Halfway from coming back...

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Half of the time for our stay in Uganda is over and half is left :-) All our interviews and the transcriptions of them are completed which is nice and gives a feeling of progress. We plan to go to back for a field study at the hospital one day before we go back but now the coming week we will just be home and start to analyse the work.

we wanted to upload some nice pictures but internet is not really working today ,so we will be back with the pictures soon.

Last Sunday we went for a half-day nature walk at Mabira rainforest some miles outside Kampala. It was beautiful and although the pictures don’t capture the real thing, we still hope you can get a feeling of the colours and the rich flora and fauna. In a rainforest most of the animal life stay in the treetops but we had a glimpse of some monkeys and heard a lot of birds. Unfortunately the guide for the walks had their day of, but sine there were two environmentalists in our trio (guess who is not qualifying…) it was still quite knowledgeable of the third of us…
This trip was just a teaser for the coming safari we are going for in the end of our stay.

February is the month of graduations parties in Uganda and we had the fortune to be invited to one, our contact nurse, Josephine’s, daughter. We were invited to come at 3 pm and after experiencing the Ugandan time-keeping way we though we would be foresighted to show up at 4 pm but only for finding the party started around 6 pm…
(The mantra “we-will-laugh-about-this-tomorrow” helped us through the hours of waiting….)
The party had a touch of wedding; situated in a big venue with a table of honour where the graduant sat together with a fellow graduant, parents and guest of honour and about hundred guests. Speeches in a certain order and cutting of the cake which was served to all the guests by the graduant, and the graduant dancing the opening dance also contributed to the weddingfeeling. We have seen and learned so be prepared for our graduation in June :-) After that it was traditional dance, Uganda has about 53 tribes which all have their own dances and Josephine’s family is Langi and everyone danced the Langi dance - also the party’s only two mozungos tried their best…
The food was traditional with matoke, beans, kasawa, chicken, goat, nut sauce and fruits. They put loads of food on our plates (even Terese could not finish it:-) ).
Unfortunately Kenge got sick and couldn’t join- he has got some problem with the blindgut which might need an operation. This doesn’t go very well together with his plans to make field research for his thesis is four different neighbouring countries. Hopefully the operation can wait until we are back in Sweden.

Tonight we are going for the weekly jazz jam session at the National Theatre here in Kampala together with some other Swedish MFS-students.

So long!

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Photos

Mabira rainforest
Explorers of the deep dangerous jungles of Africa...