Every Little Thing Gonna Be All Right

As I've said before, I really love driving.  A lot.  And I've not yet hired a driver.  Partly because I have yet to find the right person and partly because I actually really like driving.  Sure it's stressful here, but it's liberating and fun at the same time.

So today when I needed to meet a group going to Ngamba Island to see a chimpanzee conservation project at the Entebbe Wildlife Center, I was excited for my first real drive out of the city.  I was a little apprehensive about getting the right road out of town and left quite early to avoid traffic heading out of the city.

The drive was easy and pleasant, and the roads were clear.  I made it to Entebbe with plenty of time to spare.  I thought I drove by the turn off to the wildlife center, so I looked for a place to turn around.  There were about three cars behind me.  I spied a gas station up ahead on the right and proceeded to turn.  I put on my turn signal.  I know there was nobody coming in the opposite direction.  The cars behind me were all slowing for me to be able to turn.

I turned.  And as I was halfway into the gas station's entrance, I saw a blur of yellow on my right and - in slow motion - I watched a box truck plow into my side of the car and crumple my entire front fender.  Stunned, I just sort of stopped and watched in shock as the truck - just a few second ago so eager to continue towards the airport - hurriedly turn around and take off in the opposite direction.  I was still in "oh my god did that really just happen?" mode and turned off the car, got out, and asked the bystanders whether it was my fault.  They all shook their heads adamantly and said no.  Then they said I should have signaled, maybe that would have stopped him.  I am pretty positive I did.  I always do.  The truck had come out of nowhere and decided to pass four cars on a two-lane road.  By the time he realized I was turning it was too late.

As the crowd grew around me, I finally realized that I had been in a car accident and that I was unscathed.  No bruises, no scrapes, no cuts, no whiplash.  I called the Embassy and reported what had happened, still a little bit in shock.  Then I called a friend who could help put a chain in motion of help.  I started crying while on the phone with him and didn't stop for about an hour.  The phone calls kept coming, people checking in to see how I was, whether I was safe, ask what I needed.  I couldn't stop crying, out of anger and shock and embarrassment more than anything else.  The bystanders had written down the truck's number plate.  They helped me move the car farther onto the property in a safe place and pick up the scattered pieces that might be vital for repairs later on.  I entertained the thought of just loading all the parts into the car and driving to the wildlife center to catch the boat.  After all, the car seemed mechanically sound.  (That was my first impulse the only other time I've ever been in an accident too, when I hit a tree driving down our icy dirt road and totaled my beloved Saab.  I was fine then, too.)  

Instead I waited in the car, reading a travel book, until help arrived.  A quick assessment of the damage and it was decided the car could be driven back to the garage in Kampala, 40 km away.  I felt calm enough to drive again.  My colleague removed the crumpled fender and jerry-rigged the broken parts enough to drive the car.  We waited for the police to come, but they never did.  Instead, amazing me beyond belief, the owner of the truck came.  He had heard about the accident - whether from the driver or a bystander who knew him, I don't know - and he came to make sure I was okay, apologize for his driver, and to offer to pay for repairs.  This floored me.  He didn't have to do this.  Many people wouldn't.  But he did, and he was sincere.  And I am grateful for that.  It's not about the money, though that's helpful.  It's about the compassion and responsibility and business ethics. 

The drive back was slow but only slightly nerve-wracking.  I put in Bob Marley's Legend, one of my favorite albums, and sang along.  The steering alignment was off, the car was a bit shaky, and there was quite a bit of screeching noises.  But I made it, thanks to my wonderful colleague escorting me.  Traffic was awful by then, but we still made it.  A friend met me at the garage, where we took pictures of the car and I finally breathed a sigh of relief and laughed about it.  We ran errands and had a normal Saturday.  I came home and cuddled my cats and started to decompress.  I tried to nap but my mind kept running through things.  Why hadn't the airbag deployed?  What if I had realized that I hadn't actually missed the turn, that it was still ahead?  Will my car look as good once it's fixed?  I finally got up and invited friends over for a movie fest.  They brought dinner and snacks and we had a great evening of normality.  A great end to an eventful day.

When I looked at the calendar late this evening I realized that one year ago today I walked into my mom's hospital room, hours before she had surgery for a brain aneurysm.  There's something about late January, apparently.  But both these misfortunes ended well, which is as much as anyone could ask for.  And as for the chimpanzees, I'll see them another day. 

My poor car.

The door didn't sustain too much damage, but the door handle is gone.

Salvaged fender and headlight.

I got some odd looks as I drove back like this.

Eeeeeeh.

