These are the People

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Last week marked my final few days in Yumbe. After a delayed start to my week, I finally made it to town and lo, all of the staff at Needy Kids, one of the two non-profits I'm working with, was absent, registering Ugandans for the fall elections (strangely, a temporary, paid job here) and Abaru Beatrice, the director of Safe Motherhood was only around for two days. It was an unexpected, if fitting "This is Africa" final week of work. If I haven't already made it clear, interruptions, extreme delays and like are par for the course here. But the weather was relatively cool with massive storm clouds whirling around every afternoon, the mangoes were so plentiful that 10 cents bought you a garbage bag full, and I still managed to get some important work done.

Pictured above are two local folks that work with Safe Motherhood - the first is woman named Agnes, a beneficiary whose five-year-old son was quickly treated for malaria thanks to the work of Safe Motherhood and Wellshare International, and the second is Kassim, a Community Medicine Distributor, a first volunteer responder in the Ugandan chain of health services. My work with sub-granting and what might be loosely called "non-profit management" is a few degrees removed from the Ugandans who cope with malaria, so it is heartening and inspiring to meet a couple of people who can describe the real stakes.

For Agnes, if she or her son has malaria, it means she can't work in the field to bring food to her family. The seemingly minor expense of drugs for treatment - a few dollars - is an enormous burden a subsistence farming family like Agnes's. So for her, the stakes are high - to avoid malaria and to treat it before it kills means everything. For Kassim, as a volunteer Community Medicine Distributor, he plays a vital role, but one that doesn't get much support from the Ministry of Health here. It's tremendously beneficial for a local non-profit like Safe Motherhood (with support from Wellshare and, in turn, USAID) to provide him with more information and to reach out to educate his village of Aria.

Below are Adiga, myself and Beatrice in front of the Safe Motherhood office on the day of my departure. The second photo is of Tamia Christine, the office assistant at Needy Kids, who I worked with often in the absence of other staff. Good folks, all. If you're headed to Yumbe anytme soon, say 'hi' for me.

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All God's Creatures Got a Place in the Fryer

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I almost let this culinary gem slip beneath the radar: a couple of weeks ago, everybody's favorite season started in the West Nile Region of Uganda - White Ant Season! I'm told you can find them fried, but they are often prepared as a boiled ball, called onyo (certainly not spelled right). Most Ugandans I talked to said two things about this delicacy; (1) they love it, and (2) do not, under any circumstances, eat too much of it because it causes some serious digestive stress. Sounded like an endorsement if I've ever heard one, so I gave it a try.

A generous appraisal places the flavor and texture somewhere between a roughly ground pate and a mushroom loaf, but the texture of the ant carapaces (the wings are removed) throws something else in that defies description. Small leaves? Bits of sawdust? Something like that. A less generous review might point out a powerful, lingering aftertaste that eventually, inevitably, reminds you that you just at a wad of boiled ants. I was told that it gets even better if you let it sit around for a couple of days - a curing process that I wasn't about to test. 

Witch-doctor Medicine

Somewhere near the heart of the work Wellshare International is doing here in the West Nile region are the "community sensitization" activities we help our partner non-profits run at the village level. "Community sensitization," though it sounds like some kind of group anti-anesthesia, actually means "community education." In the case of malaria prevention and treatment, it means getting out into towns and villages, gathering as many people as possible together, and explaining (in a fun, edu-tainment way) how malaria works, how you prevent it, and how you properly treat it.

This last week, I went to the village of Arivu, 30 minutes south of Arua, to observe a community sensitization. Along with a drumming/skit group that provides the entertainment, local Ministry of Health officials, local government figures, the indigenous partner non-profit, and a couple people from Wellshare are usually in attendance. In between some speeches by doctors and local big-wigs, which are in Lugbara rather than English (so I can't speak to their content or quality), the real fun revolves around drums, singing, and hilarious skits that make fun of witch-doctors. See below:

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Among the many challenges non-profits face when trying to educate the Ugandan public about malaria (or any public health issue), is the prevalence and trust in witch-doctors to provide rural villagers with "medicine." Drama groups turn witch-doctors into laughable and captivating material - the children and mothers howl and run closer when the witch-doctor in rags and a mask comes forward to try to cure the malaria patient (in the skit). So for all of you readers in America, my message to you is this: Don't trust witch-doctors to cure your malaria.

