Hello all!
Apologies for lack of descriptive Ugandan content in your inboxes, but I have only just secured internet access for my phone and computer.
I am yet to spot any signs of Kony (surprise, surprise), another white person or any Allen’s snakes. For those who know me well, you will no doubt be laughing at the thought of me without hot showers for three months, and you are probably having a giggle at the thought of me washing my underwear in a basin with soap. My Girl Guide skills are also making a resurgence in the kitchen, where there is no oven, stovetop, fridge, kettle, toaster, sink and basin, benchtop, coffee maker, dishwasher … etc. etc … think coal in a bag, chopping board on the floor, and washing dishes in a bucket. So I’m camping for three months! At least the kitchen is indoors and there are plenty of utensils, spices, and it is kept super clean. Also, there’s usually at least one lady or a young guy here who is cleaning up and helping watch children or cooking, a guard, and a lady who comes to do the washing… Thanks to Mum’s recipe I even managed to make a delicious cake. Doreen and the children will vouch for me, I swear!
My arrival in Uganda was an initial scrummage for lost luggage but I had an amazing introduction to the city…
Valence, who is the director and founder of the Youth Focus Africa Foundation, arrived at the hotel with open arms and smiling face and all of my fears were settled. It is almost impossible not to be inspired by this man. His ability to consistently deliver inspiring conversation is astounding, and it is easy to see how he makes so much happen with such little funding.
Over lunch under some banana trees where I tried to not be distracted by all the funny looking birds and big bright flowers, I learnt Valence is 34 and grew up in a village called Kitoola. It is just outside of Lugazi (where I am staying), which is about 50km east of the Ugandan capital of Kampala… which is in the south of Uganda and sits right on Lake Victoria. His father died when he was nine, leaving his mother with four children. She remarried and had another three children. Almost everyone I have met in Uganda is one of about seven siblings! They don’t seem to have any problems breeding and the population is a triangled skew of high birth rates and high death rates. Before Valence’s mother remarried, someone had spoken to her about the value of education. She later heard about an organisation which was sponsoring children and became determined to access a better future for her children. With her four children, Valence’s mother trekked 30 kilometres into the mountains to find the organisation and ask if they could sponsor her children. They told her they could, but they would come and see her. She trekked back home and waited. After three months, she became sick of waiting and walked there again. She did this four times before they finally arrived at her house and offered to sponsor just one child. The child was Valence, and he is determined not to be the only college graduate from his village in 15 years.
It was through a lot of hard work and resourcefulness Valence was able to make it through secondary school and university, where he studied development. He made a promise that if he made it through, he would use his education to go back and help his community. After secondary school there were many other temptations. There were plenty of other professions which could earn him good money and a much easier life. On top of this, his mother died when he was 14. But the grieving teenager headed off to college. It was here he also met Doreen. Doreen, 32, is the daughter of a radiographer and midwife. She was also studying development and grew up in an underdeveloped village near Valence. They became great friends and she even used to confide in him about her boy problems! After one bad experience she even vowed she would not marry an African man and Valence tried to set her up with one of his American friends (although he failed to mention to Doreen that he was doing this). After many years of friendship, Valence proposed. Proposals are different in traditional Uganda. They are basically a proposal to start a relationship, or take the friendship to ‘the next level’. But it is understood this will lead to marriage and there is not really an engagement as such.
Doreen, who is now 32, was working as a community development officer for a government organisation when she married Valence and agreed to be his partner in his dreams for YOFAFO.
Despite the temptation to find a well paid job, buy some land and a house in Kampala, Valence and Doreen went back to their community where Valence started mentoring young people and attempting to inspire them to think beyond their current situation. The poverty here is rife, most children do not make it through secondary school, corruption and bribery is inherent, youth unemployment rates range from 10 per cent to 83 per cent, people die young of preventable diseases, and many workers are exploited. Valence is encouraging young people to dream big. The organisation has grown in leaps and bounds and many children have completed secondary school and even gone to college thanks to child sponsorship. The foundation also runs health education, free health clinics in remote villages, a microfinance program for women and a primary school/children’s village. Valence’s current big dream is to build a first class secondary and vocational school next to the children’s village (where there is already a primary school catering for 450 children, most of them orphans). His vision is that this will mean the organisation will not have to rely on child sponsorship, as the costs of running the school will be subsidised by school fees from parents who can afford them.
