christmas in uganda.

January 8^th, 2011

Well, this is long overdue. December was a bit of a roller coaster. Writing this blog has been weighing on my mind for some time, and now that the holidays are over, I figure it is about time to update my life over the past month and a half or so.

Let me begin by addressing the mystery illness I spoke about that is hitting the north. About two weeks ago, after nearly two months of this fatal illness stumping the WHO, CDC, and Ministry of Health, it has been discovered that it is yellow fever – and anyone travelling to Uganda is required to get this vaccination, which was a weight off my shoulders. Unfortunately for Ugandans who live in the north, nearly everybody has not been vaccinated. The government has since announced that in light of this mini outbreak, there would be a push to increase vaccinations to combat the spread. Yellow fever is transmitted through day-biting mosquitoes (as malaria is transmitted through night-biting mosquitoes).  We can only hope for the best.

The pictures! As mentioned, most are from Kidepo National Park. My last weekend in Kitgum, I was fortunate to be offered a trip to KNP for the weekend, in the far north-east of Uganda, in Karamoja. Karamoja is a region in Uganda inhabited by the Karamojong – pastoral cattle herders. It is certainly the most beautiful place I have seen in Uganda. Poaching has been a large problem in the area, which has led to a sharp reduction in game population.  During my stay in Kidepo, I met two American hunters who were there for 12 days on a game hunt. One of them invited me to tag along, and so I joined him on the hunt for a couple days – I had no idea what to expect! For all I knew, you drive out there – find your animal (buffalo in this case), shoot it, and game over. But it’s much more of a process and experience than that. Unlike a safari, where you are restricted to the vehicle, this game hunt allowed us to get out of the truck, and use locals from the area, who have grown up on the land, and we would track the animals. So every step, you have to be alert (buffalo are considered one of the most dangerous animals – extreme temper and stubborn), head on a swivel at all times. There are times when the grass would be taller than me, and so there could easily be a herd of buf lying in the grass which you could just stumble upon. It was thrilling. But these trackers were incredible – reminded me of Mantracker or Man vs Nature – seeing signs (more than just dung and tracks) I would have never picked up on in a hundred years.  In the end, I didn’t actually see the American shoot anything (which I think I might be thankful for), but we did get to see zebra, buffalo, giraffe, antelope, not to mention spending time with and getting to talk to the locals who have grown up with this as their backyard was just incredible.

Coming back to Kampala, I had been in touch with Steph (the other intern) who had been working hard on developing and administering health surveys in the villages around Kabale, for the development of a comprehensive Lake Victoria health project. She asked if I wouldn’t mind helping out with entering the data. Thinking it might be a job that would take until Christmas at the most, I agreed - only to find out there are over 25,000 surveys that need to be input, and is still keeping me busy. Thankfully, I think next week will be the last week, as I think my eyes are turning into rectangles after looking at Excel spreadsheets eight hours a day!!

The holiday season was different this year. It never actually felt like it was Christmas – there is something about 30 degree weather that just doesn’t let you believe Christmas is approaching. Some of the shops and stores would put up a sorry looking Christmas tree, or have some Christmas music playing, but it was all very phony. However, as Christmas was approaching, Kampala was becoming more and more like a ghost town every day. Many people leave the city to spend the holidays in the villages with their families. As the streets emptied with people, they filled with police and military. Al-Shabab, the radical militant movement in Somalia responsible for the two bombings in Kampala during the World Cup, threatened more attacks on Uganda over the holidays and the reaction from the Ugandan government was present everywhere you went in the city. You could not enter a store, restaurant, church or bar without being fully pat down. Checkpoints were set up all over the city to search vehicles.  Even now, as Christmas and the New Year have passed, there remains a strong police and military presence around the city. A coach bus in Nairobi, Kenya destined for Kampala was actually blown up with a hand grenade just a couple days before Christmas. To avoid all of this, Erica (who flew to Uganda for Christmas this year!) and I decided to get out of the city and do some travelling!

