The Garuga Road II

Life in Uganda has many unexpected dimensions for the newcomer or mzungu (white person). One example is the taste of food. I suppose if you buy organic food in the UK this won't be so true (we could never afford it), but here eating an egg is an explosion of flavour! A chicken here tastes like I remember chicken used to taste before Sainsbury's and frozen ones came along. And so on. A huge delicious pineapple costs about 42p; massive sweet avocado's cost 21p each. 20 bananas cost about 50p.

(The Karamojan dancers)

Christmas Day was moving. We had about 20 Ugandans with us for a big Ugandan meal which included matoke - mashed, steamed plantain - and goat stew. Goat is expensive meat; beef is the cheapest! We had two orphan girls here, one of whom had never ever been off her Ssese Island - never seen a car even. We had 10 young Karamojans who did the traditional war dance in tribal costume and war paints and played the drums; they are so poor that we bought the drum sand the costume materials. They were out of their minds with gratitude. One of them is our security guard. These three, plus our housemaid, were all given presents from us. For all of them these were the first Christmas presents they had ever received. We were all in tears of emotion at the sheer joy and excitement on their faces as they received their presents - before they even got to open them!! One danced around the room with the present on their head. Another danced sort of waltz style holding the present as their partner. The magic of Christmas, the joy of giving, was never as strong or as bright in all my 52 years as that moment.

Everywhere we go people, especially the little children, shout out "Mzungu! Mzungu!" and wave and run after us. The kids want to touch our skin to see whether it is painted on! Many are totally naked and they have almost nothing to do. Children are worked very hard. In the photo they look like they are having fun, but this was a photo-interlude in doing all the family washing in bowls using the water from Lake Victoria just behind me. They have to scrub the clothes with a soap bar and then trample them in the bowl for ages. Then the clothes are rinsed in the lake and then spread out on the grass to dry. One problem her is that the clothes them become infected with the Mango fly. The grubs hatch out and bury into your skin and then erupt out through ones flesh days later! The main task of children here is to fetch and carry water, and this is done using large yellow plastic cans. Tiny girls can be seen almost being run over by cars as they struggle along the roads and tracks with two huge 15L cans.

Top: Typical group of kids; bottom: typical improvised toy

Many kids make toys out of plastic cartons with wheels from bottle tops or anything they can find. This little lad's was quite effective; I saw him at a fishing village near our site where the HIV/AIDS infection rate is probably over 90%. 600 people living in tiny shacks thrown together from bits of rough planking and corrugated sheeting!


Living here I cannot help but be amazed at the privileges that even I, someone always brought up with a keen awareness of the world, have so taken for granted. The need is so vast that unless one is very disciplined and focused one can be overwhelmed with a sense of guilt and hopelessness.


But I can see already that if one is convinced that one is making a difference for the many with one's life out here, then this enables the difficult and painful choice of saying "No!" to individuals. Even so I carry lots of small packets of peanuts with me to give to the endless stream of Karamojan child-beggars in the main streets of Kampala.


Jesus said: "There will always be poor among you", quoting from the old testament. The question is, why are there the poor, and what can we do about it? Or do we do nothing? Do we justify our inactivity with comments about the corruption in Africa, and the missing millions of dollars? Is that the answer? I don't know the answers. I am just trying to plough a straight furrow for some good seed.