Little angels

 

Writing about the Little angels project without being able to upload pictures doesn't seem right. If I had good connection, I would upload a video, tell you that those without school uniform are in need of a sponsor, and I would let you to it. Well, no, I would add a picture of the room that was mine for three days, and then I would let you enjoy the little dancers. The connection got a fright when I tried to upload the video, so I'll have to turn to plan B.

The project was started around half a year ago by Duncan, a guy in his early twenties who was so grateful for the opportunities that he got thanks to his foreign sponsor that decided to pay it forward setting up a school for needy children and orphans by the Lake Bunyonyi. And there it is the school, simple and small, but giving the kids the chance to go to school. The level is not outstanding, but it's a beginning: at least they have a place to go where people do care for them. Fundraising takes a big part of the time of all the people involved, even the kids, but that's how it is, if one has to dance with the musungus (white people) to touch their heart and their pockets, let us dance.

I was given the chance to spend three days with them while staying with a family, getting a taste the conditions that people usually enjoy around here: the shower, a washbowl; the toilet, a hole in the ground (both with their own space separated from the rest of the world by walls, more or less precarious, but walls); the light, the sun, candles or a torch; the alarm clock, the birds – the sun helps but the windows are so small that it barely gets in; the kitchen, a small annex; the backyard, the plantation of bananas and matoke; and in spite of the proximity of the water, every drop that is used has to be fetched from the lake – an engineer, please, go to the area and design a system to get the water up the hill more efficient than plastic containers.

I was there as a volunteer but, doing doing, I didn’t do much. Most of the time I played with the little ones of the family: origami birds, throwing stones and bottle caps when I finally got hold on them, messing around with the touch screen of my computer (while the battery lasts). At school, I taught half an hour of Maths and the rest of the time I let them love me, trying to multiply the number of little hands that each of my fingers could hold. We also did some flips, but when the sun struck and I saw that the line was getting longer and longer and fights were starting, I stopped; my kidneys couldn’t get any more kids to fly in the air.

The impressions about Jinja, the sunset cruise on Lake Victoria and the rafting of the Nile stay for a future post. For now, just saying that I’ve come back alive and I’ve enjoyed it like a little child.

Taking a breath

Last week has been just crazy with wildlife, rain and mud. We somehow managed to move around in a country in which the definition of highway dangerously merges with that of muddy path full of holes, we camped under sun and rain, and we got so wet that we didn’t get really dry until we got out of the Impenetrable Bwindi and back to the “civilization”. If I try to make a summary of all the things I’ve seen I am pretty sure I’ll leave something out. Depending on the moment one thing or another comes to my mind: animals, people – locals and as strangers as myself -  landscapes, means (and ways) of transport…

Camping among hippos and warthogs was something. At the beginning it was difficult to catch some sleep, but I think it was more the sleeping on the floor thing and the loud wind than the company. Seeing the King of the Wild walking around the savannah, stopping here and there to mate with his travel partner was… surprising; one never thought of Simba having such little resistance, if you know what I mean. The elephants, which from the distance and in the shade of a terrace made that simple breakfast a feast, and in the close distance from the boat, accompanied buffalos, hippopotamus and crocs making that one a memorable afternoon,  allowed us to see them one last time, just before we run out of light, right at the border of the road, as if we weren’t the species that almost finished them up. The hippos – yes, I need to name them again – playing the soundtrack of our trip, dropping by our neighborhood, swimming in the river that separated us from Congo or in the channel through which we enjoyed the boat ride. What a beautiful animal! The chimps that, comfy high up in the tree, didn’t ask for much of a walk for us to see them, but made us twist our necks. The antelopes, the gorgeous bushbacks and the others, more reddish, all around the savannah, alert when the lioness was near by, magnificent postcard under the tree next to our tents. About the stars of the week I better talk in another post since this one is already over the attention span of some .

