A Picture

Paul neglected to bring his USB cable so I can't download off of his camera. I have a Sony which requires a special program (I think) and incompatible USB connections so I had to take this picture from our webcam which is not the best. This picture is the view of the school and the mountain across as seen from our porch which is up the hill. You can see the new building that we all funded being built in the forground.

Children of Peace

Every Saturday the older students go home and we open the school up to 200 orphans and disadvantaged kids in this area. It's the typical Africa thing: HIV kills Mum after Dad runs off to Kenya or HIV or malaria kills them both. The whole tragedy is always avoidable but as they said in Blood Diamond: “TIA“(This Is Africa) Sometimes the kids have a home situation that is horrible due to incompetent parents. One boy I have come to know quite well, Dickson, had is hand covered in oil and set on fire after his Mum discovered that he had picked the family beans and sold them to his neighbour. Yeah. That would classify as "incompetent".

Our kids have got to know Emmanuel. He is being raised by his brother who's trying as hard as he can since his parents died but that's a tough row to hoe with 6 kids to look after at age 17. When Emmanuel came to his (and our) first Saturday, he was withdrawn and non communicative. The kids just zeroed in on him and played with him and gave him extra stuff to try to make him feel welcome. During the week, they climbed up his mountain and visited him at his home and dropped off food and clothes a couple of times. Now it's the third Saturday and he's a ball of laughter. The change has been dramatic. The kids plan to pool their allowance together and they plan to sponsor him on a yearly basis.

Another student we are going to support is a 16 year old that lost his parents and lives with an abusive uncle who resents the drain on resources that he and his siblings draw away from his own family. He is enrolled in the school training to be a carpenter because he lives near one of the teachers and was about to cross the border to join a rebel group in Kenya onlly because they would feed him. The teacher talked him out of that and got him enrolled. Now he is way behind on his fees and can't afford a uniform and is in danger of being dropped from the very program that will, for all intents and purposes, save his life. All he needs is $75 to make a massive difference in his future.

There are hundreds of stories just like this and if any of you would like to sponsor a child, we can arrange for this with virtually no administration fee (3%) and direct contact with the child. If you're at all interested, let me know and I have an abundance of candidates. It would probably cost you about $200 per year.

The orphans come over at about 9 am and they go to classes such as beading and music. After that, the boys come with Paul and I and we have a spirited game of soccer. They howl in laughter every time I trip or make one of my bad passes, etc... It's a time of joy in an otherwise grim world.

During our soccer time, Diana and the girls look after the kids who have come to us sick and help in beading class, etc... They dispense the medicines and just try to comfort them through the fever. They usually have malaria since most of the homes are too poor to afford nets or sometimes they just don't realize how important the nets are or sometimes, there's nobody who cares enough. During the week, we also go visit 10 or so kids at their home so Diana can follow up on their needs and give guidance to the guardians. This is usually when we find the mosquito nets or alcohol swabs left unused in the corner.

After soccer, we all just hang out together and they laugh at me more as I try to learn their language. They are given a big meal of posho, (Made of maize and looks like mashed potatoes but has less taste) beans and rice. At 1pm a truck comes and they all load in and they go home. We all crash in the afternoon, emotionally exhausted.

Where We Are

We are in tropical Africa, not dry savannah. The only thing is, there's no more forest. Every leaf belongs to somebody since they've divided every square inch into small plots of land that has a mud house, an outhouse and a 25 x 60' garden to grow cabbage, maize, tomatoes, coffee, carrots, beans, etc... They may also have a banana, mango or avocado tree or two as well as a stall for a cow or goat or a chicken pen. It actually looks a lot like Machu Pichu in Peru.

