medical coat, so really quite boiling.
After the end of day briefing, I was very happy to come to the hotel and have a shower.

Dinner was at a lovely restaurant called the 2 Friends. A bit of western food cheered me up and the surroundings were beautiful. The conversation was interesting, as all but three people on the trip are Indian, so much of the chat is centred around that.
I didn't know whether to be pleased or hurt when during the discussion about age (one of the boys was born in 1992!) a girl said to me 'there's no way you look that old' on finding out I was 29.

Early rise the next day to be at the camp by 8am, and straight into counting medicines into small bags. And that is pretty much what I did for the next 8 hours. Just before lunch I did take a break from that and start logging meds into the log book instead.

I did manage to smooth a system during the day by changing the 4 stage process of receiving the meds into a 3 stage one, by asking that the stage of logging them into the log book be abolished. It just meant that people were standing around in the sunshine for far too long waiting and getting understandably impatient.
I took lunch at 2.30pm despite not being hungry as I just needed the break, then went back to counting into bags.

Dinner that night was less exciting although it was on the shores of Lake Victoria. The food took two hours to come, and really wasn't particularly special when it did arrive, so a bit of a let down. But the bill was 25,000 shillings each, about £7, so not so bad.

Day 3: Early rise again and got to wash my hair, quite exciting in itself. I was set free from the pharmacy today and was re trained as an optician. There was a bit of unrest amongst the troops,as me being released meant that other people had to take my place and this was not popular, but I think you just have to get on with it. Not everyone shares my view.
The opticians is great as you can give people glasses there & then and improve the quality of peoples lives straight away. Very gratifying. Some people were very funny, like saying that all the glasses that you tried on them were wrong until eventually you would go back to the prescription you started with, and lo and behold, that would be the perfect pair. Exasperating, and either a genuine mistake or an attempt to get frames that they preferred. If the latter, I would give them increasingly ridiculous lenses until they relented.
Also, I learnt to be able to tell quickly what glasses would suit a certain face. Unfortunately there was no mirror (actually, it was fortunate, as we would be there a lot longer otherwise) so they didn't necessarily always agree with you!

My annoyance today was that some of the drugs that we need for the opticians hadn't arrived, this meant that people who had woken to start queuing at 5am to see an optician and are prescribed drugs for their problem then are told to come back the next day for them, and therefore have to queue all over again.
I'm also not entirely happy with the attitude of some of the local doctors. Such as taking more than an hour and a half for lunch when they can see the length of the queues, or insisting on taking lunch at the same time, therefore effectively shutting the opticians down until they are back. Then, after that, leaving at 4pm when there are still queues. It just doesn't feel right to leave people waiting in the sunshine (hot hot hot) for so long. I would rather work through the break, or at least take a quick, staged break and keep people coming through, but that doesn't seem to be the thinking here.

Day 4: More of the same today, in the opticians, trying to give people the glasses they want. What's interesting for me on this trip is learning about 1972 from the point of view of the Indians who were living here at the time. All of the volunteers here but 3 are Indian, and either lived here in 1972, or their parents did. So today, after we went round the central market, we spent some time looking for Shree's parent's shop that they owned before they had to flee the country. They now live in Leicester.
The general thinking is that it was a much better country back then, but since then the infrastructure has been allowed to decay, and the population explosion has just exasperated the situation. It would be interesting to hear the African Ugandan point of view.
It is unimaginably how it must be to be told you must leave the place that you live in, and you are not allowed to take any of the assets you have worked hard for for years. 'The Last King of Scotland' is added to the list of films I must watch again once I am home, joining 'Gorillas in the Mist', 'Hotel Rwanda' and 'Out of Africa'.

The next day was Saturday, and a half day for the camp in which only staff from the factory which is allowing us to use their grounds are invited, supposedly a bit of a break.
Not quite the reality. When we arrived there were lots of women and children queuing and the paediatrician didn't have the heart to turn them away, so they were allowed in along with the factory workers.
My job was as organiser, along with Janice. We had to make sure that the medical books were in sufficient supply (each patient gets one as they register) that everyone was aware that unless they were a paeds or dental case, that their drugs would go direct to the factory the next week, to make sure that the factory didn't send too many staff, etc etc etc. It probably doesn't sound that hard, but with the various things that went wrong that day, Opthalmologists not turning up, non factory workers sneaking in, pharmacy staff going on strike, I did more work that half day than I did the two previous days added together. When I got to have lunch at 2.30, it was a very welcome break.

