Tuesday 22nd May 2007

Today Manzi came and saw us before breakfast and he gave us the contract for the house. It is good as it is automatically renewable for the same term unless we let them know in advance. So it is good to know that if we are staying on more than one year then we will have the same house for the same price. After breakfast we went to Mbarara to get some more money to help set up ourselves. We had a good lunch there and headed back. The drive was good, but it is definitely a different experience driving at 100km/h with people walking on the side of the road. Often if there is a vehicle coming on the other side of the road you need to blow the horn to get people, bikes and even Boda-bodas out of the way. Of course the pot holes and speed bumps are always a constant challenge.
This afternoon I was thinking of the many stories that we hear from the Wards, it seems every time we talk it seems they have an endless amount of stories that make us realise how great the need here is, and makes me feel like what I am doing is definitely worth it. One they mentioned was that when there gets to be too many children living on the streets in town, the police round them up and take them into the bush and drop them all off in remote places one by one, in a hope that they don’t make their way back again. The boy who was here when we arrived had had this happen to him a couple of times.
Many of the big organisations have fancy cars and big houses for their staff to live in, but do not actually do too much to help. The cost of the staff being here must be more than the cost put into the projects. Some pay for the children’s school fees, but then children are not allowed in school because they don’t have books, or pens, or shoes, or uniforms or some other thing they need. One such organisation actually does pay for the children’s uniforms but they only get one uniform purchased when they join the program, do they think that the children will not grow, or that maybe they might need two to be able to have a clean one for school? I am not sure that this is the same every where in Uganda, but this is the way it seems to be in Kabale. I have seen some good projects in Kampala, but nothing that actually helps too much here in Kabale. The corruption is rife here, shipments of donated clothes that are meant to be for charity end up being sold by locals – they have made trade out of it, the only benefit is it makes it cheaper to buy clothes for the needy.

Sorry for not posting many photo’s yet, I have not taken many, but will hopefully start posting some soon.