Hello everyone!
Now time is really flying by! Unbelievable; in 5 days I'm about to go on my holidays and will finally see my boyfriend again! I'm so much looking forward to it and I really need a break
now! I guess after 3 months here, everyone needs some time out to recharge the batteries.
Otherwise still nothing special happened. We're still occupied in little conflicts within the team and also with the national staff. We have to deal with TBA's (traditional birth
attendants) who refuse to work if we don't give them money, with stubborn midwifes who deliberately refuse to do anything we instruct them, with "in charges" that can not be strict
and with watchmen who either sleep on duty or get themselves drunk and start to threat other people. A lot of issues, that are very time and energy consuming… That's the way it is!
Rainy season has started again and this time it's supposed to be stronger than the last little one. It is now raining heavily at least once a day and all the roads are then turning in to
a mud pool. If it's not raining it's getting hot and muggy in the daytime, but at least it's still cooling down at night. The mosquito numbers, which has been bearable until now, is also
increasing steadily.
We also finally moved to the new guesthouse. It's a very nice and huge house. Perfect for parties, but that will have to wait for a while, since we have no power backup and the power is
usually lacking at weekends. There is also a massive problem of mosquitoes here. The floor is covered with black dots daily, with all the mosis we extincted! Hope logistics will soon find
a solution for this!
Last weekend we visited a very strange event. At the big night club of Gulu (where a female can only go to the dance floor with at least 2 male bodyguards, one in the front and
one at the back) there are shows regularly where so called "artists" are presenting themselves. Several very self confident people are trying to perform as singers and
dancers to playback music. Unfortunately most of them are very untalented! Of course the shorter the skirts the more the females are being acclaimed. For the males, I guess the others
admire them for courage, because can't think of anything else they would be acclaimed for! And now comes the best part: when the audience likes a performance, some of them storm
to the stage, do a brief performance themselves (mostly better than the "artist") and then put some money into the artist's pockets, whatever their sex. So you see men touching other
mans butts to put some money in their pockets! Very strange but quite amusing!
Otherwise nothing much changed with the night life here, so we still end up at the Havana Pub with it's bad DJ, dancing to the same songs every time and are having some beers.
Next time I will hopefully be able to tell you something interesting from my holidays!
Cheers Anne