UGANDA- PART ONE
I have decided to try and write a blog summing up my
whirlwind tour of Uganda, so here goes! I will write it in parts so here is NUMBER ONE- a brief synopsis of my trip and my first summary- my ten hardest moments.....
I can only touch on my experience- entering a world that
felt a million miles away from home- so different and bizarre and alien to me,
Uganda was beyond anything I have ever imagined or could have prepared myself
for.
After a nightmare night drive on the National Express from
Exeter to Heathrow and a further five ish hours of waiting at the airport I was
finally on the plane. I had said goodbye to everyone without crying, until I
was standing at security saying goodbye to Jay- and then from that moment on,
there was some hot rising nasty feeling in my throat, a constant lump of
uneasiness. But I had done it- I was on a plane to Uganda.
I filled my time with uneasy sleep, kids films and nasty air
meals, and then with two hours to go, ended up repeatedly crying and wondering
what the hell I was doing- on my own- on a plane- with giant supersized
luggage-completely naïve and inexperienced- and feeling like I had lost my
mind.
My first experience of Uganda was that it was hot and sticky
and also quite frankly the most unnerving thing I had ever done (check out
hardest moment number one below!)
In a nut shell my itinerary went something like this:
Airport to Kampala
safe house- Introduction to Uganda via the capital city of Kampala Visit to
craft market, cathedral, various city points
8 hour drive to Queen Elizabeth National Park- a hot sticky
drive passing sweet smelling tea plantations all uniform in size, vast green
jungle and rainforest, Rwenzori Mountains, candyfloss fluffy cotton plantations,
miniature shanty towns and rural villages so soaked in poverty that you wonder
if you actually saw them, tiny children wondering miles home from school on the
side of the road and the most breathtaking African landscapes I had ever seen.
Travel to Kinyamaseke- rural village 20 miles from the Congo
border- experience African worship and life in a real Ugandan home for five
nights.
Visit to Bayira Children’s Centre- home to more than 120
orphans or double orphans with music and dancing to welcome me that made me
feel like a princess.
An eye opening and incredibly saddening visit to Kagando
Hospital- an incredible hospital with amazing doctors, but one that is a
lifetime away from the hospitals we are used to in the UK.
An afternoon visit to St Barnabus Primary School with time
to spend with every class from teeny baby tots to the eldest in the school.
Three days at Abundant Life Ministry AKA Bethany Project- a
safe and caring environment for girls aged 15 to 25 who for some reason or
another have lost their education.
A bumpy 6 hour drive to Kibale Forest Camp/National Park (home of the
chimpanzees and monkeys) to camp in the rainforest.
A final few days in Kampala before returning home.
It is pretty hard to write about this trip (considering I
kept a travel journal of more than fifty pages whilst I was away, but I thought
I would start by summing it up with….
A SEA OF FACES
When I landed I was shifted by crowds out of arrivals into
the close clammy air and was greeted by what I can only describe as a sea of
Ugandan faces all staring right at me, holding placards and waiting for their
traveller to taxi them to their next destination. With goodness knows how many
layers on from the cold (now 48 hours) travelling, I was sweaty and panicked.
All these crowds of men began shouting at me in a language I couldn’t explain,
pulling on my sleeve, shoving their cards in my face and trying to get me to
use ‘their taxi service.’ I tried to go back inside for safety as my friend was
nowhere to be seen but an armed guard told me it was against security rules… so
me being me- I rang my mum and cried; furthermore inserting sheer panic into
all my family members brains!
ISOLATION
On my first day, Jay rang my pay and go phone, and then
afterwards I realised that it sucked up all my pay and go credit, coz I was
stupid and didn’t realise. From then on, I had no phone other than contract for
emergencies. As you would imagine in rural Africa, where there is barely clean
water let alone a perfect WIFI signal, with no phone, it meant I couldn’t
contact home. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t go around crying all day every day,
but it was tough. Just a one minute phone call made me feel better and helped
me survive the day. I had been emerged in what could only be described as the
most unsettling, bewildering overwhelming place in my life and I was a) a bit
scared and b)homesick. As I was also on my own in the way of experience, I had nobody
who I really believe understood how I was feeling, so the only way I could feel
like my feelings were shared, were when I spoke to someone at home.
THE BEGGING GIRL
There are children begging everywhere, immersed in sheer
poverty in all respects. There is a huge problem with child trafficking in
Uganda, where children are forced on the street by their ‘masters’ who are most
of the time just round the corner ensuring they don’t run away. Tiny hands
belonging to children as young as three are forced into a begging position on
the street and they sit there in the burning sun all day everyday for the greed
of their masters. We got stuck in traffic in the busiest part of Kampala and as
we were waiting along came a tiny girl no older than 6 or 7, wearing rags, her
head shaven. I was told that the best thing to do was to ignore the child
beggars- giving to them was only fuelling the problem and keeping them on the
streets longer and they would never benefit from the money anyway, but being
stuck at an everlasting red light meant that this was easier said than done.
She knocked and knocked and knocked, persistently on the window, begging for me
to give her my attention. I just had to stare forward as if she was invisible,
fighting back the stingy burning tears welling in my eyes.
