Panagiotis
gcpetrop79
martsolka
Filed under: Uganda
I left Kampala on the 23rd of January. The plan was to spend a three-day weekend with some colleagues and friends in Murchison National Park (FRI-SUN) and Monday head on off to our respective bases. The ‘twist’ was that right after that I’d be staying up north carrying out a field visit to selected sites and reviewing work, meeting with staff, and doing the whole press-the-ham (no hanging here, only pressed) flesh-gripping and other semi-pornographic ways to talk about shmoozin.’
The trip up to Kamdini, where we would all meet (I was coming from Kampala, and the rest from Gulu and Lira) was uneventful and as usual, dusty, hot and long. I was greeted with the same sights as I normally am. Tired faces on road rehabilitation workers, bored traffic police, congested Kampala roads, and then rolling green hills hiding small Ugandan huts and even more farms and schools. The road rehabilitation has for the most part been undertaken by a Serbian firm (known far and wide for their uh, roads’ quality…?) and because it’s still in a state of I guess… sensitivity, every ten feet there is a speed bump. FOR ABOUT FIFTEEN KILOMETERS. TWICE. Fucking hell. So back to the romantic description of the trip: Lots of people sitting around who should be working looking at me, hepatitis-dripping liver-on-a-sticks being sold from dudes who seem like they’re high, and women peddling sesame balls (they’re like testicles made of sesame seeds without honey. What the fuck?) Finally we met up with everyone else, hopped on into a large 4×4 and headed off towards Murchison.
First order of business? Getting lost. Haha, not a big deal for those in the front seat but for those of us in the back in the bench-seats, time (and our asscheeks) were of the essence. I was trying very hard not to have to ‘take charge’ and ‘make sure’ we ‘get there’ but at some point I had to. “It’s 1700, we have 90 minutes of sun and we are fuck-all away from fuck-else. Let’s invest 5 minutes in knowing where we’re going make sure we get there, shower, and drink. OK? Yeah. Thank you. So we get there with bruised asses. Fantastic place. The Jane Goodall Foundation runs this chimpanzee reserve, with chimp walks and nature hikes (granola not included) and you get to sleep in a dormitory and eat good food and/or drink beer. We had a great time, and it was a totally legit thing, getting to see chimps eat, sleep, fuck, fight, swing and run around on the ground. Amazing. And all this at 15-20 meters distance. Very cool. Cool guides too, they knew everything and were very humble and it showed that they liked their work. So kudos. One of our colleagues had his birthday the second day and so began the first of 9 (yes, nine) times we would sing him happy birthday that day. Awesome. And humiliating. PERFECTION.
We left for Red Chili the next day. Red Chili is the ‘backpacker’s place’ next to the game reserve in Murchison and also next to Murchison Falls. This place was somewhat shitty and the staff all had a fucking stick up their ass. But fuck them; I was there for the lions and elephants. We arrive at the place and go to the outside pagoda/veranda/waterhole place and meet with other friends:
USAID dude wearing Ministry shirt and camo pants with a yellow Obama beanie: check
ICRC Belgian dude with a chip on his shoulder and a caustic attitude: check
Spiffily dressed Londoner ‘back to see the fam in Uganda’: check
Jaded Ugandan working for some clinical organization: check
Our motley crew: check
Later:
Country Director of Very Large NGO (this is important): check
The drinking begins. We haven’t even taken our shit out of the car and I have no way to know which tent is ours, where it is, or where the hell the toilets even are. The other Country Director arrives with a friend of his and an assortment of Pakistani Colonels on leave from the MONUC Congo peacekeeping mission.
Drinking starts. I believe 4-5 happy birthdays are sung in Indian, Greek, Acholi, English, Spanish and Swahili. Oh happy day! All of a sudden the country director dude and one of my colleagues launch into heart-warming renditions of: the sound of music, for he’s a jolly good fellow, besame mucho, and other semi-colonial testaments to falsettos. Spec-TACULAR.
