Break Down

After we finally got out of Kampala with allll of the supplies in a big big big truck we broke down. It started such a nice trip with kabobs on the side of the road, grilled bananas and a stony tangowizzy which is amazing ginger ale. and then the clutch when out and we got a mechanic from a near by town and I got to play with some local kids the clutch started working again I gave the kids some Duo cotexin pens which were really cool and away we went. a half mile later the clutch died completely and we hailed a bus and let the driver deal with the truck. I arrived late last night and have been having an excellent morning in soroti. I will be arriving in Katawi tonight and starting training tomorrow morning. I also meet two people from seattle in the guest house and one man from bartillsville oklahoma. Amazing

Back to Soroti

After all this time I am going back to soroti riding in a giant 8foot by 30 truck with supplies for our work in the district of Katawi in the teso sub region. We have enough supplies to get started and we are starting soon. The training begins on Monday the 13th and by Tuesday or Wednesday we will being delivering medication to over 150,000 people in about 21 day's. We will have 10 teams of 10 and will be serving about 5,000 people a day and spraying their homes which I am not to happy about but I did get to write the training and education material to make sure everyone knows how dangerous indoor residual spraying is and we are also using Arco which is at it's final stage of testing and this is only it's second time being used in mass drug administration, so I got the forms for side effects and will make sure that we know if anyone is having problems by doing check backs with the people receiving it. But the plan is very through and the strategy is very conscious of age, sex, pregnancy status, and Malaria status. We are definitely comprehensive about it all.

Drive

I get so inspired where ever I go in Uganda. Yesterday I when to Entebbe and driving along you see some amazibng things, people making couches, Metal gates, beds, signs, cleaning second hand clothes to make them like new. This place seems to be completely self supporting if it wasn't for fuel. If you buy clothes here it would ither be shiped in second hand from Europe or the U.S., or made right at the shop by the guy sitting on the front porch talking with people while he belts out dress after shirt. Same with shoes, furniture, stoves, beds, and anything else you can imagine. Everything made here is also on a small scale with no more than 15 people working. A mechanic shop can fit into a box about 8 feet tall and 4 foot squared. Absolutely no wasted space. When I looked out at the country side in between the urban strips you could see that the land was plentiful and clear with all of the local favorite foods like matooke, millet and corn. And all the houses made out of the same earth than they rest on. You see towers of hand made bricks with a fire underneath them for days untell they become hard and all the need for mortar is sand dirt and gravel. You see very tale buildings made in this fashion with sticks for scaffolding. The only down side has been the advertising, on over a 3rd of the buildings they let coke and cellphone companies and paint companies paint their homes; on the plus side it is all hand painted and looks pretty cool. People here have countless skills and there is always a way to make profit for them.

Soroti

After a 4 hour long bus ride over a mix of dirt gravel and paved roads we made it to soroti. I found it interesting that the dirt roads were much smoother that the paved, and that most of the time on the paved roads bus seemed to be driving on the shoulder. It is as if the cars here are allergic to cement. It was marvelously hot in soroti and the sun was very powerful. We walke around and got some fruit and ate some lunch. Here most meat you eat is goat ut they don't do anything else with the goat, I asked if they have goat milk and everyone looked discused at the idea. I got to see my friend Rita and that was very nice she has a hurt nee from her 8th boda boda accident. Her house was by the swamp so their was hundreds of bugs that where flying around and when they land on you they dont know what to do they starts scwemming around and look like they have a million legs and horns. When I asked rita if they would hurt you she said no so I swashed them. The boda bodas in Soroti are bicycles which I am excited about, because I think I will get one. I have also finished the training material and went to the market yesterday since I arrived back in kampala on Monday night. A bag of Organic carrots was about 75 cents us and the biggest head of cabbage you've ever seen was 1 dollar. But here things are priced in terms of shillings so it sounds like a lot more. Any way Back to the ministry today to take care of getting the drugs released to us and then to the pharmacy's to try and scrap together 30,000 pregnancy tests for the Move on Malaria.