We live in a mountainous area. We are 5-6000' above sea level on Mount Elgon so the nights actually can get something similar to cold. When the sun is out, it ain't nuthin' but hot. When I say every inch is cultivated, that includes right to the top of the mountains. There are people - lots of people - that walk the hour or two to go down and then back up to their homes to go to work, , school, to get groceries, medications and 40 lb Jerry cans of water. The view is nice, but... prime real estate ($4000 an acre) is on the busy dirt road (The ones on which the cars and trucks whiz by at 100 km/hr) near a water bore hole.

The huts are actually made of cow dung. This is to keep away the bugs that cause jiggers which is a bug that gets into your feet and has to be picked out with a pin. I don't wear sandals.

A lot of the houses in the valleys are made of a soft brick. Our house is made of this brick and we have glass windows with grates on them and thick metal doors since, as kind as most people are, theft is a big problem. All the brick houses have tight security. If you leave your shoes outside to dry off, they won't be there in the morning.

Our house has no electricity or running water but we collect water off the roof when it rains which reduces the need to go to the bore hole too much. No electricity means that our schedule is organized in cooperation with the natural order of things. When the sun comes up and the rooster crows... and crows... and crows again starting at 4:30 am or so, it's time to get up. When the sun goes down, all the things you need better be laid out where you can easily find them and it's time to go to bed. Candles and oil lanterns buy an extra hour or two after 7 pm.

On the other hand, no running water means that you must fight against the natural order of things with all the intestinal fortitude that can be mustered together. In the tour of the house our introduction to the latrine was a knock on the door with the all-to-brief explanation: “This is the latrine”. I am a Canadian. I am well acquainted with outhouses. No problem. When my first little signal came, I discreetly made my way past the door. When I looked inside, things were not as they should be. I quickly exited and scurried to my wife in our bedroom to seek clarification. Surely I had not been listening and some mistake had been made. The desecration that I had entered was an unfinished project for the livestock or something so where, pray tell, was I to do my thing? Diana seemed to find considerable humour in my (very) sincere question but assured me that I was, in fact, in the right place.

On moral grounds, I feel restrained in describing this abomination to you in too much detail. Let us just say that one does not bring any reading material in. If you're thinking outhouse, you need to go several notches down. You must take away any design or structure that might assist you in not falling into a situation that one cannot discuss in the civilized world. As you may suspect, I have not yet mastered the mechanical procedures of this process. All I know is that I have developed a new theory about why African originated people are reputed to have the calf muscles that allow them to jump an run so well...

On the positive side, the issue of no running water has been a stimulating experience physically (as alluded to above) but also intellectually and spiritually. I have been devising new theories based on some of my economic studies. If you plot need on the x axis and pride on the y access you can create curves similar to demand and supply. My goal is to find a way to extend the point at which the human degradation curve intersects with the human necessity curve. I think I might just write a book....

On the spiritual level, I have been scouring the scriptures for the verse (or two) that will clearly show that this latrine is ..of the devil. I know that they are there somewhere. They have to be. So far, I have found some support in Psalms: “Jehovah answer thee in the day of trouble; The name of the God of Jacob set thee up on high”. I think this scripture clearly shows that it is God's will that we should be set up on high and that this squatting down business is just plain unchristian. I think I might just start a new church...

Our First Days

We woke up in the morning at sunrise thanks to the efforts of the rooster out the back door... backed up by what we call “Jurassic Cows” because of their loud moos. It was quite beautiful. We stare at a mountain and the soft sun warmed us on the porch. We took pictures right away.

We went down to the school after breakfast and met the staff who can speak somewhat understandable English. They were most welcoming. The teachers and students are very distant from each other. They maintain a very formal British boarding school type atmosphere. We are not really into that so we were always being called away from the students to be with the teachers. They put on a special school assembly with a formal welcome from the Headmaster, Deputy Head... all with a Director of Ceremonies, national anthems, prayers, etc... The students sang a few songs in English that had obviously caused them much pain to sing. Their last number was a local song completed with bongo drums and two sticks on a piece of wood all of which had just been taken off the ground. This song garnered much more student enthusiasm and even some restrained dancing from designated students. I grew up in this kind of formal world and thought a change of pace was needed. I leaned over to our hostess (who shares my perspectives) and asked if it would be an offense for me to jump in and dance. Permission granted and with a banshee yell, I joined the dancer.

