David E. Harker

My Trip to Uganda: Day 5 2015-04-21

This is the fifth day of my trip to Uganda to participate in "Encouraging Girls to Study and Major in Science." Travel to Mbarara, a city south-west of Kampala.

Event Log:

  • 7:30AM-12:30PM GMT+3 - We departed Dan's house to go to Mbarara. On the way we picked up Dorothy who accompanied us on the trip. She is the one who coordinated with the schools to arrange my visits. We crossed the equator from North to South at about 10:30AM GMT+3. It was a long drive but we stopped off at the entrance to Lake Mburo National Park and spied some wildlife, including zebras! Unfortunately I could not get a good picture of the zebras.

  • 12:15PM GMT+3 - We stopped to have lunch at the Igongo Cultural Centre & Country Hotel.

  • ~1:00PM GMT+3 - We arrived in Mbarara and checked into our rooms at the Lake View Resort. I was in room 33.

  • 2:00PM-3:00PM GMT+3 - Dan and I taped an interview for the radio at the studios of Radio West. The interview was done in both english (the official language of Uganda) and lugandan, a Bantu based language that is the major language spoken in Uganda. The interviewer would ask a question in lugandan and then re-ask it in engligh. Dan and I would provide our answers in engligh and the interviewer would then translate our answers into lugandan for the radio audience. The whole process went very smoothly and we were interviewed for about 45 minutes or so.

    • giving presentation

      Taping the interview at Radio West.


  • 5:00PM-6:30PM GMT+3 - Visited Mary Hill High School. The school was having a music festival which was wrapping up as we arrived. The girls had been divided into teams and each team was identified by colors. Each of the girls was wearing a t-shirt with the color of their respective team. During my presentation, the yellow team, in a burst of enthusiam began to chant and drum loudly outside of the venue in which I was speaking. No one seemed to be too bothered so I powered on. Dan said that the red team tried to overpower the yellow team but were outmatched by the yellow team. The blue team then tried to throw water onto the yellow team, but again, the yellow team would not by silenced. Eventually all the girls moved on before the end of my talk.

    • giving presentation

      The classroom building at Mary Hill High School in which I gave my presentation.

Overall Thoughts

It was a beautiful drive to Mbarara. Lush green landscape was everywhere. On the hillsides you could see rows and rows of pine trees that farmer's had planted for wood. Everything grows in Uganda so pine trees are a good resource.

Some of the teachers at Mary Hill had master's degrees in physics. Many of these masters students were very interested in moving on to Ph.D's, so we chatted for quite a bit after my talk. They were asking about my experience with graduate school and what I thought was important when entering a Ph.D program. In short, I told them that finding a good, supportinve, and engaged advisor is one of the important keys to working towards a Ph.D. That night, Dan and I had dinner with one of the athletic coach's at the school, Dennis, and his wife who herself has a masters degrees in physics and was wanting to move on to Ph.D. It was enjoyable to talk with such a different cross-section of people who are interested in science and astronomy.