Other than a crack in the bumper, this side is unscathed.

Get well soon!

4th Foreign Service Swap

Ack, I meant to do this last week, but the internet company kept shutting off my connection, and I got frustrated.  They assure me this has been fixed.  Which they also assured me of the first 15 times, but oh well.

The awesome Amy, a fellow FS-blogger and Basketville-aholic, is hosting the 4th annual FS Swap.  I have only participated once before - before realizing that it was difficult to compile a KSA care package - but it was a lot of fun!  And now that I'm in a country with awesome and available/affordable/abundant handicrafts and am excited to play again!  And you should too!

So meander on over to Amy's blog and leave a comment by January 19th.  And if you happen to be in Moscow, Amy also has a labrador puppy that might interest you.  She's a cutie!

Lake Victoria Cruise

Last month I joined a group of colleagues for a sunset cruise on Lake Victoria.  Aside from distant glimpses of the lake from my apartment complex and the occasional drive to/from the airport in Entebbe, I hadn't really spent time on/near the lake.  The cruise was fairly sedate - far from a booze cruise, which suited me just fine - and we had a lovely time spotting birds and admiring the lush greenery along the shoreline. 

This country is truly blessed in its weather and ecology and environment - I am thankful every day to serve in such a gorgeous and weather-pleasant country.

I have plans to go on a different sort of lake cruise in a couple of weeks so will hopefully have more pictures from a different area.

Speke Munyonyo Resort - our launch, and site of dozens of weddings on a beautiful Saturday afternoon.

To me, acacias are a quintessential sign of being in Africa. I love them. And if I am mistaken and this is not actually an acacia, just let me revel in my misconception :-).

A number of people in canoes were on the water - some fishing, some commuting.

We saw tons of birds, including this pretty flock.

Gorgeous egret hanging out in his little island of plants

Sunset over Lake Victoria

Sights, Sounds, and Smells

How's that for a hodgepodge of topics?

Let's take them in turns.

Sounds:  I have been puttering around today with my iTunes playing in the background.  And I know it's a playlist of my favorite songs, but, man, is it really hitting the spot!  Every song brings great memories and associations.  Don't you love that?

Smells:  I came home the other day to a terrible smell in my apartment.  It smelled like something burning.  I assessed every outlet and appliance with no success.  I thought I had isolated the smell to the living room and opened windows to try and flush it out.  When I went to bed it was still not gone, so I let the cats into my room so they wouldn't spend all night with the awful smell.  They are not easy to sleep with.  So that meant I didn't sleep and was almost late for the shuttle for the next morning.  (I was almost late not so much because of the lack of sleep but because my hot water was nonexistent, and I spent the morning trying out each of three showers trying to get hot water to no avail.)  Before I left I hastily scribbled a note to my housekeeper to try and find the smell and eliminate it.  When I came home she told me it was from cleaning the oven.  Which made perfect sense!  I felt stupid for not thinking of it earlier.  She apologized for worrying me; it was not a huge deal so we laughed it off. 

In the good smells department, I have been getting fresh bouquets of flowers at the farmers' market on Fridays.  I pick out a weird assortment of flowers and have the vendor put them together prettily, and I am always amazed at how inexpensive the total is.  For such gorgeous flowers that would cost tens of dollars in the U.S. I pay a fraction of the cost because they're locally sourced.  This week I have an odd combination of fuchsia anthurium, gerbera daisies, lilies, and some purple baby's-breath-like thing.  It is making my house smell so amazing, particularly the lilies.  I love it!

As for sights, this is the really exciting one!  Way to bury the lede, I know.

I came home from work the other day and walked inside and starting putting things away.  My doorbell rang; it was a neighbor who had been a few steps behind me coming up the stairs.  She asked whether I'd seen the monkeys.  Umm, no!

Sure enough, I went back outside and found a whole troop of vervet monkeys in our backyard!!  I had only previously seen one monkey at a time, so this was super exciting.  The troop had one alpha male, several mature females, numerous juveniles, and two little babies.  There were about 15 in total.  They were inside the fence around our pool and on the stairs up to another neighbor's house and were having a grand old time!  They had absolutely no concern for us being there.  The juveniles jumped and played and fought and just were absolutely adorable.  The alpha male did some exploring, played a little hide-and-seek with us around a lamp post, and climbed up our building to get a better view.  The babies alternated between trying to play with the juveniles and cuddling with their moms.  At one point I ran inside to grab my camera and probably spent 30 minutes out there watching them until they finally moved on down the hill.  My favorite pics and videos were of the moms cuddling and grooming their babies.  The juveniles also provided some great comic relief by jumping into and promptly falling out of a very small tree.  A couple came close to us but never frighteningly close. 

