A tropical disease and more.

WARNING: This is a really long entry. The first part is all about health stuff -- feel free to skip down to the interesting part about meeting with Darfurian rebels groups instead.

I haven't posted in over a week, and this is in large part due to the fact that I have been really ill. At the risk of sharing too much, I had a couple of really bad days with my stomach, after which things settled down to the point where I felt fine unless I ate anything -- and then I felt violently, horribly unwell. I went to see a doctor when it first started, and he said, "Oh, it will pass." In retrospect, he was very wrong... he just assumed that I was having stomach issues because I'm white and in Uganda, so it must not need treatment. Well, he was wrong. A week later, and I still couldn't eat without feeling sick, so I had stopped eating entirely. I had also started taking a broad spectrum antibiotic that I happened to have with me, to see if it would be help. (This was stupid. You'll understand why in a minute.)

When I got to the office on Monday morning, I was feeling really weak and dizzy, so I went back to see a different doctor. She diagnosed it as an amoeba and gave me two drugs to take to treat it. I decided to get my INR checked while I was there (for those not "in the know": this is a measure of how "clotty" my blood is, based on the amount of Coumadin I'm taking). Not only did they literally stick me with 5 different needles in 5 different places before they could finally get enough blood for the machine to work, but... my INR was 5.4. It's supposed to be between 2.0 and 3.0, and anything above 4.0 puts me at risk for severe internal and/or external bleeding. Needless to say, I panicked a little bit. The doctor told me not to panic, it's not really a big deal until you hit 8.0 or 9.0 -- but I knew that wasn't true, so that just threw my entire faith in her medical advice and opinion into question. In the same breath as telling me it was no big deal, she told me not to take boda bodas, because I would bleed too much if I got hurt and it would be a problem. Oh, okay doctor. Screw you.

I left the clinic in a pretty foul mood and feeling really terrible, but I went back to the office to try to tough it out. As soon as my boss found out, she insisted that I a) stay in the office long enough to eat lunch (I hadn't eaten in two days), and then b) go home and rest. I did stay and eat, and then I had a colleague call a special hire (a private taxi) to take me home, as I was too miserable-feeling to take shared taxis and had been forbidden from taking a boda.

When I got home, I decided the world hated me. There was a soccer game going on in the field behind my building, and the kids were screaming non-stop. There were also a few drummers that were just beating on the drums over and over again. I literally wanted to die. I was so miserable, eating had made me feel worse, and I just wanted to sleep. No such luck -- I tried moving to different parts of the flat, but you could hear this soccer game (which lasted four hours) everywhere. When the power went out around 7pm on top of everything else, I burst into tears and just sat on the couch and cried for a while. Not my proudest moment.

My boss had insisted that I go back to the clinic and see the British GP who runs the place and is her personal doctor. I thought about canceling, but I ended up calling a special hire to come get me, and I dragged myself back to the clinic. I had been warned the doctor was very "brusque and very British," which he was, but also very warm and lovely. He did some tests, which revealed nothing -- which confirmed that it was Giardia (a parasite that takes up residence in the GI tract), which doesn't often show up on tests. He said the treatment for Giardia is the same as what the doctor had given me the day before for the supposed amoeba, but he said I should skip the first drug (the one that was going to interfere with the Coumadin anyway) because it makes you feel horrible for 24 hours and isn't necessary. So I stopped taking that one, and moved on to the second drug. I took another day (Wednesday) off from work to heal up a bit and get my INR checked again (4.5), and then on Thursday, I was back at the office.

So, on Thursday, they threw me back into things. My one boss called me in the morning to tell me that I was going to go with my other boss to take notes for interviews with Darfurian rebel movements. Oh, okay. Apparently, a Darfurian colleague said that the representatives would feel more comfortable talking to my organization if there was a white face there as well -- so that was me, the token white person.

It's the same research project as before, on Darfurian citizenship and belonging in an independent South Sudan, but these interviews were more focused on the political element: what has the Southern Sudanese government said? How do these movements see the Darfurian presence in South Sudan? Questions like that. We did two interviews on Thursday, and then another two today. My boss told me I should feel free to ask questions if I have any, but it takes so much concentration to take good notes on what everyone is saying that I didn't speak up very often.

