Of Awesome Airplane Seatmates and Unintentional Explosions

It's been an eventful day? few hours? few days? flying across oceans and time zones on intermittent naps has a strange way of distorting time for me. But regardless, here I am in Mukono, Uganda, at the Save The Mothers Headquarters at the Uganda Christian University. Two lovely Canadian interns, Megan and Beatrice, have been very welcoming and indispensible in helping me get a handle on things.

But let me back up and fill you in on some things that happened in between. On the flight from Montreal to Brussels, I asked my seat-mate where he was going. Uganda. Oh, small world. And what was he doing there? A maternal-child health project. Seriously? Talk about coincidence! What did he do? Turns out he was a cardiologist from Calgary, an ex-dean of the med school! OK, sounds a bit more like providence than coincidence! We had an awesome flight with some great conversations, and he is going to hook me up with the global health office (I didn't even know we had one?) back in Calgary!

I arrived safe and sound at 1am (sadly I cannot say the same for my luggage, which is still....somewhere not in Uganda.) Fortunately my important suitcase arrived, I'm just awaiting the arrival of my secondary suitcase which has all my sterile gloves, scrubs, and medical supplies.Very glad my main bag arrived--you'd think that after so many times of traveling, and so many times of lost luggage, I would have packed smarter in my carry-on, but no. I'm excellent at denial, I keep thinking it will never happen to me, even though time and time again I'm proved wrong!

No pictures in this post, apologies. I left my camera in my room and haven't gone back for it yet today. Big excitement of the day was my exploding cell phone charger. I had been advised to bring a surge protector to Uganda. Unfortunately I did not check to see if it could handle 240V. So when I went to plug in my cellphone to charge it up, sparks crackled noisily and smoke hissed angrily out of the surge "protector". Oh dear. I destroyed the surge protector, universal plug, and cellphone charger all in one go. Miraculously the phone is still intact. (Yes I realize that would have been an awesome picture, but forgive me if I don't try to repeat it just for your viewing pleasure!)

I spent the morning at the Save The Mothers office, and went with Bea and Megan to town to purchase a few items (including a new charger and plug). They've kindly let me borrow a laptop so I can update you all. I'm off to Nagalamma tomorrow to start work with Dr Paul, a local OB/GYN and new grad. Not sure of the internet situation there, but I'll try to update you when I can!