When I returned to work after the Christmas holidays I was anxious to visit the field since my project is primarily focused on Northern Uganda and I had not had the opportunity to go. Fortunately there was an opportunity to visit Lira within the first week so off I went, admittedly without much of a program in mind.
We arrived late on a Wednesday night and I checked in to the hotel that the field staff had booked for me. It, like the guesthouse I stayed at in Kasese, was called the white house, however it was more expensive and was not as nice. The rooms had been set up so that the window and bathroom were at the back of the room and the bed was as the front leaving only a narrow corridor for air to pass through making the hotter than Kampala temperatures even hotter. It was also a bit noisy and dirty. However, not wanting to be high maintenance I decided not to complain and stick it out.
When I did mention to one of my colleagues that I had not slept well because of the heat he ended up recommending a different hotel a bit outside the center of the city. After checking out the location I changed my accommodation and slept well my second two nights at a hotel that really had great service.
The first day I was in Lira I visited a SACCO (credit union) with the Microfinance and Data collection officers in a neighbouring district called Apac (pronouced Apache). They were visiting a SACCO to update their data to be incorporated into a database which is being developed in the district to help track SACCOs performance. This gave me the opportunity to meet with the loans officer who shared with me some of their strengths and weaknesses. I was interested to learn that many women in the district had complained that their husbands' behaviour had changed after receiving loans and it was something they were working on improving.
Once the others got down to business I had little to occupy my time so I decided to explore the area a bit. We had passed through a marsh on the way to the SACCO so I first walked back where I enjoyed watching cows drinking from a stream of water where some boda drivers were washing their bikes. One thing that I really liked about Lira was that people were generally less aggressive in their attempts to get my attention and sell me things. Following my walk, our driver for the day picked me up and we went for lunch. We at mud fish, which is a type of fish that live in the swamps and are caught with spears rather than fishing lines. I quite enjoyed that experience. We then visited a local market which was nice to see. In the market we met a developmentally delayed youth (who the driver referred to as insane) who took quite an interest in my camera so we had a little game of him pointing at something and asking me to take a picture, me doing so and then showing him said pictures. On the way back to the SACCO I mentioned to the driver that I was interested in seeing the inside of one of the round huts that dotted the country side and so he brought me to one that was owned by one of his friends where I was able to see the hut, which is used for cooking and some of the compound's inhabitants.
We returned to the SACCO to find our colleagues still working; fortunately I had brought a book. When that got old I decided to explore some more. This time I walked in the opposite direction from the swamp and found a small nursery school and met the owners. The head teacher names Harriet had decided to set up the school when her advice as a newly graduated teacher was not well received by her colleagues at her first job. She and James, her husband told me that the school opened in 2011 with 47 students and that in November, when the first class was having its graduation ceremony, that the ceremony was attended by some local officials who had been visiting the SACCO and had noticed what was going on. She told me that as a result of the visit they were expecting enrollment to be closer to 100 for the new year. Kind of neat to see the impact that cooperatives can have on their communities.
The next day I attended a training session on Soya beans with the gentleman described in one of my earlier posts who excitedly told us over the long car ride about his friend exploiting resources in the DRC, and the Marketing Manager. Although the ride to and from the Area Cooperative Enterprise was long and the conversation left something to be desired, it was neat to learn a bit more about agricultural practices in Uganda, even if I am allergic to soy bean protein.
My trip to Jinja was a completely different scenario. On the last Friday in January I made a two day-friend. Two day-friends are my term for people who you meet, click with instantly, but who are leaving the city within two days. This was the second two day- friend that I had made and she was a fellow Canadian. I was sitting and waiting for another friend at the national theatre, where there was a film opening taking place which I was not attending, when Tanja approached and asked if I knew what was going. We soon got down to chatting and discovered that we were both from Canada and that she was a research assistant doing work on transitional justice in Northern Uganda and so we compared notes. She spent time with my friend and I and we went for a drink. When she mentioned that she was going to Jinja the next day I asked if I could tag along since I hadn't been yet, and of course she said yes.
So the next morning we headed to the post office to catch the postbus to Jinja. For some reason the bus driver decided to leave 30 minutes early despite the fact that it wasn't full and we were left standing outside the station. Fortunately another friend and told me that one could take a minibus from the old taxi park so we headed in that direction and quickly found several buses waiting to take people to Jinja. After we first arrived in Jinja we hired two bodas to drive us to a coffee shop called Flavours that was in my guidebook. Although we had negotiated the price with the drivers one of them was kind enough to ask for an exorbitant price upon reaching our destination, I laughed and gave him what we negotiated. Flavours coffee shop was a very contemporary coffee shop by Ugandan standards with very artistic decor.
After caffinating ourselves we then headed for the source of the Nile by foot, viewing part of the city on the way. Admission to the source of the Nile is 2000 Ugandan shillings for locals and 10,000 for foreigners. This sort of price difference is common throughout the country at parks and other attractions and part of the reason I refuse to go on safari here (knowing how much less expensive it is in South Africa really doesn't help either). On this occasion I of course paid. Upon entering the park grounds we discovered a well developed craft market along the stairs leading down to the river where I bought a few things to give to people back home in Canada. At the bottom of the stairs we discovered the opportunity to go on a boat tour of the source which we also decided to go on, much to the dismay of one of the people with us, Brendan, who had a significant fear of boats and water. While touring the source we were able to see several species of birds including Kingfishers. There are two small islands which straddle the source of the Nile which is a bubbling spring which sits at the intersection between the Nile and Lake Victoria, one of which has this large tree which is full of different types of birds and is quite stunning save for the bird droppings which make the island appear as if it is covered in snow. On the island we also saw a three meter long lizard of some kind which was also rather neat. We were also briefly let off at the adjacent island where you could stand and have your picture taken with a sign that says "source of the
Nile."We then hopped on the backs of a couple of bodas to see the Bujigali falls, or what used to be the Bujigali falls. As part of the process of harnessing Hydro electric power in Uganda they are damming the Nile river which recently involved the flooding of the falls in Bujigali. Unfortunately this has resulted in the disappearance of the falls although does provide for some interesting scenery where the tops of taller trees are still sticking out through the river. I've also learned that this flooding has been a source of conflict for the community which is being mediated by the Centre for Conflict Resolution, which is one of the organizations I'm working with as part of my internship.
So I'm publishing this post from Lira where I've returned to conduct training and research. More to follow.
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