Live from Mukono, Uganda...
{ Posted on Friday, April 18, 2008
by alan
}
Since take-off and what seems to be an eternity ago, it has been a whirlwind tour so far. With three 7-hour flights and 14 hours in layovers, we arrived in Entebbe Interational Airport a very tired bunch of Canadians.
Liz and I have sent the following email through Liz's mom, but I think she's typing in all of our friend's emails, so I'm sure that a whole bunch are either going to be written incorrectly, or might not get finished until we return, so I'll post it here on blogger for my few loyal hits, or RSS and Facebook feeds. No pictures, I can't get this computer to pick up my camera's USB connection - like Uganda, sometimes things just don't go as expected:
---
We spent the first day walking around Kampala and Mukono (the town where we're staying) and then yesterday we visited Grace, the orphanage and school that we have been partnering with for the past year. It is amazing to see in person the school rooms, the agricultural plots, and of course all the smiling and laughing children as we passed out candy (courtesy of fellow traveler Deanna's friend, who is a principal of a school in Scarborough whose students donated school supplies to Grace - woah - that was a run-on sentence!) and taught the more ambitious ones how to play ultimate frisbee (a donation from our Ultimate captain). By the end of the afternoon all our cameras and the frisbees were sticky from the candy.
Today we ventured deeper into the countryside dodging other cyclists, pedestrians and cows, and chickens (don't worry no snakes) to visit Kanga village primary school, the site for our next partnership. It's interesting to see how Kanga is where Grace was a year ago, though we weren't at Grace last year, we can see the differences in two. Like Grace was, Kanga is now in quite a state of disrepair, lacks resources and the authorities are threatening to close the school which services 420 families in the village. Kanga will be more of a challenge though, b/c when we say it's in the bush - it's REALLY in the bush. Alan had to help the locals push our bus up a muddy hill at one point and his pants are now decorated with Ugandan mud. Don't worry, Kris caught it all on camera for you to see. It was great to meet the headmaster Mr. Abbas and his co-workers. Though their English isn't great, there was still a lot of laughter and great conversation about their hopes and dreams.
We're back in Mukono now - I had fish and chips for lunch - complete with fish head and eyeballs. Good thing we're Chinese :).
---
This weekend, we're doing the tourist thing and going to go whitewater on the Nile. It's class 5, and should be a riot. It'll totally be a mzungo (an African word for white, rich, foreigner) experience since the going rate is the average Ugandan salary for 4 months.
About that stat... Uganda is about 80% rural villages. And the villages are dirt-poor and drive that number way down. So educated, urban Ugandans make more money - not much by Canadian standards, but much more than the $1 per day average. Uneducated urban Ugandans can make a decent living moving people on boda-bodas (motorbikes) or taxi's, but they have to fight tooth and nail with all the other drivers vying for enough business to pay the taxi owners and fuel expenses.
But because 80% of Uganda are from the village, it says here that they are largely getting left behind, with the system stacked against them. And what we do, while tremendously significant to one lady's dreams of helping her community of 300 homes, is tremendously insignificant to the 23 of so million others that are just like her. A stat like that in a context like mine is everything mind-numbing. Full of hope and despair, and incredulity and small, steady improvement. It is a tragedy and a vision. It is a white-world's luxury and a global challenge. But perhaps to me, it is mostly one thing:
It is a start.
Liz and I have sent the following email through Liz's mom, but I think she's typing in all of our friend's emails, so I'm sure that a whole bunch are either going to be written incorrectly, or might not get finished until we return, so I'll post it here on blogger for my few loyal hits, or RSS and Facebook feeds. No pictures, I can't get this computer to pick up my camera's USB connection - like Uganda, sometimes things just don't go as expected:
---
We spent the first day walking around Kampala and Mukono (the town where we're staying) and then yesterday we visited Grace, the orphanage and school that we have been partnering with for the past year. It is amazing to see in person the school rooms, the agricultural plots, and of course all the smiling and laughing children as we passed out candy (courtesy of fellow traveler Deanna's friend, who is a principal of a school in Scarborough whose students donated school supplies to Grace - woah - that was a run-on sentence!) and taught the more ambitious ones how to play ultimate frisbee (a donation from our Ultimate captain). By the end of the afternoon all our cameras and the frisbees were sticky from the candy.
Today we ventured deeper into the countryside dodging other cyclists, pedestrians and cows, and chickens (don't worry no snakes) to visit Kanga village primary school, the site for our next partnership. It's interesting to see how Kanga is where Grace was a year ago, though we weren't at Grace last year, we can see the differences in two. Like Grace was, Kanga is now in quite a state of disrepair, lacks resources and the authorities are threatening to close the school which services 420 families in the village. Kanga will be more of a challenge though, b/c when we say it's in the bush - it's REALLY in the bush. Alan had to help the locals push our bus up a muddy hill at one point and his pants are now decorated with Ugandan mud. Don't worry, Kris caught it all on camera for you to see. It was great to meet the headmaster Mr. Abbas and his co-workers. Though their English isn't great, there was still a lot of laughter and great conversation about their hopes and dreams.
We're back in Mukono now - I had fish and chips for lunch - complete with fish head and eyeballs. Good thing we're Chinese :).
---
This weekend, we're doing the tourist thing and going to go whitewater on the Nile. It's class 5, and should be a riot. It'll totally be a mzungo (an African word for white, rich, foreigner) experience since the going rate is the average Ugandan salary for 4 months.
About that stat... Uganda is about 80% rural villages. And the villages are dirt-poor and drive that number way down. So educated, urban Ugandans make more money - not much by Canadian standards, but much more than the $1 per day average. Uneducated urban Ugandans can make a decent living moving people on boda-bodas (motorbikes) or taxi's, but they have to fight tooth and nail with all the other drivers vying for enough business to pay the taxi owners and fuel expenses.
But because 80% of Uganda are from the village, it says here that they are largely getting left behind, with the system stacked against them. And what we do, while tremendously significant to one lady's dreams of helping her community of 300 homes, is tremendously insignificant to the 23 of so million others that are just like her. A stat like that in a context like mine is everything mind-numbing. Full of hope and despair, and incredulity and small, steady improvement. It is a tragedy and a vision. It is a white-world's luxury and a global challenge. But perhaps to me, it is mostly one thing:
It is a start.
3 Response to "Live from Mukono, Uganda..."
That's so cool that you're visiting Kampala, Uganda. I went to Passion Conference back in February and we were told to pray for Passion Kampala. What a "coincidence" that you are there now.
www.268generation.com
i forgot to tell you. that was the disc we used for kat's last game with us. her memory lives on now, in uganda!
you guys have indeed made a great start!
dude. we are so jealous.
can't wait to hear the stories when you're back!
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