Drinking continues. Heavily. Somewhere we have dinner. We move to around the bonfire and there begins my blackout. At some point I have a conversation with everyone that goes like this:
Everyone to George: “George, you’re an obstinate, foul-mouthed prick and everyone hates you.
George to Everyone: “Ahha! But my fellow country director *NAME WITHHELD* here understands the stress and difficulties that come with my job and why I have to be so reckless and spontaneous when I am up here, in order to take out all my frustrations.”
*NAME WITHELD* to George: Actually George, I think you’re an asshole. Really. I’m with everyone else. <<silence ensues>>
George: “DAMN IT! Fine! I can live with your vile hatred and venomous words. Another fucking beer!”
That was it. I woke up at 0530 ready to go safariing!!! I was still so drunk it took me about 25 minutes to decide whether my contacts were IN my eyes or not. Eventually I had to dig out my contact lens case, realize they were not, and happily put them in while on the barge taking us across the Nile to the game reserve. I thought that it was fucking cool that I was able to take them off and store them properly in the inebriated ass-forward state I was in the night before. But I digress.
The safari starts. This was cool. Buffalo, hartebeests, waterbuck, dick-dicks (I didn’t name them), elephants, giraffes, all kinds of buzzards and birds, crocodiles, hippos, baaaaaaadass! We drove around for about 7 hours. At one point we stopped at some abandoned 70s resort destroyed by Idi Amin’s homeys, and took some Van Halen pictures… They were awesome. Didn’t see lions though.
What wasn’t cool? The tse-tse flies. Those fuckers are as ugly as cockroaches, as bothersome as mosquitoes, and as disgusting as flies. And they HURT when they bite. The inside of our land cruiser became a cemetery for the flies, and the amount of blood that came out of them when we hit them was something I hope I forget about soon.
The night before, the USAID dude had told off the Pakistanis for being too loud in the night (tents, remember?) and some Polish dude wanted to fight with a British colleague because he had heard a lot of American accents the day before and had a chip on his shoulder because the Americans voted in Obama. FUCK YOU POLISH GUY. AND YOUR UGLY GIRLFRIEND AND BALD-BUT-TRYING-TO-HIDE-IT FRIEND. …we’re Greeks.
We went the second day to the falls where I lost my shitty photography virginity. Meaning I was now able to take a picture the way I wanted to in 25 shots or less. Improvement! But I shall continue to do so.
We also tried our hand on some calisthenics, gymnastics and circus tricks. Thanks to the short guy for making me a believer in myself. I originally didn’t believe we could do what he was proposing. But with a little butt-slapping and elbow-grease (good name for a porno that!) we were able to… elevate ourselves. That’s a play on words, by the way.
Fantastic.
The next day we did a little more game driving and fucked off back to our bases. It was back to work time at Gulu base for me but I did manage to make it out to some friends’ birthday party where I proceeded to drink Too Much Red Label On The Rocks while listening to a marine play “Mr. Jones and Me’ on a guitar. Well. Yes, stranger things have happened but I was not there to witness them. This one I was, and so I report it to you here.
I won’t go into the gory details of the party, which isn’t saying there were any. Get it?
I will say that on the day I left for Lira base, 50 or 60 meters from the Gulu base, a coconut or some nut-like ‘fruit’ fell from a tree and as it was dropping to the ground, the hard-top’s left-hand side mirror slammed into it with the force of the vehicle driving, blasting the mirror OUT of the black mirror cup thingie and… into my face. Thankfully, some Japanese dude at Toyota had made this mirror to withstand those dangerous and frequent African nut-drops and so the mirror merely flew at my face and hit my mouth and/or chin, rather than blowing up in a million pieces and cutting my eyelids and cheeks into a million red, small, chaffy-like tender morsels. Thanks Cthulhu!
Lira was amazing. As soon as I got there it was discovered that one of the people I was on the trip with (we had gone back to our respective caves) had malaria AND a parasite. You see, on the way back, before we split up, everyone had the fine idea to have meat on a stick at some stop. Yours truly, cognizant of the dangers inherent in consuming badly roasted dog liver, chose to abstain from this ridiculous venture. Other whiteys chose to partake, and thus paid for their sins. Indeed. Lots of work there, visits to sick babies in nutrition centers, angry phone calls to other parts of the country, dust, sweat, and lots of plumpy nut. Plumpy NUT. PLUMPY nut. It’s just fun to say; how is your plumpy nut?
