Africa -- Chickens on the buses, puppies in the sewer, Brynn with the lions and elephants

I have recently moved over to Uganda to check out some projects and to look for other assignments.  I had spent the last several months in Tanzania working on a USAID project. So now I’m based out of Kampala Uganda.

Brynn with her security detail visits Kenya

Going to Gulu

So this last weekend I decided to go back to Gulu where I had spent 6 weeks in Jan/Feb of 2013. This time I decided to take one of the local buses, how difficult could that be, it’s about 350kms, for you non-metric types that would about 220 miles. In a bus, it usually takes about 5-6 hours with stops and breaks and traffic.

I had a meeting in Kampala that ran until 5pm, afterwards we set off to the bus terminal on a boda-boda or the back of a motorbike. Weaving through Friday night traffic, I have my computer bag and a weekend bag over my shoulders and holding on the back of the seat with my spare hand. Since Mom is reading I will not mention if helmets are provided, but it only cost $0.75 for a few mile ride. Sadly, we missed the 5:30 bus and the 7pm bus was already full so we book on the 9pm bus. We sit around the busy bus terminal watching the world go by until our bus leaves.

I’m traveling with Mildred, a colleague and friend who I use to work with in Gulu, she is going to Gulu so she can move her apartment, she has moved back to Kampala. Along with us is Juliet, Mildred’s twin sister. I ask are you identical twins, which I can clearly see they are not, I’m told no with the roll of both of their eyes, they get this question all the time. My next question, are you Siamese twins? They laughed and said yes. This started a weekend of joking about where they were attached.

After sitting around until about 9:15 we finally leave the bus terminal. The forward movement of the bus does not last long as we hit Friday Kampala night traffic. Not the normal traffic where you go slow for a few miles, but dead stop. It takes us about 2 hours to get out of Kampala. So this is going to be a long night. As we get a bit out of town, another dead stop for 1 hour. This is caused by a construction site with only one lane and it being poorly manned with less than one person. People are in such a hurry and passing each other they end up blocking the other lane, now NO ONE can move, and this is self-inflected. These are not just cars and boda’s causing this mess, but also the buses heading to weekend getaway locations. After about an hour enough drivers get out and help back up buses and other vehicles to fix the problem, we are on our way. Until about 30 more minutes later, same issue, same buses, WTF. After about another hour we are off again. Now it’s well past midnight as I try to fall asleep.

You always wonder why everyone wants to sit in the front rows of the buses, because the back rows bounce like a crazy ass illegal Disney ride. I’m in the back. So, between the swerving to go around potholes, which there are many, and the lifting-off-the-seat bounces, it’s next to impossible to sleep, oh well.

So we arrive in Gulu around 6am, nine hours for 220 miles. That is about 25mph. But in reality it’s 2 hours at 75mph, 2 hours at 35mph and the rest at a dead stop.

So it’s 6am, where do I stay, well of course at a local hotel, good thing I’m with Mildred and Juliet and they know Gulu. The first one, I’m warned, has a very loud late night bar across the street, on to the next one. Looks good, pretty quiet, but being 6am I’m not really going to sleep much at this time anyways. The hotel guard says I have two options, my own bathroom for 65 or shared bathroom for 35. Heck, I’m only now going to be here for one night, I say I’ll take the shared bath. Then I find out this is not dollars they are quoting but shillings, 35,000 shillings for a night. My brain is not functioning at first because of the all-night travel, and then I realize that is $13/night. I guess I could have splurged for the own bath, but it was nice and clean.

I take a shower, crash for a few hours then check out Gulu and visit with some friends. I was happy to find out my bike was picked up by my friend Grace and given to child who will use it to ride to school.

On Sunday, it’s time to leave. There is no way the travel could get any worse than the way to Gulu, hah. So our bus is scheduled to leave at 2:30pm, I’ll be home at a decent time, good night sleep.

