OK – a new adventure everyday here. Today we (my supervisor and I) went to check out the progress on the house and found them painting, replacing window locks, installing wire mesh over the open wall vents that every Ugandan house has, etc. The screens are a big deal because the Mosquitoes are a big deal and will come through these vents, covering the walls during the day, resting up for their big night of blood sucking. Once we move in, I will cut up mosquito netting and tape it into the window wells in the hope we can open the windows at night and let some cooler air in. It’s more complicated than it sounds… I promise never to forget my malaria meds.
So, moving forward, there was considerable discussion about who cares for the yard, rare because most homes in the area have no grass. The front yard is usually dirt – period. We will be in charge of “slashing” our yard. A slasher looks a little like a golf club, but the club part is a flattened blade wielded a bit like a golf swing (sorry Arnold)) but instead of whacking a golf ball, one hacks grass. Wait a minute – that sounds a lot like golf after all!
In schools, the kids are assigned slashing duties and do it as a group.
Other high points: there is a huge hole in the backyard into which all debris is thrown – garbage, trees, plastic, dead animals – anything else that you’d put into trash pickup in the states and plenty you wouldn’t. I don’t like this, but that’s the way it is… Uganda will not change to satisfy one Mzungu.
No – we’re not to the Mental Ward yet…. that part is coming. My landlady, Caroline, is a nurse at one of the three local hospitals, all of which westerners are told to avoid at all costs. I went to one of them today as I tagged along with a woman in our office to see where she was taking her blanket to have it cleaned. The hospital laundry is the only place in town with an electric dryer, so for 10,000 shillings you can get your blanket washed and dried. Good to know. While this hospital is considered one of the best, I’m mighty glad Peace Corps will air-evacuate us out if something is life threatening! But I digress.
Caroline called this afternoon and said I could meet her at work to pick up the lease, so I hiked over and saw a long line of Ugandans waiting to be allowed through the hospital gates – waiting for the guard to decide when it was time for their appointment. This seems a little random to me, but I’m relieved to be allowed through without so much as a question as to purpose or my destination. Caroline has told me to ask for the Mental Ward and I admit to feeling a little wary about this… I pass several buildings where people are having minor procedures done – open air, with little sanitary protocol. Down the hill, there is a long building with bars on the widows and a lot of locked gates. The hair on my neck stands up. Inside the large rooms are rows of plastic covered beds – mostly empty. I’m glad about this, because at some point I am directed down these halls past some of these rooms. Visions of being accidentally mis-identified as a patient and having a “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” experience creep on me. I hurry and I am lost.
Someone is finally sent out to find the white woman wandering around. Easy to spot, I am rescued and directed to the back of one of these prison like buildings where Caroline informs me a man has just been brought in biting everyone. But “not to worry” he has been sedated and put in a holding cell, where he will continue to receive sedation until he calms down sufficiently to be processed, at which point he will receive daily injections of an anti-psychotic drug. At some point he’ll be released with a week’s worth of drugs and have to come back weekly for more. This is not his first time here – he’s back because his wife left him.
And so the day continues. I make it out of the Mental Ward, back to my safe little chair at my organization where I remind myself to always behave and not bite anyone, no matter how much they might deserve it.
I’m re-ensconced in my hotel room, have had a nice cold shower and a dinner of beans and rice at the Happy Nest Hotel across the street. My soon-to-be house mate and I shared a single serving large enough to feed a family of eight for the cost of about $2.00 American.
The end of today…