Sorghum, split yellow peas and vegetable oil, anyone?

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For the last week, I took a break from volunteering for one organization to volunteer for another organization. This latter organization will remain nameless, as per the request of my enormous, intergovernmental agency employer. I spent the week with several other volunteers at Rhino Camp and Imvepi Refugee settlements, about two hours from Arua. The "settlements" are in fact a series of refugee villages receiving the same social services and protection, all spread out on a low valley along the western bank of the Nile. 

For six days, I ticked names and totaled kilos of sorghum, all the while fending off some very angry Sudanese refugees who have become very accustomed to receiving free food every month. The heat was dizzying and the sun was, well, equatorial. Most afternoons around 2pm, I was ready to dig a hole in the dirt with my bare hands to escape the withering heat. The work itself sometimes went smoothly, at least when the food arrived on the truck on time and it was enough and the people were orderly and helpful in off-loading and measuring the food, which was rare. The entire refugee camp is divided into a dozen or so food distribution points where refugees are assigned to receive their monthly ration. It is a complicated, unpleasant procedure double checking several lists to make sure that someone can, in fact, pick up food this month (often for people who are not in the camp, but rather, are in the hospital, at school or visiting family elsewhere, all trips that must be registered with an authority and marked). Each food point involved getting food to between 30 and 200 "households" ranging in size from 1 to 15 people each. Every food point ended with at least a few irate refugees who were convinced that (1) they had been shorted some vegetable oil, (2) they had not actually received the food we had given them, (3) we were going to take the remaining food for ourselves when they were the ones who deserved it, or (4) we were corrupt. There were more precious, memorable moments, but for sake of anonymity, I'll keep them out of the blog.  

It was a strange experience for a few reasons. For one, the image I have of a refugee camp is filled with dirty tents, all crammed together and the mud streets are thronging with desperate, starving people. Not so here at Rhino and Imvepi camp where the mostly Sudanese, though occasionally Congolese and Central African Republican, live in spread out villages of thatch-roofed brick huts, indistinguishable from the rest of the West Nile Region. Many of them have been at the "camps" for years, if not decades. Most children under 15 were born in a refugee camp. Refugees are encouraged to grow their own food, but usually receive monthly rations from the nameless intergovernmental agency for which I was working. Also strangely, the 15,000 or so refugees receive a wealth of social services - medicine, counseling, education - that at least seems far greater than services extended to most villagers in this poor end of Uganda. There is, admittedly, something much more dramatically appealing to international donors about the plight of the refugee than, say, the plight of the local cassava farmer. I can speak from my own experience that the malnutrition, sickness and general living conditions for children in Yumbe appears worse than it is in these well-established refugee camps. Ugandans are aware of the disparity and it is the source of some bitterness. 

Workin' It

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A couple of readers have pointed out the lack of posts on my work (ostensibly the reason I'm here in Uganda), and they've made a request for some more information on the actual work I do between the long mornings of eating mangoes on the veranda and evenings in front of the television watching English Premiere Football. Fair enough. And it's good that they've asked, because the work has become more focused and productive each week. At the end of my third week spent in Yumbe (where, as I've said, I'm camped at a hotel Monday through Friday), I can say that I can finally write a clear entry on my work.

As I said a while back, I'm stationed in Yumbe, a small town 90km north of Arua, where I'm helping two small, indigenous non-profits (or Community-Based Organizations) "build capacity" - non-profit speak for "get bigger" and "be functional." I divide my time between two non-profits: Safe Motherhood and Needy Kids. Both non-profits are working with WellShare International, the Minneapolis-based organization through which I'm volunteering, to implement a USAID-funded anti-malaria program. These non-profits are also doing half a dozen (or more) other things that are more or less related to health and education. 

