Work hard, play hard.

July 29th travels from Kampala to Guru
(skip to the end for the good story)

Two days after arriving to work with TAMTAM, I got a sense of how hard working the team was, but also how much fun they had - and that we would be having - over the next three weeks in Uganda. Last night, Paul, Esther and Eric worked until 3 or 4 AM preparing materials for Koro Sub-county (a large area of Northern Uganda) bednet distribution, despite a 6:30 AM next day departure. Here’s a taste of what keeps those MPAIDS ticking: Paul spent his time carefully assigning over 1300individuals from each village in the sub-county to one of the research test groups (bed net only, net with a follow-up, net with installation, net with installation and follow-up). Esther was busy running off thousands of copies and preparing handout materials for our Thursday training with the village health team (VHTs), and Eric hit the ground running with formatting the data for bednet distribution day, which would take place in a week’s time. It would be harder to get such things printed and done once we reached Gulu, so they did what they had to (while I went to bed).

At 7:30, we arrived at the bus depot, a dirt lot stacked impossibly densely, and waited for the bus to fill up… shop sellers came onto these parked buses with watches, radios, flip flops, newspapers, fried dough and plated breakfasts…and still we waited. But this is a place that demands you adjust to African time. The bus moved out of the packed city and sped through the beautiful countryside a few hours later. It would stop to pick up and drop off travelers en route. At these stops, BBQ meat, bananas, chapattis and other goodies would be waved under our windows by eager sellers.



At one particular stop, Esther and I awoke to find the bus stopped for a time. Taking advantage of this, we both ventured through the blocked aisles (one woman was transporting large sacks of goods from Kampala) toward the outhouses just 100 meters from the road. Just as we stepped out, we heard the bus rev its engines – without delay, we began to run, Esther in her flip flops and I in my runners and dress. “MUZUNGUS!!” the onlookers shouted at the bus to stall it. From inside, Eric and Paul frantically moved over the blockaded aisles to tell the bus driver to stall. The sellers surrounding the bus began to rally (from inside, Eric said that he thought that they were going to riot). Esther and I ran through the screaming and waving crowd to cheers at our successful finish. We waved thank you like third place medal athletes at the rallying crowd and we stepped on the bus, onto safe travels and laughing locals who had enjoyed the show thoroughly.

One final story is best told by video. It’s a must see. It’ll be the most Youtubed video soon, so be the first to check out the fun we had on our journey to Guru, Northern Uganda.