Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Monday, December 14, 2009
The Source of the Nile
We left the hotel by midday Sunday and headed to see the rapids at the source of the Nile. They are in a park, not a national park, but some official looking guy charged us to get in. The prices were listed as Ugandans X; non-Ugandans Y. Classic. We also passed two kids with a rope trying to stop cars to pay them to go down the road. Our driver was having none of it and they let the rope down but given that tourists do go this way one can assume they get the odd taker.
Following the rapids we took off to the source of the Nile, the place where lake Victoria meets the Nile. We took a boat out onto the lake and the wild birds were to be seen to be believed. Lake Victoria is the second largest lake in the world and borders Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania. The journey from the source of the Nile here in Uganda to the Mediterranean sea is 4,000 miles and takes three months. Lastly, Ghandi's ashes are scattered at the source of the Nile - who knew.
Sunday - monkeys
Woke up Sunday morning at Jinja Nile Resort after enjoying a lie in until 9.30am. Very hot morning and no rain during the night meant that the sun was already beating down in the sky. Enjoyed breakfast with Ray (who had just come back from a 7 mile run) on the terrace looking over the Nile.
Once the bags were packed I headed out for a walk of the grounds to see more of the Nile. Fantastic views as far as the eye could see. But perhaps my biggest delight was coming across a family of monkeys on the driveway of the hotel. The only time you see monkeys in our western world is in zoos behind bars. These were really incredible and in their natural habitat enjoying a Sunday morning looking for grub. They were not that interested in me at all although I was literally in awe of them. Photos shortly.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Saturday activities
What a day! We left Jinja and headed into the outback equivalent to visit some projects. Jinja has a signifcant population but in truth other than this fancy resort the town is very poor. It is hard to describe the shacks that the average Ugandan lives in. Only 6% of the country (of 30 million) is on the national grid system. So they live in these shacks in the dark come sunset save for small lamps and fires which have no ventilation system. You drive for hours along roads almost orange with dirt (and it had rained heavily overnight) and mud and these shacks one after another. Some sell produce and others second hand shoes or clothes or mobile phones. Perhaps the strangest and most unsettling thing I saw today was coffins for sale along this piece of road; black coffins with a white cross on the front and a hole to see the face. According to my travel companion this is not unusual and Ray shared that in West Africa you can get a coffin with a picture of a coke bottle. Certainly food for thought. There is bungy jumping and white water rafting on the Nile; neither of which I will be participating in.
The projects we visited today started out with a SACCO - Savings and Credit Coop - a very formal meeting (with an agenda....anyone who works for me will know how much I like those) and speakers one by one all in their Sunday best. The SACCO is mostly run by women and the chairperson, treasurer and secretary were all women. Most of them have been able to start their own businesses with loans from the Coop. One lady sells fizzy drinks and makes a mark up of about a dollar on each case. Another sells second hand clothes and bought herself a bike (she had no shoes however) and yet another one was selling charcoal - she told us that based on her profits she was able to dress better and pointed to her lovely suit. These were great proud stories of liberation by women who otherwise would have no means of making money. Waijja told me today that husbands determine how many children the woman will have; birth control is hard to come by and would have to be taken without the knowledge of the husband. I really enjoyed listening to the ladies and have photos to share when I can get the technology sorted.
The second project was a farm which had benefited from credit via SHA as well as seeds and training on best practices for farming. This was an impressive gentleman with nine children - we all had to sign the guest book and then two of his daughters had to sing for us; much like Nicola and Darina did when Mom and Dad had guests. This man was so proud and grateful of the help, he had an Irish flag out for us when we arrived. He also passed around his son's exam results so we could see how well he was doing. he hopes to send him to university but he has to save a lot more to be able to do so. We then walked the farm, literally, for quite a while. I appreciated seeing the scale of the place but most of the plants looked much the same to me and I would have been fine with the powerpoint on it...I am kidding of course. Then the nine kids enjoyed some chirstmas M&Ms and Target balls.
