On monday I took a cab to the airport, flew from boston to washington, and then connected overnight to brussels. On tuesday I flew from brussels to kigali and then on to entebbe, where I got a ride into kampala and managed to sleep for a few hours. On wednesday I sat in kampala traffic for an unknown period (I arranged to have the whole thing erased from my memory) and then drove north to gulu, managing to avoid the breakdown that happened the last time I made this trip. Today we drove outside gulu and turned onto a dirt road; then onto a smaller dirt road; then onto a bicycle track (which our landcruiser widened as necessary); then it became impassable and we walked. When we got to the homestead, the black goat seemed to desperately want to bite off the tail of the piebald goat, who was not nearly as keen on the idea. It was hot, but only barely hot enough to sweat while sitting in the shade. Lunch consisted of several bites of raw sugarcane and several handfuls of BBQ fritos. All of which implies: I’m back in the field, baby!

It’s been 11 months since I was in uganda; 6 months since I was in africa; and 3.5 months since I was outside the US. All of which feels long for me, although it’s not so unpleasant to have a more relaxed schedule, and there were some medical issues helping to persuade me to stay. But it feels good to be here again, with reports of yet another east-coast snowstorm nothing more than distant rumors akin to alchemy or celebrity rehab stories (quiz: which one of those is more likely to be true?).

I’m looking forward to posting in the next few days with notes from the field. Today we learned that most female entrepreneurs in northern uganda choose to become either home-brewers or arbitrage traders in bulk cereals. But then I guess you knew that already.

UPDATE: here’s a photo of the ‘road’ we drove in on before parking (plus the top and bottom of my colleague Christian Lehmann from PSE)