The next crop

The beanstalks are slowly crawling from the ground up along their deftly placed bean poles. And five medical students have arrived by air and 9 hours of overland van to Kisoro! "Professor Jerry," as he is called here, is the man who started it all and holds it together. He'd landed just a few days ago but yesterday was our first sit down meeting with him at Traveler's Rest hotel. As we were waiting for him to wrap up the meeting with our colleague Moses, we watched the rap video being filmed under the veranda. We also played with Lucky, the new puppy at Traveler's and also with Moses's 5 year old sister Elizabeth, who told me she wanted to be a doctor when she grows up! Jerry, Andrew, Andrea, and I mostly talked about the many meetings to come -- whenever Jerry is in Kisoro there are meetings upon meetings upon meetings. I've heard it called a marathon meeting, but it seems more like a relay race to me. It will be very helpful to getting us up to speed with all of the various projects that are currently at varying levels of active. It was great to see him. Andrew snapped these great vistas on our way back. You can see volcanoes! (We saw four at once but it was hard to capture in the photo.)

As we were walking back a van filled with 5 mzungus and headed to our compound passed us by. We helped the new arrivals settle in and then took them to Sawa Sawa Guesthouse for dinner. While there was a good amount of moonlight to go by, the new recruits managed to pull their flashlights and headlamps from their suitcase to further illuminate the way. No one fell into any big puddles and we even caught our first glimpse of a big frog/toad who along with his sisters and brothers has been croaking an impressive night soundscape for the last 2 weeks.