On the way back to Kampala we have an extra traveler, Chloe, she is three and a half, but tells me she’s five. Chloe is Mildred and Juliet’s niece, she is going to visit her Grandma who lives in the town of Jinja, a few hours to the east of Kampala. We get along great. We get on the first bus and find it’s over booked, Mildred and Chloe find a seat, but Juliet and I are seat less along with a couple of others. Since we do not want to split the group, we decide to get off the bus. Lucky for us there is another bus boarding and getting ready to leave, plenty of room, we decide to take that bus. We get on that bus at 3pm and wait, and wait, finally at 5pm it leaves Gulu. At the time we leave, it starts to rain pretty hard, an awesome Northern Uganda lightning storm. We then notice the roof of the bus leaks, people are tying bags and curtains to the roof to minimize the discomfort. I was so far back, it did not hit me, but my pain will come on the bouncing ride.

Off we go, late, leaky bus, but we have some space, not all the seats are full, but that changes quickly when we stop several times to pick up new passengers. So it’s all four of us on three seats, Chloe is using us all for her seat as she sits across us all.

We make one more stop and a man gets on with two chickens, live chickens, and he sets them under his seat. I look to my other travelers and they say it’s normal. I shrug and continue to read my newspaper. Every so often we hit a bump and the chickens would make chicken noises.

Can you see the chickens?

So we’re traveling along, swerving around potholes, bouncing around, and listening to the occasional chicken sounds. If you know me, you’ll know I’m a news junkie, I have three papers with me and sharing them with my fellow passengers.

At about 7:00, we smell something is wrong on the bus, than we start seeing smoke coming from the front. The driver pulls over and shuts down the engine, it’s overheating. By the time I get off the bus, I’m in the back of the bus, steam is clearly coming from the engine and filling up the passenger section. Oh no!

We get off the bus, they fill the bus with some water, let things cool, and then the engine won’t start. So several of us try to push start the bus. We are able to push it from the side of the road to back unto the road and get it started. Now we realize something bigger is clearly wrong, and the driver shuts it off again. It’s a pressurized tube from the water pump that has broken. The local village mechanic shows up to help with a screwdriver and a piece of PVC pipe. He is able to take some rubber tubing, some waterproof tape that he takes from the old PVC pipe and rebuilds this tube. Now on top of all this it’s now getting dark.

I took this picture, then joined in to help

If you know me, you know I always travel with the essentials, such as first aid kits, tools and two headlamps. I loan one headlamp to the mechanic and use the other one to flag down passing high-speed vehicles that can not see us since there are no emergency flashers, no flares, or no reflectors. On top of all that the work needs to be done on the road side of the bus.

In Uganda, and most of the developing world, when your vehicle breaks down, people cut down branches and throw them in the road. So for most local drivers, if you driving along at 120kmph and see braches you may slow to 115kmph to pass safely. It’s up to the people on the road to get out of the way.

Finally, we are off, it’s now about 10pm, five hours into the trip. We finally arrive in Kampala at 2am. Since it’s too late to have someone pick us up we get a cab to take us home, finally in bed at 3am.

Kenya with Brynna

Last month Brynna came to visit. We decided to meet in Kenya since she had not been there before and she had already seen the tourists stuff in Tanzania such as a safari and Zanzibar.

We flew into Nairboi, I had flown in a few hours before her and met her as she came off the plane, we went through immigration and stayed the first night at the Stanley Hotel, one of the oldest and coolest hotels in Nairobi.

The next morning we jumped into our Land Cruiser and with our guide and driver we head off to Tsavo National Park, we spent two nights in and around the park. One night we stayed at the Saravo Salt Lick hotel that is built on stilts so you can watch the animals as the roam underneath the hotel.  

After two days of safari we headed to Mombasa for several days of the beach time.

We flew back to Nairobi, Brynna left at about 6pm, I left at 11pm. They next morning the airport had a big fire and destroyed the immigration section of the airport. Even though the reports you hear say the airport is open and functioning, I’m not going to fly through Nairobi for a bit of time.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-23611228

Dogs in the Sewer                                                                                  

Last Wednesday night I came home late from visiting some schools on the other side of Jinja. These schools had computer labs installed over the last 1-2 years and we wanted to see how they were doing. As I got home I noticed several neighbors were looking into the street drain. Of course I stopped and asked what was wrong. Four 8-week old puppies had slid into the sewer, they could clearly not get out. You could hear them but not see them. I offered one of my headlamps and they could see them. The mother dog, a stray, was running around in panic. They opened the drain so the mother could get into the pipe and hang with her puppies for the night.