Safe Motherhood was founded by Abaru Beatrice, a teacher and mother, to set up support networks around the district for HIV-positive folks. Beatrice is a tall, graceful, middle-aged woman with high cheekbones and a wide smile. Her movements, like her thoughts, are usually slow, careful and deliberate. She started the network after finding out she herself was HIV+. She now oversees eight networks of around 20 people each. They meet at least once a month to talk about adherence to their HIV treatment drugs (which require strict adherence in order to work), acceptance of HIV-positive people in the community, and to encourage other people to get tested and if they're HIV+, to "come out." There is in Uganda, as in most places, a stigma attached to the disease, and without telling people they've got it, someone is not likely to get treatment or take precautions. In addition to her HIV work, Beatrice has a few other programs related to health, clean water and education. The office where she works has no electricity and no computer (pictured above). No one in the organization (there are about five people who contribute time) is paid. To get to work in Yumbe, Beatrice catches a ride to work from 20km away. Sometimes she's unable to hitch a ride for two hours or more.

The other organization I work with, Needy Kids, is run by a man named Muzamil. Between his work hours, his indefatigable attitude and his humor, Muzamil seems a bit like a movie character. He seems to arrive everywhere on someone else's motor-bike or in someone else's car. He has a narrow mustache and sly smile. He is, like many Ugandans, quick to laugh. His organization is a little bit larger and works on a wider variety of issues, including anti-corruption and environmental degradation. Like Beatrice's office, Needy Kids has no electricty, no internet, and Muzamil works from a donated laptop. Because there's no electricity in Yumbe, work on the laptop usually happens in the evening when it's possible to use the power generated at a nearby hotel. Many of my evenings, I'd run into Muzamil typing away when I came for dinner. 

The main challenges to both organizations include, but are not limited to, (1) basic infrastructure, (2) searching for donors, and (3) maintaining an effective, basic organizational structure. As you can imagine, it's tough to contact people by e-mail, write grant proposals or organize information without power. I'm working with both organizations to get solar power systems donated from DED, the German development service (kind of like USAID). DED has also offered them energy-efficient desktops to pair with the solar power systems. Everything is heavily subsidized by German and other International government, while a 20% cost share is expected to be covered by the non-profits themselves. The search for donors is a major, ongoing challenge for these non-profits, and it's probably safe to say it's a similar challenge for non-profits in the developing world everywhere. Part of the challenge lies in the differing perspectives of the indigenous non-profits and the outsiders who would fund them. Western countries provide a lot of money through development agencies and foundations, usually posted on the internet somewhere, sometimes larger grants will appear in the national newspapers. As far as Western countries are concerned, it's ripe, low-hanging fruit. But out here in Yumbe, The internet is not an easy tool. Most of the information Beatrice and Muzamil give and receive in a given day is face-to-face conversation or over cell phones. To access the internet, both organizations have to pay someone else what quickly becomes a lot of money, and neither Beatrice nor Muzamil are very familiar or comfortable with Google, let alone with a program like Raiser's Edge (a popular fund-raising program in the U.S.). Down here, the low-hanging fruit still seems pretty high up. 

The result is neither organization has regular, core operating money. They volunteer until they get a project grant. Often, they adjust their missions and visions to suit available money. It's true there's money out there for the taking, but it's hard to find for a small, indigenous non-profit. From Yumbe, it's a donors', donors', donors' world. And it's hard to say how the system should change. A major push for internet access and basic computer literacy would be one way to help. Another option would be for more donors to be on the ground, looking for and talking with (face-to-face) the organizations they want to fund.

I got bogged down for a bit there. The third area I'm helping with is maintaining a basic, effective organizational structure. A lot of the advice and guiding the non-profits here have been given has been tailored over decades to suit American language, culture, law and non-profits. It can be very difficult for a highly educated American to understand some of the policy documents that guide an American non-profits. It's downright impossible for a Ugandan. So it can be a challenge for Muzamil to see what precisely is useful about an organizational Constitution or a financial policy (and to make sure that both actually fit Ugandan society).

And that's my work.

