On the Road Again

Hello friends and family,

I returned home from the Philippines on Sunday morning and left Friday for Uganda. I was sitting in my aisle seat in Coach, right next to the bathroom waiting for the flight to take off when a gentlemen from Northwest Airlines approached me and said “Ms. Krows, your company called and upgraded you to Business class for this flight” to which I replied “No, they didn’t” (because I knew that UW would never pay an extra $2K for me to sit in Business class on an international flight and because I was traveling with two other work colleagues who were still in Coach) and he replied “yes, they called and paid the difference for you, please follow me” so I decided not to argue and to get my stuff together and move to Business class. Because of all my travel to Africa last year, I am now Platinum Elite with NWA (which is their top level) and that is why I was upgraded (not because UW decided 30 minutes before my flight left to reward all my years of service with an upgrade to Business class). The Coach section of the plane was packed, every single seat was filled but in Business class there were still empty seats, even after they moved me up. I enjoyed all the nice things Business class had to offer, nice white wine, Turbot with lobster sauce for lunch, strawberry shortcake for dessert, the little socks they give you and the snacks in between meals. Unfortunately KLM did not want to upgrade me on my 2^nd 9 hour flight from Amsterdam to Nairobi so back to Coach I went for the remainder of my trip. From Nairobi we flew to Entebbe and arrived Saturday night around 11:30 and got to our house in Makindye (an area in Kampala) at about 1:00 in the morning. All in all, I arrived at the Makindye house almost 30 hours after leaving home in Seattle.

We leave for Jinja in about an hour, Jinja is the 2^nd largest city in Uganda and is about 2.5 hours from Kampala (depending upon traffic). Jinja is also the birthplace of the Nile river and the home to Nile brewing company which is the beer of choice for most Ugandans. We will be in Jinja for the next week and a half conducting a training for our last site to activate for the PrEP study.