I just gave a lecture to the faculty of Muteesa I Royal University (where I've been teaching) about new methods of instruction. I tried to include what BYU-Idaho has been doing re: changing the way "professors" teach. MRU is owned by the kingdom of Buganda, which by definition tries to conserve its culture. This position is somewhat at odds with the rapid changes taking place here as Africa enters the global economy where values are being crowded out in the name of economic growth, modern jobs, technology, etc. So, I had to walk a bit of a tightrope so as not to offend the kingdom, while at the same time informing the faculty to step up their curriculum a notch or two if they have any hope at staying/becoming competitive.
The Minister of Education was present for the central government (not the kingdom). He asked me to present to his administrators the next day. I don't think he'll like what I have to say about foreign aid for schools being diverted to Swiss bank accounts. Maybe I'll just show a video instead.
Oh, and by the way, I nearly had a mutiny in class yesterday when I announced the due date for the major project (a case study of problems and solutions in Uganda.....). One student said "It's too much." I responded that this is the type and amount of study we do in America, and much more! I wonder what the quality of the work will be.
Last
Friday (October 5) we took a day trip to Sipi Falls.This was our first really long drive outside
of the city.Our 170-mile trip to the
falls took over six hours due to the condition of the roads.There are no freeways here.The roads all seem to be two lanes with the
occasional passing lane thrown in on a hill.Cars, semi trucks, and motorcycles all jockey for position. Then add
people walking, riding bikes, and hauling water and chickens and just about
everything else you can imagine on the sides of the degrading tarmac (pavement)
with potholes every three feet and you have yourself a fine specimen of a
highway.Oh, and don’t forget the police
and military checkpoints.We spent a
week on the road that day.
At
one point we needed to pull over to check the map.As Dave started to pull away he promptly ran
over a carton filled with glass bottles set on the side of the road to be
picked up for recycling.They still do
the glass deposit/return game here.It
was obvious this was a big deal when people started swarming the car yelling
that we would have to pay 30,000 shillings, no 40,000 shillings!! ($16), to
make up for the loss.Dave would have
none of it.He’s fed up with being
targeted for jacked-up prices just because we are white.He gave the lady who owned the bottles 4,000
shillings ($1.60) for the three broken bottles (from the sound of it, I had
guessed it was more like twenty broken bottles), and then gave her another
10,000 shillings ($4) just to get her to stop yelling (and for the carton, I
guess).So many people swarmed the car you
would have thought we had run over a child!And who puts a carton of glass on the road!?
But
I have to say that even this couldn’t ruin the beauty of Mt. Elgon.We wound up a very steep mountainside to a
little town called Sipi and pulled into the drive of a popular backpacking
lodge.The place was deserted, but we
met Moses, who agreed to take us on a hike to the falls.I need to insert here just how
non-commercialized natural attractions are here.We had to find someone who knew the trail in
order to get to the falls.In the U.S.,
we would have hotels and a six-foot-wide paved trail to the falls, with several
shops and restaurants along the way selling “My parents went to Sipi Falls and
all I got was this lousy t-shirt” t-shirts.
Moses
jumped in the car and directed us to one of the trailheads.We wandered a dirt path down through the
grounds of a traditional lodge, over a small river, past several grazing cows,
through banana fields, past caves in a cliff, down a ladder built to scale a
cliff face, through more banana fields, past a family farming their land, and
finally to the falls, which thundered and sprayed us until we were soaked.Dave tried to stay dry with a huge banana
leaf, which worked for about a half a second.It goes without saying that we were the only people there.We passed a cave on the way down and
magically, on the way back up there was a makeshift "soda
stand".Naturally we bought sodas,
had a good view of the falls.A couple
of enterprising young boys brought around a chameleon they had caught among the
coffee trees and let us play with it, then charged us for the privilege. This
was all agreed upon without words and we had a blast.Eagle-eyed Moses spotted another chameleon
and Dave caught it.Very cool lizard.
Going
back up was the hard part.While we all
huffed and puffed and slipped around on the muddy trail, Moses had no trouble
at all, and he was wearing simple flip-flops.
The
drive home was challenging for Dave.Driving at night on these terrible roads with very dark people walking
just inches from the cars going by is frightening.Our friend Ssimbwa told Dave that a
missionary couple killed a person on the very road we were driving.Did we mention that people are invisible here
at night?No highway lights, only diesel
dust that hazes over any view.Trucks
take up the middle, knowing pipsqueaks like us will pull aside, into the abyss
of potholes and people.Jinja we love,
so we stopped there to have spring rolls at the same restaurant where we ate
the week before.These are spring rolls
worth stopping for!It was 11:00 pm by
the time we got back.Dave is a hero for
getting us back safely.
