Doin' the Tourist Thing in Mombasa for a Week

I am sorry that I haven't been able to update the blog for a while. I was invited by Lucia to go to Mombasa (a touristy town on Kenya's coast) for a week and decided to go with her and some other friends. It is really beautiful. We have a little cottage that overlooks a white coral-sand beach and the Indian Ocean. Unfortunately, our accommodations are slightly ghetto, we don't have internet or phone access and I have been out of touch with everyone. Mom, I am sorry that you were worried! I will try to make the 45 minute journey to the internet once more before we leave next week.

A Visit to the Thompson Waterfall

Yesterday I went for a road trip with two priests to pick up a car that was in a garage in Nyahururu, Kenya. We caught a matatu from the house we are staying in the South B to downtown Nairobi (about 30 minutes). Then we caught another matatu from Nairobi to Nyahururu (about 3 hours). We picked up the car which had a fixed fuel injector and then decided to hang out for a while in the area. We had lunch and then went to see the Thomspon Watefall. It was really beautiful. The picture above shows me standing with one of the Columbian priests in front of the waterfall.

Cow in the Classroom and Some Other Things that are a Little Different in Africa

I was told once that after you have been in Africa for a few months, you stop noticing the things that might be different from life back in the United States. For example, it no longer seems strange to see someone slashing grass with a machete instead of using a lawn mower. In no longer seems noteworthy when you see a 6 year old child carrying a 1 year old on her back. It doesn't seem unusual to see a line of people at the bore hole waiting to pump water and carry it back home. To counter this, I decided to do a brief blog entry on things that are different in Africa. This is by no means inclusive - it is just a small sample of how life is different.

This is something a teacher might not say in the United States: "Now children! What have I told you about leaving the classroom door open! The cow will come in here and make a mess if you don't keep the door closed." While we were showing the video at the school in Potika, I saw a cow walk into a classroom. I went over and decided to take a picture. I think the entry of the cow into the classroom was assisted by the open door and the fact that there was no chairs, desks, books, or other teaching materials in the room - just a chalkboard on the wall.

The condom slingshot. Perhaps a little different than the slingshot boys buy from Walmart back in the US.

Ah, the wonderfully repulsive smell of women brewing local alcohol/beer/moonshine. I actually don't know what it is. It looks like used paint thinner and smells much worse. They dry the ingredients by laying them on a piece of fabric or directly on the ground. Perhaps slightly different than buying alcohol at your local dumpy gas station.

Beans anyone? These are World Food Programme beans that were for sale the day after the WFP trucks came and delivered the food. Technically, I think that people can get in trouble for selling their food rations, but I don't blame them. They are not all that amazing.

Africa's version of "Payless Shoes." And they really are payless shoes. They are made out of old bald tires and apparently one pair can last 20 years (+ or - 5 years). They don't have arch support and they give you bloody blisters for the first few months, but the price is right - less than $2.00 US.

Dinner. Dried fish with posho/ugali. The big white blob is the cooked corn flour I have talked about in previous posts. The fish is completely bone, skin, fins, and head. However, it was much more appetizing than some other meals we had. Maybe slightly different from the lemon roasted trout you can order and the Red Lobster.

An Honest Blog

OK, so maybe, "An Honest Blog" wasn't the best title for this entry because I am honest in all my blog entries. However, this entry is called 'Honest' because I am going to talk about touchy-feely stuff like my feeling so if you aren't a person that likes that sort-of thing (like Dad), you might want to skip this entry.

When I left for Potika I was still feeling somewhat ill with typhoid. While I was not feeling the best, I joking told Logan, "If I get sick with a weird tropical disease again I am going home!" The main symptom I had was not feeling hungry. It was a struggle to eat even a few bites at every meal. However, after a few days in Potika and towards the end of my intensive 2 week antibiotic regimen, I started to feel much better. I began to eat normal amounts of food and my headaches were gone. I was still slightly weak and I had a strong suspicion that my immune system had taken a toll during its battle with typhoid. Unfortunately, these suspicions were confirmed when I developed a strange fungal infection on my neck. I think that the fungal infection came from picking up small, hungry, diseased and dirty children in the IDP camp, but there is no way to know for certain. It could also be sleeping on a dirt floor and bathing irregularly.


Cute Child or Disease Vector?

