ugandan rambles
Have bene back from Uganda over a week and only just getting my head straight. The intensity of a tropical African country hits the soft European system in more ways than one. No hope of any blogging once we flew north, lucky to find power supply and a loo let alone internet connection. Though bizarrely excellent phone signal everywhere, much better than in Northcote Rd Battersea or down in Dorset!
Anyway promised Rhona at work a few blogs for the lancet’s student site, so rather than reinvent the wheel anyone interested should take a look at:
http://www.thelancetstudent.com/2007/10/30/northern-uganda-a-different-world/#more-366
But in summary, the main things that haunt me about the trip: horrendous sanitation, why can there not be water and basic sewage systems in a lush environment where it rains most days? Nutrition: again, lush environment, mango trees, ground nuts, some livestock, vegetables surely easy to grow – so why the grinding poverty and malnourished infants with swollen bellies reminiscent of those horrendous TV pictures from ethiopia in the mid 1980s? And finally…I will never forget lying in bed in Kampala the day before we left, raging fever in the middle of the night and the dismal struggle of finding the hole in the floor loo every half hour, not helped by the oversized bathroom door which made it almost impossible to get to the loo in less than 2 minutes. No that’s no way to sign off: the longest memory will be of the most warm, blackest skinned people (well not the Asian Ugandans I guess), and there wish to help you with everything, and their joy that you have taken the time and trouble to visit their extraordinary country. And what a divided country, the north verses the rest, to be documented in the Lancet before the end of the year.