For the last one today (when we met with a really big/well-known rebel group, which shall remain nameless), we met at Kampala Serena Hotel. The hotel is huge, situated on 17 acres. It has its own auditorium, and President Mouseveni apparently has an office in one of the buildings. The Queen stayed at this hotel when she visited on 2008, and apparently rooms cost $2,500 per night. My boss also told me that it's on a site where Idi Amin had killing "fields," where political opponents were tortured and killed. You could hardly tell today: it's well-manicured and beautifully designed, with a lovely fountain and pond area in the middle.

So, for now I'm feeling much better -- Emily and I went to Mamba Point Pizzeria last night at my insistence. I got a four cheese pizza with Gorgonzola, mozzarella, feta and parmesan, and it was so good. I am going to dream about this pizza for days. There's another place, Krua Thai, that I want to try soon. I have to say, the food in Kampala is really quite good and varied. Every type of cuisine you could want (except maybe authentic Mexican food), they've got it and they apparently do it well. Chinese, Korean, Indian, Thai, American, Italian.... mmm, I'm getting hungry just thinking about it. And let me tell you, it's such a delight to be hungry after the week I've had.

An African wedding.

Yesterday was a bit strange. I woke up feeling sort of ill -- nothing specific, just a general sense of malaise. As soon as I went downstairs to reception, everyone commented on the fact that I didn't look well. I realized I hadn't eaten since lunch the previous day, so I had some cereal in the hopes that it would help me feel better. It didn't.

I had already decided to go to the pharmacy nearby to get something for the burn on my leg, so I added "something for feeling yucky" to my list. Diane, the motel owner's wife, walked with me to make sure the pharmacy didn't rip me off. I got a vitamin E lotion (instead of the cream for burns they initially offered, which was full of "natural herbs" from China. I was skeptical...), and then decided that maybe I should get a painkiller of some sort. The tricky thing was that, because of the Coumadin I'm still taking for the pulmonary embolism, I can only take acetominophen (Tylenol), not ibuprofen (Advil). There isn't Tylenol or Advil in this part of the world, so I tried to tell the pharmacist that I needed acetominophen. She stared blankly at me, and then had me look it up in her reference book. Apparently they call it paracetamol here, and that's what's in Panadol (the main painkiller they use). So I bought some Panadol, as well as some antacid sort of thing in case the Panadol didn't help my stomach feel more settled, and the vitamin E cream. It was all expensive -- 53,000 UGX, which is only around $20, but buys a lot more here than $20 does at home.

On the walk back to the motel, it occurred to me that I might also be dehydrated, so I bought three bottles of water at the supermarket. When we got back, I took the Panadol and drank one of the bottles of water, and I started to feel better. I decided to see what Emily was up to, but she was in Ntinda running errands. We planned for her to call me when she was on her way back, so that I could go see the apartment and meet the puppy. I didn't hear anything from her for about an hour, though, so I decided to take a nap until she called. She never called -- she texted me three hours later to say she was still out shopping, and I told her never mind, as I had agreed to go with Diane to her friend's wedding that evening.

I realized at that point that it was already 5:30, and we had agreed to leave for the wedding around 5. I got up, got dressed, and went downstairs, only to find that Diane wasn't ready yet. When she was, we got in her car and left the motel. It turned out that Diane had promised to visit her friend's baby in the hospital on the way, so we went to a private hospital and up to the children's ward, where we found a few of Diane's friends and a very happy-looking baby in a grown-up sized bed. The baby apparently has had a few episodes of trouble breathing, but she seemed fine when we were there. Diane told me that she had looked at the same hospital when she was looking for a place to give birth to one of her kids, but she felt it was "too luxurious." It would definitely not be considered luxurious by Western standards, but it wasn't terrible either.

In any case, we only stayed for a few minutes, and then went on to the wedding venue. Immediately after we parked, a professional photographer stopped us to take our picture. I was a little confused -- it seemed sort of "red carpet" for a wedding, but as it turns out, the photographers later circulate among the guests and try to sell the photos. Diane bought one of them for me. I only have a physical copy of the picture, but I took a photo of the photo with my digital camera so you all could see it. I look kind of stupid, but oh well.


