7 April 2009
Post date: Apr 8, 2009 9:01:26 AM
April 7th (Tuesday) Late
I reposted the blog today – on the public part of Children’s Global Peace Project collaboration site. (If you’re reading this – then I think you must have found your way here.) It’s a great site if you haven’t had an opportunity to poke around it yet you might want to. It has a page for public events with some pictures on past events and a page for school events with some pictures of Margot and me in Uganda last year. The school side is beginning to grow with a link to each school and pictures of CGPP activities there. Eventually the school side will also have a secure access for teachers wishing to collaborate and share ideas, materials, and feedback about peace curriculums. This reminds me that at our next board meeting I need to ask Tajali to present her training plan for CGPP peace facilitators. Also, while I’m thinking of it, if there’s anything you want to know about Uganda then please ask. It’s my fourth time here and sometimes I forget what’s interesting.
Internet access has been pretty scarce lately. It’s been down at work a lot. La Fontaine has theirs up but the only thing that really works is the internet timer that shows you how fast you’re blowing your money away on a connection that does nothing. I haven’t been to Bubbles or Protea lately. They’re a little farther away and I’ve had plenty of non-internet work to do at Mango Tree getting their Databases squared away and new electronic forms and processes in place to maintain them. Woo-hoo – sounds like we’re entering the 21st Century in computing. Well, don’t get too excited – sneaker net still works better than email to send information around the office. Nathan is plugging along at fixing the errors in the Inventory Databases. It amazing how much we take for granted the fine motor skills we’ve built up in our lifetime working by with computers. People that don’t have that experience have a bigger learning curve. Nathan’s skills have improved over time, and this time we’re really giving them a work out.
My daily travel routine usually involves walking about a mile in the morning to catch a matatu that takes me out to Mango Tree in Kiwatuli, catching another matatu after dark that takes me to Kissemente (almost to Kampala) to find something to eat, and then calling Kizzah to take to me back home to Ntinda. Ntinda is about midway between Kiwatuli and Kissemente. Usually there’s a few bodda bodda rides in there somewhere also – either out to lunch or to someplace nearby but a little time consuming to walk. If I catch a matatu from Kissemente to Ntinda late at night I usually get lucky and find a bodda to give me a ride the rest of the way. Walking along the road is kind of difficult – especially in the dark. There’s pot holes all over the place big enough to swallow a small car – the road width varies so much you could easily find yourself falling into a ditch large enough to swallow a small bus – and traffic can be a little precarious now and then. Jo told me never to walk at night along the road – hmmm – I’m just remembering that advice now. Well – life’s a daring adventure. To give you an idea of the number and size of the potholes around Kampala I’ll tell you that the matatu I was riding back from work in tonight hit a pothole – or missed find the road or something – and the van bounced so hard that a window fell out. Now Margot probably won’t find this that surprising, because we had the same thing happen on a bus we were riding from Lira to Mbale last year. Only tonight the driver stopped and backed up – with lots of oncoming traffic – so he could pick it up. I don’t know what he thought he would find – it was shattered and worthless. Maybe he wanted to take it to the recycling center – ha, ha.
I realize, I haven’t explained the bodda bodda thing yet – and no ones asked – or maybe no one’s reading. Bodda bodda is a term that comes from border-to-border transportation – like from Uganda to Kenya. For obvious reasons everyone simply calls them boddas. While the rickshaw and tuck-tuck in Asia have three wheels, boddas only have two-wheels – the economy is a little tighter here. Actually maybe the Indian’s stole that third wheel before they brought the idea here. I digress, boddas are usually a motor cycle, but can also be a moped, or a bicycle. The bicycle bodda again has only two wheels – again compared to three in India – and you basically sit on a little seat just above the rear wheel. Enough about boddas – most of you have seen the pictures and have a t-shirt.
I’ve had some interesting conversations with Kizzah over the past week during our little travels. He likes to listen to the radio station that broadcasts in news in Luganda, and he often translates for me while he’s driving. One night he just starting laughing and talking about how every African leader has to move out of his country when his term is over – for fear of lynching by the people of his country. I mentioned that maybe that might be a few American presidents that should move to another country too – like maybe Bush. Well Kizzah is a Bush fan so that confused him. He immediately cited how important he thought the war in Iraq was to get rid of that cruel ruler. So I joined in with him and mentioned that Bush also set up more funding for support programs in Africa than another other president – which Kizzah nodded to in awareness. I couldn’t leave it be though and really had to give my opinion that Bush was not one of my heroes – which left Kizzah a little perplexed for the evening I think.
Tonight, as Kizzah listened to the news again, he told me that Uganda was going to ban bricks as building materials because they were environmentally unsafe. I could tell from his expression that it sounded like insanity to him – as it probably would to over 99% of the population around the world. So I explained to him what I know. Shall I you too – or do I take another opportunity to plug www.t4tafrica.com? Well okay, I’ll tell you. The bricks are formed from clay, and removing clay destroys wetlands and the natural filtering system for streams. It also takes about 15 tons of logs (um, which come from live trees) to burn a stack of bricks large enough to build a home. I texted Dr Musazzi with the news about ban on bricks. He replied from Nairobi (seems like he’s always on business there) that it sounded too good to be true. Who knows – last year they banned business from using small plastic bags to wrap take-out food in – so it’s not out of the realm of possibility. BTW – I set up Stephanie, Mike and Tadej to meet with Lisa today to learn more about Interlocking Stabilized Soil Block (ISSB) technology. I’ll let you know how that went when I see Stephanie again.
Oh, I saw Ryan last night. He looked barely alive. He had been in Tanzania for a few days working on one of his school building projects funded by the Clinton Foundation, and had catch Malaria again! This time was pretty serous – they found him passed out naked in his room in the morning with vomit all over. Sound like it could have been a bad drinking night – but it was Malaria. That poor guy has a really bad reaction to it – and it seems he’s determined to just go with the punches. Anyway, I saw pictures of the place where he’s building a school. It’s a mess – that boy works hard! I’ll leave it at that.
Peace Out.
Here’s a picture of Guustaf Duustaaf van de Mhee, Kevin Lockwood, and Sjoerd Herms at La Fontaine after the Mango Tree meeting on Wednesday. I think we all look like Easter Eggs with those shirts. Gustaaf and Sjoerd are from Amsterdam. Happy Easter!
