Since returning to Kampala, life has been a lot less stressful than the first 10 days I spent working here. We are making some serious progress on the Oracle RAC install I am here to perform. I had a nice steak dinner last night at Lawn's for $15 or so. I also found out what medium-rare means in Uganda ... the meat waved at me so I sent it back for more cooking. My new favourite is Bell beer and it comes in a 500ml bottle, reminiscent of Tusker we had on safari in Kenya.
My "room mate" Arben has been complaining that his allergies are acting up what with all the dust wafting around the city. I did notice on the way to work in the AM, that there are hoards of women madly sweeping the streets. Here's where the title of this post comes from ... they are bent over sweeping with the equivalent of a broom with no handle. I want to get them all a handle; imagine bending over at the waste for 8 hours a day when one could stand and work with a real broom?
The streets are continually covered with a layer of dark orange dust which, now that Arben mentioned its prevalence of this substance EVERYWHERE, made me think of the cause. Regardless of whether one stoops or stands upright to sweep the roads, clouds of dust are inevitable.
I am trying to arrange a trip to Jinja, not far from the source of the ever-famous Nile river. That would be fun. Jinja is 50km from here. It would be sweet to get out of town and do something touristy for a change. I have been emailing with people in Vietnam about my second mission with no response yet.
My pet project in Ethiopia, which never got off the ground, was "a car seat for every baby". Here, as well as that, it's "a broom handle for every sweeper". I still have not figured out which side of the car the driver is on and keep going to the North American passenger door on the right of the car and find a driver there; then I chuckle ...
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