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