The next morning I woke and found people looking into the drain again. They needed to get the mother and puppies out. So we spent the next several hours getting the mother out by wrapping a rope around her neck and pulling her out. The puppies were more of a challenge.

We had two buckets and several pieces of PVC piping that we tied together. We would put one bucket in, with the opening facing the puppies, the second bucket would face the other way so we could put the PVC pipe into the bucket. Using the PVC pipe we would then push the buckets through the sewer and pick up one puppy at a time. We were able to get all the puppies out of the sewer. They are now staying in the bathroom of the one of the tenants here. The first night they got the mother to come in and be with her puppies. Just heard one has already been adopted.

One of the four puppies rescued

Moved to Africa

First, I want to apologize for not getting a blog out sooner. I could say I was really busy, which I pretty much was, or I can tell you the truth, I was lazy about getting my blog done.

Now we have that out of the way and guilt has been lifted let’s get on to the blog. I have decided to move to Africa and I’m currently living again in Dar es Salaam Tanzania. 

Update from my last blog

After Gulu, I came back to DAR, spent one day, unpacking and repacking for my journey back to the US. I arrived in the US on Feb 15, stayed with my good friend Hanumant, since my house was now gone. While in Seattle I got all my stuff done, medical checkups, visit to Dallas to see Brynn, side trip to Alaska where I got to meet with a friend I had not seen for several years, visit to MN to see family, sold my truck, and put what was left in storage. All was complete for my return back to Africa on Apr 1. But the project was not ready, so I had to wait until Apr 19 to leave.

In Alaska watching the Iditarod Race

During my first stint in Africa, Indie the dog had been staying with his BFF Koda at the O’Neils house, my previous neighbor in Redmond. With my upcoming return to Africa, this time for one year or more, I felt I needed to find a more permanent solution for Indie. A family in Ashland, Oregon, with young triplets was the perfect fit, they previously had a lab. Met them in Eugene to drop off Indie, which was an extremely sad experience. Indie is a GREAT dog, I will miss him dearly. The pictures I get from them sound like it was the right decision, thank you Andy, Molly and the family!

Indie enjoying the waters of SF

So I arrived on Monday night, went right to work on Tues, on Wednesday had to fly to Zanzibar to help set up a demo for USAID. Zanzibar is a great place. It is called the “Spice Islands” and it's made up of several islands, with two main islands Unguja and Pemba. We stayed in Stonetown, on the main island of Unguja, an old village that was once famous (not good famous) as the transfer spot for the African slave trade.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanzibar_Archipelago

  

Zanzibar teachers learning new tools for the classroom

Students seeing a computer for the first time

Zanzibar is also the hometown of Freddie Mercury of Queen. They have a bar named after him, Mercury’s, where we proceeded to have a few Kilimanjaro beers. It is located right on the beach, so great sunsets, and the occasional beach hawker trying to sell us anything. The best is when they come up to you selling CD’s and starting singing the most popular songs of Tanzania. 

But by far, the best part of Zanzibar is Stonetown, you can wander around the small, narrow passageways of the city with the most amazing architecture. But, beware of the motos coming around any blind corner and running your ass over. There is no way they could have electric motos, no noise, no way to know they are coming, you would be run over daily.

One night, we had dinner at the top of the Emerson Hotel, many flights up the stairs, no elevators, to the roof. Had the most amazing view of the city and listened to the competing mosques calling out their nightly prayers, so magical. The meal was outstanding.

We flew back from Zanzibar, we fly on a small 20+ seat Cesena’s. Our plane was full today, actually there was room for me, but someone brought their cat in a kennel. So I was tapped on shoulder and asked to sit in the co-pilot seat, so cool. Our pilot was an Australian woman, I told her not to worry I was not going to touch anything. She replied, “there is nothing you can do I can’t fix”. Ok, ground rules are set. So off we went, best seat in the plane and got to watch the radar as we flew into a storm.

My view on the trip back, good thing I have been using Microsoft Flight Sim

Back in Dar for a few days as we packed for the demo in Mtwara, than off to Mtwara where we spent several days setting up for more demonstrations.

