Summer 2005, Paraa Safari Lodge, Murchinson Falls National Park, Uganda: Early in the morning, I walk out of the bathroom, barely awake, still jet-lagged, and Laurel says to me, "We're going to write a book. A memoir. I have a title and a chapter structure started already. We're going to call it There's a Bat in My Banda and an Elephant in My Pool."
First, a bit of background: Laurel and I first visited Uganda in 2003, when we presented a five-day workshop on effective legal writing to attorneys in the legal department of Uganda's Inspectorate General of Government. We returned in 2005 to train some of Uganda's High Court judges in effective judgment (aka opinion) writing. During that trip, we met with a number of legal academics as well as prominent attorneys and representatives of the Uganda Law Society (the bar association). As a result of these meetings, we decided to return to Uganda for a semester to continue working with the academic programs and to provide additional training sessions for attorneys and judges. So, one thing led to another, and a semester in Uganda has expanded to almost seven months away, starting in January 2007, in India, Uganda, Kenya, South Africa, and possibly more.
Now back to the book: The idea was to look at the differences among visiting Uganda as a tourist, working there on a short-term basis, and living there for a longer period. The title refers to two of the stranger experiences we had had so far in Uganda. On our first trip, I had travelled on my own for a bit, spending a few nights at the Ssese Palm Beach Resort in the Ssese Islands in Lake Victoria. On my first night in my banda, a lovely lakeside hut, I was under attack from a dive-bombing bat, driving me to retreat to the bathroom, dragging all of my bedding to the bathroom floor and hiding out. At the much more luxurious Paraa Lodge, we had no encounters with bats, but on our first night we heard one of our neighbors, a Texan, shouting (and I'm not making this up), "Bubba, c'mon out here on the balcony and a get a load of this." Sure enough, we go out on the balcony to see an elephant family that had come up to drink from the pool and the hotel staff insistently trying to shoo them away.
As we get ready to return to Uganda, we are excited about travelling, working, and living in Africa and will do our best to share our experiences with those who are interested through this blog. Check back starting in early January, when we'll start chronicling our adventures. For those of you who want to keep track of us on a day-to-day basis, we'll try to keep our calendar up to date.
