April 23, 2016

 

 Today we all woke up late, on purpose, looking forward to a day where we had to do nothing in particular but relax. It was a gorgeous day with a blue sky and a bright sun.  I actually had time to read some Washington Post news articles as I lingered over a delicious breakfast of a fruit plate containing mango, pineapple, banana, and watermelon, Ugandan coffee brewed in milk (called African Coffee), and scrambled eggs on toast.  This breakfast wasn’t unusual as it is what we everyday, but the lengthy time over which I ate it was a luxury.  At around 1pm we greeted Dr. Melanie Nicol, a pharmacy professor at University of Minnesota, who has joined us for the remainder of the trip.  She was with us in Kampala but stayed there for 1 week to work on her research but will now be with us in Masindi to meet my partners here.  A bonus from her arrival was that we got to see our Kampala driver, Haji, once again.  He is so good to us and was really happy to see the students. He brought us 2 big bunches of delicious yellow bananas as a treat.

Later in the afternoon, a few of the students and I walked to town to check out the shops.  Even though the stores look nothing like ours and are without large flashy signs, you can find just about anything you need.  They are all just small concrete rooms next to each other and you have to kind of peer inside to figure out what they sell at times.  Sometimes it is easy to tell because they might have clothing or fabric hanging outside but to find the grocers you need to peek inside.  Anyway, we were on a quest to find nail polish remover and after failing at about 3 stores, we were referred to a store that carried it.  On our way back we found ice cream in a grocery store and two of the students checked it out.  

 

 In the evening, we took a walk u the street to the Masindi Hotel for dinner.  There menu is much more limited than the New Court View but we all found something and all of our meals were really tasty. I had a delicious grilled steak with mushroom sauce and a huge mound of mashed potatoes. 

Tomorrow we get to go Rhino Trekking and we are all excited about that.