That afternoon we all went to the Nile resort for a swim and a beer, so the stress of the day slowly eased out of me.

Sunday – Sightseeing day! A late start to accommodate the younger members of the party (I am in a weird age range all of my own, between the teenagers/early twenty somethings and the more mature volunteers, so I kind of swing between the two groups socially, but not quite fitting into either, all at the same time.)
Then to a supermarket to buy supplies for an orphanage that some of the group wanted to visit. After quite a journey trying to find we eventually arrived. Apparently the orphanage had improved a lot since some of the volunteers had visited it the year before, and there were now bunk beds for the children with mosquito nets.
Next stop, to the factory for lunch, vegetarian Indian, as with most days. I like it though. Then off to the source of the Nile (or one of, anyway). A short walk down a tourist shop lined set of steps leads to the water. From the name, I was expecting a spring of some sort, but what it actually is is the point at which Lake Victoria officially becomes the Nile, so really quite wide even at this point. Also, a fifth of Ghandi's ashes were scattered here, so there is a memorial statue to him as well.
A boat took us from here to the Kingfisher Resort, which is laid out beautifully with gardens and swimming pools and little thatch roofed tables. We ate dinner here, and as seems to be the custom, the food arrived 1hr3/4 after we ordered.
For some reason Uganda is leaving me exhausted, I assume it is the heat as I really didn't exert myself at all that day, but again needed an early night.

Monday and Tuesday were my last two days at the camp as my bus left late afternoon on Tuesday. I did a mixture of opticians and pharmacy and general running around type admin. The most important thing I think I achieved in those days was running between different people trying to sort out getting some glasses made for a man called Job who needed a +13.00 prescription in both eyes. I have never looked through glasses that thick, so can only try and imagine what his vision must be like close up, but let's just say that getting these glasses will be life changing for him.

Monday evening we were entertained by a local Muhindi who owns a restaurant in town. Good Indian food, though once a again slow to arrive, meaning that straight after eating we were all quite keen to head home. My last night in Uganda was as comfortable as the rest had been and I got an excellent nights sleep in preparation for a disturbed night on Tuesday.
Lucky I did, as the bus ride this way wasn't quite so idyllic. It was late to arrive at Jinja, so obviously late to leave, we went 30mins then got a puncture so had to change the tyre. The borders were fine, but then my sleeping pill didn't seem to have quite the same effect and I had a restless night. Into Nairobi where I was told the Arusha connection was going to be outside straight away. 2 hours later it did arrive and scooped me off to the Tanzanian border, trying to make up time as it went. Inexplicable the bus waited at the border for ¾ of an hour (normally it's the other way round and you have to rush to make sure it doesn't go without you).
At some point the pill must have kicked in, as the next thing I knew, they were calling out 'Arusha', and I was home.

Rwanda

A week with my Mum! We jointly decided to meet in Rwanda, for mutually beneficial reasons. For Mum, she gets to see Rwanda, a place that she has wanted to visit since 1994, and for me, I get to visit a different country in East Africa.

Things I didn't realise about Rwanda:

1)How tiny it is! Really small, like the north west of England, or equivalent.
2)How hilly it is. 'The land of a thousand hills' as they call it. Very different from Northern Tanzania, which obviously has mountains (Kili!) but they are few and far between and very much landmarks. In Rwanda driving through is like being in Postman Pat's van going over the hills.
3)That they don't speak Kiswahili. Annoying, as I am just about getting to grips with it and am back to being completely deaf again.
4)The extent of the genocide – I just about remember the news coverage from 1994, and the graphic pictures, but when you realise just how small the country is, you begin to realise that absolutely everyone living in the country at that time was affected. Something that is really hard to comprehend, no doubt impossible without living there and being able to speak to the people.

After a short flight from Kilimanjaro airport, I was met by Mum in Kigali, along with a woman called Pascalina who inexplicably told me her name repeatedly, 4 times. Pascalina passed us onto our driver for the week, Patrick and we drove off for a tour of Kigali.
Now that really didn't take very long. For me, I was overwhelmed by just how developed it was. All very neat and tidy and well maintained roads which people don't drive along like lunatics, and getting used to the hills. But after that, there really isn't anything to see in Kigali at all.
The one 'attraction' that they do have is the Genoside memorial. An excellent remembrance of what happened in 1994, filled with information notes, videos, pictures and artefacts from that year that give testament to what happened. I won't try and recount it here, other than to say that it is almost entirely unbelievable what occurred, and how preventable it would have been, and mainly, the hope and peace that there now is in the country.

