Sunday April 3, 2011 Arrival

Having left from NY Friday evening, where I had to pay extra for my clothes suitcase, I began my journey to meet up with my Ugandan colleagues who are helping to deploy hopefully 20 XOs as a pilot (more on that tomorrow). The handler at American Airlines let me take 2 suitcases and she weighed both. One had 10 XOs so I was a bit nervous that I would get stopped along the way in London and again in Uganda. She weighed the XO suitcase and it came up at 53 or 56 lbs. She said it was heavy but let it go. Then she weighed my clothing suitcase and it came up at 43 lbs. I was happy for a split second because then, she decided her scale was not working. She brought my clothing suitcase to another scale and it weighed 73 lbs. Hmmmnnn but she did NOT reweigh the XO suitcase (which had a lot of peripheral stuff as well) I paid the $60 overage begrudgingly mumbling something about humanitarian work- too little too late. So now Sunday. I was picked up promptly at 8 a.m. at the airport by Larry, my indispensible guide, who works for Teach and Tour Sojourners (TATS). I stay at their guest house. I flew through the visa process. Not a soul questioned me about that XO suitcase. Whew! (Had a minor heart attack when it did not immediately appear on the conveyor belt though.) I quickly unpacked and showered (it was almost a 3 day trek, and went to an Ugandan Catholic Mass. Same thing as last June! Local language and customs prevail, which include a whole lot of talking by a whole lot of people. Didn't understand a word and tried to keep my head from bobbing as my body craved a bed and sleep. Afterwards, I went back to the guest house. I tried setting up my laptop, the XOs and get familiar with the 1.5s. The internet would not work on my laptop, even though the wireless router was working. A technician had to set up an IP address even though my computer could see the router. A bit strange. This took a couple of hours and $12. Such is life with technology. I forced myself to stay up until 4 p.m. local time, at which point I fell dead asleep locked in my room and they had to sandblast me out of bed the next morning at 10 a.m. Apparently, they hollered and hollered to no avail; guess they got nervous.