While living in Uganda in 2007-8 as a Fulbright Scholar, I wrote a blog – an almost daily narrative with photographs - for anyone who might be interested in following my activities. 

In looking back over my blog over 15 years later, I thought it might be of general use to students who are going to work (or would like to work) in Africa.  I hope it might also interest a wider audience in the fields of ICT, global health, and development.  Caveat:  This blog is nothing more or less than a personal snapshot in time of my experience in Uganda as a Fulbright Scholar.

To position the blog in time and space, I include background information on my earlier work with SatelLife and HealthNet - the first health information delivery service in sub-Saharan Africa.  Groundwork at SatelLife prepared me for the challenge of initiating and directing the Multilateral Initiative on Malaria Communications Network (MIMCom) at the U.S. National Library of Medicine/National Institutes of Health. 

Blog entries – narrative and photos - are arranged chronologically for the most part.  The whole reads like a journal, sometimes a scrapbook, at other times a diary – the personal journey of one specialist in the fields of health information and IT in Africa.  I include real time news of disease outbreaks; the ups and downs of a peace process in Northern Uganda after 20 years of civil war; voices and places both well-known and unknown; friendships with colleagues in the university and in the village; my student team as they blossom with newfound ICT tools in the larger world of global health; the realities - the joys and challenges - of working in Uganda.

In retrospect, I find myself thinking over all that has happened in the interim - the things that have changed and those things that never change.

Julia Royall
September 2024
Dubois, Wyoming and Washington, DC