We all have to trench

The team installing the sw on the laptops

And the best part, the kids using the laptops

 

Three to a laptop

After Mtwara, it was back to DAR to do a retraining class for the engineers. It was in the infamous “sweat shop”, but now that it’s rainy season, not the hot season, it’s actually not bad. The only issue with rainy season is the roof leaks, but that is a much easier fix, except when it rains hard on the tin roof, then we have to stop class for a few minutes because no one can hear.

Training is complete and we’re now ready to install, the original schedule had the installs starting Jan 2, but that is a longer story. We’re about to start the installs in Mtwara, then the riots start, several people are killed and we hit the brakes on the installations before we could ship equipment.

Ok, time for some Mtwara local information. Recently, Mtwara found a large amount of natural resources, we’ll call it natural gas. Tanzania is planning on building a pipeline from Mtwara to DAR and process all the gas in DAR. The people of Mtwara, generally a poor area of Tanzania, want the jobs and gas to stay in Mtwara and build a bigger port, thus the riots. So as we are waiting, we continue to work in the warehouse, getting all the things ready, tool boxes, team uniforms, etc. But there is also fun time.

On Sunday June 1, it was the annual Goat Races for Charity http://goatraces.com/, this annual event races money for several local charities. Not only can you bet on the goats, and win (not much), but there is a beer/wine/food garden. This seems to be the BIG ex-pat event of the year and it was packed, not only that, it was a pretty hot that day. After betting and losing the first five races, (I personally think there were only 10 goats that they changed their outfits between each race to make it look like there were over 100 goats) it was time to spend the rest of the afternoon sampling some Kilimanjaro Beer. Not that I really need to sample it, I really know what it tastes like, but sampling sounds a bit classier. Considering how the afternoon and evening went I need all the help I can get. Our group is likely to have funded a major world charity project based on the amount of beer and stuff we drank. It’s much easier when you can say I’m drinking for charity. But we got to meet and hang out with some wonderful people. That night, instead of calling it a day, like most people did, it was off the QBar for the “after the goat races party”. This is a local bar that has a great mix of locals, expats, some working ladies, and lots of music, this creates a great environment and wonderful people watching experience. We left around 1am, pouring ourselves into a Bajaj for the ride home and recovery the next day.

The first times I came to Tanzania in 2003, it was to start the Kilimanjaro Porter Assistance Project with my good friends Donovan and Carrie. One weekend we came to DAR and experienced the same goat races. Wow, ten years later and back at the goat races.

 

The weekends also get us out to the local island of Bongoyo. It’s a 40 min boat ride, really several boat rides to get to this national marine park. We have to get on a small boat, that takes us to a larger boat for the long ride, and then transfer to a smaller boat to land on the beach. It’s a nice trip and the island is speckled with handful of thatched large umbrellas and chairs to get out of the sun. They also have fresh caught fish for lunch, we know it’s fresh because we see the fisherman bringing the fish to the kitchen from their boats parked on the beach. There is also a small tide pool of eels, they like to hang around because they get the fish guts when the kitchen clean the fish. When the tide comes up, they seem to just stay put, we swim on the other side of the island. After a day of being in the sun and some great fish, we return to the mainland through the same boating process. Some of you have asked about safety, we’ll there is no safety on these boats, in fact I rarely see a life jacket. The ones I do see say “Not to be used in or near water”. Good news is that I can swim and likely I can get to shore. It makes you think about how you pack, if there is something important or can’t get wet, leave it at home.

So back to installations, since Mtwara is still pretty dicey, we decide to send all the teams to Zanzibar and start the installs. So we start packing the warehouse, 7 medium size trucks show up at the warehouse, 100’s of batteries, solar panels, and boxes of computers are loaded into the trucks. These trucks are driven onto a truck ferry for Zanzibar and then unloaded into the local warehouse. Eric and I head over to Zanzibar on the high speed ferry vs. fly, we are with our install team of 28 strong. The first day is prep, the equipment still has not arrived, so we take a small team to some of the schools to do pre-checks. Thursday and Friday are installation days, we take all 28 people, 9 teams, to Kama school. Since this school has 9 solar classrooms to install, it works perfect, each team gets a classroom. The next day at Mwenge, 9 classrooms, we do a grid powered (with battery backup) install, so once again each team gets to do an installation.

The ship that carries the 7 trucks of equipment

The nice ferry for the teams, top deck, really fast

Installing the power cages

Talking to the students who will be using the computers

The installation team!!!!

