First Days Summary

6/09/09 CARIO, EGYPT – I arrived in Cairo at about eight in the evening after flying out of Frankfurt, It was really cool to look out of the window and see the pyramids of giza in the late evening light. It hadn’t even occurred to me that with the whole swine flu mess, my travels may get a bit more difficult. I was put on a bus with all of the passengers on my flight and taken to a “quarantine area”, Egyptian health care workers wearing gloves and N95 respirators handed us cards to fill out and had us walk in front of a thermal camera to try and pinpoint those who were spiking a fever. I was only a transition passenger so I didn’t seem to fit into any of the lines that people were forming, the coordinators just kept bouncing me around. Finally after about a half an hour of standing shoulder to shoulder with confused people someone finally pulled me out of the line and into the gate area. To put a top on all of that, the aircraft that EgyptAir chose for my last flight was older than I am and sounded rickety the whole way to Uganda.

6/10/09 Entebbe – 4 AM, As I step through the doorway of the decades old 737, the hot humid air of the tropics hits me in the face. Walking down the set of stairs rolled up to the plane, I recognize the front of Entebbe’s terminal building from my previous visit. The customs area has undergone a complete makeover, colorful art adorns the walls and new offices have been installed along the back wall. Thankfully this time all of my luggage showed up with in a few minutes and I head to the parking lot. A gentleman holding a sign written in highlighter says “Jonathan Wong”, he introduces himself as Matti and shows me to a car close by. After throwing my bags in the trunk the gravity of my situation hits, I start thinking, “well you wanted to come back…you’re back…now what?”. My feeling of uneasiness continues until Matti starts the car and the song “bye, bye, bye” blasts through the speaker system, I couldn’t contain my laughter.

6/10/09 – 6:20 AM: So here’s a real kicker, I’ve gotten a collective two hours of sleep on three different planes since I left Wisconsin on Monday morning. I finally get a bed to sleep in at 5 o’clock in the morning and for some reason I’m still awake. So…why not pull out the laptop and write my post for today. I am currently typing in the dark with my headlamp since the room doesn’t have a light blub (that’s my fault, I tried to move it from another socket when I got here and I dropped it). My guess is that I’m gonna crash at some point today given what my sleep schedule has been like, I guess I’m just a little high strung after my last two flights.
6/10/09 Got up at 4:30 today, I missed my 2 o’clock meeting with Susan because I slept through the alarm I had set for one. Susan was nice enough to give me a home cooked meal for dinner, the vegetable stir fry was just what I needed. I’ve been downing water like crazy since about 6. I hadn’t had anything to drink for about 12 hours and the humidity was starting to get to me. I was originally going to venture out to get some myself but I figured it wouldn’t be good since I still don’t have a phone or even know where I am. I made sure that I had some just in case by using one of my handy purification tablets in my nalgene. Funny story, I was sitting in Susan’s apartment for a bit while she was out and I kept hearing a noise while reading the paper. It wasn’t until I finally put it down that I noticed that I rooster has found his way in and was sitting at my feet staring at me.

6-11-09 Had my first full day in Kampala today, went to Mulago to meet up with some of the friends of the course. One of the medical students, Joe, was nice enough to take me around the city to pick up a few things. The main things I acquired today were a cell phone and some personal items. I got to experience riding in mutatus again and I got my first shot at brushing the dust off of my Lugandan.