My experiences in southern Africa with vervet monkeys was always overwhelmingly negative because they associated humans with food and made general pests out of themselves, knocking over garbage cans and literally stealing food out of people's hands at safari camps.  This troop in particular does not have that same association, thankfully, and none of our neighbors have any intention of doing anything to change this.  Our guards say they've never even tried to get into our garbage cans, thankfully. 

Anyway, I love these neighbors.  They only come around every now and then and are very self-sufficient and non-threatening.  People have come to find a monkey sitting on their porch furniture before, but that's about as invasive as they've been.  It's a nice little neighborhood :-).

Enjoy some of the pics below.  The videos won't upload with my slow internet, so these will have to do.  (Note: I reduced the files sizes to get them to upload, so the quality is not great.)

Juveniles playing in the yard

One of the more curious monkeys

Chilling

The tree they liked to jump into.  And fall out of.

Trying to coax the juveniles to get a move on.

Momma and baby.

Contemplating a swim.  They did not swim, thankfully.

Foraging :-)

Top 12 for 2012

I am going to try and follow in Donna's and Zoe's footsteps with a Top 12 for 2012 blog.  They both did a great job of linking theirs to blog posts, but since I may have been a bit lax about posting some momentous occasions, mine will be less awesome that way. 

1.  My family is healthy.  The year started out with a pretty major health scare for my mother, but she (and we) weathered it well, and we've been lucky otherwise.

2.  Weddings!  I attended the civil ceremony of one of my best friends in London in April, a beautiful affair joining two wonderful families.  In August I officiated at the marriage of my brother and sister-in-law, an absolutely perfect event that also brought together two wonderful families.

3.  I finished my first tour in the Foreign Service, in Jeddah.  This went a long way in proving to myself that joining the FS was the right decision for me AND that I can live in a difficult place for two years.  I had a great tour in Jeddah, with some days being harder than others, and it was a great place for me to learn a lot, fast, about the FS. 

4.  I moved back to Africa!  I spent much of 2003-05 living in South Africa and traveled extensively in the southern countries of this awesome continent.  I was excited but a little cautious moving back to Africa, albeit a different region, wondering if I'd idealized these youthful years.  I hadn't.  I love it here.  It's a huge continent with dozens of countries and thousands of different experiences, so generalizing is always a bad thing, but I think AF is a bureau I'm happy to stick with.

5.  Travel - I visited and/or lived in seven different countries this year, including four new ones for my life list (UAE, Oman, Uganda, and Ghana). 

6.  Friends.  2012 has been a great year for meeting new friends and reconnecting with tried and true friends. 

7.  Family.  I got to spend time with lots of family members, including all my brothers and their SOs and children, and lots of extended family.  My youngest niece and nephew are learning about Africa and Uganda and sort of understand why I'm not around all that much.  My grandmother and I did a fun road trip in WV this fall and discovered some new spots to visit and gorgeous scenery. 

8.  My cats not only survived numerous overseas and domestic moves this year, but they've become decent travelers.  Not good, but not as horrible as I had feared.  They love Kampala and are happy in my apartment.  Griffin is convinced the small guest room is his and guards it fiercely against intruders.  Callaghan prefers the top of the bookshelves or the linen closet.

9.  Between home leave and training, I had a great time reacquainting myself with U.S. culture.  I especially loved my time in DC and revisiting some favorite spots and discovering new ones.  Seeing lots of FS friends was great fun, as was the training itself.  Bonus was meeting a plethora of FS bloggers - such an awesome group!

10.  Parrotfish Festival - this one kind of goes along with #s 3 and 5, but it was on my Saudi bucket list and so long-anticipated that it definitely qualifies as a top 12.  And, really, where else could I have participated in such a phenomenally fun and offbeat tradition?

11.  I turned 30 in 2012.  And the world didn't end.  The two aren't related, really, but it was an exercise in patience and forgiveness to fully embrace 30.  Though I still get excited when demographic surveys place me in the 18-34 or similar group :-). 

12.  This is sort of a cop-out, but I really enjoyed getting to do things like go see the Celtics play, see Lyle Lovett in concert (twice!), go to the movies, and the like.  That wasn't generally possible in Saudi, and even in Kampala I've been able to go to a pantomime, Christmas concert, and a ballet performance in my first weeks at post. 

All right.  That was slightly more difficult than I'd anticipated, perhaps because I lumped a lot of things into pretty broad categories.  And I did manage to do more blog links than I originally anticipated!  AND I got it done before 2012 ended!  Though I clearly need to do some updates dating back many months...