Ssimbwa
had advised us against making the trip by ourselves.We didn’t tell him we went until the next
day. ;-)
1st step: 1.5 to 2 hours soaking, scrubbing, and rinsing in tub
Mary and Joe hanging laundry on clothes line
So, laundry is the hardest thing I (Kathleen) do here. If there is any hope of getting anything dry by nightfall, I have to start pretty early in the morning. The clothes soak for an hour in the tub, and then I have to hand-scrub each item. Depending on how big of a load it is, that can take 20 to 40 minutes. Then I rinse twice, and finally I wring the livin' daylights out of each piece. By the time I am done, my hands are raw and red. I have now developed calluses from doing the laundry.
I recruit the kids to help me hang the laundry. The jeans and heavier stuff go on top of the bushes.
Then it is a race to see if anything will dry before it rains! Prosper, the caretaker, is a genius when it comes to being able to predict when it is going to rain and comes and gets me with five minutes to spare. We all race outside to gather up the laundry. When this happens (and it almost always does), we drape the laundry around the couches, chairs, drapery rods, and any other surface we can find. It has taken up to three days to dry a single load.
I feel like I must apologize for complaining earlier this summer when I had to hang my
Jeans seem to dry best when draped on the bushes!
laundry for three whole weeks. At least I had
a washing machine! And I am also grateful that I at least have a tub and running water to help me with the process. Every day I see women who are washing their clothing in a tub in the front yard or in a (dirty) river.
What a thoroughly delightful trip to Mpigi District about 50 miles south of Kampala, just a few miles from the equator. Ssimbwa, our dear friend & frequent driver, took us to his home villages where we saw what could be considered the most beautiful part of Uganda. We traversed a giant papyrus swamp to get to a pretty remote and extremely impoverished little primary school called Jalamba Primary School. No electricity. Not a toy in sight, but in the most pristine tropical paradise we've ever seen. Here's what was growing across the street: Arabica coffee (cash crop); corn; mango; papaya; avocado; potatoes; tomatoes; mangos; cassava; yams; sweet potato; beans; squash (I used to be a good squash player); tons of bananas and pineapples.
With this type of year-round growth and abundance, this part of the earth has never known famine and it's obvious that electricity is a luxury many can live just fine without. Indeed, the beauty and bounty of the place is half of the problem when it comes to development, since for eons these people have not needed to plan for the future: wake up, pick an avocado, a pineapple, a papaya. Take nap. For dinner maybe some guava and beans. Year round growth = no need to store up or plan for a cold winter. This is one reason why most of the wealth is in the northern latitudes: without preparation and cooperation we Bazungu (whities) would all freeze to death or starve. For cooking everybody uses charcoal, which is quickly destroying what's left of the forests. Each kid coming home from school either had a jerry can (water) or a bunch of sticks on their heads (charcoal). Each evening the entire nation, the entire continent, gets a low-level haze from everybody using charcoal. We call this energy poverty, since the electricity is unreliable or inaccessible. If civilization imploded tomorrow, these people would still go along as they always have done & wonder what all the fuss was about.
A real treat for us and for them.
The girls at the school were in absolute desperate need for what we had to offer. Kathleen was told that the traditional methods to take care of their menstruation were so abrasive that they often couldn't attend school just because of the sores it made on their thighs (sorry for the lack of discretion, but this is real for these girls!) Many of their dresses were torn and threadbare. But they were radiant, sincere, and delightful. Kathleen would talk, the "Senior Woman" (teacher over all the girls, like a headmistress) would translate, and they would all start to laugh. Mary and Kathleen were becoming a little self-conscious until the Senior Woman told them that the girls were just so happy! She said that for many of them, this might be the first thing of their own in their lives.
These cute boys let me take their photo, then they sang for me, then they wanted to be paid!
Lunch in Jinja. Fabulous Spring Rolls!
At the Source of the Nile.
Joe was a little intimidated by the old-growth forest.
Mud-sided house. Someone had apparently started to cook dinner!
Giant flower in the forest that had fallen from a vine. I put my glasses down to get some perspective. If you open it as a larger photo, the pattern is absolutely stunning!
Here are some pictures of our trip to Jinja, where the Nile river begins as it drains out of Lake Victoria. We had a fabulous lunch, then went to the small tourist area just across the river from where Speke (Dave will give you the history) stood and realized he had finally found it. We then went in search of Bujigali Falls, which was once a mecca for serious kayakers. Today, after the government built a dam downriver, it is a small village that has completely lost its economy. We passed many empty hotels and restaurants on the way to the "falls" (we weren't aware at the time that the falls no longer exist), where we were suckered into paying to drive down a road to the river. It was an incredibly muddy walk to look at the river and have a nice young man tell us how it used to look. I took the picture of the two young boys, whom I then had to pay for the privilege. The young man who gave us our "tour" also got paid. Thanks to Dave, we also took a short hike in an old-growth forest. Magical. Joe was slightly scared, but we made it out ok.
