COS Archives - Nancy Wesson Consulting

The Last Mango Tree in Entebbe?

Nancy — Sat, 09 Nov 2013 16:22:00 +0000

It’s the last day in Uganda. “How to spend it,” was my first question – now beginning to be fully aware and a little panicked that I’ve missed something! Well – of course I have – but most of it is too late to capture now – so I’ll have t be satisfied with small bits. First things first – coffee! Good coffee – espresso with full-cream milk. Do some leisurely reading since the slow rain outside has given me permission. Lake Victoria—one of the world’s largest lakes—produces its own weather system and the sky is leaking from ominous slate grey clouds. Hornbills are honking like Howler Monkeys.

The day is off to a sloooow start – and it suits me. Check out time is 10:00 and they’ve given me 30 minutes of grace time all of which has been lost as I have my head buried in Nevada Barr mystery coughed up by the PCV library when I offered it Bloodline in exchange.

Thinking through how I will manage a shower and a change of clothes with no room to lounge in between now and 8:30 PM when I have to leave for the airport—I pack a confusing array of possibilities and discover that the rain has mellowed to a light sprinkle. I zip up bags , leave them in a corner and head out to the zoo and 30 minute walk away.

Arriving at the zoo on the shore of Lake Victoria, I notice an even more ominous cloud line hugging the horizon and hope I will at least a) beat the huge and eager group of primary school kids trying to behave so they can get into the zoo and b) visit the chimps before it starts raining again. The kids are pretty cute—little ones, all decked out in their red school shirts and arranged in a shuffling group with littlest ones in front and taller ones toward the back. So I pick up the pace and make it just in time.

Wandering through the place, I’m reminded again of our first visit and how disappointed I was in what it had to offer and now appreciating the rather casual approach of “housing” animals in natural and unpretentious habitat areas with motes of water and minimal fencing. On the way to the chimps, I pass the Shoebill Crane again. He’s solo and comes to say hello with a clacking his huge beak. Going by the zebras and Boks and some funny looking deer, I hear a crowd of kids and chimps screeching. Hard to tell which is which and who is exciting whom. I found a group of adults (chimps that is) scattered on the other side of the water, just having been fed and protectively guarding their own hordes of fruit. One large male teetering at the water’s edge (they HATE water) caught my attention as he tries to puzzle out how to retrieve a fat red apple bobbing up and down about 10 feet out of reach.

Not to be deterred or denied his treat, he grabs a piece of bamboo and starts slapping at the apple and pulling the bamboo toward him. Not working… He surveys the possibilities and latches onto a dead branch and carefully pulls the apple to the edge and chows down. Finishing that one, he heads for another – starting again with bamboo, throwing that one down and examines a waterlogged piece of wood—discarding it. Searching for the last tool that worked he picked the branch again and I’m thinkin’ this is a pretty clever chimp. I wonder about the evolutionary chain…

Later: now back at the motel having hiked back in a sprinkling rain and sitting under a Mango tree with branches loaded with fist size fruit that’ll be ready for the picking in about a month. The rain is back – and I want a nap – but figure there will be 20 or so hours of that. My feet have not seen anything but sandals in two years and are not happy with being shoved back into “real shoes.” I’ve had to leave the sandals behind – they were good soldiers – repaired numerous times to hold together until….

We are now at “until” and I had room for two pairs of shoes and those have to accommodate fall and winter weather. So one box of Band-Aids and a roll of medical tape later I’m hoping that I can get to Austin without having to go altogether barefoot because of all the blisters.

S-i-x m-o-r-e h-o-u-r-s

Now FOUR hours later and several more chapters of Nevada Barr, I have been graced with an unoccupied room in which to shower. Bless these lovely girls who have taken mercy on me. I am filled with African Tea—a comforting mixture of whole milk boiled with fresh ginger and a bay leaf, then poured over tea bags. Heavenly.

By the time you read this I’ll be tucked into seat 21K on my way to Brussels and dreaming of Mexican food but eating airplane food – better these days than it used to be. Hoping for something tasty and some movies I’ve never seen. well – that last part shouldn’t be hard…

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Time for Safari! Roaches, Rhinos, and the Broken Finger

Nancy — Thu, 03 Oct 2013 17:53:00 +0000

Started on September 23…

Perched in a cushioned blocky wooden chair on the front porch of Carpe Diem Guesthouse overlooking Lake Victoria in Entebbe, it’s 7-ish on a cool, misty morning as I drain my cup of French press coffee. Birds twitter and there’s an occasional rooster down below. Every once is a while a Hornbill flies overhead cackling raucously at the world below. They are so noisy and obnoxious that people have been known to cut down trees to keep them from roosting nearby and they’re loud enough to drown out any competitor. I’m back to “just me,” but with fresh memories of a beautiful three weeksTravis, Brett and Brett’s girl friend, Molly.

