Hujambo! This is the story of my trip to Uganda, which actually begins long before Uganda. About four years-ago, I returned from Peace Corps and my dad began traveling to accredit international laboratories as part of his work as a pathologist. He invited me to join him again and again, and as the lives of two busy adults often interplay, we found no synchronicity. That was… until my recent 3-week vacation between my 3rd and 4th year of medical school.
My dad will tell it another way. He’ll say that he took my brother to Kenya last year, so he had to take me to Uganda this year. But truth be told, it had nothing to do with the destination or sibling equality. It was pure chance of timing, but after four years of failed timing, I’m glad it finally came to be. After all, didn’t I (his future physician child and returned Peace Corps Volunteer) deserve to share the family experience of international medical work?
The saddest part of our trip to Africa was the beginning. My dad and I found out days before leaving the country that he had $3,000 stolen by an African internet scammer. I won’t go into details, but this is the type of problem that Africa is well known for, unfortunately. And to make matters worse, the day before we left the country there were violent riots in our destination city. Five Ugandans were killed and flights were cancelled.
As we left the USA, I wasn’t sure what was awaiting me in Uganda. After a long 13-hour sleepless flight, I saw my first glimpse of Africa, the yellow, dusty landscape of Addis Ababba Ethiopia. Our second flight took us to Uganda, with contrasting lush green hills. We flew down over Lake Victoria, and I had a wonderful view. I was expecting clouds because it was “rainy season,” but all I saw was gorgeous sunshine with cool breeze.
There was no difficulty getting visas, or getting to the hotel. And on our way into town I saw one of the most impressive things of my whole trip to Africa – a guy with about 50 live chickens driving a motorcycle! The chickens were flapping, giving the impression that the “chicken-cycle” was a live creature, half human and half wings.
We hired a driver named Mousa (pronounced “Moose- ah”) to take us around Kampala. We stopped at a craft market, supermarket, the parliament, Makarere University and “Old Kampala” with its impressive Gadaffi Mosque. We didn’t go inside since Bin Laden had just been killed. However, the atmosphere in Kampala seemed too caught up in its own political unrest to care much about Bin Laden.
The next day I accompanied my dad to the research laboratory. The political situation did not deter us from the trip’s purpose. The lab was a research laboratory dedicated to HIV, and their biggest project was developing an HIV vaccine currently in stage 1 trial. The director told me he feels in about 15 years we’ll probably have an effective HIV vaccine, at least for the African strain of HIV.
Amazing, isn’t it? All the work that goes into developing a successful vaccine is astounding – freezers, energy to store specimens, all the specimens extracted by hands, volunteer patients, years of dedication, etc. To respect all these efforts we ought to feel honored as patients able to get annual flu shots (and other vaccines).
Yet I know so many people who don’t even make the effort to get vaccinated. Do it! Vaccines are miraculous, in fact so miraculous that I might even overlook the cost of my recent vaccines for Uganda (which I recently discovered is not covered by my insurance).
I observed my dad while he did his work, and asked lots of questions about the research. Then, I got my own personal tour of Makarere University medical school and public hospital. It felt similar to my experiences touring the public hospital in the Dominican Republic. Room after room of patients overflowing onto the floors, warm spaces with scarce plumbing, doctors and medical supplies. The main difference were individual specialty departments for diseases common in Africa like “Sickle-Cell Disease” and “Burkitt’s Lymphoma.”
Uganda met my expectations as a developing country in political turmoil, with very little tourism. However, I didn’t expect to love the culture as much as I did, especially after having $3,000 stolen. Yet my experience with Ugandans was friendly and polite, and I loved our conversations. I felt it was easy to ask people about everything, and they seemed excited to tell me about their birds, politics, weddings, lack of cemeteries, etc.
Ugandan cuisine was delicious – soups, goat stew, mashed plantains, peanut butter sauce and tropical fruits. I tried grasshoppers and even those were delicious. Seriously- imagine buttery-cheesy pop corn.
And after the inspection was over, dad and I went on a safari to the national parks, overflowing with animals which are crowded into small confines by the growing population. Villages shared fence-less borders with the land that was once all home to elephants and lions. And chimpanzees watched me as intently as I watched them.
I found myself excited by the natural beauty, and the birth-land to humanity. I want to go back, and maybe somebody as a physician I will. After all, it seemed like every American we met had some connection to health care or public health projects.
Posted by Liz 