Sunday market, sugar cane, kitenge, kitsch

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This isn't much of a photo, because it's taken from the window of a moving vehicle, but it's a reasonably representative shot of most of the northwestern Ugandan countryside. I realized earlier this week how different most of this area looks compared to images I had of Africa - there is no jungle, and there is no savannah. Aside from the pet monkeys people buy elsewhere and bring to the West Nile region, there are no monkeys. Outside of the national parks, there aren't elephants, hyenas, lions or all the rest. There are only these small subsistence farms of cassava, matooke (green plantains), corn and the like. Each farm has at least one small round or square thatch-roofed hut, always as red as the dust that covers all of Uganda. These farms abut one another for miles, maybe hundreds of miles. When you're on a high hill, as far as the eye can see are these small farms, sometimes fallow fields or brushy areas, but mostly farms to every horizon. For some reason, there are no oxen or horses, only people hand-hoeing their little plots of land, and there are certainly no farming tractors. In each district there is a sometimes cash crop - in Yumbe it is tobacco bought by the British American Tobacco company, elsewhere it is cotton or sugar cane or corn. But by and large, you do not see the commercial agricultural landscape that defines rural America and Europe - no grain elevators, no railways, few fields larger than a hundred feet on a side.

There are times when I've thought of this part of the country as fitting the Jeffersonian ideal - every man a farmer - and maybe, in a way it is. It certainly is picturesque from the hilltop where you can see a thousand farms and a thousand farmers, each field a green, square blanket laid on a hillside dotted with a man or woman with a hoe raised in the air. But the lack of plough animals or tractors means there isn't much in the way of surplus, so there isn't much in the way of markets, and both education and government accountability are lacking. So it's got a little ways to go.

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I took the first photo on the way to a large open air market on the Uganda/DRC border (for those rusty on their African geography, DRC is short for the Democratic Republic of the Congo - a country that has exemplified neither democracy or republicanism). Half of the market lies in Uganda while half lies in the Congo. Needless to say, it is a "porous" border. There is more security and signage between American counties than there is between these two countries, at least at the "Kampala" market. The name of the market is, I think, supposed to increase it's appeal. It would be a bit like naming a rural Minnesota outlet mall "New York City Mall." But it was a busy market, with what loked like around 5,000 people buying and selling everything that could imaginably be available in the middle of central African nowhere: pineapple, guava, bananas, and other fruits of all kinds, goats, sheep, beef, chickens, eggs, sugarcane (pictured above), plastic bowls from China, illegal gas from the Congo, palm oil, vegetable oil (sometimes straight from the UN World Food Programme tin), flour, cassava, millet, etc. The highlights for me were the sugarcane, which I'm chomping on above, and the textiles, called Kitenge (ki-TEN-gay). The sugar cane cost 10 cents American for two three foot stalks, shaved of the hard outer bark while we waited. You chew on the fiber, which is about as hard as wet birchwood, crush it in your teeth to suck out the delicious juice (which, not surprisingly, tastes like brown sugar), try to not think about the terrible things it's doing to your dental health, and then yack up the chewed fiber on the ground. It's okay to spit out just about anything just about anywhere here. Amazing, eh?

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Of a more aesthetic bent is the Congolese kitenge. These textiles are designed and produced in the Congo, and at the Kampala market, they cost about $2.50 for a large two meter by three meter sheet. In the city of Kampala, which is eight hours away, the same cloth may cost five or six times as much. These are the cloths you see everywhere here in Northwestern Uganda. They are wrapped around women's heads, used to pad them from the enormous objects they carry. They are sewn into skirts, dresses, pants, everything. They are also exceedingly beautiful. Most kitenge come in brilliant colors and strange patters, though all with a certain similar style. Sometimes they remind me of diagrams from molecular science textbooks - golden mitochodondria or blood red viruses. Sometimes they look like giant, endless Roy Liechtenstein prints - the spots and curves of comic strips blown up and redoubled. Maybe even more interestingly, they sometimes include bizarre, almost inexplicable modern objects, which I think maybe are code for something. Padlocks and keys appear in one (chastity?). A kerosene lantern appears again and again in another (knowledge? wisdom?). Chickens are a popular motif. Faucets, fish, cages, bibles, the Koran, people in profile, in prayer, open hands, it goes on and on. I bought one for my sister that is composed entirely of tree stumps topped in red - a field of bloody deforestation. I'm not sure why you would wrap a baby with a pattern like that, but should my sister have a baby, it'll be an option.