A couple days before Christmas, we headed west to Kibale National Park, and stayed at this place in the Kibale Forest called Chimp’s Nest. Kibale is home to several families of chimps, and so we decided to go Chimp Tracking. A guide from the national park took us on a four hour hike through the forest as we tracked the chimps. After a couple hours of searching, we stumbled across the chimps. It was remarkable to see them in the natural habitat – making their way up, down and through the trees, and then just lying around the without really caring about us being some eight or ten feet away! From Kibale, we made our way south to Lake Bunyonyi, the second deepest lake in Africa at over a kilometre in depth. We spent Christmas here in furnished tents overlooking the lake. It was gorgeous, being up in the mountains. It was considerably cooler than in Kampala, because of the elevation. We took out canoes a couple times, which was great when one of the local guys decided to give me a quick lesson on how to paddle straight, after seeing me paddle in circles for 20 minutes! Our time out on the lake was cut short each time as each afternoon nasty storm clouds would roll in with some torrential rainfall.  After Bunyonyi, we spent a couple nights in Kampala before heading on a safari at Murchison Falls National Park. It was actually more than just a safari, we also got to take a rather miserable four hour boat ride up the Nile to Murchison Falls in the pouring rain, and then climb to the top of the falls as well. From the pictures I had seen, I wasn’t expecting much because I kept comparing it to Niagara Falls. But when you get there, and actually see the power of the water crashing down, it’s quite incredible. The falls themselves are only about 50m from top to bottom, but the narrowest point is about 7m, and when the entire Nile is filtering through this one gap, you can imagine the force of the water!  The safari was quite good – we saw most of the big animals, except for the cats (lions and leopards). There were heaps of giraffe and hippos, saw buffalo and elephant. The entire time I was trying to wrap my head around the fact that these were wild animals – I am so used to seeing them in a contained and controlled area at the zoo – but they are free to roam because it is their land which makes it really fascinating.

For New Year’s, there were continued threats from al-Shabab and with so many parties going on, the group of us decided it was probably safer to have a house party – something low key. One of my friends here was house sitting at this nice place in Kampala, and so we ended up there for a BBQ and some drinks, which was a nice way to ring in 2011!

On another note, some other big news here in East Africa is the Sudanese referendum, which begins tomorrow! It is quite exciting – this time next week, it is widely believed there will be a new and 193^rd country in the world! The current President of Sudan, al-Bashir, made some promising comments last week about respecting any outcome of the referendum, which we can only hope he keeps; otherwise there could be some insecurity. For anyone interested in following, Al Jazeera (http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/spotlight/stateofsudan/) and the BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12070034) have some pretty good coverage. Let’s hope for the best!

Until next time. 

Pictures! (with stories to come soon)

Bullets lying around the compound where I was staying - left over from the LRA insurgency several years ago.

The road to Kidepo National Park.

Full Moon appears as the sun sets, at Ngu Mora Wilderness Camp, Kidepo.

Savannah.

Savannah, with mountains in the distance. 

Sunset in Kidepo.

These spectacular trees with red bark, which would pop out of nowhere as you are driving through . A type of Accacia (I think!)

Sunset.

Charles, Joseph, Paul, Jean-Philipe, Moses. The hunting team I was fortunate enough to tag along with for three days. (missing is Andre, the American hunter who was kind enough to invite me on his trip!)

Getting ready to track some Buf.

On the road to Kitgum. 

Main road through Kitgum. 

Fugly's - my watering hole in Kitgum. 

Football. 

Lamwo district city centre. 

life in kitgum...

November 15^th, 2010 

First, I want to apologize for the delay in posting this - I have had this blog written for more than a week now but I have been spending a few days trying to upload the pictures, but it doesn't seem to be working and I don't know why. I have tried three browsers, and still no luck. Suggestions welcome.

