Uganda - arrival
I was woken at 5:30am by Marinda, to a breakfast of toast, tea, cereal, yoghurt, fruit. What nice people! I got in the car and drove to Johannesburg International Airport, following the signs very carefully so as to avoid going into the wrong area and getting shot, but it took me over an hour to find the rental car company, and when I asked for the price they tried to overcharge me and I had to argue for half an hour just to get the rate that they'd originally agreed to.
I got to the terminal an hour before my flight but everything else went smoothly and I touched down in Uganda at 2:25pm local time.
The volunteer co-ordinator, Abraham, met me with 3 other locals at the arrivals gate. We got into the most beaten up car I've ever seen to drive to the village. None of the windows worked, the windshield was cracked, 2 of the doors could only be opened from the outside, the seats were barely covered, and there were dents and rust everywhere. About 15 minutes into the drive, the car broke down. 3 guys and 20 minutes later the car was just about running again and we continued the journey.
Abraham informed me that this was a rental car.
Driving in Uganda is unbelievable. The only rule seems to be that most of the time you're supposed to drive on the left. Other than that, anything goes. Every car has 50 dents in it, everyone drives as fast as possible, there are no road markings or traffic lights and there are bikes, pedestrians, children, mopeds, EVERYWHERE. It's total chaos.
I'm told that a lot of people die on the road into Rwanda, because it's an unmarked border but in Rwanda they drive on the right side of the road, not the left. So at some unknown point everyone switches sides, but no-one really knows when to switch. The person who told me that had his father killed that way.
I arrived in Ndejje village after an hour's drive or so. It's all bumpy dirt roads here and mud houses with roofs that leak when it rains. There are children everywhere, I'm told the ratio of children to adults is 12:1.
The place where I'm staying is much nicer than anywhere else in the village, but there is no running water until 9:30pm and sporadic electricity that can cut out for days at a time, and is rarely on for more than a few hours a day. This is also where many of the orphans live. There are high walls around the compound and a security guard with a rifle at gate at all times. I'm sharing a room with another volunteer. The roof is made from tin so when it rains it's very loud.
When I got there I was introduced to the people running the NGO. It's a Christian organization and in rural Africa freedom of religion isn't perhaps as respected as in the West, and I think the staff here are fairly determined to convert me. I had some fairly long conversations, before my bags had even got to my room, about letting Jesus in and how by the end of my stay I will believe. Evangelist television plays in the main living room whenever there is electricity. Culture difference number one!
But despite this everyone seems very nice and welcoming. Most people speak English as a second language so communication is fairly easy. I arrived right at the beginning of a school holiday so my first week will basically be orientation and figuring out how things work.
Things aren't too organized here. The entire staff and all the volunteers thought I was a girl from Holland called Riet who made her living as a nude photographer. No joke.
There are 2 pit toilets. They are cement rooms with holes in the ground that are quite small and as a result a lot of people, um, miss. But there are lots of opportunities for wildlife watching, I am seeing on average about 4 large cockroaches each time. By large I mean about 2 inches long. Their feet click on the cement as they scuttle in and out of the hole in the floor. There is a normal toilet as well however and I use that one as often as possible, although with 30 children plus staff plus volunteers it can be a challenge getting to it.
The first volunteer I met was an older woman called Arianna. She's a medic and has been doing volunteer work for 40 years and has worked for Mother Theresa, although as far as I know she's not Christian. I got a bad first impression with her because she was quite rude to Abraham, and after being in South Africa I initially interpreted this as racism, but my first impression was wrong. Arianna is very wise and has been a huge help to me, she has the experience I lack and I'm confident the rudeness was not due to racism, but was a product of the pretty intense politics going on here. I'll go into more details with that later.
The other volunteers were gone, they were out doing their own things on their day off. They all showed up for dinner however, which wasn't great by Canadian standards but much better than I expected. It won't be too hard being vegetarian here. There are roughly 9 volunteers, all of whom are women besides Axel and I. Axel is my roommate. He lived in Uganda when he was younger, although he was born in South Africa and now lives in Sweden. He's very funny and intelligent and seems like a great roommate.
Over dinner Arianna told me that she'd treated a 6 year old boy for syphillus that day. He had not had the disease since birth, it was contracted through abuse.
After dinner Axel and I went to get a beer at the store in the village. We sat and had a drink with 2 locals, Ivan and David. The education level here is not really comparable to the West. This is how the conversation went:
"I would like to go to America, but I am scared to go because of the predator."
"The predator?"
"Yes, who lives in the forests and can turn invisible"
"I don't think you need to worry about the predator, Arnold Schwarznegger killed him in the third movie"
"Oh... that's good. Can you tell me... is Dracula real?"
"Well Dracula is a made up character, although he was based on a real person from the 1500s who drank people's blood, but there's never been anyone who could turn into a bat and the story of Dracula is made up"
"Oh... someone told me... that in America they have Dracula in a zoo"
"Still alive in a zoo?"
"Yes, and you can see him he is in a cage"
"No, that's not true"
"Oh, ok. What about aliens, are they real?"
"I think that's a little more debatable..."