The installations have finally begun. I was asked to work on this project last July, when I had returned from Haiti, it has been a long, many times difficult adventure. But at the end of the day, it’s seeing the children’s face when you get out of the truck to start the install and then when they see a computer for the first time, that is why I’m here!!!

This trip I got to hang out with Paul and Eric. Paul is the logistics person to help move the equipment around, interestingly he is from Portland Oregon. He is 72 years old and a retired Marine, because there are no ex-Marines. He has worked logistics for years and he came out of retirement to help a friend on this project. Eric, who I knew the first time in DAR is the power expert on the project, he lives on Orcas Island and is the owner of Solar Nexus International, we were roommates on this trip. The three us were together much of this trip, not only the warehouse and Zanzibar to work, but goat races, Bongoyo island, Qbar, movie nights, and general many nights out around town. We had some great times, I’ll miss them around here, but we plan to meet again in Portland when I finally show back up in the US. Strange the connection to the Pacific Northwest. Sadly Kim Kardashian is ruining the name North West by naming her soon to be spoiled child that name, WTF? Bet she can't find NW on the map, bet she can't find a map.

Eric on the roof with the solar team

Unpaid advertisement

I’m known here to have everything in my bag. Traveling to a lot of remote locations you learn to carry stuff with you because you never know what you need when you need it. One of my favorite new toys is my Jambox, this is a Bluetooth speaker with a built in mic so I can use if for skype calls too. But best is to run Songza off my iphone and play it on my Jambox, it is compact and great sound. If you travel, get one!

Now that Eric and Paul have left I decided to move into a smaller apartment, one bedroom. It’s on the 2^nd floor, brighter than the last place and breezy, have yet to turn on the AC, very nice, but have been getting more power outages, Africa. Now I need something to move around the bugs at night, waiting for a fan from the office, otherwise maybe back to a bug net, they are no fun.

Many of you may know Obama is coming to Africa, not just Africa, coming to Dar es Salaam, so over the next weeks it will be crazy here with all the advanced teams, security, traffic, etc. May run to Zanzibar or Uganda and get away those days.

What is next?

So I’m now finished with my contract with USAID/TZ21 and starting to close on my next adventure. Should have more info on my next blog, promise to be more frequent.

Brynn is coming to visit late July/early August as she transitions from the US to do a 2 year school program in Beijing. Will be great to have her visit and do safari and beach time, hmmmm, where to go?????

Leaving Gulu Uganda tomorrow, hope to be back

Today is my last day in Gulu Uganda where I’ve been working on the Internet Now project. Over the last several weeks I have really learned a lot about Gulu and I like it. It’s still a hot, dusty, lack of different food type of town. But as you spend more time in any location you get to start to peel back the outer layers and see what’s really inside be it good or bad. Having my bike has allowed me to go places I would not likely have gone in a vehicle, and at a much slower pace.

I think it’s been meeting the people in Gulu that has really changed me and my outlook about Gulu. There are several Gulians that I have spent time with here they have shared with me their insight of Gulu the history of the town and the area. Thank you Mildred, Joran, Alfred, Grace, John, Winnie, along with many others and the group at the SuperCenter.

School behind my house, getting ready for the day. Teacher: "how many months in a year ?" Students: "there are 12 months in a year"

Recently, I was doing a site survey and came across this not so nice set of buildings, as I walked through I thought it was used for storage or animals. I was stopped by the principal and asked “why are you here, you need permission to be here”. I immediately apologized and spent some time with the principal. This was a displacement school for one of the rural schools.

 A few years back the children were afraid to be in the rural areas, so they moved to Gulu town, during the day they would go to these schools, at night they would sleep on the streets of Gulu where 1000’s of other “night traveling” children would come to town to sleep. The children were worried that if they were caught by the LRA, they would never return. I have heard roughly 30,000 children in this area have disappeared and have never been seen again. The school is no longer used, it’s a hub for other projects and for storage. The children, what are left, have moved back to their village to attend the regular school.