A picture of the neck fungal infection grossness. The central large sore hurt quite a bit. I showed my neck to a health officer in Potika and she said it was a bacterial infection so I put triple antibiotic cream on it for several days under which the sore increased exponentially. Then I showed my neck to a Uganda physician in Kitgum and he said that he didn't know exactly what it was because he wasn't used to looking at white people's skin, but that his best guess was a fungal infection. So I started to use apply an antifungal cream several times a day.

We Logan and I arrived in Kampala, my neck hadn't really improved much so I went to an 'expensive' private hospital. The doctor that saw me is sitting in the above picture. He thought it was a fungal infection as well and prescribed another antifungal cream. How much was it to see some of the best physicians Uganda has to offer? The physician's consultation was $1.50 and purchasing the fungal cream was $3.00. Perhaps slightly less than it would be in the United States.

While in Kampala I faced a decision of what to do with the 2 weeks off I had before staring my class in Nairobi in July. I had an invitation to work in a hospital in Tanzania for a couple weeks. I also could have visited Ethiopia for a couple weeks or done countless other activities. However, I realized that I had been pushing my self too much during the time in Uganda and that really need to rest. I decided the infection with the latest disease might be an indication that I should let my immune system recover and eat a balanced diet and get plenty of sleep. I briefly contemplated just going home (I have an airline ticket that I can change the return date on for only the $50 change fee). However, I really didn't want to miss out on taking the Tulane Kenya Class. The class sounds amazing (studying the Kenyan Health system by visiting hospitals and NGOs all over the country) and I need the credits to graduate with my MPH. So I decided to return to house where the Columbian nuns and priests live and just rest for two weeks. This might not be the most exotic use of my time in Nairobi, but I think it was the wisest.

Here is a picture of one of the nuns I am staying with. Her name is Dora and she is actually Guetamala, but she joined the Columbian mission. Everyone here speaks Spanish except for me, but they like to practice their English with me so I don't get left out of the conversations too much. There are 6 other nuns, 5 priests, 2 brothers, and my friend Lucia who I met in Tanzania at the language school. This house is such a restful place. Everyone is really nice and they eat a balanced diet with raw fruits and vegetables and they pray twice a day. Something about staying with a group of people that has dedicated their lives to serving God and the poor is really peaceful. They know I am not a nun and that I am not Catholic, but they seem happy to let me stay here anyway.

Some people have asked what I have learned during this trip. I gave this answer with Rick Wood for his article in Stanwood/Camano News and I thought I would share it with you'll as well:

Perhaps one of the most important (and seemingly obvious) lessons I have learned is that there is a cost of living "like the people." This may seem strange, but back in the States I always imagined living like people as this really glorious thing and that I could do it with little or no negative consequences. However, living like the people: eating rice and beans or corn meal for every meal, not getting the proper balanced diet, using a pit latrine where you have to stand in other people's fecal material, sleeping on the floor, bathing with cold water from a basin, etc. have the consequences of discomfort (I was pretty much ready for this), but also the consequence of disease. Typhoid is probably the worst disease I have had since chickenpox when I was seven years old, but it was payment for the opportunity to help in a very impoverished part of Africa and live like the local people. I wouldn't trade the experience of living with the people for a disease-free and comfort-filled trip. However, illness is a hard price that you have to pay for the experience of living like the people and I think I will try to take better care of myself in my future African adventures.

The Craziest Taxi Ride Ever

Since coming to Africa I have had some pretty crazy taxi rides. For example, when the car's battery is dead and the driver has to push the taxi up a hill and then coast down before the car starts (Ethiopia). Or when the driver runs out of gas (Uganda). Or when the driver proposes marriage to you while he is driving (Uganda). Or when the driver drives around the city 4 or 5 times looking for the place he swore he knew exactly how to get to (every country). However, a couple days ago I had a taxi ride that topped them all.

Logan and I took the 14 hour bus ride from Kampala to Nairobi. I wanted to stay in Nairobi for the Kenya Course I will be taking through the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, but Logan wanted to return to Ethiopia where he manages a home for orphans who are HIV positive. There was a taxi driver named Kevin who helped Logan find a truck that would take him from Nairobi to Ethiopia. The taxi driver met us at the bus station and I asked him to take me to my friend's house (the house where all the Columbian nuns and priests live). So we get in the car and start driving. After about 30 seconds Kevin gets a phone call and answers it. All the way in the passenger seat I can hear a woman yelling at him in Swahili on the other end of the phone. Kevin responds in an equally agitated manner, also in Swahili. I can understand certain phrases such as "simu gani?" ("which phone?") and "mgeni" (he was saying something about driving a guest/visitor). Kevin hangs up on the woman, but she calls again, and again, and again.

