Tuesday, July 15: A Dusty Day in Kassanda

Tuesday, July 15: A Dusty Day in Kassanda

I can think of no better way to end a long, somewhat disappointing day than a night filled with power failures and ferocious fights among our wild dog guards! One of the fights must have lasted an hour, and that’s an hour of barking, growling, whining, chasing, and more barking.

I wasn’t feeling at all great. In fact, I was still fairly sick when I got up Tuesday. But it was our day in Kassanda and I didn’t want to miss it. So I went down and ate about ½ a normal breakfast, then we hurried to the room, packed, and backed to the van. Joseph, Vincent, and Grace were all along for today, but we knew we would need them. We had five schools to visit and six kids to see. And there was the problem of a latrine we had built for the church at Kassanda, which came in far over budget.

Vincent headed straight out of town on the Masaka Road. But in a round-a-bout near the edge of Kampala, we headed west while Masaka Road headed south. We stopped just after the round-a-bout at a tiny grocery store where we bought cookies, bread, and water. We decided we would have brown butter sandwiches once again!

This is a trip through beautiful countryside. There are tall hills and ridges and plunging valleys. Everything is green, shades of green that I’ve seen nowhere else. And there are flashes of red and purple and yellow as trees and vines produce flowers. There are fruit vendors and vegetable vendors. Some of the stands are manned, but some have a bucket for honor system payments.

And amidst all this beauty and wonder, there is a road that is beyond human imagination! It was once paved with some type of inch-thick material. But the paving has broken down into incredible pot holes. This is a road that has been under reconstruction since our first trip to Uganda. The plan seemed to be tear up the old road and put down new. The project hasn’t changed at all since Christmas, except that several of the one lane wide patches have been pulled out and nothing else put down.

So the road is a combination of a paved side and a dirt side, two paved sides with huge holes, and no pavement at all. Driving becomes a game of trying to hurt your passengers as little as possible. So Vincent would always attempt to drive on the paved part, even if it was on the wrong side of the road. When he was doing this, he would have to hurry back to his side of the road (dirt and pot holes) every time a vehicle came toward him. He would have to be particularly quick when the vehicle was a gigantic, overloaded transfer truck! He actually ignored oncoming boda bodas, forcing them off the shoulder while they were driving on their side of the road!

And there is another thing about this drive: it is suddenly much easier to see the vistas. If you look closely enough, you will see the stumps where the logging companies have come through. This was an area of national forests, several in a row in fact. They protected a huge environment for birds and animals. And now they are mostly gone. Over the last few years, there has been a lot of controversy about allowing clear cutting of the jungle in some of the forests, like these. I wasn’t so familiar with this road that I could point out each cutting, but when I asked Joseph if this was an area where much cutting had happened, he confirmed it. The saddest thing is much of the land is now being used for nothing but regrowth of underbrush. There are a few new matoki fields and even an area that appeared to have been replanted with a pine tree, but most of trees were cut to make a quick buck.

The road suddenly improves near Mityana Town, a rather large village that sits off the beaten path just a bit. It appeared to be nearly as large as Masaka in mass, but it wasn’t as crowded or as rushed. We stopped to visit a child there, Sekuwondo Ronald. We found that he had been sent home because his fees were delinquent. As we talked, I realized it was my fault. I understood that his mother had sent him to boarding school without talking to the Project, a common way to avoid the cost of feeding a growing boy. While it was true that he had moved to boarding without first asking permission, the reason was the school had ordered all S4 students to be boarding students for the year as they prepared for their S4 exams, which is also a very common thing for schools to do. Vincent said we could catch the boy at home and straighten this all out so we continued.

We visited one child, then moved to Mityana Secondary School where Ssenyondo Isa (Bob) studies. His English is perfect and his grades are spectacularly high. He is much a much stronger than most in this school, so we will look for a better placement when he starts S5 next year. We saw our impact again with this boy. Last year when I met Isa, he was troubled because he wanted to be a doctor but wasn’t doing as well in Biology as the physical sciences. I mentioned in passing that Uganda no doubt needed doctors, but it also needed engineers. His strengths were physics and math, so he said he would think about it. He came running to us when he saw our van to tell me that he had investigated engineering and that was certainly where he needed to be. I gave him 25 words off-the-cuff and he changed his career goals. These kids need our visits because there is often no one else for them to talk to about these things. As we left him, Isa made us promise to talk with Bob about sending him a photograph!

