We began our first full day in Kampala with a sumptuous breakfast in the dining room. A harbinger of the meals to come. At 11am we departed in a well-loved van with Richard who was to show us the sights of town. We traversed the business district on a Saturday morning which was interesting and cardiac arresting at moments. We eventually arrived at Makerere University which began in 1922 as a technical college and in 1949 became a university affiliated with the University of London. It now has 30,000 undergraduate and 3,000 graduate students. It sits on one of several hills in Kampala facing Mulago Hospital on an adjacent hill, which we toured next. Dr. Michael Hagland visited Mulago a few months ago and brought them 9 tons of equipment for the operating rooms and other areas of the hospital. He will be here tomorrow to begin talks on possible colaboration for neurosurgery training. We also visited the Uganda Cancer Institute where Dennis Clements worked in 1972. After 35 years it looked pretty much the same – the medical staff were kind and invited us into the clinic and the little 6 year old patient and his family greeted us with courtesy and a smile. We had a relaxing (read long) lunch beginning at 3pm and enjoyed the Indian cuisine of the resort. After lunch we split into 2 groups – one to visit friends in town and the other to go find something else to eat (what else?). We ate at Mama Mia’s and laughed that we traveled 8,000 miles to eat Indian and Italian food. But it was good. After a circuitous but less alarming taxi ride back to the resort (at midnight) we found Geelea in mortal combat with the computer and internet (she eventually prevailed) and Caroline was welcomed to a construction gang in her bathroom trying to fix something – mentioned 24 hours previously. She said something like “I’m tired already” or words to that effect. It was a good day.
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