Instant pandemonium.

All the students jumped in with their own (better) war cry: “Ay yay yay yay yay...”, the fam joined in and even some of teachers let loose. We all jumped around to the beat of the drums in a raucous and unrestrained expression of joy and laughter. It was a total gas!

After the assembly we met with the Head and he had been amused by it all. We layed down some plans for what needed to be done and how we could help. The legal details of the lease had not yet been completed so we could not begin on the house for which we raised the money until that was official so we all were assigned a teaching schedule.

I was to teach on elementary financial planning, Jody was teaching math skills required for the seamstress students, Lisa helped us all and Diana taught on HIV and sexuality. For the next week or so that was our main duty. The challenge here is the accent and actual knowledge of english. They have 48 languages in Uganda but English is the official language that is supposed to tie everybody together. Nice plan. Most of them speak english about as well as the guy on the street in Prince George speaks french. The ones who do speak english have a very thick accent. For the first few days, I thought the local word for us was “Veezee-TAH.” until I realized that it was actually them calling us “visitor”.

No. We are “Mizoongos”. If you ever want to see what it's like being a celebrity, come to Uganda. Nobody can resist staring at us. The children come out of everywhere to yell “Mazoongo! Mazoongo! How ah yoo! How ah yoo!” Teenagers smirk and giggle as we pass by. Everybody flashes us with a big African smile. The kids follow us for hundreds of yards. Take their picture and show it to them and instantly you have a mob of faces fighting to get a look into the camera to see the picture. Then hysterical laughter when they see themselves.

The students at the school are older and get completely tongue tied when you first come up to talk to them. Most will come out of their shells after a few minutes but some just can't bring themselves to speak.

There is an incredible reverse discrimination. Say we come up to a full van (Bad example: There is no such thing as a full van here... but stay with me) they boot out some poor widow and insist that you come in. Line up at the hospital? When you're with a mizoongo, no problem. Head of the line, the best seats, first to get food, not allowed to carry anything, … we feel like Hollywood personified. It takes a lot of convincing to to forgo any of these privileges. Sometimes you just have to go with it because you don't have the time to talk them out of it all.

Market days are Monday and Thursday so Diana has made sure that these opportunities are not missed. One market is a 7 km walk and the local “wiki wikis” (scooter taxies-no helmets, insane drivers) ask us if we want a ride every 30 meters. The prices are flat out ridiculous. Half is nice, a third is a little weird but here in Uganda, the price is about 1/10^th. This is not an exaggeration in many cases. New watch: 75¢; beer: a buck and change but in 500 ml bottles; live in housekeeper: $5 a week; payment for 1 day's labour tilling a field or building a brick house: $3; tea and fresh chappatti bread for 3 people: 40¢; 300 ml of coke: 30¢. Diana haggling for the last 5¢ off the prices to avoid paying the “Mizoongo surcharge”: priceless.

The kids have totally taken up with the local kids as well. When the day is done, there's usually a soccer game, chasing each other, rough housing, volleyball and the like. They are adored by all the kids in this area and our house is the center of the universe. After school they collect at the gate just watching us and waiting for the appearance of “Paulo”, Jody and Lisa. They are scraggly, dirty and in torn clothes and none of them have shoes. In Kelowna, we'd call Social Services. Here, they are the sweetest of kids... all falling over themselves to see who can be the first one to be of help.

Soccer is it. I hate to say it but more so than hockey is to Canada. We brought about 20 balls kindness of our arch enemies over at the Westside YSA and these balls are raw gold. Raw gold. We made the mistake of handing out a ball to a kid that was particularly talented (and poor) and out of jealousy that evening a band of 30 kids with sticks chased him through the trails to beat him. Fortunately, a parent intervened to save the boy. Two former best friends are still barely talking to each other. All this over a used soccer ball that wouldn't be sold in a garage sale for more than a buck...