We went over into a garden of sorts, where there was a giant tent set up with tables and chairs underneath it. One of Diane's girlfriends put us at a table with her and some of Diane's other friends and their husbands. By the time we got there, dinner was already being served, so we went over and got our food; it was all traditional Ugandan food like matoke and peanut sauce, green beans and rice rice, and some other things I couldn't quite identify. There was a separate tent in front of the big tent where the bridal party all sat -- the bride and groom and the maids of honor and groomsmen. The church ceremony had already taken place earlier in the day: the photographers were distributing photos from the church that guests could buy as well.

A random observation: women appear to wear to weddings in Uganda what Americans would consider to be prom dresses. I haven't seen so many tacky/ugly dresses since 2004.

There was a Master of Ceremonies who announced that it was time for the bride's family to speak. A lot of it was in another language (not Luganda, I don't think), but some of it was English, and Diane explained some of it to me. This was an inter-tribal wedding: the groom was from eastern Uganda and the bride from western Uganda. The bride's uncle, mother, and brother all spoke, and they introduced basically every other member of the family -- there were a lot of siblings. The bride's uncle gave the couple a cow, although Diane later explained that it really means the value of a cow; since the husband isn't a cattle-herder and they'll likely live in Kampala, an actual cow wouldn't do them a lot of good. The bride's brother, who gave her away in church (their father had died when the bride was a child) gave a speech that talked a lot about how, even though the bride is a "corporate woman" with a job, she has to remember that the man is the head of the household, and that's how it is in every species on the planet, so she has to let him be in charge. I sort of bristled at that (predictably), but everyone else seemed to be nodding and murmuring about how true it was.

After the bride's family spoke, it was the groom's family's turn. They all wore really bright colors, and they even seemed to have a sort of "theme song" that played as they danced up to the emcee/microphone. Again, what they said was mostly not in English, but they talked about having "crossed the Nile" to retrieve their bride and welcome her to the family. As the bride and groom had already been together for a long time and have two sons together, it all seemed a bit overly formal -- I mean, having added two kids to the groom's family seems like it would make her already part of the family, right? Apparently not.

The next thing that happened was cutting the cake. According to Diane, this is the really important moment in Ugandan weddings, when things really become official. The bride and groom got up from their separate tent and danced/processed together over to the cake, which the bridesmaids had stuck sparklers in. There was a bubble machine and a local musician who walked after them and sang local songs. At the moment that the bride cut the cake, there were also confetti guns that went off -- it was actually a very cool, colorful moment. After they cut the cake, the couple went and sat on the ground in front of the table with the cake on it, and they fed each other pieces of the cake that way. That was the first time the emcee referred to them as "Mr. and Mrs. so-and-so," so I think it's sort of the equivalent of "I now pronounce you man and wife."

The bride carried a plate of cake around for a bit, and the bridesmaids also helped distribute chunks of cake. At that point, the couple left to change clothes. When they came back in, everyone stood up to greet the bride, who walked up an unofficial aisle through all the tables to the groom. Then they distributed all the mini-cakes; the parents and other important family members each got one, and Diane's group of friends got one as well to share among them. Throughout all of this, the couple's sons were having a ball with the bubble machine, which was rather adorable.

Next, the couple stood up by their tent to receive all the gifts people had brought. After that was over, the bride and groom each spoke for a few minutes -- and after that, it was time to dance.

I got up and danced with Diane and her group of friends until my leg/the burn started to hurt, and then I went to sit down. I was relieved for an excuse, because the bride had come over and was dancing in the group -- and the video cameras followed the bride. I felt like it was a bit silly for a badly-dancing white stranger to be in the wedding videos, so it was a bit uncomfortable for me to be there. In any case, as people got drunker, it became more interesting to dance with the mzungu, I guess, because one of the venue workers decided to dance with me for a while. Diane came to rescue me, and I went back out with her group of friends, but then a man dancing with them decided he really wanted to dance with me, and even after I obliged for a bit, he still wouldn't leave me alone. Diane and her friends ended up having to yell at him to stop, even though that wasn't terribly effective.

Diane and I left after a while, and decided to go to a bar for a bit instead of going straight back to the motel. We went to a place called Fat Boyz. I have no idea what part of the city we were in, and I couldn't find it again if you paid me. There was a group of guys taking turns playing pool, which we watched for a while and tried to guess who would win each individual game. After we finished our drinks, we came back to the motel and I went to bed.