in retrospect...

...it may not have been the best idea to go on a four-day hike up a volcano a week after being diagnosed with dysentery. However, hindsight is always 20-20.

I just came back from an incredible trip to Mount Elgon, an extinct volcano located in Eastern Uganda near the Kenyan border. We left from Kampala on a five-hour bus ride to the town of Mbale, where we boarded another small bus to Budadiri, a village nestled in the base of the mountain. The climbing was not of carabiner-intensity, but it was strenuous nonetheless: within the first hour I felt incredibly short of breath and almost turned back due to the seemingly unbearable altitude sickness. Luckily, I was in the company of two amazing friends who provided the energy and laughter to keep me going until the summit.

For me, the most memorable part of our hike may have been the Saturday afternoon downpour that interrupted our 37-km trek. All I can remember is a blur of the three of us, tearing through the tropical forest of Elgon when we noticed that it had started hailing. I was holding up the caboose of our train of mazungus (as expected) when I realized that we had lost our guide, Moses. We apparently thought it was a brilliant idea to keep going, and so we continued blazing through the sodden forest until we were out of breath and desperately needed to take cover under the branches of a contorted tree. I most vividly remember the heaviness in my lungs, the buckling of my knees, and the hail getting caught in my hair and eyes. In spite of being with two other people, I remember feeling strangely alone at that moment--so much so that if something had happened to any one of us, I didn't think anyone would be able to help. Then, seemingly out of nowhere I heard footsteps shake the forest floor and from out of trees came Moses, sporting a black poncho and fully resembling Batman, and I once again felt strangely safe in the middle of nowhere.

Perhaps the most rejuvenating part of our journey was getting out of Kampala for a couple of days. Living in the city is definitely an exciting experience, but I was beginning to feel that it was an experience that needed to be missed before it could be appreciated again. I'm back in the city now, a little weaker than I was before I left, but much happier to be here than camping in the rain. But, if Elgon were to call again, I wouldn't shy away from another visit.

Work has picked up quite a bit over the past few weeks, ever since I was given another project. A few years ago, RHU conducted a survey of Ugandan Parliament members, regarding their knowledge of sexual/reproductive health services and rights. While the survey was conducted very swiftly, it suffered from a high rate of nonresponse and its questions were strongly directed (example: "Would you agree with the statement that family planning helps individuals to live a healthy and useful life?"). My boss approached me a week ago and asked me to perform a similar study, but with more useful questions and more quantifiable data. He wondered if I could get nearly all 360 Parliament members to respond to the survey. He also asked me if it if would be possible to publish my work in order to help RHU garner more funding for future projects.

Oh, P.S., I have less than three weeks left in Kampala.

To quote one of my friends, "you're working with some pretty sexy data," and publishing papers is a relatively distant concept for many organizations here. If it's possible, I think it would be insanely useful to at least pass on the knowledge of the process of submitting to a journal, but it seems more than foolish to anticipate salience in the data, regardless of how "sexy*" it may seem.
(*strange, yet useful, adjective to describe data, though I apologize for using it more than once)

As a result, I've found myself buried in this very interesting project. Parliament members have the potential to be incredible forces for grassroots change, particularly in family planning and health advocacy issues. But for many reasons, a substantial number of MPs remain reluctant when it comes to being actively engaged in legislation regarding reproductive health, and I'm hoping to find out why. While working on this Parliament project, I'm still in the process of handing over data collection and analysis of the quality assessments of community health outreaches to other staff members. It's a balancing act that I have yet to perfect, but I've always considered it better to be too busy than to be bored. Wait, I'm on summer vacation?

Like many of my friends, I'm perturbed by how quickly summer is passing, especially given that I consider it to be my last summer of goofing off before I succumb to being a grown-up. Granted, being a grown-up isn't the worst realization in the world, I'm still trying to put it off for as long as possible (which probably doesn't bode well for the psyche of my grown-up self). Being on a mountain for four days almost compels you to be introspective, which I suppose is healthy in small-enough doses.

While it's great to be a temporary vagabond, I'm excited to come home soon, even if it's just for a little while. Traveling is always exciting and adventurous, but I've learned to never overestimate the tranquility of being home.