A future without planes...

Some pithy thoughts on airplanes and travel from Alain de Botton in light of the distruption from the Icelandic volcano, from the BBC website:
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In a future world without aeroplanes, children would gather at the feet of old men, and hear extraordinary tales of a mythic time when vast and complicated machines the size of several houses used to take to the skies and fly high over the Himalayas and the Tasman Sea.
The wise elders would explain that inside the aircraft, passengers, who had only paid the price of a few books for the privilege, would impatiently and ungratefully shut their window blinds to the views, would sit in silence next to strangers while watching films about love and friendship - and would complain that the food in miniature plastic beakers before them was not quite as tasty as the sort they could prepare in their own kitchens..

Passionfruit, Mangoes, Fried Pork, Shangri-La

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At least two of the ingredients for a perfect West Nile Saturday are (1) fruit and (2) pork (unless you are a resident Muslim). Those two food items and the relatively cool weather that arrived in the area on Thursday night made for a pretty good start to my Ugandan weekend.

I slept in until 7:45am instead of the usual 7:00am, because the sun still comes exploding into the sky, even on Saturdays. Then I got the water boiling on the stove for instant coffee and oatmeal - both luxuries in this part of the world. While breakfast cools down from boiling, I enjoyed a brief, cold shower, courtesy of the outdoor cistern which provides cold water in the morning and lukewarm water in the evening. Then I pulled back the sliding doors wide onto the yard so the house can exhale some of the stale, warm air. Rashid, being the kind-hearted man that he is, offered me a couple of mangoes from the tree in the yard (they are as plentiful around here as acorns in Minnesota). After cutting the mango, I squeezed some fresh passionfruit juice from fruits bought on the roadside yesterday evening. Then I fired up ye olde internet for some e-mailing on my laptop, turned on the BBC World Service, took a sip of coffee and exhaled.

Late in the morning, I met with a couple of international friends at the house of Janet, my (previously mentioned) cook and her husband Richard, in the nearby (previously mentioned) village of Ediofe for a lunchtime feast of fried pork and beer. As I wrote before, the system for pork-purchasing in Ediofe is a little unusual coming from America. You go to one of the "pork shacks" which are small and stand alone from the villages many bars. There, you buy the pork by the kilogram, and if you're ballsy like Richard, you haggle the pork-monger about which piece of pork you want to eat. Richard lobbied for some rib bits, and the pork-monger obliged. Both me and my international friends did our best to not look too closely at the sanitation in said pork shack, but suffice it to say, there is no health code in this part of the country. You may gather that by looking closely at the photos below.

We took a seat at a nearby bar, with a strategically close position to the television to catch the Manchester United v. Manchester City English Premiere League soccer match coming on in an hour, we ordered a few drinks, and we waited. After a long wait, a huge plate of fried pork arrived (which I was too hungry to photograph before eating), along with a kind of slaw salad, sliced raw onions, tomatoes, a shallow dish of salt and hot pepper flakes, and a big dish for pig bones. I'm not very clear-headed about food these days, but the cold beer and the sizzling, fried pork was about as good as food gets. The good view of the soccer match on t.v. helped.

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Quiet towns and wild rides

On Friday morning, I returned from Yumbe to Arua. This marks the end of my second week in Yumbe, which in contrast to the provincial capitol of Arua, is very quaint and very small. The normally intense heat broke on Thursday evening in dramatic fashion as a violent wind came across the plains from the northeast, dropping the temperature about 90F to 70F, bringing rain showers that lingered through the night. The clouds up above looked like a summer front in Minnesota - purple waves rolling ahead of dark, ominous clouds, and the sky made it look as if down on earth, we were under a great sea.

Hours each week in Yumbe, while I wait for people or documents to arrive, I watch goats and trash blow by in the hot wind. The wide open lots, half-built brick foundations and empty huts make ideal territory for the plastic bags and goat herds that fill the town. The work is slow and inefficient, although the lack of electricity, facilities and resources mean no one's clearly to blame.