While in Kampala, we still had time to kill, so we spent the next couple of hours at the beach discussing Valence’s belief in the power of the recognising the past does not exist, and if you want to change the world you must first change yourself (Mahatma Gandhi quote) etc etc.
Yes, I did say ‘the beach’. It was a pretty surreal experience to be sitting in the middle of Africa on a beach. Driving in, there were statues of a waving Nelson Mandela, and one of Queen Elizabeth chatting to the former president. Valence thought the Queen “looked hot”. I am pretty sure he was not referring to her body temperature... although it is very warm here, being on the equator and all. There were also old aeroplanes painted up (although a little run down) for people to look through, camels to ride, volleyball nets, and funny shade huts dotted along the shoreline. Sitting down and a young guy comes over to ask what we’d like to drink. There weren’t many people on the beach, but Valence said it would become busy with the after-work Friday night crowd a bit later. And then, with some scratchy reggae playing in the background, a group of about 30 secondary school students turned up. They had come from about 300km away and most of them had never seen a beach, let alone gone swimming! Some jumped in early and started splashing around and trying to navigate their way through the water like frogs! Others stood on the shoreline, undoing their belts and just waiting for 20 seconds of dutch courage which never seemed to eventuate. Some girls giggled, while others who had nothing appropriate to swim in just looked longingly as their classmates splashed and jumped around, leaving their teenage self-consciousness in their clothes on the sand.
Collected luggage and baggage and went skittling through Kampala en route to Lugazi. These people are crazy drivers, and the boda boda drivers (smallish motorbikes) are completely insane. Pedestrians and bikes have no right of way, and vehicles just keep charging through. It's like they just close their eyes and hit the accelarator or step out on the road and hope for the best! But somehow it works and they all miss each other??
Over the past week or so I have spent most of my working time with Doreen’s younger brother Dickson. Dickson is a clinical medical officer (a doctor) and gives two days a week to YOFAFO. He lives and works in Kampala for the rest of the time. YOFAFO provides health outreach to 10 villages, visiting one village per week. Running the clinic requires a lot of improvisation! At the first village we went to, they initially asked Dickson to consult with patients and dispense medication under a tree outside! It would have been lovely to sit under the tree… but there were of course a few confidentiality issues! So someone lent the main room of their house. This week he treated people inside an old classroom. HIV/AIDS is obviously a massive issue, and there are reports the prevalence is on the rise. The official rate is now about 7 per cent, but Dickson says the rate in some rural areas can be anywhere between 30 and 70 per cent. The other major issues are intestinal worms and malaria. Doreen’s three-year-old son Joe had malaria last week. Doreen took their 18-month-old daughter Beth to the doctor today and she was diagnosed with it. I am sure we are sharing mosquitoes! But they don’t take medication every day … and I do. So it should be okay ;)
The villages are so remote and people would miss out on health care if YOFAFO didn’t run these clinics. For old people with arthritis it is impossible for them to make the trek into town and it would be too expensive for them to pay for transport. But they are living in a most spectacular part of the world. The tropical surrounds take your breath away, and they are sitting on views of Lake Victoria you would pay a small fortune for in Australia! So strange that in contrast, these people don’t even have electricity and live off what they can grow ie. matooke (mar-toke-ay ….. steamed plantain / green bananas), beans, ground nuts (like peanuts), posho (cornmeal) and rice.
Dickson and his patients have been extremely generous with me and allowed me to pester them with a video and still camera. Have almost finished the first film, but will do another interview tomorrow. Dickson also wished to pass on a message that he drove very carefully when I was on the back of the boda boda and we were slipping and sliding around the mountains in the mud (it is very warm here at the moment, but is wet season… so usually buckets down once a day). He said to me: “Amy, have you ever been to the snow?... Well welcome to the Ugandan Snow”. He also said that if something did happen, he would give Valence the honour of explaining it to my mother...
