Living in Lugazi (when you're me)

Currently, I am here:

Lugazi is a town of thirty to forty thousand people but feels much smaller. This might be because 40 or so percent of Ugandans are under age 15. Basically, there are lots of kids everywhere.

Lugazi is located about thirty miles outside Kampala, the capital, but takes an hour plus to get there with traffic. It's along the Kampala-Jinja highway, a main trucking route. Its largest industry is sugarcane, and the town is surrounded by lovely green hills and fields.

The Namango district of Lugazi.

Weather is hot and humid, but not as bad as DC in the summer. I'm convinced the sun is much more powerful here, but maybe that's because I spent the last two years living in an office under florescent lights. Nights are cooler, but often it smells like old alcohol from a distillery nearby. Pretty narsty.

Sometimes it rains a lot.

I live with three other American interns (Julie, Angela, and Vilate) in the Lugazi district of Nakazedde. A fourth intern, Trista, is due to arrive in week or so.

Interns and Luta at the top of the hill in Namango.

We live in a gated compound shared with two other families. There are five small buildings (two for us) surrounding a courtyard where the kids play, where we do laundry, and hang out.

We have electricity except for when we don't. Our running water hasn't worked in over a week, so we've given up on it. Instead, we get it from a large container outside belonging to the landlady and take bucket showers. We buy drinking water at the store. All aforementioned inconveniences are mitigated by the fact that we have (fairly) reliable internet, which is really all that matters.

We do not have cockroaches, thank god. We do have the occasional lizard or spider or mystery bug, however.

These are the two boys next door, Jonah and Joshua. They're cool, I suppose, for little kids. Except Jonah shrieks incessantly at least once per hour about nothing (which reminds me of this awesome blog). It's especially delightful at seven in the morning, sometimes coupled with a crowing rooster or two tethered in the courtyard. Fortunately, I have ear plugs.

Here, Jonah sports a lovely, summer look.
He sometimes wears dresses. We don't ask questions.

Jonah carries a stuffed
bunny on his back.

Youssouf and David are our teen-aged neighbors. They offer us perspective of what it's like growing up in Uganda. Conversations usually are about family, schooling, food, or music. And youth health, of course (at my prompting).

They also help us with everything - washing sneakers, fixing our water problem (aka clambering onto the roof to mess around with the pipes), taking us for morning jogs. And David is quite the singer. In short, they are amazing.

Playing Twister with Youssouf and David (and their friends)