The Story So Far ...

We said farewell to our work friends at the RSPCA and BBC on 14 September, farewell to our families on 3 October, and set off for Africa to save cheetahs, decorate school buildings, and look around a bit. After a trip home for Christmas, we headed for South East Asia on 6 January -- where we were stunned by Qatar and Cambodia, taught novice monks in Laos, and acted as security guards at an Elephant Festival. It was back home for four weeks to look after John's dad, before we tangoed our way through five South American countries in fifteen days. We then snooped our way through New Zealand, dipped our toes into Fiji, drove-thru California and were home from home with family in Vancouver.

Now, we are home itself. Fulfilled, happy, and ready to earn the respect of our friends and family by knuckling down and earning some money once again ...

Monday, 22 November 2010

Losing Patience in Kampala

Welcome to Uganda


I came to Africa to learn to be more patient.  In Uganda, like Uganda, I have failed.

How can I be patient with the politicians who have created a state that has failed like this?  The President's election poster smirks his request for a sixth five year term.  It promises prosperity, on a fetid wall, beneath a broken streetlamp, with a beggar slumped at its crumbling base.

How can I be patient in a country where even the international airport is so lethargic you struggle to find out how much the entry visa costs?  Where the average primary class size boasted by the government is 60 -- but the reality, I'm told, is closer to 100?   Where the tourist brochures promise a nation of smiles, but most of the people I see in the capital seem sullen?  Where, it's reported, the hospitals offer some help to those able to pay, and leave those that cannot lying on the floor?

Blame Britain?  Uganda's been independent since 1960.  Blame the west?  We've only recently stopped the loans.  Blame Ugandans?  They've grown up in schools that barely function.  There's only one person I suggest should shoulder the blame, and His Excellency President Museveni is still asking for votes from that poster.  

NB:  this entry typed peering at the screen during the latest mid-evening powercut. 


John
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