When a soccer pitch is bad in our world, you say it is nothing but a “cow field”. The local school soccer field is, in fact, a cow field... including the cows and the stuff that comes out of a cow's butt. There are 10 “ post holes randomly dug into the field as well as 12” ledges, stones, etc... It makes for some interesting strategies.

Of course they play in bare feet, run like the wind and have incredible control of the ball and can almost pound it the length of the field in a flash... and that's just the 8 year olds... Of course, they (and all the villagers that gather around to watch the Mizoongos play) all get quite a laugh watching me play. Paul is actually able to look good and Jody and Lisa shock them at how good they are. Being girls, they are not expected to be good at anything else but carrying a truck load of bananas on their heads...

So that was our usual day for the first couple of weeks: get up at dawn, have breakfast, prepare for our classes, teach, have lunch at the school, do some tilling or weeding, play soccer with the kids, eat supper and ...crrrrrrash.

Our "Safe" Journey to Bududa...

From Kampala we drove the 4 hours to our project in Bududa which is near Mbale in eastern Uganda. For the entire 4 hours of driving along the highway there was a constant stream of people and rickety old bikes along the side of the narrow highway.

Along the way, I learned some new rules of the road that seem to work just fine in Uganda.

1) If the space for your vehicle seems too small to fit through, immediately rush to that space and the normal laws of physics are suspended and you will fit through it and, while you're going through, a motorcycle is likely to pass you...

2) It is perfectly safe for 4 and 5 year old kids to dodge in and out of speeding traffic.

3) If people are walking along the side of the road, it is their responsibility to get out of the way if you are driving on the shoulder of the road.

4) The faster you go, the quicker people will get out of your way.

5) Passing Procedure: Speed up to 120 k/hr (on tires that are threadbare), put your outside corner inches from the inside bumper of the car (or semi-trailer...), honk your horn and go. It seems to be the responsibility of the oncoming car to slow down but there is also a suspension of the space/time continuum in this situation as well as item #1.

6) There is absolutely no need to reduce your speed on gravel roads that have tight corners, giant pot holes, wide enough for only one vehicle and is filled with people, children and rickety old bikes wobbling along carrying things like ...oh, what are some of the things I've seen... a bedroom armoir, 60 or so planks carried sideways, several hundred pounds of bananas,...

7) During driving in the night, headlights are a nice developed world luxury that work great if you can afford to fix them.

8) Notwithstanding the above, there is again no need to reduce your speed during night driving.

9) It is not necessary to bother with the expense of maintaining your vehicle in minimal working order (shocks, tires, working headlights, axles...) when the person responsible for evaluating your vehicle every year can be bribed for much less than a new set of tires. Legal liability is not a concern to 99.9% of the population. Note: this rule does not apply to horns. Car horns must be fully functional or you will not live a day on Ugandan roads.

What blew me away was watching all the 5 and 6 year old kids walking along the side by themselves with cars and trucks speeding by. We would go through crowds of kids that were in villages and nobody even slows down. It would be like doing 120 through a school zone except there would be hundreds of kids along the side of the road at once without any parents or teachers to watch them. It was terrifying. Chickens and goats are more or less free to wander and one chicken paid the price for that freedom on our bumper. Sometimes, the van would have to drive on the shoulder (See item 5 above vis a vis the responsibility of oncoming cars) and he would lean on the horn to make people and bikes jump into the ditch.

With the grace of the Almighy we arrived in Bududa , without any accidents (or heart failure)... except for the aforementioned chicken. The staff and several villagers jumped up to us and hugged us and insisted on carrying our bags up the hill to our house. We immediately sensed the love and joy that surrounded us, in spite of the severe poverty.

What Would You Do With No Legs?

