Picture Me Walkin'

Like all my well designed plans, everything I thought I had all figured out for the next couple months is totally out the window. It turns out the partially-inept travel agency I was forced to use to book my tickets had one last trick up their sleeve. I guess my ticket can't be extended past early Feb, some sort of one year maximum. So, now I have to decide to either cut my travels to less than a month or just let my return ticket expire and figure it out later. A responsible person, obviously, would pick the former. But for me, I like cowpeas. I have some big-boy decisions needing to be made in a hurry. It's unfortunate that I just so happen to be the most chronically indecisive person on the planet. I'll have to figure it out in the next week, so soon enough life will go on as normal.

[Part One of a two part epic] (Scenic Gulu) Last week we were extended an amazing invitation from a friend of a friend of a friend. He runs a project for war-orphans in Pader, which is way way way up north in the "war-torn" region about as far from somewhere as one can really get. Normally this would immediately go into the "thanks but no thanks" pile, but this one felt different. First off, it's not everyday that we get chance to go see that area with someone with real business up there- if the stories are true, you can't up there and not see some real wild ish. Second and perhaps most relevant, dude was a Rasta. You know like Bob Marley, dreadlocks, red, black green bracelets. The Rastaman is a friendly people, and if you can't trust a Rasta then who can you trust in this world, right? So anyways, we went to Kampala to talk with him and iron out the details. All seemed to be ok, we agreed to help split the costs up to but not exceeding x shi-shi's...

Because we are nothing if not fair and balanced, I'm going to whine about some things that went wrong the other day. Also, Luke gave me the beating of a lifetime playing Gin, which never gets old. 1. As some of you may know, the NBA playoffs are in full swing right now. Given that we are decidedly not in basketball country, we've given up trying to follow with any regularity. However, there are maybe two or three games a week that make it on the South Africa satellite feed. Amazingly, there were games on Saturday and Sunday, so even though that is prime soccer time in these parts, we had double the odds of catching a game. One we had to miss for official business (seriously, we are really starting to make real progress), but we were all set to watch the other. Except that the power was out and there were big soccer games. But that is relatively common, so we had a contingency plan. A small place, with a generator, that the soccer hoards only frequent for the biggest of games. W...

And that about does it for Italy. I still can't believe we (read: Luke) got this side-trip to work. We've eaten some delicious treats, learned a LOT about fire and just generally gotten the five-star treatment. Tonight we finish off with some non-verbal observation training (meaning a behind the scenes look at the kitchen in a local restaurant). (Just this little Villa where we've been staying) Nathaniel has been just an excellent host Between the remedial science lessons (some of us only studied fluffy social sciences in college) and a window into the inner gossip of Tortona, he's kept us entertained at every moment. And take my word, this gossip is racy stuff. But just like that, we're leaving. And this is where things get a little weird, folks. Among the helpful bits of advice we got from some of the field teams: bring a case of syringes. Hopefully we will write this one up as an abundance of caution, but if something happens and there aren't any clean syring...

Well, Friday is my last day at Industrial Economics , where I've been consulting at the nexus of policy, economics and the environmental for the last 2+ years. Despite the (very) occasional complaint, I have to say that it's been a pretty rewarding experience overall. I've gotten a chance to work with smart and interesting people, made some good friends and learned a lot. I don't want to get too philosophical about these things, so even though it's tough to leave some people behind here, I think we'll just leave it with a 'good times were had by all' and move on. IEc Ski Day - it's been a tough last week at the office Luke is coming to Boston on Sunday afternoon. Clearly, we are just running around like crazy at this point, trying to make sure we have everything before we take off (zero chance of that happening). We've been lucky to get some good advice from people on what to bring and what to pick up in Uganda, but of course if anyone out there ...