The last project of the day was a farmers Coop that is now so established that SHA is moving on. This is their ethos but I think hard for the farmers to accept and they used the opportunity of the CEO being in town to pitch as to why they should stay with them longer. They have built themselves a very big processing factory for grains and stuff....there were huge machines there which I am sure are very good. More than anything SHA took me there to show me this is what it should look like so that they can pull out as the farmers are self sufficient. They will now bring farmers who are begining on the path of a Coop to this one to show them how it is done. It was great to see the pride in the accomplishments and the satisfaction they have all gotten from an improved lifestyle and certainly now well beyond food security issues. They also spoke about how SHA had helped them with sanitation and HIV/AIDS awareness and treatments. A new accronym for me today PLWA - people living with Aids.
Photos are great but I can't get the Mac online so am using a PC in the hotel. I hope to be able to get them up tomorrow. Tomorrow.....back to Kampala. There was an incident when I asked for the "bathroom" today and was pointed toward a hut; first a lizzard ran out and then I opened the door to see a hole in the ground. Suffice is to say I was right behind the lizzard.
Ciao
The projects we visited today started out with a SACCO - Savings and Credit Coop - a very formal meeting (with an agenda....anyone who works for me will know how much I like those) and speakers one by one all in their Sunday best. The SACCO is mostly run by women and the chairperson, treasurer and secretary were all women. Most of them have been able to start their own businesses with loans from the Coop. One lady sells fizzy drinks and makes a mark up of about a dollar on each case. Another sells second hand clothes and bought herself a bike (she had no shoes however) and yet another one was selling charcoal - she told us that based on her profits she was able to dress better and pointed to her lovely suit. These were great proud stories of liberation by women who otherwise would have no means of making money. Waijja told me today that husbands determine how many children the woman will have; birth control is hard to come by and would have to be taken without the knowledge of the husband. I really enjoyed listening to the ladies and have photos to share when I can get the technology sorted.
The second project was a farm which had benefited from credit via SHA as well as seeds and training on best practices for farming. This was an impressive gentleman with nine children - we all had to sign the guest book and then two of his daughters had to sing for us; much like Nicola and Darina did when Mom and Dad had guests. This man was so proud and grateful of the help, he had an Irish flag out for us when we arrived. He also passed around his son's exam results so we could see how well he was doing. he hopes to send him to university but he has to save a lot more to be able to do so. We then walked the farm, literally, for quite a while. I appreciated seeing the scale of the place but most of the plants looked much the same to me and I would have been fine with the powerpoint on it...I am kidding of course. Then the nine kids enjoyed some chirstmas M&Ms and Target balls.
The last project of the day was a farmers Coop that is now so established that SHA is moving on. This is their ethos but I think hard for the farmers to accept and they used the opportunity of the CEO being in town to pitch as to why they should stay with them longer. They have built themselves a very big processing factory for grains and stuff....there were huge machines there which I am sure are very good. More than anything SHA took me there to show me this is what it should look like so that they can pull out as the farmers are self sufficient. They will now bring farmers who are begining on the path of a Coop to this one to show them how it is done. It was great to see the pride in the accomplishments and the satisfaction they have all gotten from an improved lifestyle and certainly now well beyond food security issues. They also spoke about how SHA had helped them with sanitation and HIV/AIDS awareness and treatments. A new accronym for me today PLWA - people living with Aids.
Photos are great but I can't get the Mac online so am using a PC in the hotel. I hope to be able to get them up tomorrow. Tomorrow.....back to Kampala. There was an incident when I asked for the "bathroom" today and was pointed toward a hut; first a lizzard ran out and then I opened the door to see a hole in the ground. Suffice is to say I was right behind the lizzard.
Ciao
Friday, December 11, 2009
Wake up on the Nile
The beauty of this place (or one of them) is you arrive someplace in the dark and wake up to a setting you could not imagine in the morning.
Slept well after a few Ugandan beers with Waijja and Ray last night. Rains during the night woke me briefly which were very loud. Then you come out in the morning to green, wet beautiful landscape. It is impossible to really put into words what you see. The Nile is very loud and current strong. Pictures and more to follow later. Off on the road now. Just your typical Saturday.
Slept well after a few Ugandan beers with Waijja and Ray last night. Rains during the night woke me briefly which were very loud. Then you come out in the morning to green, wet beautiful landscape. It is impossible to really put into words what you see. The Nile is very loud and current strong. Pictures and more to follow later. Off on the road now. Just your typical Saturday.
