Strikes and Gutters

My entire experience here in Uganda has been quite the rollercoaster ride of great days and weeks immediately followed by pretty miserable ones. These highs and lows are common in everyday life of course, but going through it on a different continent has made these emotional swings seem much more extreme. Over time I've been levelling out, and the good days and bad days have become almost as normal as they are at home. In the past few weeks, I've been through a pretty humorous, depending on how you look at it, ride through these good and bad times.

About two weeks ago I succeeded in purchasing a bicycle to cruise around on for the remainder of my time here. Getting back into the saddle of a bicycle, even if it is a rattly, squeaky, really heavy one with only one gearing ratio to choose from and crooked pedals, has made me realize just how much I've been missing that two-wheeled freedom in my life for the last two months. The type of bicycle I bought is known as a boda-boda bicycle here. Boda-boda refers to the bicycles and motorcycles which have an extra seat on the back for carrying passengers. The bodas are a sort of staple mode of short distance transport in this part of Africa. I bought a boda because they're cheaper and I'm able to strap my backpack onto the extra seat to carry it to work when the bags heavily loaded with my brick of a computer and two liters of water.

The above combination ended up leading to what is probably the biggest bummer of my time here. Last Thursday, I had my backpack strapped onto my bike with my computer and two liters of boiled water in my Nalgenes inside. Somehow, as I was riding, one of the water bottles worked its way open dumping an entire liter inside my bag. I didn't realize this until I arrived at my host organization's office and saw my bag dripping. A few expletives came to mind as I thought of how my water bottles were situated right above my computer. The computer was off, but unfortunately the battery was in and fully charged. I've yet to get any sign of life back from the computer, but my camera and papers did dry out nicely. I'm hoping I'll be able to at least salvage data from the hard drive once I get home.

Then, this past Tuesay, I found out the grant I requested to fund the construction of a few BioSand Water filters has been, well, granted! A great success, but with slightly less than three weeks left in my internship now I may not see any filters put into use before I leave. Luckily that's just a small personal sastifaction which may not be granted while the important task of providing the residents of Makooma Community with a way to treat their own drinking water will be accomplished by my host organization even after I'm gone.


Strikes and gutters, dude.