Power? What's that?

Hello friends and family,

I have been without internet for the past couple days. The power has been off more than it has been on and the generator at the hotel is not very reliable. We realized this morning that the power cord had been removed from the modem in the hotel, we inquired after it and were told that they weren't sure where it went. So, that leads us to believe that maybe the hotel staff felt we were using too much internet and so they just took the power away. I'm using internet at another hotel and paying 3000 shillings an hour (about $2).

The dining area at our hotel is open air and every night when the sun goes down, and we are sitting and having a drink or dinner the lightning comes out to give us a show. I watch as the sky lights up and illuminates the clouds, then goes black again. At home, when there is thunder, there is most likely lightning, rain and wind. Here you get each one by itself at some point throughout the day. It is currently the end of the rainy season here so every afternoon beginning around 2:00 the wind picks up and whips the leaves around on the ground into little hurricanes. Then about 20 minutes later, the wind dies down but the thunder starts. Tremendous, awe-inspiring thunder that rolls and cracks through the sky. Followed by the rain, and not a Washington drizzle but pounding huge drops that will soak you in seconds. A couple hours after that, the lightning. The other members of my training team (consisting of 1 from Uganda, 3 from South Africa and 1 other person from my office) always look at me when the thunder starts because I cannot help but smile. I love the storms in Africa. They remind me how small I am and how big and tremendous God is. The power of mother nature is amazing.

The other night I was having dinner with some co-workers, it was dark (the sun sets at 7:15 every night being we are so close to the equator) and the lights kept going on and off. The power would go out and the staff would use the light from their cell phones to bring us a candle for our table. We would sit by candlelight and eat. Then, a few minutes later, the power would come back on and they would take the candle away and blow it out. Again a few minutes later, the power would go off again and the whole process would start over. It was pretty comical.

Our training is going well, the site staff are starting to get tired because of the long days but the weekend is coming. A note of why we are doing our research here in Uganda- currently 3% of the population that is in a relationship is concordant positive (meaning each person is HIV positive in the relationship), 5% are in discordant relationships (discordant meaning that one is positive and one is negative). So to put it another way- there are more couples where one person is HIV negative and one person is HIV positive than couples where both are HIV positive. The person who is HIV negative in that relationship has a 50% chance of acquiring the virus from their partner. That's a huge risk. With 4 new infections for every 1 infection that is treated, we cannot treat our way out of this epidemic....we need multiple prevention strategies, such as PrEP (what we are doing). There are currently 2.8 million new infections of HIV a year in this world, that equals 6,800 new infections a day for those who like to crunch numbers.

I'm off tonight to have dinner at a local restaurant....we had to call ahead of time at 1:00 to order otherwise it would take hours for us to get our food (since they prepare when you order). So far, the food has been great, matoki (steamed green bananas) every day at lunch, with fish, rice and fresh fruit.