I returned to Arua on Friday along a 90km road on the slowest "bus ride" of my life. Our 1990 Nissan compact pick-up idled in Yumbe for an hour before we had three people in the cab and 17 people (plus three babies) in the bed of the truck. The going was slow, but I was told that the road was short. About twenty minutes down the road, we came to a stop while climbing a hill. After talking with some fellow passengers, I gathered that we had run out of gas - a curious problem given that we had just left town after idling for an hour. No matter, and no stress for the Ugandans I was with; we waited for about 45 minutes while a boy ran down the dirt road to find a few liters of gas which he brought back in pop bottles. When we started again, the battery was dead. Again, no matter and no stress, as a few men just hopped out of the bed and pushed the truck uphill or downhill until the engine sputtered to life. An hour down the road, we ran out of gas again. No matter and no stress. We waited, sitting on the road side, for an hour or so while the same boy ran down the road for fuel. I began to suspect an animal had died in the pillow that was protecting me from the springs of the seat (I paid a premium for a front seat, leaving the pregnant women in the bed - very un-gentleman-like of me). Finally the boy returned with a couple more liters of fuel. In the intervening hour, villagers walked by our human pyramid, but no cars passed. About a dozen push-starts later, our "truck" arrived at the outskirts of Arua, where the same boy hopped out and sprinted ahead in a failed attempt to distract the white-uniformed traffic cop from our small truck, heavy with paying customers. The driver did not have a license, so he spent another 20 minutes arguing a bribe with the traffic cop, before we drove on to Arua proper. Door to door service, 90km, five and a half hours. The Ugandans on board did not seem perturbed - and most of them were in far more uncomfortable positions, not to mention state of pregnancies. In the way that an American might react to a long commercial break during prime time t.v., they hardly seemed to notice the delay. So, a lesson in patience (or resignation).

But I've been told by fellow Americans to not dwell on slow things or things that don't work in Uganda, so I digress.

On the road to Yumbe

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Written on Monday, May 12th: I leave this morning for a town called Yumbe, about 90km north of Arua. I was there Tuesday through Friday last week, and I will spend at least the next three weeks there. WellShare works with two small Civil Society Organizations there, and I'm helping them "build capacity" - development-ese for making sure they're functional and financially stable. This week should be a telling one as far as how much work I will be able to get done in my brief time here.

The above photo is of the Needy Kids Uganda office. It is, by Yumbe standards, a grand building. Even the thatched hut on the right is an upstanding piece of architecture. The town, which is much closer to Sudan, and therefore (I'm not sure if this is logical) drier and even hotter than Arua. In many ways, northern Uganda lags behind the south - health, education, and above all, economy. While the whole country was pretty well ruined under the oppressive dictatorships of Idi Amin and Milton Obote, the devastation continued in the north under the reign of terror of the Lord's Resistance Army, well into the 2000's. The LRA, under the leadership of madman Joseph Kony, roamed the northern countryside, looting, raping, maiming, murdering and recruiting child soldiers. As a result, people living in small villages (which constitutes most of Uganda's population), sought refuge in larger towns under the protection of the Ugandan army. When the LRA was chased out of the country - they are still wandering poorer, more anarchic areas like the "Democratic Republic" of the Congo, southern Sudan and the Central African Republic - people left Yumbe to return to their villages. So until recently, Yumbe had quite a few residents. On top of these woes, Idi Amin came from a town not far from here, Koboko, and so he recruited many military men from the area. The bitterness felt by the rest of Uganda towards the far northwest has not entirely dissipated.

Today, the town looks a bit like the sub-saharan version of Detroit - as you walk down the street, you see an occupied thatched hut, an empty lot, a burned down thatched hut, a crumbling building, an occupied building, and yet another burned down thatched hut. The people here have visibly less money than the people of Arua, who in turn have less money than the people of Kampala. You see protein deficiencies in the distended bellies of children, there isn't much in the way of local crops, and as a white person, I'm asked for money about once for every 50 feet I walk through the town.

The washed-out look of the photo is if anything, an understatement. There's a filter technique sometimes used in American films like "Three Kings" of "Blackhawk Down" where the whole landscape looks bleached and hot. From squinting, sweaty eyelids, this is how Yumbe looks.