I also spent a day at the women’s microfinance centre. Doreen explained to me how they have used donations from volunteers to change the lives of many women in the community. In Uganda, a female is unable to secure a loan without collateral – ie the support of her father or husband. But many women have lost both their fathers and husbands (some husbands have died, others left…). And when a man dies, his family usually comes and takes everything from the woman and leaves her with nothing. And she cannot get a loan. The women are given a minimum loan of 100,000 schillings (about $40) once they can prove they have some skills in managing money. They are placed in groups of five. Each woman is given a loan but they have to look after each other and guarantee each other. For example, if one person cannot meet their loan repayments for the week, the others will pitch in for her. The program was working so well, the women were paying off their loans much sooner than they needed to! It also made them realise the more they paid off, the more they could borrow, and the more money they could make. Empowering women is very important to Valence and Doreen. Valence refers to his mother as his hero and is more than aware of the power a mother has to instill ‘big dream’ values and a sense of self belief in her children. The microfinance program has seen women start up small businesses selling fruit and vegetables, clothes etc etc. Some have gone on to purchase boda bodas which others drive for them and make money for them. It has meant many women have been able to build themselves a small house, and feed their children.
I have been a little uncomfortable with the male / female relationships here. It is not so much the case in the city, but in Lugazi, things are still very traditional. Doreen does not wear pants in Lugazi. Only skirts and dresses. It is okay to show a bit of cleavage, but never the thigh! The majority of women kneel to their husbands, and the man does not help around the house at all. Valence has told Doreen she does not need to kneel before him when she speaks to him as they have a mutual respect for one another. He said he felt if she knelt before him she would really be laughing at him on the inside.
Although Valence does help with washing the children and wiping their noses, he is still happy to read the paper while Doreen is on her hands and knees with a cloth, mopping the floor, washing clothes by hand, sweeping, cooking, doing dishes, and trying to keep small children away from knives, fires etc etc… It’s such a massive job!! She has help during the week, but does it all by herself on Sundays.
But Doreen and Valence have a lot of respect and love for one another and Valence plays a much bigger role in the house than most Ugandan men. He also works very long hours and the pair of them run the organisation as a team. I also have to remember that I am in a different country with different rules and upbringings…
I have been trying to go jogging, but am attracting a lot of attention. Not only am I the only white person in town, I am the only one who jogs, and I am a female. Children run out in large groups, shouting and jumping “Mzungu! Mzungu!” (moo-zoong-goo = white person). So everyone knows I’m coming from 100m away. Some of the women smile and laugh (some wait until after I’ve passed to laugh) and some have stone faces I can’t crack no matter how much I smile! And I don’t feel so safe when I am by myself and six men on boda bodas are yelling at me to stop and are asking for my phone number. So I am trying to rope Valence into jogging with me, and in the meantime I am skipping at home. I can deal with waving every 20 seconds, but feel uncomfortable enough when I am around lots of people speaking in Luganda and the men are yelling out things at me. I’m sure it’s harmless, but I really have no idea what they are sayng!! Most of the time I really appreciate all the friendliness, but sometimes I just want to put a bag on my head.
In Lugazi, many people are ‘employed’ by the Mehta Group – an Indian corporation which has subsidiaries across the world, but in Uganda, runs the Sugar Corporation of Uganda Ltd. The sugar factory was established in 1924, but the Mehta Family lost their Ugandan assets in 1972 when former president Idi Amin dispossessed all Asians of their businesses and personal property. The assets were returned in 1980 with a change of government. The organisation claims to be playing a major role in the development of Uganda and points to how it provides in-house training and schooling for the children of employees. It earned ‘Employer of the Year’ and ‘Best Employee Relations and Welfare’ awards. I am finding this rather baffling though. I can see the Mehta Family has built a golf course / botanic garden / soccer field / hockey pitch / large house in Lugazi for their own very private use. Meanwhile, local people tell me the Mehta Group's ‘employees’ are all casual and are paid less than $10 a week. From what people have told me, the money for the schooling is taken out of the ‘employee’ wages and the company is actually making money on this. Apparently they only train / provide education to the students to a certain level, and do not encourage them to attend college. Some politicians and local leaders say the workers and this community are being completely exploited by this company. But nothing is being said about it in the media or elsewhere (from what I can tell) because a) the people are not educated about their rights b) they are desperate for any kind of employment and cannot risk the small pay they receive from the organisation c) the government/president potentially has some financial interests in the organisation d) the government owns and has a lot of control of the media. The one time the corporation did attract negative attention was when it tried to acquire part of the Mabira Forest near Lugazi for sugar production. Mabira Forest is one of the largest natural forest reserves in Uganda, is one of the most environmentally valuable forests in Uganda and in Africa in general. President Musevini tried to give some of the forest to the corporation in 2007, resulting in violent demonstrations in which two or three African-Indians were killed. He retracted his stance on this, but has recently reinstated the offer. Late last year, Musevini announced he would give about 7100 hectares for sugarcane growing... so there seems to be political will when it comes to national environmental issues, but not worker's rights?
