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| That's our apartment on the right. |
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| Mortimer |
I’ve been in Uganda for three days now. It doesn’t really feel like it though. We arrived very late on Tuesday, after 23 hours of traveling. Our driver, Alfred, was waiting for us at the airport with a sign. He gave us lots of tips during our hour-long drive from Entebbe to Kampala: everyone is nice, ask for help; don’t ride the boda bodas without a helmet; Kampala is safe, but don’t be stupid. We made it to our apartment a little after midnight. The apartment is nice. It’s down a little dirt road with some goats tied up at the end. Lindsay named one of them Mortimer. There are a lot of places nearby, so we’ve been walking ten or fifteen minutes to get to shops and food and internet. We’re about a fifteen minute drive from Makerere University, where we went for the first time yesterday. I’m definitely curious to see how our work there is going to pan out. It will certainly be interesting.
Today we finally found coffee. First time in three days, which I think might be the longest I’ve ever gone without coffee. And it wasn’t instant coffee. French pressed, in fact. When we were walking down a dirt road trying to find the Pop-Up Cafe, we spotted an adorable old man walking towards us. As we passed, he called out, “What’s your country?” We told him Canada and the US and he excitedly recounted stories of visiting a student of his in Ottawa and working in New York, Baltimore, and DC. Apparently he used to be an economic advisor for Uganda. “I was at the United Nations,” he told us. He also taught economics at Makerere for eighteen years before he retired. He is 83 years and four months old and only leaves the house on Fridays. Glad we happened to be walking down that particular street at the right time.
(There would be a picture of Lindsay and the old man here, but when she asked to take a picture with him, he said, "Not now, I'm still talking!" And then we never got to it.)
