Inventiveness and some key learnings in Africa

After now being here for over a week there are some key learnings I am taking away that are not cultural and not vocational. These have to do with everyday things. I’ll start with bathing. 1) Bathing there have been multiple times while here (particularly in Gulu) where I have had to take what one of my team members referred to as a bucket bath. You have the tub, and a bucket and room temperature water (no hot running water for bathing). You then have to get yourself wet, lather up and then turn yourself and the bucket in many different ways to rinse yourself off. It’s a challenge but it gets you cleaner than you would be after just sleeping 8 hours in the heat. 2) Skype’n in the dark. This morning I woke up at 6am here (10pm for my lovely wife Mary). I dialed into skype using my MTN (mobile company) modem. After some bouts of not getting the modem to work my modem co-owner Peter…let me stop there one second… as I type there is a chicken 3 feet from me as I am sitting outside typing this, this is a common occurrence chickens, goats and cows all over and on the side of the road as you go about town, even in Kampala…. I digress. So Peter figured out that if you hold the metal part on the modem with your hand and hold it in the air you don’t lose your internet connection. So here I am this morning. Laptop on lap, modem being held in my left hand above my head headphones on so I don’t disturb anyone in the house and then I realize I cant see myself on my video screen. This I soon figure out is because I am sitting in complete darkness in the living room. So I then proceed to grab my trusty headlamp. Let me tell you if some say that duct tape is the one thing you need to bring and can solve all problems, I would argue that a headlamp is #2. So with computer on lap, headlamp positioned to point at my face, headphones on and my modem in hand pointing towards the heavens I was able to Skype with Mary. And only lost the connection twice! Which is pretty huge here.