Grasshopper Night

Today was the day that we really knew the grasshoppers were back. We'd seen flurries of them in the past few days -- and flurries of people filling their sacks with them -- but this morning, when we rounded the bend onto the main road, close to a hundred people were milling around the edge of the road, selling their sacks of collected bugs and buying from the seated sellers who lorded over ENORMOUS, like impossibly enormous, sacks of grasshoppers. The jumpy bugs coated the sides of buildings, flitted through the air like little green fairies, and exploded out of shaken bushes. They were everywhere. Again!

But tonight was the night we fully grasped the plague-like proportions of this visitation. Coming home from dinner we looked ahead down the road, to the same spot we had seen the hordes of bug-buyers and sellers this morning, and saw something impossible. Floodlights illuminated the sky above the cluster of shops but the light was moving -- an undulating upside-down tornado of moving light. It was the grasshoppers, gathered in such jaw-dropping numbers that we had to take a closer look. Nobody else seemed to pay much attention on the otherwise pitch-black road, but our eyes were fixed on the swarm, and all we could say was "Oh. My. God." over and over again.

The pictures won't totally capture it, but trust us when we say that this put the fear of an Old Testament god into us.

Back up Crater Hill

Katrina has been trying to incorporate a little more activity into our lives -- and a little less screen time, which work provides plenty of -- and so around 5:30pm she hustled the two of us out of the hospital and, after dropping our stuff at home, we continued down the road to the path for Crater Hill.

We hadn't been up there since the sunrise hike we posted earlier. We still remembered the way and knew just a little bit more Rufumbira so could greet people we passed on the road. We've become pretty good with greetings and "how are you"s but beyond that we're pretty hopeless. Although Katrina did just learn how to say "where does it hurt" and "point to it" -- pretty useful for a doctor-in-training.

The walk up Crater Hill, once you get to the hill itself, is crazy steep and we were both very out of breath when we finally reached the top, but the view is wonderful. The topography of our corner of Uganda really stands out from this height: hills that rise up out of nowhere, like enormous hands had gathered together piles of earth. We see the patchwork of terraced farming and plots of maize, potatoes, and beans; we see the crowd of people still milling around the market; we see Lake Mutanda just around the bend; and of course there are always the volcanoes.

We walked down in the dusky light. We passed young shepherds with their cows and goats (cowherds? goatherds?) coming in for the night and people streaming out of town having walked in for the day's market or work or maybe a hospital visit. We waded through the still teeming market so Katrina could buy a cabbage -- her new favorite vegetable -- and the stares and solicitous cries of "muzungu!" didn't seem that weird or alienating, just part of the town.

A Ugandan Wedding

Things have been very busy around Kisoro -- hence the paucity of posts. We're still settling into our jobs, with grace I might add, and meanwhile preparing materials and schedules for the next few weeks when we'll be home for a well-deserved Christmas break (yay!). It's amazing how quickly the time has gone.

Last weekend our friend/co-worker Dixon invited us to his sister's wedding. It was a ton of fun. We'll let the pictures speak for us.

See some of you soon for Christmas! Please remove any snow before we arrive; we're very sensitive now.

Follow this link for our web album of the wedding.

https://plus.google.com/photos/112618579612179098204/albums/6093474784992344993?authkey=CKvo7or4hK7t4gE

Vistas from the corner office

Not too much time to spare here, but wanted to share life as its been seen through our eyes over the past few weeks. We've been doing a lot of work in the community with our village health workers and in the classroom training the latest cohort alongside our clinical Kisoroan colleagues.

Sister Immaculate, Kisoro District Hospital's extraordinary mental health nursing officer, teaching the Doctors for Global Health VHWs about joint pain.

Mr. (?Dr.) Sam Musemenali, KDH's head clinical officer, teaching our VHWs about leg swelling. We learned about how patients with chronic leg swelling without any "danger signs" could be instructed to elevate their legs to reduce swelling and discomfort. George, a VHW in the front row, is demonstrating.

Here's Dickson, a nursing officer who is working full time for Doctors for Global Health. Behind him is Muhavura, a volcano taller than Mt Fuji. He and I were just leaving our "Chronic Disease in the Community" clinic on a hill in the midst of corn and bean fields in Mugwata Sooko. I like to think of this as "our office"...

Dickson again -- walking our motorcycle around this truck that had slipped through a muddy patch off the road.

More soon! 

Our Lake Bunyonyi Trip

There's been a lot of action around these parts: Thanksgiving, one big batch of med students headed back to the States, trying fried grasshoppers! But because there's also been a lot of action at work, it's been hard to find time to deliver this news in a timely fashion. We'll get to all of that good stuff, but until then, enjoy a photo gallery of our recent group trip to Lake Bunyoni.