The next day it was time to return to Kampala. A shitty day, dusty, and with the roadwork continuing, another bumpy ride, and hours of work waiting at the end of the road. Not something to really look forward to, but still, it was with a happy mood that I was going south. A safari, good pictures, and some good work had been accomplished in 7 days of fieldwork. The next four weeks are almost scary compared to the last 4 weeks in terms of work. But that’s cool.
In retrospect I wanted to write a blog that was a little more descriptive but I find myself sometimes having difficulty externalizing my thoughts on things these days. Perhaps I really think too much about the work, and by the time I get around to placing it on paper or the blog it’s just been digested and regurgitated in my head too much. So I hope the above will suffice for now.
Maybe next time I’ll have something more lyrical. Perhaps the pictures will make up for it. Or maybe I’ll decide I just don’t care at all. I’m not sure if this week was good or not. I think it was fun but maybe without any people it would have been better.
Have you ever been on safari? Did you want to comment on that? Well don’t. I have decided that’s the last fucking safari I go on. Safaris suck. Wow look, a fucking warthog. Lame.
I was also going to put pictures on this thing but I can’t even be fucked to make this new mac resize the images. The only computer I know which cuts a picture to 50% size while doubling the file size. Retarded. Jobs, go die. I also hate times new roman. This blog sucks and won’t let me change the fucking thing.
Filed under: Sierra Leone
…for those living in the developed part of the world,
the others might actually find it quite useful!
(1) There are an estimated 500 million people at risk of malaria in Africa alone. Approximately 250 million nets are required to cover this population and, if a net has an average life span of five years, this means 50 million nets a year are needed to maintain coverage.
(2) Most malaria-endemic countries in Africa spend only US$ 4 per capita a year on health, equivalent to the average cost of an untreated net in countries where nets are widely available. It would require US$ 200 million a year to provide 50 million nets and a further US$ 25 million a year to treat these nets with insecticide.
(3) Paederus sabaeus Erichson also known as the Nairobi fly or Champion fly is a Staphylinid beetle f
ound in both East and West Africa. The genus Paederus has almost 600 species worldwide. It is an active predator of several crop-damaging insects and occurs in warm tropical 
climates. The insect breeds in wet rotting leaves and soil. The beetle is drawn to light fixtures and candles at night. The beetle does not bite or sting, but when crushed against the skin it releases a potent toxin known as pederin that results in itching, burning, erythema and oozing 12-48 hours later.
(4) Human African trypanosomiasis, or sleeping sickness, now threatens the lives of millions of people in Africa 
once again. The disease was under control between 1960 and 1965 thanks to mobile teams systematically screening millions of people at risk and vector control in some foci but reappeared during the 1980s. In 1995, around 300 000 people were estimated to be infected by the disease. Sleeping sickness is transmitted by the bite of tsetse flies, killing people and causing abortion and perinatal death from mother-to-child infection.
(5) Bed bugs are small wingless insects that feed solely upon the blood of warm-blooded animals. Bed bugs seek out 
people and animals, generally at night while these hosts are asleep, and painlessly sip a few drops of blood. While feeding, they inject a tiny amount of their saliva into the skin. The skin lesion produced by the bite of a bed bug resembles those caused by many other kinds of blood feeding insects, such as mosquitoes and fleas. Despite what you may have heard or read elsewhere, bed bugs are not known to transmit any infectious agents.
Backstage trivia: Two months ago I was treated for malaria falciparum ( I do sleep under a bednet and I am on prophylaxis with Malarone), three months ago I suspected presence of bedbugs on my bed, one month ago i was chasing a tsetse fly out of the landcruiser, last week I did the awful mistake to crush a nairobi fly on my leg (by mistake…)!
