Pearl of Africa

I am safe and sound in Uganda and having a truly amazing experience so far. Winston Churchill called Uganda the Pearl of Africa and I can now see why. Everywhere you turn, you are rewarded with overwhelmingly beautiful views. This is further helped by the fact that Ugandans are among the nicest people in the world. They are always wanting to know "How is you?" and not once during my time so far have I felt unsafe even in busy centres at night and even though I often encounter people walking around with machetes (for their fields).

My time has been divided between Mbarara - a major city centre in the south west, and Kikagati - a rural town near the Tanzania border with many subdistricts including Kitezo. Kitezo has about 1500 people currently walking several kilometres to obtain terribly polluted water. This rainwater catchment project I am working on will provide a much cleaner source for the community.

Some highlights from Mbarara:
- Insanely crazy traffic
- Canada House where I'm staying is like being in a summer cottage
- The team I'm working with is fantastic and we all get on really well
- A couple of them brought guitars and we have sing alongs regularly
- Met lots of really interesting people on my flight including one young woman doing qualitative AIDS research and she hung out with us for a while
- Boda boda is the main transportation mode. It is a scooter that used to take people in the north to the Sudanese border which is where the word "boda" comes from.
- Had an interesting meeting with someone who has a hygiene and sanitation training centre. She is interested in seeing how the communities they serve may benefit from the BioSand Filters which CAWST promotes.
- Our team went on Safari at Queen Elizabeth National Park. Surrounded by some of the most beautiful and peaceful scenery anywhere on earth, we got up close and personal with elephants, baboons, african buffalo, gazelles, water bucks, warthogs, and many other animals.

Highlights from Kikagati:
- Driving into town was a bit like feeling as though we had just liberated the country from a ruthless dictator or something. People would come running towards the road and cheer and yell things like: "How are you?," "Jumbo (Swahili for hello),"Agaandi (how is the news)," or "Muzungu (White man)." Sometimes kids cried, often they just stood there with their mouths agap. Many of them have never seen a white person in their lives.
- Jogging around the village. You get to see such extremely rare sights and meet people working their fields. Everyone seems to want to shake my hand. Children often run with me for a while in their bare feet.
- Reunited with Obed who came to Canada for training from CAWST
- Obed took me around to see BioSand Filters he had installed in people's homes
- We had a meeting with the community leaders and had them air their concerns about the rainwater project. By the end of the meeting they and we were all extremely excited and ready to go on the next steps.
- Living in an environment where there is no electricity or running water is such an eye opening experience. I don't think I'll ever look at the world in the same way as a result. I always knew access to clean water was a major global issue but until you have to worry about it yourself, you can't understand how troubling it is and how everything else that was important suddenly is not anymore.

I've been trying to upload photos and am having problems but I have to run, I'll try to write again soon and maybe have better luck with the photos next time.