We chartered an awesome guide named Robert who drove nine of us over the mountains and down towards the second deepest lake on the entire continent. It looks like a small sea got poured into a steep, verdant maze of valleys. The mountains drop straight into the lake and the peaks that aren't submerged make up the constellation of islands that fill the lake. Some are inhabited, all are gorgeous.

We hung by the dock at the compound of hillside cottages where we all stayed, took a boat tour with Robert, had lunch on a neighboring island and spent many hours on the patio of Birdnest Hotel -- the Ritz of Bunyonyi. The views were spectacular and we all got a well-deserved break from the hustle-bustle of the hospital. It felt great to visit another world for a weekend.

holy moley, it's the Crested Crane, national bird of Uganda!

we came across a family of baboons on the side of the road

mom and little babe

and dad who, i swear, could have pushed our van over if he'd wanted to

first glimpse of one of the long arms of Bunyonyi

r&r by the "pool"

so lovely... the lake is nice too

thinking about going in...and I did!

...but after these kids paddled past

after-lunch walk on one of the many islands

the sacred ibis! (yes, we're still pretty bird crazy)

daniel relaxing at the bow

L to R: Andrea, Kevin, Hannah, Robert, Priya, Cristina

ahhhh, nothing like a fancy dinner overlooking the lake

Grasshopper Apocalypse! (Part 1 of many...)

Kisoro natives would probably find the title "Grasshopper Heaven" more appropriate since these bugs are serious cash cows. We've been hearing about the impending descent of "the grasshoppers" for weeks now and it seems like today is finally the day. They fill the sky like the snow flurries that are probably starting to stir up in New England.

We both leap away in a barely concealed panic when one lands on us but locals are diving after these things, filling up enormous plastic bags, and then selling them by the side of the road, sometimes de-winged and de-legged for the consumer's convenience. On the way into the hospital today I saw a group of girls poised over a bush; while one of them shook it the others made mad-grabs for the 'hoppers that erupted forth.

We've also been hearing that they make a delicious fried snack. Hence the frenzy about capturing and selling these little guys. One of us is ready to chow down but unwilling to approach a live one, and the other of us is just unwilling, on both fronts. (Two guesses...)

Future posts will probably deal with our sordid attempts to seek out and eat this seasonal snack, but for now we have to just focus on surviving this very Old Testament massive swarm of insects.

Tutorials in the Field

 A few times a month, a clinical officer (usually accompanied by a medical student -- or a lowly elementary school teacher on hiatus) will mobilize a small number of Village Health Workers at a spot near their home villages, usually a church or a school with the purpose of extending their education in a less formal setting.

My friend and clinical officer Dickson and I jumped on a motorcycle last week to lead one of these tutorial sessions. The roads were particularly bad (potholes that resembled the grand canyon -- nearly to scale), and the views were spectacular. We made it to both meeting sites and reviewed the homework the VHWs had been assigned at their last training at the hospital.

There is also time for the VHWs to ask questions they might not have had the guts to during our full-group classes. Even though I was filtered through the very accommodating translating of my fellow teacher Dickson, it felt great to be inspiring questions from interested students and doing my best to answer them. I've picked up enough basic medical knowledge organizing these last few months of VHW trainings to at least nod in assent when I hear a correct answer.

These VHWs are the newest cohort, only officially "on the job" for a the last few months, so they have a lot of questions and doubts but we are doing our best to encourage and empower them to be the primary linkage between their community and the wider healthcare network. Ideally, once they've been trained enough, these men and women (but mostly women!) will be able to treat most common illnesses right in the homes of their neighbors and will have the experience to know when a hospital referral is appropriate.

It feels great to be out riding through the countryside with the wind rushing past us and the sky wide open above, but it's perhaps even more satisfying to arrive to find adult students waiting to learn more about how to best care for the health of their communities.

A new fruit and a new bird!

Katrina is a very adventurous and bold market shopper and that quality led her to discover "tree-tomatoes", also known as tamarillos. The person who gave them this first name must have never actually seen or tasted an actual tomato because the resemblance between the two fruits begins and ends at their roundish shapes.

They are best eaten scooped right out of their skins with a small spoon. The taste is a little like a nectarine, a little like a guava, a little like a kiwi, and a little like something magically new.

I also caught this picture of a what I think is some variety of sunbird eating from the fruity end of the banana tree that grows right outside of our kitchen.

Our kitchen

We haven't provided too many interior shots of our living accommodations so here is a series that shows our rather spartan kitchen.
There's a medium-sized fridge (a puddle of water snaking out across the floor from it is usually the first sign the power went out over night...doesn't happen that often.) We also have two propane-powered burners that can be set to "High" and "Inferno". Ugandans, we hear, do most of their cooking over charcoal so this must not bother them.
The buckets you'll notice are for compost and trash (the two small ones) and for storing water in the very likely scenario of the kitchen sink not working.
I'll also throw in a picture of me relaxing right outside the kitchen door on our porch. It's a lovely place to sit.