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 From: Dave Zamierowski Ugandan Journal Entry #1 (trip date May, 2009); Essay date June 1, 2010 We arrived in Entebbe at night after our long flight on KLM from Amsterdam. But in bright daylight we had crossed the Alps and then Venice with my portside window seat looking at the Adriatic. We entered over the Mediterranean from the instep of the boot, then over the great Sahara. I had never seen any of this before. Awesome! ARRIVAL/GULU We were too excited to be fatigued. Our party had a total of eight people - all in education, most in Nursing or Medicine. We got through customs and the airport easily under the protective wings of the Parliamentarian from the district where "The New Campion" is, The Hon. Okumu and his wife Jane. Our first view of Uganda was at the new five-star Golf Course Resort and Hotel. You know this is off the end of the accommodation spectrum for East Africa when it has a revolving restaurant on the 9th floor overlooking Kampala. Awesome. But reality set in the next morning when I missed most of the orientation because I had to sit in a currency exchange for 2 hours to convert my American Express Checks (mistake) to Ugandan shillings. So I didn't say much when it was time to go - they were in fact waiting for me. I just hopped in one of the two vans hired to take us to Gulu and off we went. Gulu is approximately 150 miles north of Kampala and the trip takes 5 hours. Before the majority of the road was paved it was an all day trip. But we still had the experience (May is the start of the rainy season) of dodging huge potholes and cattle and packs of people on bicycles or "bota-bota" (motor scooters). The sight of kids selling bags of freshly cut sugar cane or live chickens they held by the legs and waved at you as you slowed down at the huge speed bumps for small villages, was my first introduction to real life in Uganda. We were traveling first class by any standards, in our air-conditioned roomy vans. Looking at the 60 people hanging out the open windows for air in the buses that ran between Kampala and Gulu showed me what the alternative was. As we left Kampala with its tin-roofed shanty towns along the road with mansions just visible on the hill tops behind them and got out into the country we saw the indigenous dwellings - the "sustainable" dwellings built from local resources - the round mud huts with packed dirt floors and thatched roofs. Most of the non-professional people we dealt with, the people on the buses and in the villages, came out of these mud huts. The Ugandans are a formal, very conservative people. When we went to church, when we went to town, when we went to the schools and hospitals the men were in white shirts, mostly with ties, and the women were in long skirts and the blouses or dresses all had at least short sleeves. It is some kind of Ugandan magic that these pressed white shirts and these spotless, colorful dresses come out of these mud huts. My first impression, with my western eyes and mind-set, was that these mud huts were demeaning. It is what you were required to live in if you had no other choice. My eyes were opened by a Ugandan female nurse at the district hospital we visited in Awach. When we were discussing the housing for employees, she took me aside and showed me her room attached to the triage and clinic building. She pulled me in and I thought I would bake on the spot. I could not stay in there. Her room was constructed of the same brick or block walls covered with plaster as are all the "official" buildings and then covered with a tin (or corrugated metal of some kind) roof. As Fr. Tony explained to me, you must seal the roof with the walls because if you leave any space, bats will take up residence inside under your roof. But this is the equator at 4000 feet and although the breezes and rains at this elevation make this tolerable, the sun is brutal. And a sealed tin roof makes a solar oven. With tears in her eyes, the nurse told me "My children will not stay in this room with me - they say it is too hot and go back in the village every night to sleep under a thatched roof." After I had seen more and had a chance to reflect, it became evident that what people constructed when they had no resources were tin roofed shanties as in the slums of Kampala. When people had the resources of the open countryside, they constructed mud huts and thatched roofs. That is what has been sustainable and comfortable for hundreds, probably thousands, of years. This information was very enlightening for me. But what is most special about a trip to Uganda, is the chance to have these little "pull-asides," as the nurse did for me at Awach. I learned more in these moments than in all the formal presentations. And what makes them possible for us is the fact that English is the language of education, healthcare, commerce and government. No translator is necessary for one on one, face to face conversation. The British influence is strong still in Uganda in many ways besides language. And the feeling toward Britain is cordial, almost "grateful" - perhaps because Britain had enough colonizing experience by the time it started in Uganda that it wisely prohibited any foreign ownership of land. Except of course that for a house or office. And that is where our trip to Gulu wound up - in the "senior quarters" that used to be the residence of British officers and government agents. The main street is still called Churchill Street and we stayed at the brand new Churchill Court Hotel - evidence of the rebuilding and revitalization that is occurring in Gulu now that the rebel activity of 20 years has been quelled. The remaining few rebel bands of Joseph Kony and his LRA are active only along the border in The Congo and in Southwest Sudan and have not been a threat to northern Uganda for years now. The problem is rebuilding the northern section of this country that is coming out of IDP camps and has a lost generation of child soldiers and child brides for the rebels. Besides the brutal killings, I understand some 20,000 children were abducted from northern villages. So, here we were in Gulu at the end of our first full day. My room looked out on the interior courtyard of grass where every evening they set up chairs and tables and broadcast on a big screen the selected world soccer game of interest for the local crowd at the restaurant. We had a big feast at outdoor tables on the patio that night (love the local Nile Beer) and then retired to our individual rooms with private bathrooms and showers. Our beds with mosquito netting were comfy. Mahogany seemed ubiquitous here and everywhere we went. The simple doors and cabinets were just beautiful. I slept solidly and awoke to see a cell phone tower just visible beyond the compound wall outside my door. There are six cell phone companies (using the majority of the highway advertising billboards) in Uganda. Ubiquitous. Anyway, I looked around and was reminded of the journals of the early "new world" explorers - "every bird and tree and plant was different than anything I had ever seen before." I just couldn't stop looking around. We had arrived.
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