Finally the taxi driver hands me the phone and says in English, "This woman wants to talk to you." I was slightly startled, but I took the phone only to find a woman hysterically screaming at me in Swahili. She yelled in one breath, "Jina lako nani? Utafanya nini?!"(What is your name? What are you doing?!") I thought she might not know English so was desperately trying to dig up the Swahili I hadn't used for 2 months and give coherent answers to her inquisition in Swahili. I told her my name in Swahili and that I was a student, but she just wouldn't stop yelling. I recognized the Swahili word that means "husband", but I didn't understand the rest of the sentence.

I was a little bewildered so I gave the phone back to Kevin who talked to the woman for a few minutes and hung up on her again. I asked if the woman was his boss because that was the only person I could think of that would want to talk to the passenger in a taxi. Kevin informed me that the woman was his wife and that his wife thinks he is having an affair with another woman. The he said, "Why did you talk to her in Swahili? I told her that I was driving a white-English speaking woman and now she has heard you speak Swahili, and now she thinks I am lying and that I am not driving anyone but I having an affair." I apologized for increasing his marriage problems and asked what I could do to help. He suggested that we go and pick up his wife to that she could see that I really was a white English speaking person that is not having an affair with him. So, we took a 30 minute detour to pick up a very angry middle-aged Kenyan woman. The woman didn't want to talk to her taxi driver husband so she addressed everything to me. For example she would say, "You can tell that man that [meaning her husband] I called his phone and a strange woman answered!" She did not seem at all impressed at all that Kevin was telling the truth and that I was a white English speaking person that he had never seen before that day or that we had driven half an our out of our way to pick her up. Anyway, I ended up spending the taxi ride acting as a mediator between a husband and wife. I thought it was a pretty funny taxi ride. Oh Africa, the crazy things that happen here!

"Even your soul, it runs away"

While we were in Potika we stayed with an exteremly nice family: A man named Michael, his four wives, and his 25 children. The 'junior' or fourth wife was named Rose and she cooked for us and washed our clothes during our stay in Potika. Every evening Michael would come in and chat with use about different things and issues. He is very well educated and informed on many issues surrounding the peacetalks, international politics, and the situation in Northern Uganda. One night the conversation turned to the LRA and LRA abduction experiences. It turns out that Rose, our cook, was abducted several years ago by rebels and escaped by running away and shouting, "The LRA rebels are here!" once she was within earshot of the Ugandan military.

Once we were on the subject of LRA abductions, our translator, Alex decided to tell us his abduction story. He said that when he was 15 years old his mother sent him to take some sugar and oil to his grandfather. Alex and his friend were riding their bikes down a dirt road and some drunk rebels with AK-47s came out of the bush and stopped them. The rebels asked Alex and his friend how old they were and Alex tried to lie and said he was 9 hoping that they would think he was too young to be of any use. They said Alex's friend wasn't strong enough so they let him go, but they took Alex.

Alex said the rebels then told him he was part of the Lord's Resistance Army and the gave him (and other abducted children) an induction into the LRA by making a cross with palm tree butter on their foreheads and told them that if they tried to escape they would be cursed and die. They told him he was part of the LRA and that he could never go back to his family. When the LRA abducts young boys from their families, sometimes the force the boy to kill one or more members of his family. Then they tell him, "You are a murderer now and you can never go back to your village. The LRA is the only life you can have now." Fortunately, Alex's family wasn't nearby so he wasn't forced to kill any of them.

After the induction, they started forcing Alex to do hard labor. Namely, carrying very heavy loads. He said they forced him to carry a backpack full of batteries and bullets in addition to 50kg (over 100 pounds) of rice. The LRA rebels told Alex, "We are not your mother don't complain to us about the load being heavy. If you complain we will shot you. Or if you collapse while you are carrying the loads we will shot you." Alex tried to describe the despair he felt when he was struggling to carry the heavy loads, in constant fear of being shot in the head on the whim of a solider, and thinking that he will never see his family again. He said, "You are so sad your heart feels empty and even your soul, it runs away." I think that this probably describes how many children feel after they have abducted by the LRA. The LRA forces the boys to carry heavy loads or become or to fire weapons and they force the girls to be "wives" for the rebels. Perhaps the fate of the girls is worse. They get gang raped every day until they become pregnant and then the LRA rebels shot them. Unless of course, a girl happens to fall into the good graces of Joseph Kony (the leader of the LRA rebels) and then you can join the ranks of his some 600 'wives' and only be raped by him.

