There is no simple way to describe Mwanza and the parts of Africa I’ve seen in the past six weeks. It’s a contradiction. Mansions are constructed on plots of land whose granite boulders were broken down into pebbles by day laborers using nothing more than hammers and their own strength. The neighborhood of the rich, with its houses leaning over Lake Victoria, is bordered by two small villages where entire families live in a single-room, dirt-brick house, their children running around barefoot and dusty. The chaotic rush of the city disappears in a 30-minute drive and in two hours, [View Full Entry]

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I’m one day back from 24 hours spent on the Serengeti, and with the fear of having to pay an extra USD50 it wasn’t one minute more, and I haven’t the slightest clue how to start. It felt like being in a National Geographic documentary and I kept expecting to hear the dull drone, slightly British, of the narrator. Even now, looking back at the photos, it’s hard to believe that I actually saw those animals, that I took the pictures of the herd of 70 something elephants, the lionesses sleeping in the grass, the hyena with its morning breakfast, the [View Full Entry]

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There are monkeys here, vervot monkeys, with bright blue testicles. Not just any shade of blue either. Imagine an incredibly vibrant Robin’s egg blue. That’s the colour of these monkeys testicles. And better yet, they like to show them off (typical men). We came across a group of them the other day swinging around in some trees and climbing on a few fences and one of the bigger males stops in plain sight, like he knows he’s being watched, with his legs staggered so that his testicles were perfectly framed. It was a golden photo opportunity so of course I was [View Full Entry]

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Our last trip to Geita, well my last trip to Geita, and I think I’ve gotten use to the long days and interesting toilets. We started out Monday afternoon joining the bustle at the ferry terminal. There’s stands selling the local chips maii (they add eggs to a fry pan with the chips so its more like omlette than chips but still good) and vendors try to sell you hair scrunchies that belong to the eighties or English learn-to-read texts assuming that because I’m a mzungo (white) I’ll be interested be anything written in English. We joined in along with the [View Full Entry]

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Discovering new places and little corners of the city is always exciting and usually somewhat terrifying but watching someone else experience the culture shock of downtown mwanza and the market is pure fun. After the conference finished up on Thursday I head into Mwanza with Patrick, a student from the US doing some data analysis at NIMR, and Dermot, a conference delegate and researcher in rural Uganada. Pat's been down here longer than I have and I'm still stunned that he hadn't been exploring at all, how boring must it be to hang out at NIMR and the hostel all day? [View Full Entry]

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Within two days, Treehouse (it’s the name of my accommodation, and not really in a tree or anything that resembles a treehouse) went from being a quiet lonely place to overflowing with guests and visitors. Brian and his son Dan returned from Safari and their local buddy, Joseph, stops by most nights and there were two film makers from London here for a couple nights. They were in search of a city that would reproduce 1950s Congo since the Congo is apparently a little expensive and almost impossible to get into unless you’re personally invited. They’d taken tons of photos of [View Full Entry]

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So I'm walking down the street, one of the few that's paved and has a side walk, and I hear this huge clunk sound from behind me and turning around there's a car rolling right in my direction! I say rolling because it couldn't have been moving any faster than 20 km/h and I wasn't all that concerned about having enough time to move out of the way but another pedestrian, adorned head to foot in traditional muslim dress, grabbed my arm and pulled me further off to the side. We both turned and watched the car, minus one hubcab, rumble [View Full Entry]

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Ahhh, what a week! I can’t believe how tiring it is to sit in a car all day! So “field work” is like a week long road trip where there is hardly anywhere to stop for food and bathrooms are holes in the ground surrounded by either a small brick building or a structure built of sticks and banana leaves. I swear my ass is bruised from all the bumps we went flying over. The driver usually managed to slow down but at dusk, the red roads did well to hide them. Those one’s hurt. The more I saw of the [View Full Entry]

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I have to laugh at what, yesterday, I considered rural because today has totally changed my perception of the word. We visited health centers and dispensaries today that were down roads I initially thought were foot paths. There was nothing but wide open space, the sky went on forever and we could go for hours seeing only locals on foot or bicycle. Houses built of red brick made from the earth and thatched roofs were spotted along the side of the road and in the distance but the nearest thing we had to traffic was problems with cattle and goats crossing [View Full Entry]

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Holy rural! The ferry crossing from Mwanza to the opposite side of the bay brought us towards Geita and many, many things I had never expected to see but were nonetheless not surprising or out of place. There are not as many hills over here and the landscape stretches out to the horizon, interrupted by copses of trees. They are trees I could not hope to name, but their branches, sparse with vegetation reach upwards. Some would be more suited to a Dr. Suesses’ storybook. The buildings are clustered sporadically. We drove by one or two compounds standing in solitaire and [View Full Entry]

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