They flew out last night and I’m glad we waited until almost the end of my time here to have our visit, because it would have been even more dreadful to put them on a plane had I much more time left in country. They got the full Uganda treatment with the exception of taking public transport. Thank God for that – because even private pushed the limits of most sane people.

I picked them (as the Ugandans say) from the airport September 4^th and we spent the first night in Entebbe. It was pure magic seeing them arrive that night and the beginning of a dream come true. I’ve been on a countdown for the last 6 months! And I have to say they looked spectacular even exhausted after 24 hours of travel. So we hit the hotel and got down to the business of beer pretty fast. Then their first run at mosquito nets.

The next day we got a hire back into Kampala via a detour to tour an organic farm and bio-gas installation. Although that was Brett’s idea, it was a great introduction to Uganda for everyone else and sparked a lot of conversation about sustainability of resources and life in Uganda for the rest of the trip. It gave real-world significance to the Heifer Project. (Check it out if you’re looking for a different way to do Christmas and want to change a life.) We met some new friends (see below), collected some seeds, and saw how the manure from two cows provides cooking gas and lights for this whole installation. Cool…

The following night they were introduced to my life away from home by staying at the Annex, sharing a shower, bath and city noise. Figured I should so this gently before they hit Gulu – after all there was still hot water… Moses, our intrepid Language trainer and tour operator picked us on time at 6AM the next morning and we set off to see the wilds of Africa – starting with a some baboons along the road and a family of five Rhinos at Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary and moving on to chimps later in the day.

What a gift it was to see Uganda through the fresh eyes of those not jaded by too many “it-is-finished-spoiled-not-there” explanations for almost everything. It was a loooong day. We hit the top of the falls at Murcheson Falls in late afternoon to gape at the Nile as it tumbles and plunges 65 feet through a 6-foot crevice and into what’s know as the Albert Nile. Spectacular to say the least. Think we won’t be rafting this one.

I’m glad we had a stellar day, because by the time we arrived at our grim lodging for the night we were almost too tired to care. I had to let go f the idea of a “gentle” introduction to the realities of Uganda… This place made the Annex look like Four Seasons. The cold water hand-held wand-shower was barely a dribble, none of the fans worked, only one outlet worked to charge multiple cameras and phones and stomach trouble had found some of us already. I’d been informed that the place was “nice,” so it was a rather rude shock – and this from someone who’s lived here for two years and is “used” as they say.

Someone had put an almost empty beer bottle on a counter as we entered the place and before we could get back to the door to get the rest of our luggage a Goliath-sized cockroach already had its butt in the air as it peeked head first into the bottle. Brett put a It take a long time to full a hippo. This portion of the Nile is hippo-central: they laze around in cool water during the day and waddle out to eat about 88 lbs of grass at night.

The next day, somewhere during the excitement of people piling out of the car to see wild-things my hand was slammed in the car door, breaking the middle finger, but more on that later. It was it own adventure worthy of another blog installation. How I managed to break only that particular finger I don’t know – the whole hand was in the door. I’m just lucky that way I guess…

After that bit of excitement on the heels of the first night in the little house of horrors, we opted for some luxury the following night. The kids had hit the jet-lag wall and come into full contact with heat, dust, bugs and – the realities of travel in the third world and none of us were in the mood for a possible repeat of the roach hotel. We’d spent a wonderful afternoon (in equatorial sun…) on a barge cruising up the Nile and watched a man catch the biggest fish (Nile Perch) I’ve ever seen in fresh water. Paraa Lodge was right up the road offering good food, pools, cold beer, full-time electricity, hot water and ice for the finger. We went over budget and took it! Aaaahhhh… I

It had rained during the night, so the next morning offered everyone first hand experience with the roads I’ve been complaining about for two years. We watched as a big army truck nearly fell over and had to get pretty creative to get our own 4X4 out of the mire. The next two days were full tilt (no pun intended) as we rode on the top of the vehicle to see everything the park had to offer: Boks, water buffalo rooting in a deep mud-bog,

The park was truly spectacular though marred a bit by new oil drilling which has begun to disturb the elephants. Our sightings were distant and we searched to the bitter end to find their new haunts, but they had moved deeper into the wild areas and away from the new oil-company roads. On the way back to Gulu though we had a great surprise when we whizzed by a big bull munching on a bluff two feet from the road. It happened so fast, we asked our driver to back up, which he did slowly and reluctantly, because elephants are famous for charging and crumpling vehicles that startle them. By the time we crept back, he was long gone, but to get that close was still a thrill and all-in-all our Safari was a complete success.