Three weeks after he was abducted, Alex was able to escape while the LRA was fighting with the Ugandan Military. The Ugandan Military captured Alex happily took the batteries and bullets from his backpack and then discussed whether or not they should execute him as an LRA rebel for several hours. Finally they decided to let him go and he was reunited with his family.

HIV/AIDS Prevention in the Potika IDP Camp

The trip to the Potika IDP camp went really well. After the experiences in the Agoro IDP camp I was more prepared and more comfortable teaching about HIV/AIDS in front of large groups of people. The Potika camp is slightly smaller than the Agoro camp (Potika is about 8,000 people instead of 10,000) and is split into two smaller camps that are over a mile apart. We were living in a mud hut in Potika camp A (the northern half of the camp that is about 14 miles from the Sudan border) and we walked to Potika camp B several times a day so we got lots of exercise during our stay. We did most of the same activities that we did in Agoro - video shows about HIV, condom shows and distribution to the drunk men every night, talking with the women and the youth. However, in Potika we were also able to talk in the primary school about HIV/AIDS and stigma in grades 5, 6, and 7. These went really well and the children had a surprisingly high knowledge of HIV.


Here the school children (over a 1,000) are watching a film encouraging education for girls. We gave a very simplified talk about HIV afterwards. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of us standing in front of the classrooms teaching about HIV because we were busy during the classroom visits and never remembered to take a picture.

Here are some community members are watching a film about HIV. We had several (about 5 films about HIV). We had 4 video showings in Potika A and 4 video showings in Potika B as well as a showing at the school and at the military barracks.

Sometimes we played music in Luo to draw people for our video shows or teaching to the youth. We were playing music and I was just taking some pictures. I started to take a picture of this tree and all these children climbed up in the tree and stared dancing. I thought it was very funny so I took a picture for you'll to enjoy.

Here is one of the many "HIV education signs" posted around the elementary school. Logan commented that this is pretty intense. This is a school for children in grades 1-7 and it has signs like this. It is a different world. Most girls drop out of school before they reach 7th grade because they get married at the age of 13 or 14.

I got to sleep in a mud hut! I got to sleep in a mud hut! I got to sleep in a mud hut!

I got to sleep in a mud hut! I got to sleep in a mud hut! I got to sleep in a mud hut! In case you couldn't tell, I was slightly excited byt the fact that I actually got to sleep in a real mud hut with a grass roof in the middle of an Ugandan IDP camp.

Here are more pictures of Potika camp A than you probably wanted to see:

I will say it once again: "Africa is Beautiful!" I took this picture one afternoon when I had nothing else to do. It looked like this almost every day. This is the southern side of Potika Camp A. If you continue down the road the children are running on you will reach Potika Camp B (a little over a mile away).

I just realized this is almost the same picture as the one above, but I am too lazy to take this one off and up load another. The fenced huts were for MSF (Doctors Without Borders) staff, but MSF has left, so now the huts are empty.

The moon over the Potika IDP camp A. This was our view every night.

The sunset over the pit latrines and bathing shelters. The pit latrines were horrible, but this picture is nice.

I called this hut the "fixer upper hut." I remember when my mom first showed me the house our family now owns in WA state. It was a terrible mess. It had a broken window, a skylight that leaked, random wires sticking out of the walls, a hole next to the bathroom sink, a rotting green house, a pot with 2 year old oat meal sitting on the stove, several different colors of paint on the outside of the house, and a yard filled with old cars and 5 foot high weeds. (They told us that everyone else who looked at the house was considering just knocking the house down and building again on the same property). My mom said, "Isn't it beautiful! This is my dream house! It is so perfect. It is cloudy and raining today so you can't see the view, but it has a really nice view." I thought to myself, "This is the worst fixer upper dump I have ever seen in my whole life." Well, now I can't say that anymore. The above picture shows my new standard for the worst fixer dumb I have seen in my whole life. Sorry mom, I was wrong it was possible to do worse.

This was our hut! It was really nice. It was big and had a floor with newly applied black dirt. (For some reason the black dirt is considered 'cleaner' than the normal red/brown dirt).

This is me (and some children) welcoming you to our hut.

This is what the roof of our hut looked like from the inside. Only the big huts have the central beam/log that helps support the roof.

This is what I liked to call the "cool hut" because it has the painted triangles. I tried to convince Alex and Logan that we should paint our hut the same way, but the didn't seem to be that excited about the idea.

This was one of our neighboring huts. I really liked the door made out of flattened USA cooking oil cans given to the camp inhabitants by the World Food Programme.

