March 23rd, 2017 by jasongulati

I feel like I’m just settling in. My body is tired at a normal hour, I’m comfortable hopping on bodas, I have my routine down at the hospital.

Yet I leave on Saturday night.

Part of me still feels like I got here, but I’ve also gotten used to the diseases that were new to me three weeks ago. Bilharzia, malaria, HIV (not new but I see it slightly more frequently here), Giardiasis, chronic Hepatitis B, you name it. What we DON’T see much of in Kampala is sleeping sickness, dengue, or zika. I definitely feel like I got a speed course in tropical diseases here, in addition to your run of the mill colds and aches. I’m sure I mentioned this before but it has also been awesome seeing people from around the world. As it turns out, Kampala is quite a melting pot.

It’s reflected in the food, too. I can log into my food delivery app right now and find Mexican, Thai, Indian (whose influences are deep in Ugandan cuisine), American fare, local, and more. In fact, the best quesadilla I’ve ever had was here. The traditional meals I’ve had here were also fantastic–very carb dense with matoke, rice, beans and a little meat. I’m not sure what goes into making the beans but they’re pretty incredible. That’s just the cooked stuff. The fresh fruit, the avocado, the bananas, the mangoes, the pineapples… I’ll miss it. Such high quality for a fraction of what you pay at home.

And somehow I dropped two or three pant sizes in all this.

I went back to Oweno market with one of my housemates to pick up some clothes I had made. I was super impressed with the result, and of course everyone was super nice even though we were obviously out of place. I’d post a picture but they were neatly folded and closed in a bag for travel.

In a fit of bad news, my phone got pickpocketed while we were out Saturday night. I am normally pretty careful with my belongings but I let my guard down at precisely the wrong second (moving through a busy crowd inside a pub), came through the other end, empty pocket. To be fair, no one warned me about theft here more than other Ugandans and I feel bad bringing it up to people, but it’s come up in casual conversation a couple of times since I don’t have much going on in my life right now. I was pretty upset for about a day since it had some personal data on there and priceless memories. But I got the phone company on board to do a remote disable and notified the police. I don’t expect anything to turn up but I found peace of mind knowing I did what I could. It definitely didn’t sour my overall experience here, which has been just wonderful.

While I’m ready to go home, sign my residency contract (side note, I matched to my #1 choice), and see my girlfriend I’ll miss Kampala a lot. It actually inspired me to buy a motorcycle when I move to Honolulu this summer.