I didn’t realize the temporary and shared housing sections were not yet up on the Homes and Plots when I wrote my last post. Check back later for more updates. And since I’ve gotten several emails already, here’s my two shillings on where to stay in Kampala when you first arrive:

Budget: Red Chili Backpacker Hostel is where everyone who has everything they own in one pack tends to stay. Wifi, a bar and restaurant on the premises. CONTACT: off Port Bell Road, Bugolobi. Tel: 0772 509150, 0752 584054. Tel/Fax: (041) 223903. E-mail: chilli@infocom.co.ug.

Mid-Range: For about $40 to 50, you can stay in the Acacia Apartments, which have a convenient Kololo location. They are nicely furnished, have a full kitchen and good security. A place to stay if you have a lot of stuff or want more privacy than a dorm-like hostel. Cheaper for extended stays. CONTACT: John Babiiha Avenue, Tel: 0772 471 624. E-mail: sustainenergy@usec.org.uk.

Higher End: The Speke Hotel is in the center of Nakasero, the downtown part of Kampala, and (apparently – I’ve never seen them) has nice rooms. But you can’t beat the location. Watch out for boda drivers and special hires who will charge you more if you grab one in front of the hotel. Best to walk about five meters and then get a better price. CONTACT: 7/9 Nile Avenue. Tel: (0414) 235332/5, 259221, Fax: (041) 235345. E-mail: speke@spekehotel.com.

For more places to stay, and a general resource about Kampala, visit The Eye Magazine’s website and then pick up a hard copy when you get to town for a lot of useful contacts.

TO FIND A ROOM IN A HOUSE: After you arrive, check out the message boards at Garden City, Kisementi, Katch the Sun, Cafe Pap, and Web City. Answer ads, or put up your own.

TO FIND YOUR OWN PLACE: Not easy, by any means. That’s where Homes and Plots can help. Check out the sections on brokers and services, and check back often for more updates on the site. Note: a lot of brokers will try and put you in a pre-furnished place. This will cost more money, and often the furniture is the kind of hideous that only the combination of magenta and orange can produce. Some are nice, though. If you’re staying in Kampala for more than six months, it’s best to get a place unfurnished, save on rent, and buy stuff on the side of the road.

I get a lot of emails from people who are moving to Uganda who want to secure housing before actually arriving. Or at least research a bit. Up until now, I’ve always told interested parties to just sit tight and figure it out eventually.

That is no longer the case. Uganda Homes and Plots is a project by a friend, long in the pipeline, now on the web. I wish something like this had been around when I was looking for housing in Uganda, because trust me, it sucks. Really.

If you’re interested in more information on the web site or housing in Uganda or the project in general, let me know and I’ll put you in touch with the site’s creator. Check back to Uganda Homes and Plots as the site develops, look for the free magazine in Kampala, and watch the housing market in Uganda go virtual.

Maybe it’s the fast internet. Or maybe it’s that it feels less like work if I’m only googling and not reporting. But either way, it’s nice to be blogging because I want to and not because I feel compelled to.

There may be interruptions in blogging in the future should I plan to leave my grandmother’s kitchen, but for now, the blogging continues.

And a blog roll! Finally! What took a good about of time here with fast internet was just unfeasible in Uganda – because I’m too busy working and because everything would have taken hours to load.

Have a blog about Africa? Want a link? Send me an email at glennagordon at gmail dot com.

I’m now in the land of fast internet (so fast, I forgot it could be so fast), which was a good thing since after just four days of not checking Google Readers, I already had 1000+ items.

Here are some of the more interesting things I read this morning in my grandmother’s kitchen, using wifi from an anonymous neighbor who hasn’t locked his or her signal. Yeah, my grandmother doesn’t have wifi.

A diplomat posted in Brazil and later in Congo had sex with teenage girls and taped it. He told the judge that sex with youngsters is okay in other cultures.

Afghanistan has one female athlete slated to participate in the Olympics this summer. But right now, she’s missing.

Doctors for MSF left a conflicted region of Ethiopia recently, citing their inability to actually help people because of government restrictions. The government responded by saying that MSF was lying and spreading propaganda. Wonder if most people will believe Ethiopia or MSF.

A doctor did an HIV test for a woman in Kenya without her knowledge or consent. He told her employers she was positive, before telling her, and she lost her job. She just won a $35,000 court case. I’m guessing that’s more money than she would make as a waitress (her old job) and hopefully enough to keep other doctors and empolyers from doing similar unethical things.

And speaking of AIDS, do donors spend too much on this epidemic to the exclusion of others? No answers here, but some interesting questions.