I finally made the trip from Kampala to the north, but instead of heading to Pader as originally thought, I have come to Kitgum, another northern district, some 40 or 50km from the Sudanese border. To travel the 300km, it took nearly six hours. The road from Kampala to Gulu was quite nice, paved and free of traffic, but from Gulu the road was unpaved and it slowed us down quite a bit.

As many people had told me before I left, this part of the country is much different than the south. And not just in the sense of it being a much smaller urban centre. In fact, it is hardly urban at all. The town here is roughly the size of three city blocks by three city blocks. There are small shops, selling basic groceries as well as a fish/fruit market, combined with a few clothing shops and small local restaurants. Beyond this, there are only a couple roads in and out of Kitgum, unpaved and in rough shape, with villages made up of thatched huts lining both sides of the road.

The north is much warmer and flatter than it is in Kampala – and it is a dry heat, not as humid as the south. I keep being told that we are coming into the dry season, which is only going to make it warmer here – upwards of 40 degrees during the day - but everyday it continues to rain at some point. The rain cools things off which is nice, but with it comes a bit of wind, and this inevitably knocks out the power – and when it goes out, you don’t know when it is coming back on. Very erratic, and quite frustrating if you are working on something. (The rain has stopped since I wrote this, and I feel the dry season is underway!) Water is another commodity I have had to learn to live without these past couple weeks, as it out more often than the power is. I have went maybe a few too many days without a shower, but finally managed to jump in the neighbour's shower yesterday, so I am feeling a little more refreshed.

Acholi , the local language is entirely different than what is spoken in Kampala (Luganda). English is the official language in Uganda, so most people speak it well enough to get by, but the small amount of Luganda I know is no good up here.

I have fallen into the guest room of another Aussie, who is working for a borehole drilling company here in the north. AMREF is one of his clients, and he is drilling water holes all around the north. He has shown me around Kitgum and I have been going around with him a bit to see the sites. I made it to Lamwo, which is another district, a bit farther north, and we were just outside Sudan. It has been interesting to see the for profit business perspective of a company working with NGOs towards the same objectives.

The north is only a few years removed from conflict, and there are very obvious lasting effects. The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a guerrilla rebel group, led by an evangelical Joseph Kony terrorized the people here for roughly 20 years. He and his rebel group would attack villages at night, slaughtering men, and women and often abduct the children, and recruit them as child soldiers. Children would be forced to torture and murder their families. These attacks were happening every night, and eventually there were safe houses set up for children to walk to at night, most notably in Gulu. IDP (Internally Displace Persons) camps were established by organizations for families to seek refuge. The Ugandan military has since forced the LRA out of Uganda and into Sudan, the DRC and Central African Republic, where they are currently still on the run and being pursued. People have begun to move back to their villages, and a sense of normality has been restored, but effects are lingering.  In the compound where I am staying for example, there are bullet shells lying around from the conflict. 

This past weekend I traveled east, to the Karamoja district to Kidepo National Park. I will share some stories from that weekend in my next blog, and I will try to get a few pictures up because the place is incredibly beautiful and I had a fantastic weekend out there. For now, I am trying to get back to Kampala tomorrow as I am close to wrapping up my work here I think (also, there is what they think an Ebola outbreak in Pader, some 80km away from Kitgum, where people are coughing up blood, bleeding from their eyes, and I think a few people have died). 

Stay tuned for some stories from Kidepo!

ponds, pimm's and proposals

November 4^th, 2010

This past week and a half or so has been a bit of a roller coaster.  Last week I was able to experience a part of Kampala that most people living here never will. And I am not gloating, but it was just a matter of being in the right place at the right time. And this week has been very hectic as we have been rushing around putting a proposal together for yesterday.