I have been resting these days in the lovely Byoona Amagara, in Lake Bunyonyi, enjoying the views, the good food and the library (almost three books in two days!). Now I am looking for a quieter and, hopefully, more involved chapter of the trip. In the few days I am going to spend wherever I stop I doubt I am going to be really useful to anyone, but I hope to get to know some of the projects that are running far from the high spheres that I always hear associated with the same corrupted word…

Return trip to Bunyonyi

I spent the weekend at the Byoona Amagara resort on lake Bunyonyi. Well, I should probably say I spent the weekend going to and coming back from that place, since I was there from dusk on Saturday to 1pm on Sunday. The resort is a peaceful well maintained environmentally friendly and socially responsible island retreat with the best food I have tried since I set foot on this continent.

The views from the top of the lake are great. The weather didn’t allow for much enjoyment, but it clearly has possibilities. The place where I took this picture was way out of our budget, but we managed to appear when the rain started and they let us stay under the roof long enough to take some photos.

In order to get to the island we took a “taxi”, a matatu, a car ride from a friend of a friend of a friend, and a canoe. On the way back we opted for the motor-boat, a taxi (almost a real one this time), again a matatu and another “taxi”.

The “taxi” is an overloaded car that covers medium range distances (often the same itinerary back and forth) and drops and picks people up on the way. We were so lucky that ours run out of gas just a few kilometers before our destination and the guy had to take a boda, the motorcycle version of a taxi, to go and get some to the closest gas station. The “taxis” are usually in determined points of the city and between the driver and the two or three partners that are around shouting the destination and pushing people around to get it full one has to be alert not to get in the wrong one.

The bodas remind me of the motorcycles that men used to ride in my parents village. There are hundreds of them, everybody uses them, and they can transport just about everything, including coffins (I hope it was empty!).

The matatu is an incredibly overloaded van, but overloaded to a point that got me thinking way too much about the possibilities of this country to go anywhere if they don’t begin respecting themselves a bit. I don’t know how those thing still work. The incredible number of passengers, the crappy road, the continues stops, the big pieces of “luggage” on the roof, nothing makes sense. I kept thinking it was going to crack open any minute. But it didn’t, and it’s probably still doing the same route, up and down again, loading and unloading people as if they were sheep. I am beginning to think that animals have a better life than people around here. With so much rain, they are never short of food, and I can’t see them putting a cow on top of each other to get them to the next city. In fact, I don’t think they move them around at all.

I was on the second row of passengers (in front of the bars are the driver and 2 passengers). Two more rows were behind me. Each one of them had more people than the designer thought there should be. None of the passengers complained or even blinked when the second driver/ cashier told them to squeeze. In Rome do as Romans: I didn’t complained (not too openly at least), but laughed, indeed I laughed, we just couldn’t believe it.

The car ride was… something. After the matatu experience it was nice to seat in a car with the right number of passengers. It was a good and powerful 4x4, so the bumps on the road were nothing more than an annoyance. The unexpected finding was at the other side of the window. Seeing little kids smashing rocks with hummers that were almost bigger than themselves by the road is not something I was ready to digest when going to a touristy area in the middle of nowhere. Is not that this is a country of contrasts: everything is dusty, everything is cracking, nothing is luxurious, but there are people that do worse than others. Here in Ishaka the hospital and the Medical School keep the business going and it seems that everybody is more or less able to get their share. Stepping outside of the fish bowl was an experience. I guess I saw the place I came to see. Our day by day has somehow fallen into a routine and everything feels pretty normal, but I am in Africa after all.

Some of us were more relaxed than others on the canoe ride, but we all had fun.

Canoeing to the island was really nice, except for the couple of water-scared individuals of the group, I suppose. We got to see a bit of the low fog coming out of the lake at sunset and arrive to the island with enough light to see our steps. We had, as I said, the best food ever. They are slow, that’s true, but a bit of African tea helped keeping us warm while the bravest sang at the rhythm of the Spanish guitar (played by a German). In the morning we enjoyed some bird-watching while having a great breakfast, both for the food and the location. We went for a nice walk on the island and kind of got lost but the place is small, so we soon were back and ready to start all over again.

People have some sense of humor around here.

When we arrived back to the hotel it was hard to look at the same menu again. I have been meaning to talk about the food choices for a while. I’ll do it soon. The post will be much shorter than this.