After visiting that, and randomly driving into the courtyard of the 'Hotel Rwanda' hotel, Patrick whisked us away into the countryside. The drive to Ruhengeri was about 3 hours and really reinforced the meaning of a land of a thousand hills. Really beautiful scenery and people along the way. I'd like to think that I could recognise a marked difference between the Tanzanian people and the Rwandan Hutus and Tutsis, but I really can't. They all look amazing to me. Patrick was very helpfully pointing things out to us along the way, but my questions were much more about the people and their way of life, how many children they have (about 7- 8 in the villages) how the orphans have coped since the genocide, how people make a living (mainly subsistence farming- about 90%) and things like that, to try and gauge the difference between Rwanda and Tanzania.

The main noticable difference whilst driving along is just how clean and tidy the place is. This can be attributed to 2 things, firstly, plastic bags are banned in Rwanda, and it is actually enforced, so you don't see any around the place, in ditches etc. Secondly, on the last Saturday of every month every citizen has to spend the morning cleaning a certain area of their town or village (or Friday if they are not allowed to work on the sabbath). Such a good idea, so simple but not only does it make a beautiful unspoilt country, but also helps to build the community spirit in the areas where it was all but destroyed 16 years ago.

Ruhengeri is a small market town of not great note, other than it is on the doorstep of the Volcanoes national park, which plays host to about 15 families of Gorillas. Clearly, we couldn't visit Rwanda without going to see the Gorillas!
The next day we rose early and drove up to the briefing, where our driver fought for a good group for us and we were briefed about what to expect. The two golden rules were: don't get closer than 8m, and don't use the flash on your camera. We were put into a group with 6 Americans, 3 nice, 3 not so nice, and set off. It was about two hours fairly easy hike initially through farmland and then, once inside the park, through bamboo which was being cut down ahead of us. We had a guide, some optional porters, a group of trackers and our own personal armed guard in case the and elephants decide to get a bit friendly. After the trekking we came to a clearing and were asked to leave all bags, food and drink and take only our cameras as we were very close to the family.

It's hard to explain the how it feels when you come face to face with the gorillas for the first time, but I guess privileged would sum it up quite well. I don't know if we were particularly lucky or not, but the family we visited had a giant Silverback who was more than happy to allow us to watch him playing with his sons and grooming them. We spent an hour with them, which went very quickly, but we really felt like we had spent some quality time with them. They are very playful creatures, the boys fighting just like human siblings, although with a little more chest beating than is common amongst their cousins. We got lots of photos and then spent the rest of the time just sitting watching them, making sure the Silverback didn't come too close! Very satisfying. Must watch 'Gorillas in the Mist' now, really.

The next day was similar with a trip to see the Golden monkeys. Very funny animals who live in the bamboo trees. The trek to see these was much shorter and we were there in 20 minutes. Again we had an hour with them. They were much harder to photograph as they are pretty agile, so you'll have to take my word for it that they are there. This time our group was 4 Germans and the two of us. For some reason English people seem to be a bit scarce in Rwanda and we didn't see any others the whole trip. Due to the early morning we had finished that excursion by 9.30, so Patrick drove us to a lodge for morning coffee. It was very nice sitting in the gardens pretending we were really staying there, and Mum spent some happy time bird watching. I sunbathed.
After that we went to a trade fair in the stadium where I bought some earrings and Mum bought tea and coffee, then we watched some traditional dancing before heading back for another of our many meals in the hotel. Good food, but we really did exhaust the menu in our time there!

The third full day was also spent in the Volcanoes National Park, this time doing a hike to the top of the second highest volcano, of which I forget the name (Bisoke). Though at 3,711m, not a small climb. That said, they had very much prepared us for the hikes to see the gorillas and monkeys, both of which had been very light hiking with not much height gain. Also, with having conquered Mt. Kili the month before, I felt no trepidation about climbing a mere sub 4000m peak.

How wrong I was.

