Carol Bontekoe

This blog has been keeping track of my adventures since 2004. The stories and the adventures have come from my college dorm room to Uganda, Peace Corps Kyrgyzstan, learning Dutch in the Netherlands to living in the wilds of Homer, Alaska. I went back to school in Amsterdam to study Theaterwetenschap (Theatre Science) at University of Amsterdam. And now my adventures as a Fruit Fly, a Sexy Unicorn, and creating a movement with Team Sparkle in Chicago.

Monday, August 9, 2004

Craziness

Yesterday I was writing my journal entry, and fotuantly I save them periodically because the power went out. No no no not just at the computer lab, nope in ALL of Kampala. How come I don't get a I survived the black out of '04 t-shirt. I mean I'm in the only major city in the whole country. In America itends everything in Uganda it's like, "Oh well" It's not like there are an stop lights or anything so traffic could still go. So my longest day since I have been here was on Friday. There is a little boy named Mark at the Anna and Tony nursery. He has had a really bad ear infection and Laura, Pam, and I think he has HIV. So on Friday Laura and I took the little boy to a clinic towards Entebbe called Mild May's. It was complete chaosoutside because there were riots going on all along Entebbe road, which is th one we were on. Because some politican was coming back from the U.K. after being gone for 3 years. So that was already a real hastle. And finally after waiting for three hours w got to go see a nurse. She then proceeded to tell us that they have a policy not to test children for HIV if their mother hasn't been tested. That was not good enough for us because we had explained the whole situation on the phone the da before and they had said it would be fine. So she sent us to the head nurse. Who acted like we were stupid and how could they test the boy when we couldn't even answer the question if he was Catholic or Protastant. Christain was just not a good enough answer. She eventually left us for a long while and came back and said the doctor would not test him. Well that wasjust not good enough for us. We were going to talk to the doctor. The Nurse led us to the doctors door. And line or queues or whatevr are an novel idea here. So we evetually after being cut a few imes just we literally outside his door and wouldn't even let him out of his door after the pactient before us left. He wouldn't do it either so we know he had some good stories to tell of two crazy muzungus in his office that day. His answer was not good enough for us either so we ended up seeing the director of the clinic. We couldn't get our way. Just wasn'tgoing to happen but we put up a good fight. And we did get him medicinefor his ear..... Just stinks. A whole day and we didn't really seem to help him in any way. We defiantly tried though. And we have gotten his mother to agree to be tested. But if she will show, is defiantly a question mark.Africa is an ineresting place. It is a rare day when a Marroon haired American can meet an Iraqi ex-patriot man and discuss their dislike for Bush together on a Matatu(mini Bus) in Uganda. Always a interesting occassion. But I didn't know he was an Iraqi and he didn't know I was an American. He just assumed I was from the Netherlands, which was very weird. I have that look about me.

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