Uganda
well i'm back at home...with european food (overeating the milk, cheese and butter....sorry jules but my path towards veganism seems impossible) and taps where water actually comes out when i turn them on...yay! anyway i did neglect bootlog whilst i was away so i will copy and paste the emails i sent from uganda so everyone can join in the fun...
Email 1:
After a somewhat stressful start to the trip I have now been in Uganda for a week. (We were told at Heathrow that the flight was overbooked and there was no seats for us on the plane-so four of us were left there arguing with the flight attendants. In then end we got a flight to Nairobi, hanged out there for 8 hot and boring hours and then flew on to Entebbe.)
I can't describe really what I have seen because the imagery here is way to rich for words or even photos. We stayed in Kampala for a few days which was really strange. We felt really uncomfortable and even though this is the capital city we were pretty much the only white people(muzungus) there. There was hardly any beggars apart from the first day when a horde of about 5 year olds were following us, with outstretched hands....it was hard to look away.
We drove up to Gulu on Sunday and the scenery is so stunning. It's really green but the road we drive on is of course made of dust...we even had to stop to let some baboons cross the road...on the side of the road is your obligatory African women carrying huge parcels of wood/food/coal etc on their heads with babies strapped to their backs (many times I have seen a man next to them walking empty handed)
The building site for the school is going extremely well. The trenches for the foundations have been dug, the first a-frame for the roof made, cement is already in the first set of foundations etc etc we have a lot of Ugandan volunteers working with us (they don't know that they will get paid at the end...) and some girls from a business school which is also run by food for thought. I have never met such strong girls in my life!! Even though today I was becoming quite the king of pushing heavy wheelbarrows full of cement...
We had a look at one of the IDPs camp (there are 50 in the area and we saw one of the best ones...) and it was so heartbreaking. Think of an Oxfam ad but stepping into it and much worse...potbellied kids with flies all over their faces and hungry eyes, one hut after the other, no running water, animals and people sleeping in the same huts, one of them for about 20 people (theyre like a 6man tent or something)...
I feel very safe here but sometimes it does hit you that we are in a war area. The town is basically full of camps and NGOs (UN tracks everywhere) military presence is high. We have to leave the school by 6pm and have a curfew of 9pm where we live. Yesterday sarah, another girl and I went with some Ugandans in the truck to pick up some sand for the cement (yes, riding in the back of a dodgy truck is probably the most dangerous but fun things on these dodgy roads) it was 4pm when we left. Ah yes, one thing here is if you want something like sand you drive into the bush where some guy will have left the materials, seeming to me in the middle of bloody nowhere. It had rained the night before and earlier on that day the truck had gotten stuck in the mud 3 times. So we drive into the bush, get the sand by the river bank and start walking up to meet the truck at the corner as the first bit is too heavy for all that sand + us. Alas it gets stuck, but this time very deeply. We try for 50 minutes to get it out...the sun is getting lower and people are beginning to get nervous. To be in the bush in the dark (and it gets dark early here) is about the most dangerous thing you can do. We have 12 girls with us (and in my few days here I have met countless girls who have been abducted, raped etc by the rebels) and we decided to walk back to the school. But the men want to stay with the truck....so we walk back about 4 miles with no water through the bush and lets be honest here I was shitting myself.the girls started getting very scared so we had to keep on motivating each other. Sarah was really dehydrated and started getting slower and slower, at one point I thought I'd have to carry her...luckily we got back to the school where they were very worried about us...they decided to send out the army to those men left in the bush and there was some heated discussions who would go back in the bush to find them again. My team leader however made a (wise) decision that all of us leave , right now, to get back to our compound..this was now about 7pm. All of a sudden our beloved truck pulls in-it took 2 hrs to get it out, but it was all ok in the end!but it made me realize how volatile the situation is and how careful we have to be.
But please don't worry, im very happy and feel very safe. The people here are so thankful to us it makes me feel ashamed.
Last of all, there are 1,000 kids in the school right next to the vocational centre we are building and theyre soooooo adorable (all undernourished of course...) and stare at us like were monkeys in a zoo...but its great to try and give them some love from us.