More will come later. And stay tuned for the “Mad Italian with the Electric Saw.” You can’t make that stuff up…

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We’ve been “sleeping around.” Zanzibar and COS

Nancy — Sun, 21 Jul 2013 15:50:00 +0000

I’ve been sleeping around…. Now that I have your attention, I’m baaack from “sleeping around,” the Ugandan expression for having been traveling and sleeping somewhere else…So yes, I’m happy to say I’ve been “sleeping around” in the wonderful world of sand and sea, blue waters, seafood, fresh breezes, pina-coladas, shopping and reading under the shade of a palm tree.

In the Ugandan vernacular, when you have been gone for a while that statement is, “You have been lost.”Yes – and it was pure heaven. I have now- unfortunately – been found back here in Uganda.We arrived back in Gulu finding neither power nor water. And several in our group came back with the flu.

But I digress. First – more about Zanzibar. How can I spend two years in Africa and not go to a place with such an exotic sounding name: Zanzibar! We went in a noisy troop of six irreverent women of a “certain age” and one brave husband.

Arriving in Kampala a day early because none of us wanted to risk the very real possibility of a bus being cancelled (it is not there) or a delay due to mechanical problems (it is spoiled) or just late (it is not there) we checked into our “home away from home” – the Annex. Disagreeing to some degree over when we should arrive at the airport (the women wanted to leave e-a-r-l-y to avoid the above mentioned list of possible calamities between Kampala and Entebbe, so we did and arrived with more than enough time to spare.

Now – for those of you who have ever griped about the NTSB procedures, which require everything from being X-Ray ed to being felt-up at the airports Stateside, please be assured things are worse elsewhere. Whereas this happens once in the US, it happens at multiple checkpoints in Africa. Entering, one puts everything on the standard conveyor built where thee is evidently some low-level scanning going on. Maybe a little feeling-up and wanding as you go through. Then – of course there is the standard passport checking, fingerprint scanning and distrustful immigration officer whose attempts at intimidation make one feel like you’re the spy-who-came-in-from-the-cold. Then – there is the wait. No gates are announced – one must intuit these things. This was all relatively painless however and we were served a cold, soggy beef and cucumber sandwich as a snack on the plane – so far so good.

We landed at Kilimanjaro airport yes – that Kilimanjaro – to get off the plane and wait around so we could get back on the same plane in 15 minutes to fly another land in ZANZIBAR. Our ride was there ON TIME – the first fabulous difference we have discovered being out of Uganda. we were taken to Santa Monica’s Hostel, a beautiful old convent turned hotel. This place was the site of the last know slave-market in Africa and the history is palpable.

Stone Town is known for its haphazard assembly of narrow, winding streets – and they feel even more tortuous to night. But we were a hungry tribe so found our way to a open place that served seafood, something we’ve all be salivating over for months now. We had lovely King Prawns and fell in bed happy travelers. Stone Town is a classic old Muslim village and it was such a welcome change to see happy, carefree children running and squealing with delight. Still, we had to dodge the ubiquitous motorcycles careening around blind corners, to get to shops filled with tempting wares from antique spice chests to Tanzinite, which I could not afford. It’s said the supply of Tanzinite will be gone in 5-years, but this might just be a clever marketing ploy. Also known for it’s amazing doors, it was hard to make it down an street without taking pictures.

Zanzibar is known for its doors, the design of which originated from the need to stop elephants before that rampaged through it – therefore – all were outfitted with long spikes. Now that elephants no longer go marauding through the streets, the spikes have become decorative brass knobs. The next day, we were wild to get to water and shopping and good coffee and as luck would have it all were found in the same direction! Stone Town, for all of it’s charm is still a tourist mecca so we opted out after getting our fill shops (it can happen).

The last night though we discovered the seafood-buffet that appears in the harbor every night. There are no words to describe it: hundreds of tables laden with skewers of every seafood known to mankind – fish of every variety – squid – octopus all dredged in spices.

Since we’d eaten elsewhere – being a little suspicious of seafood that’s been sitting out for god knows how long – I opted for a “pizza” of chocolate and bananas grilled on a Segiri. Interesting but not to-die-for.

