The Artsaypunk

Just so you know. In the middle of a rainforest, in a National Park, in a country with two official gradations below “Outhouse,” is just about the worst possible time to get the shits.

The night before we went Chimp Tracking, I had a restless night, mostly due to the chomping, scratching noises directly over my head. Anyway, when I’m half awake, half asleep, is when I have the dreams I actually remember. I dreamt that while we were out tracking, my sister and I discovered a brand new [...]

Anna and I decided to stay the night in a tree-house banda about a half kilometer back into the forest at the chimp camp. I was excited. Who wouldn’t want to stay in a tree-house in the jungle? And I must admit, just about every crazy-assed thing I do in the third world, I think, [...]

My sister and I decided, in a spontaneous way, to rocket up to Fort Portal, a western Ugandan town near the Congolese border, where, among other things, you can get access to Chimpanzees in their natural habitat. I’m a sucker for monkeys, so we went for it. Jameson, an old-boy at Anna’s school (and pronounced [...]

Just outside of Mbarara, there is a sign for “Moses and Sons Coffin Dealers.” The sign has a helpfully large painting of a coffin on it, I suppose to counter the illiterate crowd. The worst part is, according to my sister, their shop is almost exactly halfway between the hospital and the AIDS clinic.

At Anna and Mike’s school we are in a fairly remote area of Uganda. In order to get anywhere, especially 45 minutes to the nearest town to get internet access, you have to flag down transport on the side of the road. This is so foreign to me coming from Pakistan, where I would hitch [...]

As best I can remember from Kampala’s Capital FM, 91.3: (Trumpet Fanfare) Young Man: HURRAY! I don’t have AIDS! (Fanfare fades) Young Man: I thought I had AIDS because my girlfriend DIED! (Pause) Young Man: But I did not get AIDS because we used condoms for every round of sex! Another Man: You mean condoms [...]

For our trip to Queen Elizabeth National Park (similar to Queen Victoria Park, but less stuffy) we decided to hire a driver for the day. We settled on a guy named Wilson, who does a lot of driving for Anna’s school, agreed to pick us up at 5 AM (I didn’t even know there was [...]

So I was doing a little more laundry, just a small load this time… I’ve learned that clothes can be worn for much longer and dirtier when you’re washing them yourself. Anyway, the laundry soap my sister uses is called Nomi and one of their slogans is “Cleans even the invisible stains.” This strikes me [...]

Well, I was really missing servants this morning. I sat with my sister, in the shade of the outhouse, washing my clothes in a basin. Slowly, it dawned on me why my servants always throw down my folded shirts with such disdain. Washing clothes is one pain in the ass. My hands are actually sore [...]