Update from the Dark Continent

So we have been living here for over a month now, and have experienced some power outages here and there, mostly for just a couple of hours a day, 4 or 5 times a week. This past week, we have come to fully understand why this is the Dark Continent. We have been without power at our house and at the clinic for 10 days now and no sign of it coming back on any time soon. We have heard maybe by Thursday but who knows.  (Side note: I am writing this from the clinic right now, because their generator is running, and there is a HUGE lizard of some sort walking around the room. Bet you don’t see that in your clinic back home. ) Anyways, not having power has honestly not been as terrible as I thought it was going to be. We were warned that this happens often, so I had been anticipating it. We make due by not buying anything that has to be refrigerated, doing the house work before 7pm when you can no longer see anything, cooking dinner by candlelight and head lamp, and trying to do all of our emails and everything at the clinic as much as possible. It’s actually been kind of fun at times. It feels like we are camping. We hang our head lamp from our mosquito net above the bed at night and play cards. That way we are not bothered by as many bugs interrupting our games. We have also been almost too busy to even care that there is no power. We do miss our fan at night and a hot shower would be most appreciated, but I try to take my showers during the heat of the day. This is probably more information than you want to know, but we have definitely stopped washing our hair every day. Speaking of hair, Newman FINALLY let me cut his hair on Sunday. It was really rainy outside all afternoon and nowhere for us to go really, so after some convincing, he let me cut it. I must say I think it turned out rather nicely. It was driving me crazy how long it had gotten, and he said it was making him really hot, so we were both satisfied in the end. I however will not be letting him cut my hair!

So just a few more updates on things we have been doing. Last week was a pretty standard week of working at the clinic. Wednesday we went over to our friend Maggie’s house for her birthday dinner. She is a Peace Corps Volunteer. We had a Mexican fiesta, and the food was amazing. Everyone pitched in, and even though we ate everything in the dark, we still had a really good time. Michael and Amanda headed off for Kampala on Friday and Amanda will be gone for the whole week, but Michael will come back midweek. Newman and I will ride with Michael next Thursday to Kampala for the weekend. The boys have some meetings to go to and then we also have some fun social events as well over the weekend. It will be nice to get a hot shower and some good food and good company for a few days. We love Masindi, and it is definitely more our speed, but Kampala is a nice retreat now and then.

We went on a fun little outing on Saturday with the Pharmacy students that are here and Mustafa who is a local boda boda (motorcycle) driver. He traded his boda boda for a car and took us to the Rhino Santuary which is about an hour or so outside of Masindi. It is the only place in Uganda other than the zoo where there are rhinos. As soon as we arrived, we met up with our ranger who hopped in our car, AK47 in hand of course, and took us to a field where we got out. He gave us all gum boots to wear because he said we are going Rhino tracking and we would be tracking the rhinos on foot. Apparently the group that got there before us did not like that idea and they turned around and came back. They wanted to see the rhinos from their car. We were happy to get out and walk with them. As soon as we got out of the car, there were 3 large rhinos drinking in a pool of water in front of us. We were told that it was very rare to see them that quickly. I can’t remember 2 of their names, but one of them was named Obama because he was the first male born on the sanctuary.  His father is Kenyan and his mother is American and they said “Yes we can!” (Rhino's were hunted to extinction in Uganda in 1983 and have just recently been reintroduced through the sanctuary we visited.  There are 14 rhino's in the country and we saw 5 of them.)  We also walked a little ways through a large heard of long horned cows and made our way to a shady spot where a large mother and her baby named “Angel” were sleeping. It was pretty amazing. We got as close as about 50 yards from them. It was well worth the trip and we were back in Masindi by early afternoon.

We also went to St. Mathew’s for the first time, which is the Anglican Cathedral in town just down the street from us. It was a nice service and it was in English. We were the only white people in the packed church, so we definitely stood out. They came to us in the middle of the service and asked us to write down our names so that they could introduce us, which they did at the end of the service. We were at first introduced correctly, but by the end of the service they were calling us Newman, the doctor, and his nurses. We had two pharmacy students with us so I guess to them we were all nurses and Newman, since he is the head of the medical clinic, is obviously a doctor. It was pretty funny.

I will leave you with some pictures of the rhinos, the random fair that was in town, etc.... Enjoy and we love you all! Just a reminder that if you feel called to give to PMI in any way, you can do so on their website at www.palmettomedical.org. They have some really amazing projects going on and they are doing everything due to private donations. So, please pray and if you can…give. Thanks!!

These children are our neighboors and Lynn, my mother-in-law, sent a soccer ball over with the May team which the children REALLY loved. This is a picture of Newman giving it to them.

This is a leopard that was at the fair.

This is a camel at the fair. Newman and I did not get on it, but Michael and Amanda did.

Michael and Amanda on the camel.

Our ranger at the Rhino Sanctuary

The first 3 rhinos we saw. The one closest to us is Obama.

Walking through the heard of cows.

Newman working with Joseph, the clinic's administrator, and Wilson who helps us out and also helps out at the clinic is standing behind Newman.