We stopped to visit with Juliet (Carol) next. Juliet got pregnant about two years ago when she was still in primary school. Juliet had asked the Project if we would stand with her during her time away from school. I spoke with Carol, her sponsor, and she agreed to give the girl the opportunity to finish her studies. She is in S1 and doing okay, though she says it is very difficult. Her mother keeps the baby while she is at school, and she seemed very happy.

Our next stop was a small primary school in Kassanda only a shot distance from the church. Nansubuga Faith (Clark and Sharon) and Mubiru Michael (Gary and Terry) are two others that began with us long ago. Nansubuga has great English and a very well developed sense of humor for a fifth grader. Michael has grown from a tiny boy into a tough fourth grader. His English is also very good. These kids seemed so excited to see us, and they were really excited about their blankets and basin.

This was our last school for the day. We now shifted to church matters. We found a few people waiting for us at the Kassanda church. We went in and took seats. Joseph said that Pastor Fatuma, the senior pastor here, would be along in a few minutes and we should prepare to eat our sandwiches. I went to work making them, but Daniele and Angie soon took over. They did a much better job!

While we were preparing, Fatuma came in carrying food. She always fixes food, even though right now she is sick. She brought boiled cassava, fresh avocado, and corn. We ate a little bit of cassava (no taste at all) and avocado (wonderful) but, based on personal experience with a piece of this last year, left the corn for others to eat. All decided they wanted a sandwich so we had to switch to halfs. We sat in the church and ate. This is always a peaceful place, and today was no exception.

During lunch, Grace then the drummer at Kassanda amazed us with their skill. When we had finished, Fatuma insisted that we go to her house. When we got there, we found a very curious thing. Fatuma’s mother is very old. She has lived in this house with Fatuma since our first visit to Kassanda. Her mother is healthy, but she is blind. Last year when she came to greet us, she bumped into furniture.

Today, she walked out on her own and shook Joseph’s hand. She described shirts on men across the room. Fatuma says she sees normally now. She says it is a result of prayer! I don’t know how good her vision is today, but I do know the furniture isn’t in danger when she passes by today!

David said a prayer for Fatuma and her family, then we got back in the car and drove to Kassanda’s new property. This is a beautiful piece of property on the side of a hill on the other side of Kassanda proper. We have had a bit of trouble getting the title, then once we had it, we were told the latrine had to meet new environmental specifications. This added tremendously to the cost, but last winter, Dan Kato, one of the elders at Kiwatule, told us he could build all that was required for $500. I funded this, then learned he wanted $200 more. I wouldn’t release that money without seeing the situation.

So we found the latrines completed from all external appearances. However inside, the floors weren’t complete and the holes in the concrete for the actual toilets had not been cut. There was also a bit of roofing remaining. The story was that Dan expected volunteers from the church to help him. In fact, no one showed up. He ended up having to go into town and hire a crew to work with him. And that’s how he ran out of money. Fatuma will need to answer why no volunteers came after she promised them, but it appears that Dan did a good job with the funds entrusted to him.

A few weeks ago, I received an email from the Kassanda Cornerstone Project. It basically said that we were doing a similar ministry and they would like to talk to me. Last week, I received a message saying they had read our blog and wanted me to drop by while I was in Kassanda. So we did! The director was out, but one of his assistants talked to us and showed us pictures of their work. They run a sponsorship program like ours. They are also involved in training for area residents. They are very geographically focused and currently have little support. If you have a minute, Google them!

The assistant called the director and he soon arrived. He was glad to see us, but kept talking about our return to Canada. It appears he has been Googling Uganda and sending notes to anything he finds that is remotely similar to his work. So it appeared that we really surprised him by actually dropping in. The day was slipping away, so we only stayed a few minutes. We agreed to stay in touch.

After only 2 hours, we arrived in Kampala once again. I asked Vincent when we started to stop and get drinks for everyone. He didn’t get around to it until we were in the city. Everyone went in and selected a drink. I selected a liter of mango juice!

I told Vincent we had decided to stay in, so we would eat at the Guesthouse. I suggested they could join us if they wanted to. He wasn’t overjoyed. When we got to the Guesthouse, he said they would come back in 45 minutes, which gave us a few minutes to go up and unwind.

We all met in the restaurant. Everyone ordered, and we waited well over an hour for our food. But this gave us some time to relax and chat about things other than kids and budgets. The food was fine, as it has been each night. I had to cut back. I had Beef Ragout again, and ended up eating the ragout over rice and giving the beef away.

We went directly back to our room. I worked on the blog and Lisa worked on her presentation for tomorrow. She has her women’s meeting from 4:00 until 7:00 tomorrow!