BootsnAll Travel Network



Articles Tagged ‘Mbita’

More articles about ‘Mbita’
« Home

After Sunset

Thursday, February 9th, 2006

The sun sets so fast here. You can notice that the sunset is imminent, and by the time you’ve rummaged around in your bag to get your camera, it has already sunk below the crest of the hill. That’s the equator for you.

An African town at night is completely different from during the day… it’s like another world entirely. That’s one thing I’ve missed out on by travelling with a relatively organised group as I have been. In the evenings, we go back to our research station and socialize only with ourselves.

Yesterday a small group of us visited an HIV/AIDS orphanage, on Rusinga Island, just outside of Mbita. We’re currently located in Suba District, one of the poorest in the country. In 2000, the infant mortality rate was 606 out of every 1000 children under the age of one, which is truly astronomical (in the past five years, it’s gone down to 147 per 1000 through aggressive malaria awareness campaigns). This is also the district with the highest AIDS prevalence: 42%. And Rusinga Island is the highest of any community, with a prevalence of over 50% (with a population of only about 200,000 to start with). So the orphanage was something to behold. There were I think over 250 children there, several of whom were HIV+ and all of whom had lost their parents to AIDS. It was sad to see. The women running the facility made small handicrafts to sell and support the facility. I bought a really beautiful tie-dyed fabric – it cost 500 shillings, which is less than 10 dollars, and you know that will go a long way in that community.

None of us wanted to leave, so it was dark as we were driving into Mbita. It was so different than it was during the day. Everyone was gathered into those storefronts that had electricity, watching the Africa Cup on tiny television sets, braiding each other’s hair, socializing with friends. People set up fires outside, which they’d sit around, cooking and talking. It was a very surreal experience. There was an air of calm and serenity, but with a bustle of life and activity below the surface. Like a summer night camping with friends, in a way. I guess that since the sun always goes down so early, you use the evenings as a time to be with family and friends. Hopefully I’ll get to experience more of that once I leave the big group.

Today’s the first day of our next class…it’s kind of weird that I already have three credits behind me. In a few days, I’ll be leaving for the Maasai Mara for 16 days, and I’ll probably be out of touch again for a while. That should be incredible…My prof is apparently something like the world’s leading expert on the Maasai, so he’s got lots of connections there. We even get the chance to do a homestay in a rural Maasai village for a few nights. It should be amazing.

Across the border

Wednesday, February 8th, 2006

I made it through the border in record time, didn’t even have to pay any bribes. That’s got to be a good thing.

We’re staying at another ICIPE station in Mbita, Kenya. My bedroom looks out onto the beach and Lake Victoria, and at night I can leave just my screen door open and hear the waves rolling up against the shore at night… So amazing, I wish I could go swimming, but then I’d get schistosomiasis, which would really suck, to say the least, because it’s about the grossest parasite ever. A group of 10 of us got to go on a boat ride in Jinja where we went down the Nile and into Lake Victoria, and we got splashed by water a lot and we kept on joking that we were on the schisto ride. Seriously, the odds of us getting schisto (aka bilharzia) from that is virtually none, so don’t you all freak out now. Anyways, it was worth it, getting to boat down the Nile. We didn’t get to see too much of Jinja, except enough to see what we thought were giant swarms of birds that turned out to be giant bats (they were even there at 10 am!). Kind of cool. Kind of creepy.

Today we went to another hospital, here in Mbita. It was in much better shape than the one in Fort Portal. I mean, it wasn’t perfect, but it was much less chaotic, and at least here patients’ families didn’t have to supply all their own food, bedsheets and mattresses (yes, that was how it was in F.P.). We also got to talk to some traditional healers, which was kind of a neat experience.

Oh, and I also wanted to make a comment about elections in Africa. It’s the national elections in Uganda on February 23rd, so it was totally amazing to be there and see all kinds of campaign posters for President Museveni and others. Just to put it in context, Kenya had a referendum on their constitution last year, and since many people are illiterate, they had ‘banana’ for yes and ‘orange’ for no. In Uganda, it’s a similar thing, but with hand gestures. As we were driving through towns in our big mzungu truck, people passing by kept giving us the thumbs up or a peace sign. At first, we kept randomly returning the hand signals and people laughed, until we realized that thumbs up is the symbol for Museveni and the peace sign (two fingers) is his main opponent (FDC party). There’s also a flat palm, for Milton Obote’s wife who’s running in the north (aka bad), and a clenched fist, for the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Party, very VERY bad). I just think it’s such a fascinating way of practising democracy so that all people can be involved…even if it is at the expense of the dignity of a bus-load of travelling mzungu.