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.
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.
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| 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.
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.
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| 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.
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| My in-house security |
There is also a house dog Layla.
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| My apartment -- I'm on the top floor, best for hearing ALL the road noises |
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| 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.
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