First Blog from Burim in Uganda!!
Feb 16, 2011
Traffic in Kampala is a little crazy
The last time I was in Uganda was July 2009. I was supposed to return to Uganda this last fall, but had some health problems so we postponed the trip until now. It is good to be back. I arrived in Entebbe on February 3rd at midnight, and after getting my visa (it is issued at the airport after arrival) and having all my bags checked by security, I went outside to find a driver to take me to Kampala, the capital city of Uganda, where I would stay for 2 nights. After we agreed on a price, the driver took me to Kampala and helped me find my hotel. By the time I was in the hotel room, it was very late and I was tired, but I was so excited to be back that I couldn’t sleep. The next day I went shopping for food and water to take with me to Gulu, where our program is based, and also tried to find a driver with a good price to take me there, since taking a bus with all the bags I had is not safe. The distance from Kampala to Gulu is close to 400km and it costs a lot to hire someone to take you there, but it is worth it because it is the only safe way to do it.
Burim in Gulu, Feb 2011
I arrived in Gulu after 2 days in Kampala, and started meeting with everyone to set up a schedule and start as soon as possible. Everyone seems to be happy to see me and to be able to continue the program.
In the few days since I’ve been back, I’ve met with the Youth Volunteers, GUSCO (a Ugandan NGO working with formerly abducted children), two Gulu secondary schools, and the Pabo IDP camp, (which is supposed to be closed, but has more than 10,000 people still living there). In the Pabo camp I am going to teach the primary kids there and the dropouts (kids from 15 years old and above who do not go to
school) and also train a group of people who will run the program after I leave.
Ugandan Youth Volunteers, Feb 2011
In addition to the classes I will be teaching during the three months I am here, I will be spending a lot of time training the Ugandan Youth Volunteers—both as a group and in individual lessons on ukulele, guitar, pennywhistle, conducting, and teaching techniques. While I was gone our program was taught by our Ugandan Youth Volunteers, but on a limited basis because they were not allowed to leave their schools to teach in other places. Now they are older so I am hoping they will be able to do more.
It feels very good to be back and see that there are not many changes except that the electricity is even worse than it was before. I only have electricity for two hours after midnight. Sometimes they might leave it on for 3 hours but not more than that, and there is no electricity during the day at all. If I am lucky the place where I stay will run their generator for one hour during the day, especially if there is a football (soccer) game and people come to watch it, but if there is no football game that day, then there is no generator.