20 Ugandans, 21 including you

At the conference I was at in Cape Town, I was chatting with the lab coordinator from one of the USAID implementing partners I have worked with a bunch this past year.  I said "there are so many people from Uganda at this conference" and he responded "yes, so far I have counted 20 Ugandans, now 21 including you."  It made me smile in a moment when I was feeling homesick for my "real" home.  8 days until Christmas trip!

I had to head to the embassy in Kampala recently to get a second set of extra pages added to my passport after trips (since August) to Kenya (2x), Ethiopia (2x), Mozambique (2x), South Africa (2x), Swaziland, Tanzania, Rwanda and Zimbabwe.  Reading that list makes me feel tired, but the travel itself was actually generally great and pretty energizing.  Coping methods for excessive travel: 1) write in beautiful journal given to me as going-away present by my Credit Suisse co-workers during airplane take-off and landing when I'm not allowed to read my Kindle or work on my laptop 2) carry Kindle everywhere, download New Yorker Kindle edition every Monday and lots of good books 3) take advantage of quality time with friends when I get it 4) meditate! I started meditating and try to do it 5 times a week - so far so good.  5) practice gratitude for this wealth of experiences and the opportunity to do work I care deeply about.

A very few photos from various adventures (there would be more except that I stupidly took my blackberry on a 3.5 hour hike with my friend Leah in a banana farm/forest by Lake Kivu in Rwanda during which we got caught in three torrential downpours... attempts at recovery of said device and photos contained within are ongoing):

From a trip to a teeny island in the middle of the Nile with my roommates Lorne and Lindsay (below) and a couple friends

 Nile

 In Beira, Mozambique (where I hung out with Abel)

Crazy urban decay in Beira - it's a fascinating post-colonial town with wide avenues, beautiful beaches, and tons of once gorgeous buildings.  I'm told it has experienced a bit of revival of late with Chinese investment in the port for exporting goods mined inland.

 Soccer game in Beira

The pretty marvelous coffee shop that opened down the street from my house in Kampala.  The manager there once described it as me and my roommates' "home" which I'm just going to take as a good thing

A bit worse for the wear after the infamous hike in Rwanda (Leah's camera).  Leah is working for an organization called the One Acre Fund that provides fertilizer and training to farmers on a loan plan - if you have read Poor Economics, you will know why I think it's a super cool organization

Re-uniting with Global Health Corps friends Morris, Emma, Ashley and Leah in Kigali, Rwanda

 With dear Abel.  Before I left Beira, he asked me about 6 times for a copy of this photo.

Habituation

I've been in Cape Town for a week and a half now, and I've already started to take some things for granted (cheese! grapes! shrimp! craft beer! have all been reduced from 2 exclamation point items to 1 exclamation point items), but it's still too beautiful to fully take for granted.  It has been described as "the least African city in Africa" and in my limited experience, that is definitely accurate.
I've been at the first annual summit of the African Society for Laboratory Medicine which has been really fascinating because it brought together a lot of the people I've been working with in Uganda, Ethiopia, and Mozambique over the past year and allowed me to learn a lot more about labs than the beginnings I've gotten from learning on the job.  I'm generally anti-conference -- I think they can be a major waste of time and take people away from real work -- but I've had more productive meetings this week than I would have in a typical month, so that's been great.  We were at the conference center from 8am to 9pm most days this week, but I also got to see penguins AND a Lady Gaga concert in the past week, so I am feeling pretty lucky and grateful to be here both for work and for fun reasons.
More photos - and hopefully will take more this weekend before I head to Zambia on Sunday.
With my manager and the scientist on my team before the Lady Gaga concert - we have all looked better...

 Great hike overlooking the city

 Beach on the peninsula

Penguins and other nice things in Cape Town

Cape Town is just so beautiful that even my disastrous blogging habits cannot stop me from posting photos of it... more to come