Just checked in at the Jinja Nile Resort, Jinja, Uganda
Where to begin...long great day on the ground.
Did not sleep too well last night due to barking dogs, chriping birds and probably too much on my mind. Alarm went off at 8 and the daylight afforded me the first chance to see the surroundings. Green as the eye can see; this place would give Ireland a run for it's money.
The landscape is lush and the land very fertile. We started the day in the Self Help Africa offices in Kampala with Wiija (country director) giving an overview of SFA Uganda.
Then it was off to the field to Kyunga to meet local SHA staff and visit projects. Interestingly SHA only employs locals, no ex-pats on the ground at all.
Our first project was a coop of farmers who have bought from SHA six beehives and are making honey. The formality of the visit was something else. Under a tree, in a very remote hot part of Uganda the coop had gathered. Women on the ground, men on chairs. Two chairs with cushions which looked like thrones were reserved for Ray and I. The farmers had clearly prepared for the visit and the head man read out his two page overview of what they have accomplished, what else they would like, and a general overview. We were then given a tour of the beehives, not something I was too thrilled about but they gave me the beekeeper hat due to serious big girl blouse behavior. The hives are provided at US $35 each to the famers and with a 10% interest they agree to pay back SHA within six months. Their hives are thriving and the bees seemed very active today. They sell a jar locally for about $4 and so should be able to cover the loan in the period agreed.
The philosophy of SHA is all about having African's fend for themselves with the assistance of credit, grains and access to agricultural needs. We finished our first visit by giving the children some M&Ms for Christmas and watching a bag of Target bouncy balls go further than anyone at Target ever anticipated. I should say that the Ugandans are beautiful, women are truly stuning and the men are elegant. The children are just incredible, and they are everywhere. The average Ugandan woman has 6.7 children. The objective of SHA in this part of the world is to assist locals gain food security, access to clean water, health advocacy and gender equality for women. Many of the micro credit loans are given to women for the purposes of starting up their own businesses and gaining some independence. SHA covers 200,000 households in Uganda and services 1m people.
After the beekeepers we went to rice grain farmer followed by a local coop of women who had loans and who were enjoying the fruit of those loans, some literally with giant banana trees. Huge pride in their work and a real sense of accomplishment, moving them above the poverty line one household at a time. At each visit today we were handed a visitors book to sign, a very nice formality lost almost in the west, one was just a copy book like the ones we used in school, others nicely bound and clearly the family was proud to ask you to sign it.
There is so much more to tell but it is late now, wireless is not available and so some of my great pictures will have to wait till tomorrow as will further details on the other visits of the day.
An incredible day in a truly beautiful country, albeit with roads not for the weak of heart. We are staying tonight at Lake Victoria where the Nile begins and goes all the way to Eygpt. More tomorrow for those of you interested....
Did not sleep too well last night due to barking dogs, chriping birds and probably too much on my mind. Alarm went off at 8 and the daylight afforded me the first chance to see the surroundings. Green as the eye can see; this place would give Ireland a run for it's money.
The landscape is lush and the land very fertile. We started the day in the Self Help Africa offices in Kampala with Wiija (country director) giving an overview of SFA Uganda.
Then it was off to the field to Kyunga to meet local SHA staff and visit projects. Interestingly SHA only employs locals, no ex-pats on the ground at all.
Our first project was a coop of farmers who have bought from SHA six beehives and are making honey. The formality of the visit was something else. Under a tree, in a very remote hot part of Uganda the coop had gathered. Women on the ground, men on chairs. Two chairs with cushions which looked like thrones were reserved for Ray and I. The farmers had clearly prepared for the visit and the head man read out his two page overview of what they have accomplished, what else they would like, and a general overview. We were then given a tour of the beehives, not something I was too thrilled about but they gave me the beekeeper hat due to serious big girl blouse behavior. The hives are provided at US $35 each to the famers and with a 10% interest they agree to pay back SHA within six months. Their hives are thriving and the bees seemed very active today. They sell a jar locally for about $4 and so should be able to cover the loan in the period agreed.
