Uganda (part 3): What do you know?

The proud owner of a round-trip ticket to Uganda, it was time to see a map of Africa. Frankly, despite a degree in International Affairs, I couldn't point it out.

Uganda is in the middle of Africa, toward the East... part of what is considered East Africa and the Great Rift Valley. Uganda rests atop the northern portion of Lake Victoria, the worlds second-largest body of freshwater, a lake it shares with Tanzania and Kenya. Winston Churchill called it "the pearl of Africa." Aw. That sounds sweet.

Well, a little research sent up a few red flags. Terrorists bombed an Ethiopian restaurant in Kampala, the capital, a few months earlier. But even more worrisome, casualties from routinely crashing buses and boda (motor-bike-taxi) accidents account for a massive number of hospitalizations and deaths. (They drive like madmen, straight down the center of the narrow roads. Going blazingly fast they play "chicken." It's terrifying.) Or as Philip Briggs so elegantly puts it in his book Uganda (published by Bradt): ...(their) "uncompromising approach is disconcerting enough in towns, but terrifying on rural roads where larger vehicles approach each other head on in the manner of medieval jousters...". True that.

The fact that many of those drivers are drunk certainly doesn't help matters.  The World Health Organization ranked Uganda the leading consumer of alcohol per capita in the world. (That's crazy! Look how small it is!) A 2004 study in the casualty department of a 1200-bed teaching hospital in Kampala found that alcohol constitutes an significant factor in road traffic injuries. *

Further, alcohol consumption there is linked to a whole lot of domestic violence - especially related to sex. "Women whose partner frequently or always consumed alcohol before sex faced risks of domestic violence almost five times higher than those whose partners never drank before sex."**  Plus the booze is related to HIV:  "In a study conducted in a rural Ugandan population, it was found that individuals who had ever drunk alcohol experienced a rate of HIV prevalence twice that of those who had never drunk."

Immunized from lots of stuff.

Oh, and you don't drink the water.  You don't brush your teeth with it. Don't swim in it (parasites). Don't eat food washed in it with its skin exposed - in fact, don't eat anything unless it's cooked. Cooked and handled by someone reliable. (Um...?) The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, and the US State Department agree.  And before you go, they recommend immunizations for Yellow Fever, Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Typhoid, Rabies, Meningococcal Meningitis, Cholera, Influenza, Polio, Measles, Mumps, Rubella, and current Tetanus/diphtheria/pertussis vaccinations. Absolutely bring daily preventative medication for Malaria. (If you don't take it, you will get Malaria. Ask anyone who's been there. And if you can avoid the specific physical misery it unleashes, why not just pop a pill a day?)

How completely outside my comfort zone! I'm going to a third-world country on behalf of an organization dedicated to victims of human-trafficking in forced prostitution, where half the population is under the age of 15, the other half is drunk, they drive like damn fools, there are about three paved "highways" country-wide, and I'll need to get shot-up with all sorts-of things before I go. Oh and since it's on the equator, you don't even want to play dare with that great fireball in the sky. Bring sunscreen. (And a lesson I'd learn the hard way: don't forget to put it on.)

What else? Oh. Did I mention that since 1986 (when Museveni assumed power - this was arguably a good thing) rebel soldiers, known as the LRA - the Lord's Resistance Army - have brutally terrorized northern Uganda? And with no apparent political agenda. Across the districts of Gulu and Kitgum, The LRA routinely massacred families and infants, abducted children, raped and sexually enslaved schoolgirls, and worse. (Now having been there, I have heard individual details of such horrors. It's stuff you can't even dream up in your worst nightmares.) This so-called "civil" war has simmered down since the LRA's leader disappeared (ie. went into hiding) in 2005 and the LRA has retreated into the Democratic Republic of Congo. President Museveni is still in power, however elections are in Feb. 2011 and there were around 8 or 9 candidates running for the position when I left in November 2010 - each representing different political parties.  (Currently, many ex-patriots are leaving the country until the Ugandan people have voted and the new or extended current government is settled.)

Only thing I knew for sure:  I was going to Kampala and Gulu. Come hell or high water. And that the only answer to my mother's question "is that safe?" was that I truly didn't know.




SOURCES:
* Andrews CN, Kobusingye OC. Road traffic accident injuries in Kampala. East African Medical
Journal, 1999, 76(4):189–194.
** Koenig MC et al. Domestic violence in rural Uganda: evidence from a community-based study.
Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 2003, 81(1):53–60.
*** Mbulaiteye SM et al. Alcohol and HIV: a study among sexually active adults in rural southwest
Uganda. International Epidemiological Association, 2000, 29(5):911–915.