Uganda Report #2

It’s the morning of Monday, August 17th. Glen headed back to Mbale on Saturday morning. The original plan was for me to go with him, but I chose to stay behind in Soroti. There wasn’t going to be really anything for me to do in Mbale, and I wanted to have a chance over the weekend to go out and take some pictures and walk around Soroti. Glen is supposed to be coming back this morning to Soroti along with 10 other local people whom I’ll be training this week. But, I have no idea when they’ll be arriving, so I’m just hanging out in my hotel room until they get here.

Saturday, I went out walking around Soroti in the afternoon, with the intent of taking a bunch of pictures. I took a total of zero. I couldn’t get over the awkward feeling of asking somebody if I could take their picture. The root cause was that I felt like I would be “showing off” in front of all these people who have barely anything, and I have this expensive camera. So, I walked and walked. Probably did about 3 miles in total. Everyone I saw was friendly though. I would wave and say hello and they would smile and say hello back.

Sunday was my best day in Uganda. At 6pm (I was planning on going at 5:30, but overslept during my nap), I went out, determined to take some pictures. I headed towards one of the water pumps (it’s about 300ft from the hotel). There are people there all day filling up their containers of water. I got over there, and there was a bunch of children, and I was still being stupid and shy. But I did get the guts to ask one kid if I could take her picture. She was really shy (and I don’t think she knew english), but she nodded, and so I took a couple pictures. That’s when it all opened up. All of a sudden kids started coming over to me wanting to look at the picture. They loved it. Then they started asking me to take pictures of them. So, for about 20 minutes, I just stayed in one place taking pictures of the kids, and showing them and they would laugh their head off.

There was a little 4 yr old girl who was just in awe of seeing a white person. She sat there and rubbed my arm and she held my hand for a little bit and even gave me a hug (and possibly some diseases). After awhile, I said goodbye to them and proceeded farther down the trail. I got to some more kids and the same thing happened. Unfortunately, by then it was pretty dark, and so I couldn’t take any more good pictures. I told the kids though that I would try and come back again this week. And I really plan on doing so. It was so much fun, and the kids were a real delight. The stupid thing is that I always knew it would be this way, even while walking around yesterday…I just had that stupid idea holding me back of worrying what the people would think of me. I can’t take credit for it though, because before I left the hotel, I prayed and asked for courage and to be a blessing—and both of those were answered in some form.

The weather so far has been pretty warm. Although I don’t know what the actual temperature has been, I’m pretty sure it’s been in the 90s all week. It does cool off nicely though at night, and there isn’t any humidity during the day.

Every evening since I’ve been in Soroti, there has been at least lightning, and three times there has been a full blown thunderstorm with wind and rain. Sunday night it rained cats and dogs for about 15 minutes. One of the hardest downpours I’ve ever seen. It rained quite a bit last night, but since the ground is so sandy here, there are just a few small puddles this morning, and those will probably be gone by late afternoon. It definitely is a lot of fun to have this kind of weather though. I love thunderstorms a lot.

The landscape in Soroti is really flat. There are two hills though. One is next to the hotel (on the south side of Soroti), and the bigger one is on the east side of Soroti. There is some large building on the top of that one, but I have no idea what it’s for. There are lots of big trees though. It’s flat like west Texas, but definitely greener and more vegetation.

Traffic is nuts. There are huge trucks (the equivalent of semi’s), smaller trucks, cars, lots of motorcycles, even more bikes, and then there are all the people walking as well. You see this mix of travel anywhere you go, on any road. I have no idea how the vehicle I’ve been in hasn’t hit or been hit at least 200 hundred times. I’m amazed that people aren’t getting run over all the time. Needless to say, busy U.S. streets/highways are like driving through an empty field compared to here. I think horns are the most frequently used car part (even more than the brake or steering wheel).

The computers that are at the internet cafe are configured and ready to go. Glen is bringing 3 more with him from Mbale, so those will need to get setup when they get here. The biggest problem is that the ISP still hasn’t gotten the internet connection setup. I’m hoping Glen will have some more news on that when he gets here, but as of Friday, we had no idea what the timeline was going to be on that. And the ISP was going to be providing some additional equipment that I need before finishing some of the setup. So, while it is frustrating, it is something that I personally can’t do much about.
Healthwise, I’m good. My cough is still lingering around, but it doesn’t really bother me.

I’m now down to 5 nights left in Uganda. I’ll be flying out of Uganda on Sunday evening (Aug 23).