Pakwach and the crazy long journey

The past two days have been crazy and exhausting, but a cool adventure. Yesterday morning began with a super fun 3am wake up in order to get on the road to Pakwach, a town in the northwest of Uganda. The roads for the first few hours of the drive were awful. It was dark and bumpy and eight of us were in a Toyota Prado, which i kind of like a land cruiser. I slept a bit, but the bumps made it a little hard to actually fall asleep. Once we got to the town of Soroti the roads improved drastically and life was a lot better. We saw the only flight school in Eastern Africa in Soroti and then continued on our journey. We stopped in Lira for a quick bite to eat around 10am and then hit the road once again. On the last part of the drive you are on the northern edge of Murchinson Falls National Park (the one we went to our first week in Uganda) and we saw a bunch of Kobs, which are antelope, and two huge elephants under a palm tree. Since we were driving pretty fast, and not on the journey to see animals I didn't get a picture, but they were really big and fairly close. Finally at noon, yes NOON, we arrived in Pakwach. 

The reason we made the journey was kind of a sad one. The account for GHU who does all of the different office's book passed away last week. I think I may have met him briefly when we went to the GHU office in Kampala, but from what everyone said about him he was quite a remarkable man. Everyone said how kind, smart, genuine, etc. he was and it really makes wish I had the opportunity to know him. From what I gather he died of complications of a pulmonary embolism and was only in his forties. He also left behind his wife and three children, which makes me so sad. The women really don't have any rights to the belongings of their husbands here, including the land and home, which only the man's name is on. We were having a conversation about women's rights here on Monday while out of the field and basically if the husbands parents/aunts/uncles want to they can take the home away from the window and she is left with nothing and no where to go. Many women here don't work, so it can be a real problem. I don't know how often it happens, but it sounds awful. I don't think it will happen with his family from what everyone was saying, but I just find it interesting.

The service was quite nice, and very long. There were so many people there it was crazy! He really was a loved man. The whole ceremony lasted around four hours and was filled with many long speeches, a viewing (my first ever, it was really strange), and the lowering of the casket into the ground. The whole thing took place at his parents' village and he was buried in a grassy area in front of the homes. After the casket was lowered into the ground, traditional food was served and everyone ate. I'm not a huge fan of the beef here, and I don't really like beans that much so I mostly had rice and some cabbage, but it was really nice.

After the ceremony we waited around for a while since Phidelis had to literally drive like 200km each way to go fill up at the right gas station for which GHU gave him a gas card. It took him hours and we had to wait around for a long time. In the meantime Joan and I acquired an audience of I think every child in the village. They were so funny. We were just sitting there chatting with Joshua, a trainer for the MISC study, and they just watched us and would giggle and whatnot when we acknowledge them. A few eventually got the courage to shake our hands, but apparently we are kind of scary. Some even tried out some of their english, and they love to try to mimic our "accents."  Their parents would inevitably shoo them away at some point because they though the kids were bothering us, but I was sadder when they got shooed away since they weren't bothering us at all. We showed them our iPhone and took some pictures and showed them some games which was fun since they don't see cameras and iPhones often at all.

Finally a little after 7pm Phidelis got back and we were able to leave Pakwach. The way back we decided to take a route through Kampala instead of going to way we came so we could avoid the bumpy roads. By the time we were on the road it was already getting dark so we didn't get to see any animals and the large waterfall on the Nile that we passed over was too dark to see (we could hear it at least). We made a few stops along the way to grab a water or use the toilet, but we mostly just headed straight back. The journey home took 10 hours, which was so so long, especially since we drove for 8 hours on the way there on the same day! Luckily I had my iPad with me so I watched around four episodes of Friends, watched Enchanted, and played some games to keep myself occupied when I was too uncomfortable to sleep (I was crammed in the middle seat all ten of those hours home). Just before we got to Kampala around 1:30am we switched drivers since Phidelis had been driving for 22 and a half straight hours at that point. Caesar, one of the trainers, drove the last four hours and we arrived back in Tororo at 5:30am this morning! It was nuts!

When we got back we were locked out of the guest house since the lock it up at night (at least we know were safe!), but we eventually honked enough that the night guard let us in. I got ready for bed super fast and went to sleep for four hours before getting up for work today.

This morning I forced myself to get up around 10am so I could fall asleep at a normal hour tonight and I showered which felt amazing after feeling so gross all day yesterday. I got to work by 11:30am and I was the only one from the Pakwach group there! No one else who went on the journey even got there before 3pm and only three of us came in at all. People in the office were actually kind of shocked I was there. I got a good bit of work done today though and I enjoy the people I'm around here, so I was happy to be there today. At the end of the day we had a little birthday celebration for the June babies of the office, one of whom had here birthday today, and there was a cake (much dryer than our cakes, and less sweet, but still good)!

After work Joan and I went to the movie store and I bought The Lucky One and Admission to watch sometime. We also went to the bank and to the supermarket because we decided we wanted to attempt to make a funfetti cake from scratch, though it will have to be minus the sprinkles since they don't have them here, so really it's just yellow cake. Oh, and I forgot to write this before, but the eggs here are so different than the eggs at home. They taste the same, but the yokes of the eggs here are white! So every preparation of the egg looks like you are eating egg whites, haha. Seeing a hard boiled egg with a white yoke is so weird, but so cool. Anyways, we got the ingredients to the best of our ability and we will hopefully make the cake next week. We also decided we were craving pizza, so we went to the Crystal and got some and met a lady named Phibby (pronounced Phoebe) who was really cool and will be an awesome person to know here. She is the executive director of a program that is helping to offer cervical cancer screenings and stuff for women here in Uganda. She does other stuff too, but this is long and I'm getting sick of typing, haha. 

So now it is bedtime, and I am definitely tired. Tomorrow will be a normal day and then Friday it's off to Jinja too meet up with our other five classmates for the weekend!

Joan showing a few kids an iPhone game