I went to Kampala by myself on the weekend which was really lovely. I had to sort out the internet on my computer, so jumped in a maxi taxi thing (matatu) without about a dozen other people and went rocking and rolling to Kampala. It took about two hours to go 50km! Sorted out the internet, went to where I was staying and had the best hot shower ever! Then just spent some time enjoying a good internet connection, a big comfortable double bed, normal floors, my own uninterrupted space. Went to a small swimming pool at a hotel in the morning and had the pool to myself. Well so I thought… at the end of the swim I looked up and about 30 men were standing on a balcony watching me!! It is uncommon for people to swim here. There is only one 50m swimming pool in all of East Africa – at a resort outside of Kampala. Even the Ugandan swimmers competing for Olympic spots train in 25m pools…
Met up with a friend of a friend of Minerva’s for lunch (for those who don’t know Minerva… she is a dancer who used to work with Gerard at Phunktional). Ellady is a really interesting guy who is a member of the Arterial Network, of which Minverva is connected with. The organisation is based in South Africa and aims to build and develop regional / national / continental / international networks in support of Africa’s cultural and creative sector. Ellady is currently heading a campaign to save Uganda’s national museum. The museum has been collecting important artefacts from across East Africa since 1908 and yet this historically significant resource is not funded by the Ugandan government. It is also important to note the site was the location for the 2007 CHOGM conference. The Government of the Republic of Uganda wants to build a 60 storey commercial trade centre on the site of the museum, and is suggesting its demolition. Ellady’s civil society is taking the government to court… their next hearing is on Thursday. Ellady also used to be a member of Uganda’s ruling party, but says he became very disillusioned with the corruption and policies. He recently ran for parliament as an independent and intends to do so again in 2016. He was very generous with his time, is doing a lot of phenomenal advocacy work in the areas of heritage, the environment, tackling government corruption, and malaria prevention. He was also able to answer many of my questions about some of Uganda’s political issues which I am interested in (I had a lot of questions…!) and provide some insight into key issues which I am hoping to look into and perhaps start some stories on while I am here.
After lunch Ellady took me to the museum and then to a baptism for the young son of a friend of his. I wasn’t really prepared for what would happen at the baptism and Ellady gave me no warning. I was in jeans and t-shirt and when we turned up, I realised Ellady was quite close with this family. Everyone was dressed up like they were going to wedding/nightclub and I found myself in the front row of the ceremony, seated next to the parents! I am in their family photos forever now… Everyone was speaking Luganda so I didn’t have much of an idea what was going on, but as usual, I just smiled and laughed, bopped along to the music a bit and threw in a few Luganda words which everyone is always impressed by. People are constantly laughing at me and I have no idea why.
By the time I made it back to Lugazi I was soooo happy to see Doreen and Valence. They are such genuine and generous people, and it is starting to feel like home. Plus Doreen puts extra ginger in my tea...
Lots more to tell and many more descriptions of Lugazi, the villages, Kampala, Doreen, the kids, politics, the ebb and flow of each day etc…but have probably weighed your email inboxes down enough with this one!! Will try to log in a little more regularly now… I figure since Gran is giving Facebook a go to stay in contact, I should be able to manage a few more emails.
Lots of love and thanks for all your correspondence,
Amy xox