Here's to an awesome 2013 for all of us!  I'm not into resolutions, so I won't go there, but may 2013 be all that you want it to be, and more :-).

Kittens in Kampala

I'm taking advantage of decent internet to post a few photos.  These are of my kittens in their various favorite spots in our new apartment.

Actually, this is the kitties in our NYC hotel during Hurricane Sandy.

Griffin finds the highest spot in the kitchen on our first night.

Content, isn't he?

That's more appropriate, ottoman in the living room.

Or chair in the master bedroom.

Callaghan playing with one of his favorite toys.

Griffin on top of the china cabinet.

Griffin in the (un)packing paper.

Callaghan on pillows on hangers on a chair.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

And I have been remiss about posting.  And this won't be too exciting a post.

Things have been quite busy here, which has been great.  I've gotten to participate in some neat things for work and feel like I'm getting a better pulse on the goings on here.  That feels really good.  When I left Jeddah, I was pretty confident about what I knew, who I knew, and what I didn't know.  Things were easy because I knew my way around.  My last official event was one where I knew almost everyone quite well, and the ease I felt with them had taken an entire tour to build.  Now, I'm starting over.  This is the way life is in the Foreign Service, and it comes with its own rewards and challenges.  Having one tour under my belt and starting over here makes me appreciate this reality a little bit more.

I've started driving here.  Just a little.  And only a couple days a week.  I still don't feel comfortable in rush hour.  I thought I'd be more comfortable driving than I am, but the perils on the road are numerous and difficult to avoid.  Traffic isn't the problem.  It's more sharing space on the road when it's full of cars, matatus, boda bodas, pedestrians, occasional animals, and more than its fair share of potholes and steep drop-offs.  This takes a certain familiarity that I don't completely possess yet.  But I can drive if I need to and know my way around well enough not to get hopelessly lost.  I am planning to hire a driver but arrived at the wrong time of the year for picking up someone from a departing family.  Maybe after the holidays my leads will pan out.

It's wonderful to come home to a home-cooked meal a few days a week!  My housekeeper is a fantastic cook and often knows what I want even if I don't.  She also keeps me well-stocked with fresh fruit salads and lots of great vegetables.  I take a huge tupperware container full of fruit in to work everyday and munch on it all afternoon.  It's perfect for those moments when my blood sugar starts to tank and I need a little pick-me-up.

A couple weeks ago I got a great introduction to Kampala's cultural offerings, attending a pantomime of Red Riding Hood and a performance by the Ugandan National Contemporary Ballet in the same week.  So much fun!  I can't wait for more outings like this.  I also attended a wonderful Christmas concert at a local church with a renowned choir, which was a fabulous way to spend a Sunday afternoon.  I did a CLO-organized dinner cruise on Lake Victoria, which was very pleasant.  What a gorgeous setting with good friends, great music, and decent food.  I look forward to more lake adventures - though the very serious bilharzia threat will keep me out of the water itself for the most part.  There's something about parasitic snails...

I'm planning my first getaways for the new year, both in Uganda and out.  More on that later.  Some very exciting trips in the works!

Decorating for Christmas has been quite haphazard since I can only find 2/3 of my Christmas tree among my HHE - and the part that's missing is the bottom and stand!  So I have trinkets out here and there that the cats knock over for fun numerous times per day.  Christmas will be a fun day of celebration with friends and lots of food - I'm excited!  It's the second best thing to being with family.
Anyway, I hope all of your celebrations are wonderful, whatever your chosen holidays are!  More, with photos even!, soon :-).

Happy Kampala Days

I am firmly in the honeymoon stage of culture shock, and I'm loving every minute of it!

So here's what I'm loving so far (for those moments down the road when I'm deep in a culture shock valley):

-Work:  Awesome.  Challenging, rewarding, entertaining, and fun.  And that's all I'm going to say about that.

-Housing:  Awesome.  After Jeddah I was due some good housing karma, and I've got it in spades.  It has its quirks, but it's pretty darn wonderful.  And my neighbors are all awesome as well. 

-Settling in:  My car was in my driveway the day after I arrived.  My HHE and UAB were delivered within a week.  I have two internet sources set up, and today I had DSTV installed. 

-Weather:  Pretty much perfect.  I even love the rain!  60-80 every day of the year, give or take a few degrees?  It doesn't get much better than that.

-People:  Old friends, new friends, an abundance of good people.  Colleagues and Ugandans alike - they're all wonderful.  It's not every post you can get invited to a Thanksgiving with people you've just met and feel right at home. 