Typical village houses

Building a new house in the village

National Park

Last Saturday, after a site visit, we went to Chobe Lodge, it’s about an hour drive south of Gulu. Since we were already south of town it made nice little stop off. After you turn off the main Gulu-Kampala highway (not really a highway or anything like a highway, maybe a step up above a good quality dirt road with asphalt and lots of potholes) you drive about 20kms through the outskirt of the Murchison Falls National Park. There are reports of Giraffes and Elephants in the area, sadly we did not see any, this was likely due to the late arrival at the park. We then arrived at the park entrance, paid the fee, checked-in and traveled a short distance to the Chobe Safari Lodge. This is an old government lodge that has been privatized, remodeled, which really means the prices have gone up, a lot. But it’s beautifully laid out with rooms facing the Blue Nile River. There is an amazing swimming pool and great lunch buffet.

For me the best part of this place is the location on a bend of the Blue Nile River. This is like a huge Hippo singles bar, where 100’s of Hippos spend the day staying cool in the swift flowing water. At night they come out, to find vegetation. We heard stories where the Hippos have chased around some of the guests and staff of the lodge. I spent a lot of time watching the Hippo’s heads emerge out of the water for a few minutes, before they would hide again under the safety of the Nile. A short walk around the corner there was large area where the hippos just hung out waiting for the night eats.

Driving around in the Land Cruiser

On this project we drive around in Land Cruisers, this is due to rough roads we typically travel to get to the remote locations. One LC is the better than the rest, it has a great off-road suspension and good AC. We try and take it on each trip. Even with the good suspension, it’s a pretty rough ride. So it’s bouncing around from location to location, its helping the core muscles, sucking them in so you don’t fall over or hit your head on the side windows. I always seem to be in the back seat, but it’s my preferred spot.

One of three of our Land Cruisers

Music all night

Where I live is on the main road from Kampala to Juba South Sudan, making it a trucking mecca, it’s also home to some of the local bars. Some of these bars are open all night playing loud thumbing music. I don’t mind music until midnight, but when you wake up at 4am and it’s still playing that is pushing it. But as soon as school started again, Feb 4, the music is cut off at about 11pm, guessing some of the local moms of the students may have had a word with the bar owners. There is one place that plays really nice music until about 11pm, great level and I've fallen asleep to it more than once. But at the end of the day, still have to wear the earplugs to sleep through the night.

Camera Issues

Looks like the rough roads have finally done in my camera, you may see a slight line through some of my pictures, arrggg. Looks like it’s time for a new camera.

My Bike

So I have been spending a lot of time on my bike, meaning a bit of maintenance too. Good thing I know how to work on a bike, but this more like working on a car than a bike. I think a hammer would be one of the main tools I’ll need to have in the future. The brakes are solid metal, but not very effective, starting to get some popeye arms. There is no way in hell I could stop quickly, but that is not a big issue, I’m not going very fast either. The last two weeks I have been riding my bike occasionally to work. I keep getting comments about why didn’t I get a bike with gears. Today I had to replace my bike tire, one month and already wore one out. Bad roads or bad tires -- both.

We have three trucks for the project, last week the drivers were out front of the office washing the trucks. They saw my bike and washed it too, it looks really great, thanks guys!

Most weekends I get up and ride my bike to The Coffee Hut, they make a great breakfast. I get the express breakfast and a banana smoothie. After breakfast I stop at the bakery next door, they have the most amazing banana bread. I always get an extra piece to give to the two little girls that live at our guest house. 

Haircut

If you read my blog regularly I usually have something to say about getting a haircut in places around the world. In Gulu, I get my usual number 2 clipper cut, afterwards a woman walks me over to a sink and washes and massages my head, felt so good, all for 5000UGX or about $1.90USD.

SuperCenter

The Internet Now Project includes a training center at the large Gulu University campus. I have spent a bit of time at the SuperCenter (SC) this last month working on their network and helping with the 50 computers that are networked. The workers at the SC are being trained on applications that will be installed at the 100 sites around Northern Uganda. Some of these people will actually run the remote centers. Almost all of the trainees are students or recent grads of the Gulu University, many of them with ICT/computer backgrounds. Several of the students have been interested in what we are doing with the larger network that is about to be built. This week I did a training class to this group, talking about how we design and install this upcoming network. A few days later we have to install a new router at the site and 6 of the students stayed afterwards to see the install.

This week I received an email that has made my think about the work we are doing in Uganda.