But let me begin with last week. Dave, my roommate, is the co-founder of his own organization – the United Future Foundation. An investor in his organization was here in Kampala last week, to check out the project, and also to enjoy a bit of a vacation. Dave played host for the week, and in the evenings, he would invite me out to have dinner with him. We ended up at restaurants in two of the nicest hotels in the city. The first night was Tuesday and we were at the Serena Hotel Kampala. I couldn’t have noticed a difference in the steak I had at this place from one you would get at The Keg.  The food was delicious; the conversation was flowing, and soon followed the alcohol. The banker made sure our drinks were not half empty before ordering us another round. I must have had 5 Club (a local Ugandan beer which have a volume of 500ml), and when you mix in several shots of Southern Comfort and Bailey’s it makes for an extremely difficult day at work on Wednesday! Nonetheless, the night wasn’t over quite yet. The restaurant sits on a patio, overlooking a pond. The banker looks at it, and thinks aloud, ‘I wonder how deep it is.’ It is an artificial pond, designed by the hotel, for aesthetics and to create a certain ambiance. Feeling pretty good at this point, I say ‘It’s not more than a couple feet.’ He comes back straight away with an offer of 400,000Ugandan Shilling ($200USD or so) to walk through it from end to end. At this point in the night, I can’t refuse. I roll up my pants, because I am so confident that is shallow. Lucky for me, I am right, and it was just up to my knees. I managed to get through it unscathed, but not without some difficulty mind you, compliments of the alcohol, the slippery algae and the sharp rocks at the bottom.  I have no idea what the hotel staff thought about us ‘mzungus’ (white people) walking through the pond, and the next day I felt like a bit of an ass, but it was definitely a fun night. And I made 400,000UGX!

The next day at work I actually find myself with quite a few things to do and I can’t remember the last time I was so hungover. I swear the hangovers get worse as you get older! It was a long day, to say the least.

Two nights later, and we are at it again, at another hotel in the city, the Emin Pasha. I tried to control the amount of alcohol I was taking in, but the banker had a way of keeping a watchful eye on your glass and ordering you a drink without you ever noticing. I did have the pleasure of discovering a drink I have never heard of before, and coming from English blood, I can say I am a bit ashamed that I hadn’t. Pimm’s is the drink, and it is considered to be England’s second drink (the first being tea, of course). It is a gin based liquor that you mix with sparkling lemonade and tonic, and you fill your class with fresh fruit (apples, cucumbers, strawberries, etc). Easy to drink and very refreshing. Friday wasn’t quite as bad as Wednesday had been, but I was certainly feeling a bit under the weather.

Friday was his last night in town, and we ended up at the same place as the night before, drinking Pimm’s, Souther Comfort, Club, Gin and Vodka, and enjoying gourmet cooked food. It was certainly fun, but looking back, it all felt a little colonial. That is not the Uganda I am here to experience.  And while it was fun at the time, I think it is important to remember that most Ugandans will never see the inside of these places, and that puts things back into perspective a little bit.

The next day is Saturday, and as I am sure most of you back at home did that night, I ended up celebrating Halloween at a party. I lazed around most of the day without a costume, when at about 5 Dave and I decided to venture down to Owino Market, in Old Kampala. And I wasn’t prepared for what I was getting myself into. The market is massive, and has everything you could want, I am sure, if you are prepared to look for it. You are walking on a path, one person in width, and sharing it with two or three people, through a maze of used clothing, electronics, toiletries and hygiene products and anything else you can imagine, all the while having every vendor you walk by grab you by the arm, or yell ‘Mzungu’ at you. It is 30°C, and you are just sweating. I was fascinated and overwhelmed at the same time. I ended up finally getting a Rastafarian outfit (a XXL Bob Marley t shirt, with a beanie hat, and a couple Rasta coloured accessories – all in all, a rather poor effort if I might say so). The party was fine, but I was exhausted from the week before. I was looking forward to a Sunday of relaxation.