Ivan is 22 years old and David is 20. It was David's father who was killed on the road to Rwanda, and most of his other family have died of AIDS. A volunteer here told me that in 10 years it is estimated that there will be no adults left in Uganda as they all will have died.
Axel and I finished our beers and went to bed.
I got to the terminal an hour before my flight but everything else went smoothly and I touched down in Uganda at 2:25pm local time.
The volunteer co-ordinator, Abraham, met me with 3 other locals at the arrivals gate. We got into the most beaten up car I've ever seen to drive to the village. None of the windows worked, the windshield was cracked, 2 of the doors could only be opened from the outside, the seats were barely covered, and there were dents and rust everywhere. About 15 minutes into the drive, the car broke down. 3 guys and 20 minutes later the car was just about running again and we continued the journey.
Abraham informed me that this was a rental car.
Driving in Uganda is unbelievable. The only rule seems to be that most of the time you're supposed to drive on the left. Other than that, anything goes. Every car has 50 dents in it, everyone drives as fast as possible, there are no road markings or traffic lights and there are bikes, pedestrians, children, mopeds, EVERYWHERE. It's total chaos.
I'm told that a lot of people die on the road into Rwanda, because it's an unmarked border but in Rwanda they drive on the right side of the road, not the left. So at some unknown point everyone switches sides, but no-one really knows when to switch. The person who told me that had his father killed that way.
I arrived in Ndejje village after an hour's drive or so. It's all bumpy dirt roads here and mud houses with roofs that leak when it rains. There are children everywhere, I'm told the ratio of children to adults is 12:1.
The place where I'm staying is much nicer than anywhere else in the village, but there is no running water until 9:30pm and sporadic electricity that can cut out for days at a time, and is rarely on for more than a few hours a day. This is also where many of the orphans live. There are high walls around the compound and a security guard with a rifle at gate at all times. I'm sharing a room with another volunteer. The roof is made from tin so when it rains it's very loud.
When I got there I was introduced to the people running the NGO. It's a Christian organization and in rural Africa freedom of religion isn't perhaps as respected as in the West, and I think the staff here are fairly determined to convert me. I had some fairly long conversations, before my bags had even got to my room, about letting Jesus in and how by the end of my stay I will believe. Evangelist television plays in the main living room whenever there is electricity. Culture difference number one!
But despite this everyone seems very nice and welcoming. Most people speak English as a second language so communication is fairly easy. I arrived right at the beginning of a school holiday so my first week will basically be orientation and figuring out how things work.
Things aren't too organized here. The entire staff and all the volunteers thought I was a girl from Holland called Riet who made her living as a nude photographer. No joke.
There are 2 pit toilets. They are cement rooms with holes in the ground that are quite small and as a result a lot of people, um, miss. But there are lots of opportunities for wildlife watching, I am seeing on average about 4 large cockroaches each time. By large I mean about 2 inches long. Their feet click on the cement as they scuttle in and out of the hole in the floor. There is a normal toilet as well however and I use that one as often as possible, although with 30 children plus staff plus volunteers it can be a challenge getting to it.
The first volunteer I met was an older woman called Arianna. She's a medic and has been doing volunteer work for 40 years and has worked for Mother Theresa, although as far as I know she's not Christian. I got a bad first impression with her because she was quite rude to Abraham, and after being in South Africa I initially interpreted this as racism, but my first impression was wrong. Arianna is very wise and has been a huge help to me, she has the experience I lack and I'm confident the rudeness was not due to racism, but was a product of the pretty intense politics going on here. I'll go into more details with that later.
The other volunteers were gone, they were out doing their own things on their day off. They all showed up for dinner however, which wasn't great by Canadian standards but much better than I expected. It won't be too hard being vegetarian here. There are roughly 9 volunteers, all of whom are women besides Axel and I. Axel is my roommate. He lived in Uganda when he was younger, although he was born in South Africa and now lives in Sweden. He's very funny and intelligent and seems like a great roommate.
Over dinner Arianna told me that she'd treated a 6 year old boy for syphillus that day. He had not had the disease since birth, it was contracted through abuse.
After dinner Axel and I went to get a beer at the store in the village. We sat and had a drink with 2 locals, Ivan and David. The education level here is not really comparable to the West. This is how the conversation went:
"I would like to go to America, but I am scared to go because of the predator."
"The predator?"
"Yes, who lives in the forests and can turn invisible"
"I don't think you need to worry about the predator, Arnold Schwarznegger killed him in the third movie"
"Oh... that's good. Can you tell me... is Dracula real?"
"Well Dracula is a made up character, although he was based on a real person from the 1500s who drank people's blood, but there's never been anyone who could turn into a bat and the story of Dracula is made up"
"Oh... someone told me... that in America they have Dracula in a zoo"
"Still alive in a zoo?"
"Yes, and you can see him he is in a cage"
"No, that's not true"
"Oh, ok. What about aliens, are they real?"
"I think that's a little more debatable..."
Ivan is 22 years old and David is 20. It was David's father who was killed on the road to Rwanda, and most of his other family have died of AIDS. A volunteer here told me that in 10 years it is estimated that there will be no adults left in Uganda as they all will have died.
Axel and I finished our beers and went to bed.
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