-House help:  I am lucky to have found a wonderfully caring and talented housekeeper my first week here.  She loves my cats, and they love her.  She cooks well, does the grocery shopping, and anticipates things.  And she's not too zealous about putting things away in places I'll never find them, which is always a plus!

-Happy cats:  The cats settled in quickly and never looked back.  They're slowly getting over their fear of strangers - Callie even emerged when the DSTV guys were here and making noise today!

-Green:  So, so, so much lovely green.  After two years in the Gulf, it's much appreciated.  I will never get tired of looking at banana trees and palm trees and fields of lush crops.  This is an amazingly fertile country.  Which leads me to my next point.

-Food:  The fruits and veggies here are great - fresh, quality, and affordable.  I do miss berries, but it's a tradeoff for the most wonderful bananas and pineapples and mangoes and papaya and...  I've been to a few restaurants, all of which have been really good.  I can get pretty much anything I need on the local economy, so I'm feeling good about this.

-Life:     No matter what time of day or night, the city is full of life.  On a drive to the airport a few weeks ago in the wee hours of the morning, I was amazed at how many people were up and about.  Comparatively, Saudi felt fairly sterile in terms of life on the streets as you drive through the city.  Some parts were more lively than others, but they pale in comparison to Uganda.  Or, maybe, it was dominated by cars and not people.  Here, I never fail to smile on my commutes to and from work - there's so much to see and take in!  People, shops, animals, markets, street food, farmers, factories, matatus, boda bodas, and more - it's awesome.  Someone said to me when I arrived that I shouldn't have the notion that streets were meant for cars to drive on - that's merely one of their many functions.  And it's true!  It's a little scary to imagine driving in these very chaotic but exciting streets, something I'll try out this weekend, but I'm excited all the same.  You really get to know a place by driving there, and it was something I missed out on in Saudi.  I do want to hire a driver for part of the time, but I am not over the novelty being allowed to drive. 

I know I'm forgetting something, but it's the end of a long week, and I have my bedroom finally almost perfect with the addition of working A/C, so sleep is a pleasant thing again :-).

So, dear reader, please remind me of this post in 3-5 months when I'm cursing many of these same attributes of post!  Gotta love the roller coaster of culture shock!

True Thankfulness

Happy Belated Thanksgiving!  I meant to post on the actual day, but I slept super late and got up just in time to go to  a coworker's home for a lovely, delicious dinner.  Even though I was away from family, it was wonderful to spend a cozy holiday with new friends :-).

There is much to be thankful for this year.  I have a phenomenal family, amazing friends around the world, a rewarding and challenging career that provides me endless adventure and financial stability, two fuzzy and loving kitties, and oh so much more.  But I would be remiss if I didn't mention one of the defining events of 2012:  I am immeasurably thankful that my mother is still with me. 

I didn't blog too much about it at the time, but I came terrifyingly close to losing my mother to a brain aneurysm in January 2012.  But for luck and a world-class neurosurgeon and surgical team, things could have gone very badly.  It has been a long year of recovery for my mother, who also had a knee replacement in the weeks before the brain surgery, but she's doing phenomenally well.  The recovery has been frustrating and slow and, at times, just plain humorous, but she's back to work full time (and then some) and back to her old lifestyle (now improved with less knee pain!). 

I'm thankful that my father - who has been a rock through all of this - and I were able to lean on each other during that horrific week, when we came home every night from the hospital to an empty house, not sure what the next day would bring.  Along with my brothers, we clung to every improvement by Mom, whether it was coming out of her medically induced coma days earlier than predicted or yelling at nurses (anger is a common side effect of brain surgery, apparently) or taking her first unaided steps or coming home from the hospital.  We laughed and cried and celebrated together, and I'm not sure any of us could have done it alone.  And we didn't do it alone - our family, friends, and communities came together to support our family in incredibly touching ways.

And so, when my mother danced with my brother at his wedding this summer, to the family favorite "If I Had A Boat", I broke down (along with many others in the room) because it was something that we just weren't sure was going to happen months earlier. 

While I wish our family, and especially Mom, never had to go through this ordeal, I am thankful that we had the best possible outcome.  Not a day has gone by that I haven't felt thankful to have my family healthy and intact. 

And, in the parlance of my family's newest inside joke courtesy of a post-anesthesia/post-craniotomy haze, I am eternally thankful that the wombats weren't really out to get anyone that week.  Or any week since.

I hope you all had memorable and delicious Thanksgiving celebrations, whatever the circumstances and wherever you found yourself this year.