After a connection in Dubai (not too shabby haha) my plane
finally touched down in Uganda—also known as the Pearl of Africa. Winston
Churchill gave Uganda its nickname way back when and it stuck. Boy, did it
stick. They were hashtagging the heck out of it when I went through customs:
#HavingFunInThePearlOfAfrica, #gorillasaresocool, and my personal favorite,
#HippopotamusInWaterInThePearlOfAfrica. Apparently, whoever is in charge of
tourism isn’t a master of the twittersphere yet.
At the airport in Entebbe, I met up with Annie McCarthy, another
recent Notre Dame grad, and we headed for a rural eastern town called Kumi. It
required just about every type of transportation possible to get us there in
one piece: a taxi to Kampala, a long bus ride to Mbale, a matatu (a blue and
white van) to get to Kumi, and a boda boda (a motorcycle taxi—the most popular
way to get around) to get us to SPOUTS. Check out the map below if you wanna
follow along!
Kumi is a wonderful place and the SPOUTS of Water factory is located on the campus of Kumi University—a school started by Korean missionaries. There is still a strong Korean teaching presence at the university; however, the administrative operations are now run solely by Ugandans.
At the factory, my job is to optimize the filter production
process: decrease the frequency of failed filters, increase the number of
filters made, and introduce water quality testing in factory as opposed to
sending the work to an independent lab. I’ve got my work cut out for me but I’m
definitely optimistic. More on that later, for now just pretty pictures of the
factory and some SPOUTS employees!
So as you may have guessed from the title of the blog,
“mzungu” is what they call white people here and it is basically the Ugandan
equivalent to a “gringo” only in a slightly more endearing sense. One of the
highlights of my day is passing children at school when they run up to the
fence and yell/sing, “Mzungu! Mzungu! Mzungu!”. They get a real kick out of
seeing a white guy around so I’m glad that I can serve as some entertainment
haha.
That’s about all the content I have so far. Now, to fulfill
the promise from my first post…
The Peach Fuzz Buzz:
Here I am on day 12
of the no-shave party (I gotta five day head start before I left, I think)
Puns for days:
Honestly, I haven’t been super punny this first week but I
hope to improve in the future. Anywho, the neighbors have this mangy little kitten
whose name is Noon (it’s Korean for snow, I think) and the other day she was
clawing at one of us, so I said, “Hey Noon! Are you kitten me?” (bah bum chhh!)
Oh and here she is. Aww…
Thanks for reading!!!
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