Going into Monday, I knew it was going to be a busy few days with the proposal deadline being Wednesday. We had no shortage of things to get done, between completing the activities, writing the narrative, and creating the budget. Most frustrating was contacting the local governments of the districts AMREF was proposing to work in and getting a letter confirming their support. Dozens of emails and phone calls were required to get these letters scanned and emailed to us, and we only managed to get 7 of 8 before we had to submit the proposal. So we will see if that has an impact on whether or not it gets funded. Tuesday night, three of us were in the office working to get it done until nearly midnight, just to be back at 8 the next morning.

The whole experience has taught me how much different business is conducted here than back home. I was told to be prepared for the slower pace of life, and that things take a long time to get done. Knowing this doesn’t make it any easier to deal with when it is actually happening and there are deadlines to meet.

Now that the proposal is over, I expect I will be heading to Pader in the coming days – either the weekend or Monday I presume. I am excited to get out of Kampala. While I have familiarized myself with the city, I am at a point where I am ready to explore the country. The pollution alone is enough to make you want to get away! When you wash your face, blow your nose, clean your ears and do your laundry, you can actually see the black from the car exhaust! Also, at the end of the month or beginning of December I am hoping to make it to the southwest of the country, near the border of Rwanda, Tanzania, and the DRC. The other intern, Steph, has been down there since we arrived. You can check her blog out here. She has some pretty sweet pictures up, and it looks gorgeous where she is staying. The region is filled with lush forests and rolling hills.

I am preparing (and by preparing, I went out jogging this morning for the first time) to run a marathon (or part of one) at the beginning of December, which will be a challenge.  [Aside: Brougham, I am looking to you for some inspiration, any suggestions are welcome ;) ] I don’t have to register until a couple days before it’s held, so depending on how well the training goes, I will decide if I run the 10K or half marathon.  I can’t even think about a full marathon at this point.

Still no pictures. I apologize.

 Feel free to drop a line, would love to know how things are going with you.

staying in kampala for now...

October 24^th, 2010

Well, it is Sunday and I am still in Kampala. Plans have changed a bit, and it looks like I am not going to be heading north to Pader for another couple weeks. The work I am doing in the city now will keep me busy for now, and so I will be staying put until at least the first weekend of November.

The first week in the new place has been good. Unlike the hotel I was at, this place doesn’t have a generator and so when the power goes out, as it often does, it can throw a bit of a wrench in whatever it is you might be doing (i.e. cooking dinner). Luckily enough the power has only gone out once in the evening. The sun sets here around 7 or so every day, and if the power is out, the apartment becomes dark as night! Gives you a reason to go to the bar, not that we have needed one most nights! I have met quite a few really cool people that I have been having dinner and hitting the bars with.  I have just kind of joined their little group, but everyone is a lot of fun. 

Dave (the Aussie) and I made it out to play tennis yesterday at a court nearby, which was a blast! The club let us play on the centre court, chalked up the lines before we started, and even offered us a ball boy (to which we declined)! We had a bit of an audience as the military and police would come and watch as they had their lunch. Kind of felt like we were playing on the clay at the French Open at Roland Garros! Just beyond the courts, in the cricket pitch, the National Resistance Movement (NRM; governing party in Uganda) was hosting their nominations for presidential candidates. Of course there is no doubt that current President Yoweri Museveni will be the nominated candidate. The impending election (scheduled for February or March) is a popular topic of conversation right now in Uganda. This will be the third multi-party election in Uganda, and there is quite a bit of dissension among Ugandans towards the current government. Museveni has been in power for 24 years to date. Many are sceptical as to how fair this election, like those previous, will be. From speaking with several local Ugandans, it is very evident that the government has been handing out money, in exchange for votes, and people are upset by it. Moreover, promises haven’t been fulfilled, nepotism is common place in the government, and people aren’t noticing a change, at least in Kampala. In light of this, most people think Museveni will win this election because the opposition is not organized or strong enough, and this will mean another five years in power.  It will be an interesting and exciting few months leading up the election.

