Safari salaama

While Maggie was in Kampala I took the opportunity to visit the Family Spirit Centre. I had met the founder Isaac at the clinic and he had told me of the work he had been doing. He looks after over 20 orphans and vulnerable children from the age of 3 to 15. He has been doing this for several years and seems to have financed this on his own. As the venture grew he decided to open a school to give the children an education. He now has a school for 50 children and attracts some from the local village. These children pay a small fee which he uses to subsidize the orphans. He has some paid and some volunteer teachers.
I was impressed by the centre. The children all seemed well nourished and lively. I was given an impromptu concert of songs and nursery rhymes after a prayer led by a 4 year old! The children all seemed to have a good relationship with Isaac and many called him daddy. For a lot of the children he was the only father they could remember. There were 4 children who had arrived this week. The oldest girl was about eight and she was looking after the 3 younger children. They had been abandoned by their family and were sad and lonely among the other children. This process of vulnerable children being left is happening all over Uganda. The childrens’ families are destroyed by war, poverty or illness. It is left to people like Isaac and the staff of the centre to pick up the pieces and help these children.

As Chris says, I had yet another trip to Kampala. So far I’ve always managed to get a lift with Sallie; we stay over for two nights as she has business to attend to. This gives me a great opportunity to shop and stock up on supplies but, believe me, it is far from pleasurable! I’ve been persuaded to buy an oven and as I’ll be the only volunteer here with one I can see I’m going to have lots of orders for cakes and puddings (they’re non-existent in Masindi unless you count drinking yogurt in a bag). We return from Kampala feeling incredibly hot, sticky, dirty and tired. On a good day the trip only takes three and a half hours. Unfortunately yesterday was not a good day! We were already running late and didn’t leave until 4.30. As we pulled out of the car park onto the road, I looked out of the window and noticed that the front passenger side wheel was suspended in mid-air over a ditch. Sallie couldn’t move in either direction. Luckily help came and a few men ‘lifted’ the Land Cruiser back away from the ditch. On the way home we got a puncture. We were in the middle of nowhere, and the only traffic was the occasional lorry or bus pelting past at full speed. It was dark, very dark, as only Africa can be but a lady appeared from out of the bush with a lantern. We tried to find appropriate tools which meant emptying the boot - I wasn’t very popular with all my shopping! We failed miserably to change the tyre. The phone signal was intermittent but luckily we eventually managed to get hold of someone to send a mechanic. We then got a call to say that someone had seen the Masindi bus leaving Kampala after us and they would phone the conductor and tell him to look for us and help. So much for travelling safely in day time! The crowded Masindi bus arrived and came to the rescue. The car we were driving happened to belong to the owner of the bus. Networking here is great. In fact, everything relies on it.
Kampala is crazy at the moment. CHOGM (Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting) is being hosted there this week and for months it is all everyone has talked about. An obscene amount of money has been spent to ‘beautify’ the City. The infrastructure is nowhere near ready and everywhere you go there are construction workers working around the clock. Some of the repairs on roads that will take our Queen from the airport have already been washed away with the heavy rains. It is easy to see which route the VIPs will take. A huge amount of money has been diverted from other essential areas just for these three days. A school and teacher training college in the centre of the City was bought (allegedly for 10 dollars!) by a Saudi prince so that he could demolish them and build a hotel for CHOGM. After demolition he changed his mind. Many hotels have sprung up (with worrying speed) specifically for this occasion but apparently some countries are not happy with standards and are even planning for their VIPs to stay in Nairobi and fly them into Entebbe everyday.
It is an everyday occurrence to hear of many injustices and nothing seems to shock anymore. It’s also easy to become cynical living here.
Perhaps I should go for my Sunday swim and relax a bit!