How to make a Ugandan "Traditional Dish"

I enjoy collecting recipes from other cultures. While we were in Potika we were exposed to a wide variety of unique and interesting dishes. One of them was the, "meat of a small animal who had no name in English." This meat smelled mostly like wet dog, and tasted slightly better. The Camp Commander captured a baby "small animal who has no name in English" and showed it to us and it looked A LOT like a cat, however, the adult probably reached a larger size than the common house cat in the US.

Another dish we were served was, "Green Vegetable and Fish." This is a fairly simple dish and I think that it would be quite easy to make back in the States. So here are the directions:

1) Buy okra leaves OR
Buy the stalks of spinach OR
Mow the lawn and save the grass clippings

2) Buy cans of sardines OR
Go to your local polluted, dirty and over-fished lake and catch some small fish

3) Lay out the sardines or the small fish from the dirty lake to dry in the sun. It is VERY important that they be placed on dirty surface and be easily accessible to flies. The more flies the better. Leave the fish out to dry for at least 3 days until they look like this:


This is a picture to assist in the making of the above listed recipe. (I tried to be very Betty Crockerish and give you a fully illustrated recipe, but unfortunately I don't have the picture of the final product. Hopefully, you can get there without all the pictures).

4) Use a dirty knife to chop the dried sardines or the small fish.

5) Boil water and add the okra/spinach leaves and/or the grass clippings.

6) Add the chopped sardines or fish

7) Cook for several hours, stirring occasionally.

8) Check to make sure the consistency is correct. It should be very slimy. If you use a spoon or a fork to lift some of the grass-mino creation out of the pot, there should be at least 5 inches of slim hanging off the bottom of the spoon. If there is not enough slim, hire a small child to spit saliva into the pot until the dish reaches the correct consistency.

9) Serve to your guests with a ball of posho (tasteless cooked corn flour). If you don't have any corn flour on hand, just make some Cream of Wheat and add to much powder to the water so that it gets really hard and dry.

10) Carefully watchyour guests eat, making sure that they finish their entire serving.

We were served this "Green Vegetable with Fish" while we were in Potika and unfortunately, I don't have a picture of it, because we were being watched by the cook and I didn't want to make her feel bad by taking a picture of the food-grossness.

Six Middle-Aged Men Playing Uno at 10am on a Thursday Morning

Imagine that you are walking down the street at 10 am on a Thursday morning and you see your dad with a 5 other middle aged men all playing Uno with a deck of Titanic Movie playing cards. Would you be a little surprised? Or perhaps you might even have a hard time visualizing what this might look like. Guess, what? Today is your lucky day. I have pictures from the Potika IDP camp that will help you imagine what it might look like.


Alex looks on as a serious game of Uno takes place. They actually keep score and bet on the Uno game. However, they call the game "last card" instead of "Uno".

A game of Uno in an African IDP camp isn't complete without a set of very-worn looking Titanic Love Scene playing cards.

This person actually has a very goo hand. The Jack or 2 of Hearts can go on the 7 of Hearts. Jacks act as "reverse cards", 2s act as "Draw 2" cards, 3s act as "Draw 3" cards, Aces (except for the Ace of spades) act as "change color/suit" cards, the Jokers act as "Draw 5" cards, 8s act as "Skip" cards, and the Ace of Spades acts as a "block draw 5, 3, or 2" card. Also, when you only have 1 card left you yell, "warning!" instead of "Uno!", but other than that it is the same game. (Can you tell that I was slightly bored at times during my stay in the Potika IDP camp?)

A Birthday in Africa!

Usually on my birthday I am madly studying for finals (or taking a final). One year I actually had both a statistics final and a neuropathophysiology final on my birthday. Then I usually have a joint birthday with two of my brothers, Paul and Peter, who have birthdays very close to mine. However, this year I got to spend my birthday in an IDP camp in Africa! It was so cool. We didn't exactly have cake and ice cream. There wasn't even a place to buy toilet paper or bottled water in the camp, but Logan and Alex wanted to celebrate. We continued the birthday tradition of sugar consumption and tooth day by buying soda and biscuits. It was really nice. My first birthday in Africa! I hope it is the first of many!

Birthday sodas! I am sorry this picture is slightly blurry. It was taken by a slightly drunk man who had very little previous experience with a camera.

Birthday Cake substitute. It is a "Biscuit." The are sort-of like the teething biscuits 6 month-olds chew on back in North America. They are quite good.