We woke up in the hotel and had a relatively nice breakfast of eggs and delicious fruit. We ate on a balcony three stories up and when we looked over the edge we could only stare in silence. There below us was a sea of people... every bit of space was occupied with people walking, biking, driving, carrying, begging... and in the dingy back alleys hordes of people were cooking on open fires, loading, burning, ... It was a sight that we'd never seen before.  Actually, I can't find the words to describe what we saw.

First on the agenda was to get some local currency. When we walked out the door, there were 3 or 4 people on the street sleeping under cardboard and garbage at the front door of our hotel. As we walked along we saw a couple of men with no legs begging for money. After we got our money, we loaded up our "matatoo" (15 person van) that was to bring us the 4 hour drive to the rural area of Bududa in eastern Uganda near the Kenyan border.

As we drove in Kampala past all the people I saw 2 more men without legs. One was begging and the other was busy delivering a package. He walked on his hands faster than most people were walking. He had acquired some thongs so he could grip the part that goes between your toes to keep the shoe on his hands as he shuffled along.

I had to wonder what I would do if I found myself with no legs in a country with no sort of social services to help me.  We just don't see such things in Canada... but can you imagine? Nobody to look after you and no legs.  No wheelchair.  Nobody to bring you food.  Probably no shelter.  Can you imagine facing such a challenge?  You think of the picayune issues that bother us in our lives and then think of that guy who found a small job delivering packages using thongs as shoes... It's just plain staggering.  In the next few weeks I now know that I will see a lot more of this kind of resilient strength in the face of unfathomable hardship.  

The Trip That Almost Wasn't

We have discovered a nifty way to reduce waiting times in airport line ups: show up at the security gates 25 minutes before an international flight. It works like a charm ...especially if you have nerves of steel and have no problem enduring hateful (and fully justified) looks from other people patiently waiting their turn in line.

First, you have to drop off your bags way in advance so you earn your right to a boarding pass. Then you lollygag about in an unfamiliar city. Look at your watch and think to yourself "Gosh, I'm very late here. I may miss my flight." If you really want to make it more fun I suggest you do this for a trip for some exotic place like... ummm... let's go with Uganda.

I can tell you from personal experience that the flood of emotions that gush through your head can really get the old heart pumping! This prepares you for the 500 yard dash from the drop off point that is quite convenient for the shuttle bus and not so much for you. All the sweat and panting will only help your cause in your desperate attempt to convince the security guard to let you in at the front of the hour long wait line. Remember to have a flakey half truth ready such as "We got lost." (Actually, we got on the main highway that took us half way to Portland before we could get off) In those moments as the security guard considers your request, remember to savour the gut wrenching stress.

When it all works out and you get to cheerfully cut in front of about a thousand other travellers, I strongly advise that you don't turn back and look at the faces of the people who are now behind you. Just enjoy the feeling that you've just saved yourself the irritation of waiting your turn in the security line and you've won the little game.

I don't know WHAT we were thinking... It was wild. We got up early and checked in 5 hours early then decided to leave the airport and have breakfast and search around for the best park n ride spot. We had PLENTY of time. Leaving the airport, I didn't understand the sign and missed the exit. About 7 or 8 kilometers later, we found an exit and fought our way back to the airport on secondary roads. I got focussed on haggling with these guys and looking for better and better prices. I will proudly say that I saved us about $400 just by doing so. Once we found the place and went through the registration they told us the shuttle would be there "right away". Everything was great... and then we looked at our watch and the fun times began.

We got on the plane and I couldn't believe we made it. From there everything was great. All the flights were on time and very comfortable. We arrived in Entebbe and were met by our friend Barbara and she took us to Kampala where we stayed the night in what would be regarded as a nice hotel here which is about 2 notches below a one star in Canada. All night long we heard screaming and yelling like there was some kind of uprising but it was all just the standard thing for this city. I had never heard anything like it. The noise, however, didn't keep the tired travellers from getting a good night's sleep.