On a similar issue, Southern Sudan is holding a referendum in January on the issue of secession. As Sudan borders Uganda to the north, there is the potential for there to be spill over effects in Uganda. The referendum has the potential to be a bit more volatile than the Ugandan election and so the New Year brings quite a bit excitement and uncertainty in the region! 

              

A Ugandan newspaper made headlines around the world this week, but it received very little attention here in Kampala. A magazine called Rolling Stone published the names and addresses of 100 gay Ugandans, and called for their hanging. Homosexuality has been a hot issue in Uganda lately, with an MP introducing a bill last fall that would see the death penalty be handed out as a sentence for homosexuals in some cases. Homosexuality is currently against the law in Uganda, and has the potential to carry a lengthy prison sentence.   Unfortunately, this is not uncommon among African countries. Between this and the story back in the US about the four young people who committed suicide because they were bullied for being gay, it is quite unnerving. 

Go Leafs Go!

getting to know kampala.

October 18^th, 2010

At long last, I have found a place to rest my head at night. After looking at hostels, hotels, houses and apartments, I have settled in at old military barracks built by Idi Amin in the 1970s. A couple of other guys, an Aussie and an American, have agreed to let me the flat for my time here. A bit dodgy looking from the outside, but the inside is quite satisfactory. A little heavy on the mosquitoes, but other than that I really can’t complain. But I mustn’t get too settled, as I just found out today that AMREF wants me to go to the north, to the Pader district, on Sunday through until the end of November.  There is a water and sanitation project coming to an end and they have asked me to ‘document its closing out.’ Can’t be sure what this entails right now, but I am eager to see another part of the country and experience life outside of the big city. I keep hearing how so much different the village life is from the city. Up until this point I have been working out of the Country Office, in Kampala, assisting in the research and design of an HIV/AIDS prevention proposal.

Kampala is slowly becoming more familiar, and I am slowly becoming more comfortable getting around the city.  When I arrived, the first few days I was scared to step on to the street. The traffic is like nothing I have ever seen for so many reasons. There are four traffic lights in the entire city, and half of the vehicles don’t obey. There are no lanes, or stop signs, or common road etiquette. The first couple days I thought it was pure chaos, without any sort of direction or order at all. I have now realized that it is chaos, but there is some sort of understanding among the drivers, which I cannot begin to explain through a blog. Because there is such lack of structure, rush hour (or the jam) is far worse than anything I have seen back home. And when it rains, forget about getting anywhere. It took me nearly two hours, to get 8 kilometres across the city after work today. It took another friend 3 hours and she only made it half way.

Bodas, or motocycle taxis, are the quickest means of getting around, but certainly not the safest. Every day I hear another story of someone who has had a terrible accident on the boda. But riding them is almost unavoidable, especially in the jam, because they can manoeuvre through the cars and get you where you need to be quicker than anything else. Needless to say I have been on the look out for a helmet, at which point I won’t feel like I am risking my life every time I get on one.  

A couple people have been asking for pictures, and to be honest, I haven’t taken one. I will, in time, and hopefully there will be some coming soon.

first steps on african soil.

October 7^th, 2010

I am sitting here in my hotel reminiscing about my first two days in Uganda, in Africa. As I look around the room and listen to the sounds, I can't tell if I am in Toronto or London or Kampala. It is a bustling city, not unlike the others. The sun has set, and while there are no street lights, it remains busy. I arrived here on (yesterday) Wednesday morning, after travelling for about 27 hours. I hadn’t slept in over 40. I was jet lagged, and tired, and desperately wanting a bed. As soon as I stepped off the plane, all of my senses had been aroused. As we walked into the airport, the first thing I see is an advertisement for the iPhone 4. Where am I? I thought. That alone blew all expectations I shouldn’t have already had, right out the door. After seeing that, I decided that I would no longer assume or expect anything, as difficult as it might be. 

I know this wasn't written today, but I haven't had time to upload it - and hopefully they will be posted on the day I write them from now on. 

Happy Thanksgiving!!