Difficulties in developing countries can also be quite liberating

Our most reliable driver was supposed to arrive at 9:30 for our trip to Gulu; it is now 11:50; we wait. He texted us an hour ago. He left his driving permit at home and had to get it, “c u soon.”

I had a lunch appointment at 3:30 on Sunday, 30 minutes away from my house. I called five drivers. All were busy and “20 minutes away.” Finally, one came. After sitting in a “jam” (they don’t need to use traffic to describe it), I arrived at 5:10.

I went to get mobile internet for my computer at the telcom center. The technicians were on my computer and in and out of the room for an hour and a half trying to figure out how to install the necessary software on my Mac. They were dumbfounded. We restarted the computer. The internet worked.

All of this can happen in the US. All of it does (I know I owned a Gateway laptop). But the regularity of which it happens here means work arounds are common.

Meeting times are fluid, appointments are flexible and reservations dates are estimates. Some of it is a necessity. When you miss the once daily bus in the morning because it got full and left at 5:30am and not after 6am as it usually does, you wait. When the phone network is down or rain washes away the road, accommodations must be made.

It creates incentive for people to focus on the here and now. If your mobile phone rings you answer it; if your appointment is there you talk to him and if food is in front of you eat it. And for all the frustrations of planning, it is quite liberating. Such focus on the present shortens your “to do list.” Simply, when you don't have emails in your inbox and messages in your voice mail there’s less stress.

Of course, I am now late for my 3pm meeting and will likely not meet the government official I had hoped, but someone else who did not make an appointment probably got to.
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Working it…and Representing

So the jet lag has not been so bad. No real tricks, but if I can get shut-eye within the “zone of acceptable sleep times” from 9pm to 9:30ish am, I do it. Hadn’t gotten much sleep the first night, from 1:30-5 and from 8:00 to 9:30. Not long but, enough to give me energy for the day and evening ahead.

The day’s highlights were seeing my first protected water spring of the trip in the Entebbe botanical garden as well as numerous monkeys, which I usually don’t like. (The park attendant said they wouldn’t hurt me they are used to whites. Upon questioning, I discovered the monkeys are also docile around blacks too.) Less enjoyable was the experience with ants crawling up my pants and biting after I entered a forest to see more monkeys.

Although I was sleep under-nourished and had a busy day, I was ready to meet some others. So I called my newfound friend Becca who took me to a pantomime show at the National Theater; and then the local bar.

Becca, her friend and I all chatted, hitting important topics: the shower pressure at my guest house (all the velocity of a fine warm mist); a new anti-homosexual bill in Ugandan Parliament (controversial); and why Ugandan men prefer to drink Smirnoff Ice but American males won’t touch it (odd).

As the evening grew later and the music a bit louder, I found myself talking water projects with Sean Farrell, an extremely knowledgeable water expert from Trocaire, an Irish aid agency. We discussed (read: yelled over the beats of American and Ugandan hip-hop) the merits of including local government water officials in borehole projects. Although the discussion was productive the environment for conversation was not.

It was good for dancing, and dance those at the bar did. I watched with a sense of awe. Men hit the floor with break dancing moves and rhythm that could earn them far more than a spot on the ground in a Kampala bar. The speed, the spins, the starts and stops. They could do physically, what I could not fathom mentally. It was if the music was emanating from within them. And when I heard Jay-Z’s lyrics that “Brooklyn was in the house” I looked around with a sense pride -- a sense of belonging -- as if the lyrical genius was speaking directly to me. After all I was from Brooklyn; I was representin’. No doubt Jay-Z would have been proud of me…or maybe not.

Air France, the first flight...

Flights to Africa are rarely direct. Sure, South African Airlines flies non-stop to Johannesburg, Egypt Air to Cairo, and even Delta straight to Accra, Ghana. But many require two stops. Most three. My itinerary takes me to Paris; Nairobi, Kenya; and into Entebbe, Uganda, the former capital. It lies on the shores of Lake Victoria, the second largest body of fresh water in the world and is a 45-minute ride to the current capital of Uganda, Kampala.

The first of two 7-hour plus flights My Air France goes smoothly except for the frozen cous cous dinner and allows me time to continue reading on the recent water situation in Uganda, from rural infrastructure development to corruption, an all to common theme that permeates the country, even in the aid sector. As I have 22 hours of flight time I have a lot of time to read and ponder. But I am now thinking about how can I beat the impending jet-lag.

When I fly to Europe from the US, I usually leave at night. I try to sleep en route; it rarely works. To “beat” the jet-lag, I don’t sleep from the morning I arrive at my destination until at least 9pm. My general strategy is to stay up. It based on a simple notion: it’s easier to force consciousness than sleep. Even this summer as I journeyed 30-plus hours to Kyrgyzstan (coincidentally taking the same Berlin-Istanbul-Bishkek route that Ben took a month earlier to Afghanistan) I overcame the jet-lag relatively quickly, mostly by staying active.

My current flight poses new challenges. I arrive at 11:30 at night. And I fear a difficult jet-lag. I have no game plan for when to stay up and when to sleep.