Last Time From UG: Seriously This Time

I’m back in Uganda for now. I decided to leave some things in Gulu during my travels to the South and Rwanda and to come back and work at Health Alert for one last week of work. The program coordinator at HAU had identified some needs that I could address during this week, so everything worked out for the best. Currently, HAU is applying for a WFP (world food programme) project that they hope to spearhead. It deals directly with agricultural and nutritional needs in the Acholi region and how those needs relate to health. I’m part of a five person team that will be trying to get everything put together by the end of the week to turn into the WFP country office. Its interesting that this opportunity landed in my lap because this week I have also had a run in with ten recent graduates of Cambridge University’s development studies program who had come to Gulu under the auspices of the UN and WFP. While they are all incredibly intelligent, I was mildly turned off by several of the member’s arrogance and belief that in a mere three days they could accurately survey the area as part of their research. It was almost entertaining the degree to which they bickered among themselves and the intractable opinions each took in simple and in the end fruitless discussions. Perhaps what frightens me most is to know that these may be the future leaders of the IMF, UN, World Bank and countless other institutions which have and continue to dictate the establishment of programs and the allocation of funds to places all over the world like Gulu who are in need of in depth analysis of regional and national issues if any effective change can hoped to be obtained. Similarly, in a vein that I’ve touched on repetitively in my blogging, the lack of discretion used in the distribution of candy and footballs by the group further qualifies their approach to “aid” and “development.” Having seen the effectiveness time and very limited funds can have when properly managed by an organization that knows the population well, like the staff of HAU do, it shames me to see the waste of intellect and potential that this group throws away sitting on their ox-bridge scholarly stools. Not to mention that in the three days they have here, they are eating at the most expensive restaurants, are scared to walk around at dusk and won’t brush their teeth with the tap water, the latter two of which are both sufficiently safe and reflect the western view that nothing here could possibly be safe.

Terribly sorry for the tirade, although I must warn you, another will follow concerning Rwanda in the next few paragraphs.

After I left Gulu with the GlobeMed group, we proceeded to Jinja to raft the source of the Nile. The river boasts four class five rapids and is considered one of the world’s finest rapids. The four of us went accompanied by one of the students from Concordia’s CVAP programme and met students from the WashU chapter of GlobeMed. We spent the night prior to rafting at river “base camp.” There are these huge buses that take teens and twenty somethings across the continent for these MEGA-adventure trips. Anyways, in talking to them we found out that a few of the groups [the ones dressed in tutus and leopard print spandex (men and women)] that they were competing amongst each other to see who could have sex with the most number of people during their two month trip across Africa. Kind of gross, and they were utterly obnoxious, but since they were all plastered, most passed out pretty early. Still, I wound up not getting any sleep that night; I just stayed up talking with everyone. The day on the river was incredible although filled with a fair share of danger and bruises. My boat alone suffered a black eye, a bruised back and a severely bruised arm. Where sleep failed me, adrenaline took over and the whole way down was incredibly exhilarating. After leaving Jinja, we returned to Kampala where Aurelien and I said goodbye to our friends from UNC and the ones we’d made from Concordia. We proceeded by bus down to the southwestern region of Uganda where we stayed at this neat place on the beautiful Lake Bunyoni. For anyone traveling in or near Uganda it is the perfect place to relax, catch up on sleep swim and eat delicious food, all at incredibly reasonable prices. We met three more students from Concordia that we had made plans to travel into Rwanda with and we spent a few days swimming, canoeing, sleeping, eating and indulging in locally grown herbs. The place is completely solar powered and complete with compost toilets. All the proceeds go to the local community on the island that run the place and use the profits in their community development.

After recharging the batteries that had been drained by our hard work in Gulu and the Nile river, we left for Rwanda arriving in Kigali by mid-day and finding a little inexpensive place at the bottom of one of the cities many big hills. The country is nicknamed the country of a thousand hills making it beautiful, but often strenuous to get around. Kigali is remarkably clean, not only for Africa, but for any sizable city anywhere in the world. The guilt money that has poured into the city is a true testament to the power that development can have in truly transforming a city or a country. With clean roads, organized traffic and orderly proceedings the city is a beacon of a new post-genocide era. However, the city is teeming with western influence and it shameful that the genocide had to occur as a result of colonial ethnic divisions in order for money for development to come in and make the difference that it has made. Regardless, our time in Kigali was great, we walked around the city a lot, up and down the hills. We visited the genocide museum, which was incredibly informative not only on the Rwandan genocide but also the numerous other genocides ranging from the Armenian to the Yugoslavian. The outside memorial pays tribute to the 300,000 buried in the mass graves in the compound. Walking around the graves was utterly heart wrenching, as were the stories from surviving family members of children killed in the genocide, by every means imaginable, five year olds being tortured and two month olds thrown against brick walls. Let us pray that the museum serves its purpose in educating the world about the atrocities that Rwandans endured so that no other group should ever face the same fate again.

We took a two day trip to the Parc National de Volcan in the northern part of the country where we climbed the 3711m Mount Bisoke, a volcano complete with crater Lake at its peak. We had originally sought to peak Mount Karisimbi at 4506m, but because of price and time constraints it proved unfeasible. The north was very rural and nowhere near as developed as Kigali, but Rwanda thrives on its tea and rice exports and even the most deprived families get a fair share and seem to live, if only slightly, outside of extreme poverty.

Aurelien and I left our friends in Kigali, returning to Kampala for Aurelien’s last night in Uganda. We splurged and saw the new Transformers movie and ate at a restaurant that actually had tax, which was a first for our time here. We had been traveling with another guy and two girls, so the three guys had always bunked in the same room and to save costs I had slept on the floor since I had a sleeping bag. For this reason and after a bumpy ten hour ride from Kigali to Kampala I nearly immediately fell asleep once we arrived at our hostel in Kampala. The next morning Aurelien and I shared goodbyes and I boarded another bus back up to my beloved Gulu. The hotel staff were ecstatic to see me upon arrival and have spent the last few nights just enjoying their company, playing pool, dancing and as the say here “swimming in the Nile,” Nile being one of the delicious Ugandan beers. I will leave Gulu on Friday and fly out to Delhi on Saturday. Once I get there I’ll be in greater communication on an individual basis as opposed to simple updates on my blog although I will keep those up as well. Until then…