Next day, after coffee on the beach we were picked up ON TIME (one could get used to this) and taken on a spice-tour before getting to our beach place in Paje. Something like old plantation grounds, it shared the land with a school and we were met by a gaggle of little Muslim school-girls who all wanted their pictures taken. I can’t believe how much we learned about spices and their plants. The Swahili meal was good and we took off for Paje and our hotel, Ndame.

Now, I’ve spent time on some beautiful beaches and this one has to fall near the top of the list: talcum soft sand and clear blue waters, protected by a reef line out to which you could walk at low tide. Tides on this side of the island are extreme, so at slack tide you can walk out almost half a mile.

The highlight of the trip was a snorkeling day which got off to a slightly rough start when we headed out on a old wooden boat with an unhappy motor. Fortunately, when it sputtered to a stop we were still close to the beach and after going back in for a new fuel line we somehow managed to be on our way. Slipping by a family of dolphins we were invited by our pilot to have a swim with the dolphins. This amounted to jumping in – in a mad clamor and swimming like hell to “follow them.” I know this will come as a surprise, but dolphins are faster than humans so it was a bit of a cluster, but still exciting to be that close in the water. I did manage to hover over a small school, including babies, at about 20 feet below me.

Having snorkeled in the Bahamas and Caribbean, the fish here by comparison were not the bright neon beauties I’d expected, but much more subdued in coloring and I’m a little curious as the evolutionary or environmental cause for this. Sounds like a Google question to me… Oh but it was glorious to be in the water again, paddling along over this very different reef. Starving by this time, we were taken to one of the most spectacular virgin sandbars – in the Indian Ocean where our trusty guides became to unload a table and chairs, a shaggy shade cloth canopy, four lobsters and a Sigiri. While we beach combed and marveled at the jaw-dropping beauty of this place, they grilled a spectacular fresh seafood lunch accompanied by cardamom rice and tomato curry. Heaven. On the trip home, we snorkeled for a few more minutes over a reef consisting only of flat flow-petal like formations. We arrived back just in time to wash the salt off and climb into slightly more civilized clothes to have dinner at The Rock. The venue was spectacular and the food mediocre (unless you had the lobster at $50/plate). That was July 4^th and I can tell you that everyday I spend here makes me appreciate the US – warts and all.

After days on the beach, eating like there’s no tomorrow, we headed back on July 7^th and were brought hard-back to reality as we got to the airport after waking at 4:30 AM for a 5:00 AM pickup and hour drive back to the airport. We were greeted with the news that out flight had been cancelled and changed to a flight that would – are you ready for this – leave Zanzibar, fly to Dar el Selam, put us on another plane which would fly is BACK To ZANZIBAR where we would then fly to Nairobi – and then – at some point – get us to Entebbe. Unable to explain why this was illogical, we finally worked with Precision Air and ended up being divided into three separate groups on three separate flights. Our little group of three spent 11 hours in the Nairobi airport, before boarding a 10:30 PM flight into Entebbe. It appears we are still in Africa and still dealing with air travel, despite the illusion that we may have spent time in relative order. While in Nairobi we witness a near riot of flight delays and had to admit, we sympathized. The good part of the flight was seeing Mt. Kilimanjaro out the port window.

Close of Service Conference (COS) was next and we road a rowdy bus filled with our compatriots to Jinga and discovered to our great delight that we would spend the next two days at a beautiful resort on the Nile. During our two years, we have lived like paupers, stayed a hostels sharing bathrooms and dormitory style hotel rooms so we were pretty happy to arrive at a real honest-to-god resort with beautiful rooms overlooking the Nile, complete with a bar, decent food and monkeys.

“Superlative” awards were given and and yours-truly was granted a dubious moniker. I accept this PC Emmy proudly and thank all the opportunities along the way to further tweak my vocabulary. Since some readers might be offended if I printed it and I’m trying somewhat to keep this “suitable for all audiences,” you will just have to wait until I get home to hear it.Suffice it to say, that a sense humor and a few well-placed bad words are necessary tools for the insanity here. The award will be framed and put in a prominent location in whatever place a call home next, lest I ever forget this roller-coaster-ride experience we call Peace Corps.

Still, after all this time one go from the pits of despair to the top of the mountain in a matter of seconds. And this morning as a friend and I plodded through ankle-deep mud from a beautiful all night rain and were cursing the process, we looked up to discover a huge herd of Ankoli cattle like the ones below being shepherded through the alley in front of my house. And in that moment, I loved Uganda… again.

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