No internet, no water….no electricity?!?!

Monday, June 30, 2008

So, that’s not completely true (the title). I had water for this morning, but it was gone by the time we came back for dinner. The electricity went out for a little while, but came back on the same day… No, I’m still not complaining. I had my hot sponge-bath (the water smelled a little like burning, but no, I’m not complaining.

In other news, Lauren and I went to the Mpererwe dump today, tooks lots of pictures which I am still unable to upload due to internets speeds that rival a sloth moving in slow motion. There were tons of birds eating the trash and just hanging about, but more importantly, there were tons of people. People were sifting through trash to find useful items, planting their vegetables, and working in the water treatment plant. Yea, you read that right, people were planting fruit and vegetables in the dump that is leaching tons of horrible chemicals into the land and water. Three words for you: COMMUNITY HEALTH EDUCATION! I know the pictures will make things clearer so I am going to go to a café with really fast connection speeds and make sure to get them up tomorrow.

The COBES students, medical and public health students from Makerere University, were with us at the dump and they too had never seen it. They remarked about how dirty the “treated” water was, how disgusting it was that a cow was drinking from the untreated water, and were even scared of breathing in lead. So basically, we did what all medical school professors do; we simply told them about a problem affecting the development of children (lead, you know that’s what I’m studying here), and now everyone is sick with lead poisoning… I still think I have some disease that I can’t pronounce or remember, but I learned about it in physiology. I think I might start lecturing to medical students and then providing them with the cure (not covered by insurance) to their psychosomatic ailments. I’ll call it beer.

We also heard back from the Ministry of Education and Sports… they are excited with and interested in our study and they have some good ideas for us. No, I’m not dumb, just really optimistic. Their could be thinking “wow, what a great way to make the government spend tons of money on a dump instead of something more positive.” But they could also be thinking “what cool people, gee, I think we should give them a grant and start a kosher restaurant for Danny.” Hey, you never know.

So tomorrow is my birthday. I thought about that for a while today. I haven’t spent a birthday at home with the family in 7 years. Family, my birthday will be celebrated with a BBQ upon my return…please? I am craving meat, chicken, hot dogs (don’t be fooled, they don’t count as meat), pizza, and fresh vegetables. Yup, still not eating fresh vegetables though on Sunday I still got hit with some pretty intense…nevermind.

On that note…I think I hear the water cistern filling up again which can only mean one of three things; 1 it’s raining outside, 2 there is a croc in the cistern, or 3 WE HAVE WATER! Wow, now that I smell like burnt tea (water is heated on a wooden stove and is put in the same containers we serve tea out of…no I’m not complaining) we have water. I will complain about showers. One of these days I will not have to wonder if taking a washcloth to a filthy body and then rinsing it into clean water makes the clean water dirty, too dirty to use to wash the rest of your body. Half my tan is dust I simply can not remove.

It’s late, goodnight. I’m off to flush the toilet.

It’s filling back up… tomorrow is going to be a great day.