Mud Huts and the Source of the Nile

Hello friends and family,

Mbale is a beautiful place! Very lush and surrounded by amazing mountains that are all dense jungle. The trip from Kampala to Mbale went pretty smoothly and took about 4 hours without stopping. As we passed through Jinja (prounounced Ging-a) we drove over the Nile river. The Nile River starts in Jinja and apparently there is a park that you can go to and the locals will take you out in a boat and point to a place in the water where an underground spring comes up, that is the birthplace of the Nile. After Jinja, we got on better road and it is a good thing because the afternoon rain started. The rain was coming down so hard that pretty soon water was flowing 3 inches deep over the road. It continued that way for the duration of our journey. When we arrived at our hotel "The Mbale Resort Hotel" the power was off but the rain was starting to let up. I lucked out and got a room on the end, I have an awesome view from my room of the mountains. During the day there are multiple waterfalls look like trickles of white water coming down the side of the mountain; after the rains, the waterfalls are so swollen it is amazing the force of the muddy water over the mountainside. I can actually hear it from my room.

So far the power has been out every day for at least a little while. Yesterday morning the power went off when I was in the shower and it was completely dark because the sun was not up yet. Luckily it came back on a few minutes later.

Most of the people in this area live in homesteads. Homesteads are a series of mud huts. Each mud hut is round with one room, the roof is made of thatched grass and is probably about 6-8 feet across. There are typically 5 or so mud huts per homestead, depending upon the size of the family.

The training is going well, I gave a 4 hour presentation today on screening for the study and tomorrow I have a 4 hour presentation on enrollment into the study. The community has not had research in the area so it will take some time for the locals to understand what we are doing and there will be some skepticism in the beginning. We had one doctor tell us that at her church in Mbale last weekend, the pastor said he would have rather go to heaven with AIDS than wear a condom. Comments like that are very disheartening. 25 years after HIV/AIDS was first reported and people still won't do the one thing that we know will protect them, wear a condom.

Currently, it is late and I am wishing I had a recorder to record the sounds of the night in Mbale. The crickets are loud but there are frogs that sound like they are the size of cows! Their croaking is enormous! I have never heard anything like it. Very fun to fall asleep to.

I hope you are all doing well.

Love and hugs from the jungle-