I think there are always amazing journeys where we meet different people. These people have different talents and great skills with the zeal to work but no opportunity. I am sure that when you go back, this should be on the menu for your friends and partners across the Globe so that opportunities like this one (Internet Now!) can be created to create more opportunities especially for an African child.

We are installing 2 containers of computers at 100 sites, my work is to connect them to the internet.

Came across a building where people can used computers in a secure housing. Because the y are secure, they can be used day and night. An amazing organization, BOSCO, runs this computer center.

Heading back to the US

Sunday February 10, I start my journey back to the US. I leave early in the morning for the 4 hour drive from Gulu to Kampala in one of the Land Cruisers. I’ll spend a few days in Kampala. On Feb 13, I’ll fly from Enteppe to Dar es Salaam, then later that night I will fly Dar to Amsterdam and on to Seattle.

I WILL be back to Africa very soon again.

A cool pump to get water to the kitchen of the Unyama Teacher University

Drying my clothes in my room. Normally done in the sun, but it was nighttime.

Gone off to Uganda

I arrived in Uganda, first trip to Uganda for me, on Monday Jan 7. Took Uganda Air from Dar es Salaam to Entebbe Uganda. The flight is only 1.5 hours and you fly over Lake Victoria, the world’s second largest lake. Number 1 is Lake Superior, up by my home town of Minnesota. 

In Entebbe I'm behind two much larger planes, so it took forever to get out of the immigration. I was met by the owner of our local partner, we drove the 45 minutes to their Kampala office where I was updated on the program and the challenges we face.

The new program is called Internet Now, funded by Oxfam. The project places containers in the rural areas of Northern Uganda. The containers have several computers inside and are powered by solar and connected to the internet. Another partner, Samasource, http://samasource.org/ does micro-projects. This SF based company contracts with large corporations to off source some of the companies work, I’m learning more about their business model. The local Ugandans come to these containers to do the work and get paid. My job is to help get the internet to each of these sites, I will be here for about 3-4 weeks.

They picked Gulu because it was one of the hardest hit locations during the years of Idi Amin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idi_Amin and the recent LRA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord's_Resistance_Army mess. This area has seen more than its share of terror, rapes, child abductions, machete attacks, and brutal killings. I can’t imagine how rough it has been. When you look into the eyes of people from Gulu you can sense the pain, the difference between the people in Kampala and Gulu makes them seem they are from different parts of the world. Several times I have seen an Invisible Children NGO truck drive by, they have an office in Gulu, they did the video Kony 2012. http://invisiblechildren.com/kony/

I arrived in Gulu on Friday Jan 11, after spending several days in Kampala. We had to wait for the truck to get back from the shop, the engine had been blown on the last trip back from Gulu. Trying to get a mechanic to give you a date or time when the truck would be ready is a crapshoot. “It will be there at noon”, we thought on tues, little did we know it would be 4pm on thurs. Off we went on a 340km drive. The first 200kms are relatively nice, flat, smooth. Then the road, gets smaller, rougher, pot-holed filled, baboon running in front of the truck, large truck driving in your lane, Nile River crossing type of road. I was actually a bit scared on this trip. But I learned this is nothing, wait until you hear about the trip up North the next week.

Gulu is considered a “frontier” town. I think in the future I’m going to get a clear understand what the heck “frontier” means. This is a transit town, this means all the trucks going from Kamapala to Juba South Sudan come through this town, and not through this town, right past the apartment I’m staying. There are no tourist things here in Gulu, just a pass through to go to other parks. But because of the bad history, there are many NGO’s and some NGO hangouts. This means young westerners who come here to work or volunteer in variously funded projects.

Main traffic circle in town

So I got to town on Friday, our apartment is on the south end of town, (N02.75040, E032.30410). The first Saturday I walked the 2+kms into town to look around. I notice most people are walking, on motorbikes (boda -boda), or riding bikes. In town I notice the local bike shop. They have one speed and the semi-mountain bikes. For the one-speeds, there is the Uganda Roadmaster King, an Indian version of the same, and a Chinese version. The Roadmaster King cost 210,000 Uganda Shillings (UGX). Sunday morning I went back and bought one. I had to wait about an hour while the mechanic made it road worthy. Off I ride into the heart of Gulu on my new Roadmaster King to many interesting stares, and call of “Mzungu” which means white guy.