The philosophy of SHA is all about having African's fend for themselves with the assistance of credit, grains and access to agricultural needs. We finished our first visit by giving the children some M&Ms for Christmas and watching a bag of Target bouncy balls go further than anyone at Target ever anticipated. I should say that the Ugandans are beautiful, women are truly stuning and the men are elegant. The children are just incredible, and they are everywhere. The average Ugandan woman has 6.7 children. The objective of SHA in this part of the world is to assist locals gain food security, access to clean water, health advocacy and gender equality for women. Many of the micro credit loans are given to women for the purposes of starting up their own businesses and gaining some independence. SHA covers 200,000 households in Uganda and services 1m people.
After the beekeepers we went to rice grain farmer followed by a local coop of women who had loans and who were enjoying the fruit of those loans, some literally with giant banana trees. Huge pride in their work and a real sense of accomplishment, moving them above the poverty line one household at a time. At each visit today we were handed a visitors book to sign, a very nice formality lost almost in the west, one was just a copy book like the ones we used in school, others nicely bound and clearly the family was proud to ask you to sign it.
There is so much more to tell but it is late now, wireless is not available and so some of my great pictures will have to wait till tomorrow as will further details on the other visits of the day.
An incredible day in a truly beautiful country, albeit with roads not for the weak of heart. We are staying tonight at Lake Victoria where the Nile begins and goes all the way to Eygpt. More tomorrow for those of you interested....
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Entebbe & Kampala
Arrived at 10pm local time so unfortunately was not able to see any Africian landscape as we landed. Got through border controls no problem. Saw a large WANTED poster for a J. Stark in the airport, decided not to take picture of it for fear of being questioned.
We were met by the Self Help country director, whose name now escapes me (it is midnight and I have been traveling all day in fairness).
Entebbe is abou 40 kilometers from Kampala and is the old Birtish Colony town I am told. Kampala is a big city (popoulation 3 million) and we drove in late at night, lots of people on the streets, in bars, around fires etc. Our guide told us Kampala never sleeps.
Difficult to really get a feel for the place late at night, seems to be vibrant, lots of scooters, lots of people just walking on the side of the road, very poor in certain areas and then big high rise buildings and commerce. Drivers overtake each other with speed and not a lot of room. We drove through the city to a very quiet residential area where we are staying the night in the Capital Palace Hotel. A hug from Ray and off to bed it is; it has been a long day and we have a full day tomororw.
Ciao
London to Entebbe
Made it to London without incident and schlepped over to the new BA terminal, which is huge and very cool. I think it is the most fascinating airport in the world to watch the comings and goings of where planes arrive from and depart to. Met up with my travel companion, Ray Jordan, CEO of Self Help Africia and a self proclaimed serial hugger.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Taking off
At logan airport off to London this evening. Thankfully this morning's snow in Boston turned to rain and assuming we have a woman pilot we should take off no problem. Currently in Richard Branson's Virgin lounge enjoying the very comfortable surroundings; I suspect I will be having some worlds colliding moments very soon. Last couple of hours of work stuff and then I am OOO. Airplane reading - The Shackled Continent; Africia's Past, Present and Future by Robert Guest. Sleeping pills for on the ready for the second leg of flying tomorrow. Next stop, London. Ciao
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
What time zone is UGANDA in?
An excellent question I was asked yesterday which prompted me to gather some brief facts to share with you about UGANDA:
- Uganda is in the Eastern African Time zone which is eight hours ahead of the east coast US and three hours ahead of Dublin. It is also five hours behind Hong Kong
- UGANDA only gained it's indepdance from the United Kingdon in 1962 - up the Ra
- The population of UGANDA is 32 million or 7.2 times the population of Ireland
- Capital is Kampala
- Currency is the Ugandan schilling
- 72% of the population of the country lives just a bit above the international poverty line of US $5.00 a day
Monday, December 7, 2009
Visa arrives
The Visa arrived today from the Ugandan Embassy and so the borders are now open. T minus two days!
Friday, December 4, 2009
Getting Ready
Next week I will be embarking on a journey to UGANDA to visit projects with Self-Help Africa.
I will blog daily and provide updates on the journey as I go.
This blog is also a way for me to make sure I take the time to record every aspect of this trip.
Uganda is the Pearl of Africa....here I come.
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