I met my supervisor, Michael and his wife Amanda yesterday in Kampala. They bought me lunch and we had a pleasant first meeting. Then we went shopping at Nakumatt to stock up on food supplies.
They needed to remain in Kampala for three more days, so I was then sent off with Joseph, the clinic administrator, on the long journey to Masindi. The roads were good, and we made it there in three hours. Along the way I was perplexed by the elaborate signaling that drivers do as they pass one another on the road, warning each other of police checks so that they know when to speed and when to slow down.
As we got farther and farther from Kampala, driving through vast expanses of nothing but wilderness, a strange reverse agora-phobia started rising in me. Masindi is so remote and isolated. I’ve never felt like that before-- I experienced a real dread of what was to come.
I’m now comfortable in the dusty, chaotic bustle of East African capital cities. I can deal with the honking, the smells, the anonymity, the crime, and the invasion of personal space. But the quiet, isolated, slow poverty of a rural village is another thing altogether. I’m not excited about the idea of being so, so alone.
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