What’s up with those high food prices? A brief and reader-friendly explanation from IRIN.

“I have met many NGO workers who are incompetent but hide behind flashy cars with flags and behind posh offices,” Norbert Mao, a leader in Norhtern Uganda told the Daily Monitor. There is a plan to kick out all those NGOs who don’t really do much. Amen.

About how I feel right now, but with more bland lighting.

Respite – almost. I still need to finish two articles, file some photos, pack, figure out which way Umeme is trying to take advantage of me, do another round of interviews tomorrow morning in Katwe, try and make some kind of order of the disorder that is my apartment, and figure out how to get from where I am to where I’ll be.

But, as of Wednesday afternoon, I will be on leave. Sort of – still will have to finish up some writing and do some other reporting.

Wait… that doesn’t sound like leave! you might say. But I will take a break, at least for a bit. I will visit somewhere I’ve never been before and go somewhere else familiar.

And hopefully, I will come back to Uganda, without feeling so tired. Because right now, the next boda boda who tries to overcharge me by even UGX 500 is at risk for losing a limb.

So, for the sake of Uganda, and for my own, I will be out for a bit. Still around, but a little less urgently.

Check back for occasional posts. Regular posting will resume at the beginning of August.

Awhile back, I wrote about how I was doing a story that involved newspaper personal ads.

The story proved much harder to report than I had expected. My idea was to speak with people who were living with HIV about finding partners through the personals. Every week, I culled the adverts and sent emails and text messages to people who identified as HIV positive in their ads.

I received few replies. And some people bothered to reply only to tell me never to contact them again. One woman replied, but then wouldn’t meet me. One woman set a meeting time with me and didn’t show. Another man replied but really only seemed interested in dating me. Another person met me only to complain about how someone had found his email address in the New Vision and subsequently conned him out of several hundred dollars.

Needless to say, I spent a lot of time trying to report this story, and a very small amount of time actually reporting it. The result is here. One of my only successful interviews was with this lady, who was thoughtful and funny – I could have spoken with her for hours. About six pages of single spaced typed notes were whittled down to this 600 word story.

It would have been great if I could have talked to a bunch of people and gotten multiple perspectives, written a really interesting feature that showed a real trend emerging, but as it is, I had a few sodas with a very nice lady.

Joanna: “Dating is hectic, so I put a personal ad in the paper”

KAMPALA, Joanna*, 25, an HIV-positive schoolteacher who lives in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, decided to take a chance on love by putting a personal advertisement in the newspaper. She spoke to IRIN/PlusNews before her first date with a man who responded.

“I’ve only dated one person who doesn’t have HIV. It’s kind of hectic, because you don’t know your future or how it’s going to be. You’re not ready to pass on the infection to this other person. That’s why I put up my ad in the Meeting Point section of the New Vision [a national daily].

I just wanted to see, would it work? Does it work? But then … I opened my e-mail and there were a lot of e-mails from guys – maybe 20.

I’m going on a date this Sunday. We’re not so sure what we’re going to do – I don’t like sitting down when I’m meeting a person for the first time, so maybe we’ll go somewhere or do something. Somewhere with an activity, not just to talk and eat.

What I liked about him is that when we talk, he treats you like a person. The others were interested in ‘How do you look?’ and I don’t want a person who is interested in how I look, but in my character. We have talked on the phone for three weeks now. He works upcountry – he’s an administrator with some NGO [non-governmental organisation] dealing with HIV.

I hope he’ll be like the kind of person I imagined on the phone; someone who is fun, not someone who has sadness or is into depression. Some people go on and on about their status and that kind of thing – they haven’t gotten over it. I hope he shows some character; I want someone who is free to be himself.

I’m scared, I really want it to work out, but what if it doesn’t? What if we get there and we can’t talk? What if we communicate so much on the phone but then there’s nothing in person?

READ MORE…

Moses Kajenda may not have eaten lunch because of me. When I entered his ward with the supervising doctor at the medical facility of Luzira Prison, Uganda’s biggest penitentiary situated in a Kampala suburb, the sick inmates were eating lunch. Each had a bowl of posho, a flour and water based staple, and a bowl of the broth of bean soup without beans.

The doctor led me over to Kajenda’s bed, neatly made, with pink sheets folded over a dark green and black blanket. I was reporting on the co-infection of Tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS in the prison system, and Kajenda had both viruses. The doctor told me a bit about his medical condition – on first line TB drugs and now ARVs, while before he only took Septrin, a prophylaxis antibiotic. He was doing better here, eating more, not subject to hard labor as he had been at the upcountry facility where he’d previously been serving time.