We were both completely unprepared for the hike that day. The guide the previous day had said it would be about 3 hours up. When she said up, we didn't realise that she literally meant straight up the side of the mountain. Not like Kili at all, no nice meandering paths to get you accustomed to the altitude. Not at all. Instead a sheer climb up steep muddy slopes. No man made steps, no nice benches to sit on, no long drop toilet, just us and the mountain.
Mum and I were sharing a day bag, and as this was a longer day we had 2 litres of water, a packed lunch, walking sticks and numerous spare layers in it. I was the designated carrier up the hill, but after about an hour it became clear that the $10 it would cost to hire a porter would be money very well spent.
After about 2 hours of this high CV work out along with a good thigh and bum workout, the guide said we were almost half way up. What! That could not be possible. We started quizzing him about the altitude we had gained so far and mentally working out how much further that meant we had to go, surely he was lying. Surely.
The answer was yes, he was a bit, and then when we came out of the rainforest into a grassy clearing, we realised that there really couldn't be all that much further to go. We were right, it was 20m. We were both exhausted, and very happy to see the crater lake emerge from the cloud before us. An hours picnic was next whilst we girded ourselves for the trip down. Whilst quicker, this had its own obstacles.
Mum's knees being two of them. The natural steps really were steep, ie for the two of us not particularly long limbed creatures, well over knee height. On the way up this was a work out, on the way down it was more of a tumble down a mud slide. Somehow I managed to stay upright, but I think I was the only one. Most people were filthy by the end after several falls, and Mum was lead down the whole way by a porter. She would like me to point out at this stage though, that she is 61, and no one else on the hike was over 35.

The hike took us 7 hours in total, and we were both whacked by the end, though we made a mental note that our guide fell asleep on the car ride down.

The next day took us to Lake Kivu. The hotel we were in Ruhengeri had been nice, but the one at Lake Kivu really was something special. It was on the shores of the lake, with a private beach as well as a swimming pool and beautiful gardens. I was very much looking forwards to 3 days relaxation and sunbathing. Unfortunately this was slightly dashed by the rain, but I got a couple of good sessions in.
The rain wasn't the only disturbance though, the other was the presence of a UNHCR conference in the same hotel. Cue outrage from all the other guests that a public authority such as that would stump up for a weeks retreat in one of the smartest hotels in Rwanda for all of it's Kigali staff. Almost unbelievable. This outrage apart, they were also pretty speedy when it came to the meal times. If you timed your arrival at dinner just 5 minutes late it was like there had been some kind of ram raid on the kitchen and there were mere scraps left. Unfortunately we only realised by the second night that we could eat in the bar and order a la carte instead, much preferable.

Other than enjoying the view, the most notable thing we did at Lake Kivu was a morning trip over the border to the Democratic Republic of Congo. We had to buy visa's, of course,and Patrick was not allowed to drive us into a different country, so we had to walk across and one of his friends picked us up and drove us around. We were in the city of Goma and the contrast to the Rwandan side was palpable.

It was clearly much poorer, more crowded, dirtier and overrun with UN staff and troops. We were really not allowed out of the car, as they considered it too dangerous, and Patrick's friend took all our photos for us, as people would not react well to tourists taking them. Goma had also suffered from a lava flow over the city in 2002. This was clearly still evident and there were piles of lava rubble everywhere, and most roads were unpaved.
The public beach on the Rwanda side had been a place of volleyball, swimming and sunbathing. In Goma it was basically a cross between a market and a laundry.
There were 'guns not allowed' signs everywhere and the main form of transport other than UN Landcruisers were home-made wooden bikes for transporting goods. Pretty ingenious actually, but probably not the sign of a wealthy country. A really interesting trip – good to see the difference a border can make.

That evening we fought to stay awake for the world cup final (one of us won this battle, the other didn't!).

And that was really the end of the trip. The next day we drove back to Kigali slowly, exactly retracing the route we had come in and saw it all again. Still as stunning the second time around. Due to flight issues I had a night in Kigali that night, but Mum started her laborious trip home, so she saw me to my hotel room and we said a quick but tearful goodbye.

A night in Kigali on your own is not a particularly thrilling prospect, unfortunately, so I bought some picnic food with small change and watched the best that the 3 channels had to offer. Not much. Early night in preparation for my 4am wake up call.

The flight home (is Arusha home?!) was pretty cool, as on the approach we had an excellent view of Mount Kili and Meru and the pilot allowed all 7 of us that were on the flight into the cockpit to take photos.

Back to work!