THE ROADS
I will never complain about Britain’s potholes again, not
after you have had air time, whilst belted and sitting in a Ugandan Toyota when
you’ve hit a mighty pot hole in the dark. The pot holes are metres long and can
run for miles, they are difficult to see, the roads are dusty and the traffic
is crazy. There are no rules- or if there are, they don’t follow them. They
undercut, they overtake, they see a gap and they go in it, the lanes mean
nothing, the signs mean nothing, people sometimes don’t even to bother to stop
for traffic lights, you do 100 emergency stops a day, people walk out in front
of you down every street, there are animals all over the road (and lots of dead
dogs) and all in all the driving/roads are friggin mental.’
THE POORLY CHILD
We gave a young mother a lift that had a little boy aged
around one and a half. She worked at a safari lodge and needed a lift to the
nearby village so we let her hop in as her child was poorly. She said he had
been suffering with a cough/cold for a few weeks and he was very tired. All I
could feel was its eyes on me so I turned and gave it a smile- its eyes were
white and rolling in his head, his nose was snotty and he was limp and barely
responding, but the whole journey, his little eyes were locked on me. I just
thought of the kids here with their coughs and colds and the little purple
spoon of calpol and then I thought of the hundreds of children in Africa with
their swollen tummies and dirty feet. It was one of the times when it really
shone out to me how fortunate we are here and how a simple cold in Africa could
be something far worse- I have thought of that little child ever since-
wondering if he really got better or if he has become a victim of something
that could have been prevented.
THE TOILETS
Alongside the above pot hole complaint, I will never (I will
try not to anyway) complain about British public loos. After trying to pee in a
matchbox hole on the side of a public gas station in central Uganda due to
desperate nervous pee syndrome, most public loos will now suffice. It is hard
enough peeing in a stinky hole with flies zooming round and lizards on the wall
and actually being accurate- so you can imagine why other people who used that
loo also may have missed with not just a quick whizzy woooo. Eugh it’s enough
to make me gag now. I never want to see another human poo again.
THE HOSPITAL (not for the faint hearted.)
You see African hospitals on the tele, but nothing can
prepare you for when you see it in the flesh. Having found my trip a hard
enough rollercoaster- I opted out of seeing all of the planned viewings when I
reached Kagando Hospital- one of which was a specialist ward for very young
girls who have been made pregnant and given birth, which furthermore had ripped
out their insides, as their bodies just weren’t developed enough to carry a
child. I also skipped seeing those with leprosy.
I did however brave the children’s ward. I wondered down a
corridor and was asked to remove my shoes for ‘hygiene purposes’ and on the way
saw some cold looking treatment rooms which I would personally never want to be
treated in. I walked into a huge room full of beds, crammed together. There was
no flashy equipment, no beeping machines, no bright walls, no clinical
antiseptic smell and just three staff members. Just plain metal beds lining the
walls with hanging mosquito nets. The closer to the main desk, the sicker the
child- the further away, the less life threatening. There are no provisions for
food, or bedding, so family members must gather what they have to look after
the sick and must provide for that person whilst they are in the care of the
hospital.
The lawns outside the wards were filled with more sick
people or their family members, sleeping on makeshift mattresses as there is little
to no space inside the hospital itself.
You could just hear a constant humming noise, which
eventually, I realised were the many groans from the sick children.
The premature baby unit was also a shock- just like the main
children’s ward, when there is not enough space, children must share incubators
or beds. There is a current rise in Uganda with babies being born prematurely
and some I saw were nearly two to three months early- so small that they were barely
recognisable.
I cannot believe the heartache that the people I met have
endured. Of course, you hear stories but to hear and see with your own eyes, is
on another level.
I heard of how the rebels came from Congo and tiny school
children hid in cupboards and when they were brave enough they returned to the
village to find that everyone had gone, their homes had been destroyed and
their animals had been slaughtered. They hid in the bush for days, too
frightened to return home, until eventually, they were (some were) reunited
with their families.
The girls I met at Abundant had lost their education for
many reasons- all aged 15 to 25, some had not even been able to finish their
primary education. I heard stories of abandonment, of losing children, of
giving birth when they were still children themselves, of having many siblings
and their family struggling to survive and malnourished, of girls becoming
orphaned or double orphaned, of HIV and AIDS and of pain and suffering that you
couldn’t imagine.
One girl’s story really struck me and for that reason, I
will now be sponsoring her. She is 22, the same age as me and she became my
friend very quickly, speaking better English than the others and helping me to
feel okay during my visits. She lost her primary education because nobody could
afford to her help carry on and since has been digging to support her family.
Her father died in 2011- after finding water on his back, he was taken into
hospital and from there he recovered by tests revealed he had HIV and following
the news, he lost his will to live and just gave up. Her brother took over
looking after her and her family and he was the only one left that could
support them. He was in the Ugandan army and on the final week of training, he
went to Lake Victoria for boat training. Her brother fell in the water and
(with no life jackets), he began drowning. Instead of fishing him out of the
water and saving him, they shot him so he would die quicker.
This is one of many stories I have collected from the girls
at Abundant, and I have collated this info onto sponsor forms with Rosie with
hope that some people here in the UK will support them.
My next section will focus on my favourite memories and moments in Uganda.... :) Enjoy :) xxx
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