My new bike is a one speed, weighs about 50lbs, with a 40 spoke rear wheel and 32 spoke front one. The brake cables are solid metal, and I have this sweet ringer on the front.

One day last week I thought I would head south, on my bike, to check out the area. This turned into a 20km bike ride, meeting many locals and getting tons of stares and laughter. I also heard the phrase Mzungu many times. At one point I rode and talked in great length my new friend Francisco. On the way back, I was starting to feel added resistance, thinking that it was the heavy bike and the hills, I stopped and realized I had a flat tire. I was able to pump it with my bike pump to get me to the next town where there was a “fundi” or mechanic. As I waited for him to fix the tire I got to talk to the locals. They asked where I was from and why I was out riding this heavy bike when I could have one that is lighter and with gears, I just shrugged. Tire was fixed, 1000 UGX and I’m off again.

If you have not looked it up already, the US Dollar to Shilling is about 2700UGX to 1USD. So my bike cost $78USD, the tire repair cost 37 cents.

A side story about Haiti this week

Last year I spent three months in Haiti, one school I visited stuck out more than any other location. This was the Institution Maranatha, an orphanage which I wrote about in my blog.

One was the Institution Maranatha which is a rural school, what I did not know until I arrived it was a local orphanage. As I got out of the car with my tools I heard wonderful music coming from the second floor. I delayed my site survey to go check it out. I found several of the kids practicing a dance number with others playing some instruments, for the second time on this trip I was in stopped in total amazement. This is why I’m in Haiti.

Many times as we installed school computer labs some of the local kids would want to help, I usually asked them to help and assigned small tasks. One young man at the Maranatha installation asked me a lot of questions and was very helpful. Before I left he asked for my email address. About once a month we would exchange emails. Last week I got a very disturbing email from him, two children in the village had recently died of Cholera, one being his cousin. He asked if I would please help his village. I asked him if others were sick and what the community was doing. I was told six more were sick and there were no local clinics, the closest was in Cap Haitian, but no one could afford the moto ride into town.

I started to email all my contacts in Haiti and anyone who knew Haiti. I got a message from one of the medical organizations in North Haiti, they in turn got me in contact with Dr Maklin of the Haiti Mission of PUMC. They run a traveling clinic supported by US volunteer doctors and nurses. They were able to send doctors to the village the next day. Haiti Mission of PUMC’s medical director is Dr Ford who built the Maranatha school and actually knew my young friend. What a small and strangely connected world. I will be donating to Dr Fords organization that helps the orphanage and provides medical care. I usually don’t ask, but if you want to support an amazing group of people and an amazing project this is the one.

Robert Ford Haitian Orphanage/School Foundation
http://www.fordhaitianorphanage.org/

Back to Gulu

On Wednesday I needed to go to Northern Uganda to check on some potential sites, where we do site surveys that include gps coordinates, pictures, and videos that we send to the other teams involved. We left the house at 6am and headed out of Gulu on this rough dusty road. As I mentioned, I thought the ride up to Gulu was a bit fast, that was nothing. We’re driving 110-120km/hour on dirt roads. I thought this was one of the legs of the Dakar race. We would honk when we would see people, goats, chickens, etc. and they would scramble out of the way quickly, they knew that everyone drives crazy and fast on this road. Since this is the road to South Sudan we would also come across big semis. Would anyone slow down, no, they fly past each other at record speeds. I will always be sitting in the back holding my lucky coins, we leave again on Monday.

We crossed the West Nile River on a really cool ferry where we continued on and did our site surveys. Then we Dakar raced back to Gulu. This trip took us 4kms from the South Sudan border.

Protection at the ferry crossing

Gulu town

Around the apartment there several small local communities, throughout the day the people would go to the local wells to fill up water. This is mostly the job of the young girls/women in the community. I’m amazed how they balance the water on their heads. They can even bend down to pick other things up without spilling a drop.

There is a family that takes care of the house, they have three young children. The two youngest are the gate openers and closers when the trucks come in and out of the compound. They are so cute.

My in-house security

There is also a house dog Layla.

My apartment -- I'm on the top floor, best for hearing ALL the road noises

View from my room of the village across the street

Next week back into field to check on some more sites, with a visit from some of the Inveneo staff the following week.