I should be happy that there is even internet available at all, and to some extent I am. However, when you are used to broadband connection speeds, waiting on what I only assume is dial up is excruciating. From the time I loaded up Firefox in the library until the time I was able to log in and see my hotmail account: 30 minutes. I ended up playing solitaire while waiting….. There was also about a 3-5 minute wait after I clicked on an email before it came up. When you get 30-40 junk mails daily, it took a while. The university here has a well visited library, full of students at all hours. Looking around I see students reading from textbooks in laboratory science, computer programming, and pharmacy. I have seen several students working on presentations for natural resource conservation, so hopefully that is also an active area for study.
After two hours in the computer lab and getting frustrated enough to throw a brick through the computer screen, I headed up to sit on one of the buildings on campus. There is a wireless network that was located somewhere on campus. After several days of asking around, I was able to track down the administrator of the network in the computer science building who was very kind and gave me the network key. As long as I was within about 5 feet of the building, I was able to receive bandwidth at something approaching real-time. Unfortunately it only lasted for 5 minutes, but it was enough to upload some blog entries.
No ward rounds today- Ugandan independence day. Instead me and a group of volunteers and students are heading to Queen Elizabeth National Park to go on some game expeditions and a boat launch. Then, if there are still permits available, chimpanzee tracking on Sunday. I would like to go see the gorillas down south in Bwindi, since that is one of the things that Uganda is known for; the ability to hike in and observe at close range a troop of mountain gorillas. Permits are a hot commodity, since they often book out months in advance and the park administrators are very careful not to let too many people in or get to close to the gorillas. Unfortunately, it’s at least $500 USD, which is a little spendy for this trip. Maybe next time. Plus, there’s enough to see in the other parts of Southern Uganda that I could spend a year here and still not see everything.
Looking over my map of Uganda today, preparing the route for the weekend. I was a little shocked when I looked to the north of Uganda and saw a warning on the area surrounding lake Albert “Caution Roads in This Area May be Mined.” Years of rebellion and reprisals by and against the Lords Republican Army, or LRA has left northern Uganda a bit unsettled…. Luckily the park is nowhere near this area. Of course, there is a red label over the very southern part (to which we will not be going) of QENP stating “Travel Warning in this Region Due to Civil Unrest in Rwanda and Congo.” This map is also several years old, so who knows how accurate it is. According to locals, there hasn’t been any significant refugee influx since January, when apparently 30,000 refugees crossed the hippo infested river to reach Uganda from the Congo and Rwanda. No word on if any fell victim to wildlife.
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