Kajenda, gaunt and stiff, folded his hands, one over another, and spoke with his eyes to the floor. He answered the doctor, who translated, only looking at me fleetingly from time to time.

The other inmates in the ward sat quietly on their beds, eating their lunch. I was worried about Kajenda’s lunch as soon as we started speaking, and sure enough, an attendant came and took away his food. At first it seemed like the food was just placed on a surface at the front of the room, but by the time we had finished speaking, all the others’ plates had been cleared.

I asked the doctor if he would still get his lunch. Oh yes, yes, the doctor reassured me, and spouted off a list of extra rations prisoners in the medical facility receive – soya, greens grown in the yard behind the facility, and tomatoes and onions from the central prison system.

I asked when they receive this food, since I certainly didn’t see anyone with a tomato or greens. The doctor assured me it’s every other day, or every couple of days, just not today.

As we started to leave the ward, it didn’t seem the attendant was bringing Kajenda his unfinished meal. I voiced my concerns again, but the doctor said, “No, this one will eat, he is just a slow eater, he will finish his food later.”

According to prisoners, they eat only once a day. Food is needed to properly absorb ARVs, and regular caloric intake to give the body strength to fight TB. I thought about saying something more, or about waiting until I saw Kajenda receive his lunch. But I decided against this. Maybe that would just make it worse for him later today, or tomorrow and the tomorrow after that. I couldn’t anticipate what kind of effect my intervention would have.

Walking out of the room with the doctor, who was on his way to lunch, I wondered whether Kajenda would eat lunch.

Probably not.

Perhaps, speaking to him about TB in the prison is important enough to interrupt him temporarily. Maybe it will make health officials more aware of the overstretched facilities and resources at Luzira and that would be advantageous to the inmates in the long run.

But it certainly wouldn’t be advantageous to Kajenda. I couldn’t have told the doctor, no, let’s come back later and let him eat. The doctor was busy and I was taking up his time. And my presence in the ward was sanctioned – by the commissioner of prisons, the officer in charge of this part of the prison, every one of the dozen or so guards who checked my permission letter and ID, the officer in charge of the medical facility, and this doctor, in charge of this ward. Probably twenty or so people in all had agreed to my presence and played some role in me getting from my flat in Kampala to this ward in Luzira.

I always tell people, before I interview them, that it’s up to them whether they speak to me, and if they do, which questions they answer. I said that to Kajenda, but just like I didn’t set the terms with the doctor, Kajenda didn’t set the terms with me.

And so, because of me, Kajenda probably never ate lunch. Or anything that day.



Where Coca-Cola succeeds, so does an economy, according to the Economist, whose general policy of life and love is, “You broke your leg? To fix that, just liberalize your market.”

When Coke can’t sell:

At a macro-level, when Coke fails, the country whose market it is trying to penetrate usually fails too. Coca-Cola’s bottling plant in Eritrea hardly works because the country’s totalitarian government makes it impossible to import the needed syrup. The factory in Somalia sputtered on heroically during years of fighting but finally gave out when its sugar was pinched by pirates and its workers were held up by gunmen. Mr Cummings admits that Coca-Cola is “on life support” in Zimbabwe.

A correlation between Coke sales and ethnic violence:

“We see political instability first because we go down as far as we can into the market,” says Alexander Cummings, head of Coca-Cola’s Africa division. The ups and downs during Kenya’s post-election violence this year could be traced in sales of Coke in Nairobi’s slums and in western Kenya’s villages.

The article gives the space of a sentence to potential problems with Coke in Africa – unhealthy, bad for the environment, blah blah blah – but also points out that a Coke is cheaper than a newspaper in most places in Africa.

This makes me think something is wrong with newspapers.

I’m not sure if, at the end of the day, it’s about caring, or doing, or knowing, or some combination of those things. But I wanted to write here that I’m touched by the many encouraging emails I’ve received about my last post.

I also received a few inquires about the feeding center. So, it’s Matany Hospital, Pediatric Feeding Center, about one hour from Moroto town in Karamoja, run by Dr. James Lemukol.

His email is available upon request – just drop me a line rather than putting it in the comments.

Chances seem slim that my photos will be published, so I’m putting up more here. More to come as well…

And for those of you who inquired about me personally, I’m doing okay, thanks, just frustrated at times. Usually, I hide the frustration in a veneer of cynicism and crude jokes, but even that armor seems to be wearing this these days. It’s been awhile since a vacation, but I’m about to go and visit some family in a bit, lay on the beach and regain some sanity. I’m aware of just how lucky I am to get to go on vacation – to have the privilege to leave this, not think about it for awhile, and return, ready and recharged.