End of my first night in Kampala

(12:05am, 20 June)

So, here I am inside my mosquito-net-fort at Jon and Sarah's house. It's just after midnight local time right now.

Bringing both the flashlight and the little USB-port light were good choices; the light switch is inevitably outside the net, so the flashlight makes getting in etc much easier, and the USB light makes for good and easy to position light for typing without needing batteries or anything.

This afternoon and evening were really nice. I met Jon, of course, and he took me to the office and showed me around and introduced me to the operators and office manager, as well as to the Appfrica developers with whom we share space, and who helped write the software interface the Question Box operators use.

Jon and Sarah also have a really cute puppy ("Zipper") from the local SPCA. She's 11-ish weeks old, pretty small, and impressively mild-mannered for a dog of her age. I'll have to post pictures of her later.

Later in the evening a few of their friends came over, including one of their friends' couchsurfers. It turns out that Jon and Sarah are on CS, and I suppose now I definitely have to join since I am, for all intents and purposes, couchsurfing their place. They said they'd write me a reference on it, too, and they and their friend and their friend's couchsurfer exchanged some stories. We watched a movie, Revolver, from one of their well-stocked (and all completely MPAA-ok...) external hard drives. It was by the same person as Snatch, Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, etc, but was kind of incomprehensible and not really as good. It seemed to be going for sort of a Fight Club-style twist but left it way too ambiguous.

I think they have Arrested Development on one of their drives, so thankfully my forgetting to bring it with me won't prevent me from seeing it until the fall (not that I'll ever have time to...). I also went briefly to a nearby and pretty elaborate supermarket with Jon to get a few things he needed for the people coming over, but didn't get anything for myself; will sort that out over the weekend. I just had no sense of what I had space to store or prepare or whatever while I'm at their place. He also showed me a couple of places that might have rooms while we were out, and hopefully I'll be able to get one before long. Also, it's commonplace for stores to have bulletin boards where these things are listed.

In all, I don't feel like I accomplished much today but it was definitely a start, and while I didn't see a whole lot of the area besides from the original car, I definitely feel like, well, I'm here, and am starting to get a feeling for the place.

In other news, apparently Grameen issued Question Box a couple (three?) GPRS/EDGE modems, but the operators' computers are at the Appfrica office where there is already a connection (about $1000/mo for a 192kbps connection!), so Jon said I could just use one as my connection for the duration of my stay. I might still get data for my iPhone, as well, but needn't decide right away. It'll work fine as a phone once I get a SIM card for it (tomorrow, I hope), which will help with getting a flat and all that.

OK, I think that's all for now. I'm exhausted, and excited not be in an airport for the first night since Monday and sleeping in a bed for the first time since Saturday.