Dr. Ruby Dunlap’s Uganda Fulbright Blog
The circulatory system of Kampala is an atherosclerotic mesh of streets most of which wind through the vast slums which, if reports are correct, characterize the cities of the so-called developing parts of this planet. There are sections of privileged residences and businesses behind fortresses of thickly spiked walls, gates and hired guards.
The U.S. embassy is one of these, a massive structure of multiple barriers and checks. Our embassy driver had never left his vehicle but hired nationals guarding the entrance still lifted the hood and ran a mirror underneath it to check for any discourtesies before allowing it to proceed through yet more checks and barriers when we arrived at the embassy around 9 am Wednesday morning.

We walked through a metal detector. I had to leave my three memory sticks and calculator at a front desk; no electronic devices of any kind are allowed to be carried into the embassy. After that, we had to leave our passports with a young Marine who sat behind thick glass at the final check. We were met by Dorothy, the Ugandan national who works as a cultural affairs attaché and who had facilitated the orientation for the Ugandan Fulbrighters in Washington in June.

Joann, the embassy officer assigned to meet with us, chatted pleasantly. The new ambassador to Uganda had just been sworn in by Congress and had not yet arrived in Uganda. I looked a bit wistfully at the photo of the two cats she transports with her household; she is career foreign service. “Don’t even think of it,” I told myself sternly. I’m afraid I count being catless among my sacrifices to be here; cat lovers will understand. Bob inquired about the strange circles which ringed the window frames. Joann explained that new embassies which were built after the Kenyan bombing are bomb proof; the circles were part of the window bomb proofing.

Ben, a young security specialist, reviewed safety precautions with us, against theft mostly, which is a systemic pathology around the world. Another Fulbrighter, Suk Bin of Korean birth, was with us. Bin teaches chemistry at a small Catholic college in Texas and likes to call himself an Asian redneck. Whenever he introduces himself as faculty at a Catholic institution, he quickly adds that he himself is agnostic. Bin has been assigned to the Ugandan state university in Gulu and had to fly on local aircraft from Kampala to Gulu which is in northern Uganda. He confided with me that he had temporarily suspended his agnosticism while in that aircraft. I laughed and said, “I’m going to pray that God gets you in Uganda, Bin.”

After filling out the paperwork for extended visas and my work permit, our driver headed back to Mukono along tortuous streets through mile after mile of rusty brown shanties. The city seems to live in and along its streets with constant motion of thickly populated pedestrians, slow moving cars and trucks, and boda-bodas which either are darting in between the slower vehicles or standing in small, alert squadrons for nationals who hire them for transport. Joann and Ben had warned us never to try a boda-boda; a Peace Corps volunteer caught on a boda-boda anywhere in Africa, Joan told us, would instantly be sent back to the U.S. The risk of injury was just too great. I assured her that my one and only experience had been limited to a slow ride on the university campus.
On Thursday, we spent the day shopping in Kampala with Karen Drake, the nursing faculty from Bethel University who has been most instrumental in getting the nursing program at UCU started. We had cash for shopping. Following recommendations from the U.S. State Department, we had brought a Visa debit card with us. The ease with which cash can be withdrawn with that card from the ATM machines which stand outside local banks is unnerving but we’ve taken advantage of this several times in the week we’ve been here.

I do not enjoy shopping and I won’t bore you with the reasons why I enjoyed this shopping expedition even less than most. It was necessary to purchase sufficient things to start up a small household: a few appliances, groceries, and cleaning things. Thursday evening I cooked supper for my men folk: some beef from a mature and well-exercised animal, smashed Irish, gravy, fresh green beans, and salad. Lettuce from a bigger store was safe, said Karen, if you washed it in soap and water with its final rinses in drinking water. This was a bit of happy news for me who had thought giving up raw vegetables another sacrifice.

Friday was spent with Karen and the masters nursing students, all day in orientation. We met in their nursing lab, a small room heavily locked. There are seven of them, adult, mature, experienced nurses eager for career advancement and hungry for more knowledge. They shared their struggles, trying to balance family, work and school, sounding very much like adult learners in the U.S. Learning with them will be a joy. At the end of the day, Karen, the nursing department chair who is a national named Jemima, an undergraduate faculty who is also a graduate student named Grace, and myself interviewed a faculty applicant from the Philippines. Nursing faculty are so scarce and this one had an almost perfect CV with an earned PhD and many years of experience as a nursing educator including several in Kenya.

We did the applicant the courtesy of a thorough and honest interview; two African and two American nursing faculty interviewing an Asian. My sense of our global village was strongly reinforced in that experience. Afterwards, Jemima worried out loud that she was being biased in her reaction to the applicant whose interview, like her CV, had been nearly perfect. Jemima had called a couple of references not supplied by the applicant. These had been concerning. I told her that Belmont has had otherwise good applicants for faculty positions who turned out to be not good fits for Belmont. Criteria for goodness of fit include the developmental stage of the institution: faculty who would serve mature, well-funded programs well might not serve so well a new, small, precariously funded program. The hiring decision will come from administration ranking above Jemima but the consensus among Jemima, Karen and myself (Grace had left) was strong.