List

The clock is ticking down very, very quickly. I still have a lot to do.

1. Find a duffel bag to pack my stuff in (erm... yeah... that's a little bit vitally important)
2. Figure out medical insurance junk
3. Buy film & AA batteries
4. Get myself an absentee ballet for the voting in November
5. Visit my bank and let them know that ATM action in Kitgum is a-ok
6. Say goodbye to all of my friends
7. Pack
8. Pack
9. Pack, pack, pack

I've started having nightmares about packing. In one, I packed five or six of my old favorite stuffed animals and no water purification devices. (There's a pretty bad Hep-E outbreak in Kitgum at the moment).

On the sunny side of things, my Mauritanian colleague finally got his passport AND managed to run to the Ugandan embassy & get himself a visa -- so we're all set on that front.

The photo is a view from my DC Summer bedroom window.

T minus Seven Days

Oh my gosh. Seven days???!!!

I have so. Much. To. Do.
















In the meantime, this weekend, I organized (with quite a bit of help) a birthday party AND a bachelorette party. And BOTH were successful. Hurrah!

***

Oh god, now where the hell have I stashed my passport this time???

City Girl

I'd forgotten how fun it is to be a young woman living in the city. There's cocktails and friends and diversity and dates and museums and politics and outdoor movies and jazz in the sculpture garden for free.

Small town USA does not do it for me.

The only small town I've lived in and really loved is Basse Santa Su, but hey, it's a market town, so people are always coming and going -- Banjul always felt small after the wonders of Basse.

Here in DC, there's loud music and dinner parties and new friends and laughter and camaraderie and neon lights and grassy knolls and I am so much happier than in Vermont.

Yesterday the world got up on the wrong side of the bed.

...Our computers kept crashing.

...The government of my colleagues' homeland was overthrown in a coup.

...My friend received a letter from grad school debt collectors.

Coups & Bueracracy

Well. I went on CNN this morning and saw a headline reading "Coup d'Etat in [my colleague's home country]". So I said, "Hey, check this out" and he said "Whaaa...?" and long story short there was a coup in his country.

This is my one&only colleague who will be in Kitgum with me. Assuming his country manages to issue him a passport. They've been "working on it" for two months now. And now there was a coup. So there's no official government. I wonder if this will break the red tape holding up his passport, or if it will solidify it?

I took the bus North yesterday...

and picked up my visa from the Ugandan Embassy!

And then I took the bus South and continued my correspondence and studies to prepare me for my trip.