Global Camps Africa - Reports from Uganda and Rwanda - Sept. '08

Reports from Uganda and Rwanda - Sept. '08

We met with the head of school of Maranyundo School, a girls school about 30 minutes from Kigali, the capital, that has been funded by a lot of Boston people. It has a beautiful campus, housing for 60 girls with another 60 rooms being built, and a very dedicated, competent feeling. It seems to be well-known and respected. The wife of Rwanda's President visited the school in March.

Sister Felicite was very interested and wants to send a staff member to us in South Africa.

We stayed at the "Hotel Rwanda" (Hotel des Milles Collines), that was memorialized in the film and where Tutsi refugees were sheltered during the April-June 1994 genocide. We went to the Genocide Museum twice--once to see its powerful exhibits about the Rwanda genocide and others in recent history (Armenia, Cambodia, Kosovo, Jews, and Namibia) and once to hear a survivor's story and watch the HBO film, "Sometimes in April," which was strong in the US, but is over-powering watching it where it happened.

We spent two days in Volcanoes National Park hiking over some beautiful, mountain terrain to see 2 different gorilla families. Very exciting and beautiful. There were some dozen adults and young in each group. We were in groups of 6-8 and could stay for an hour observing them. These are the rare upland silverback gorillas, important in the world both because of their rarity and because Rwanda had to convince a lot of people living up close to the border of the park that it is in the interest of the people, long-term, to make sure the gorillas are protected and not poached for short-term profit, and that their wooded, forest environment be protected and not cut down for short-term gain.

In a country where over-population and poverty are rampant, these are major.

I met with the Africare people in Rwanda. They have COPE Clubs, which is the program we are hoping to fit in with in Uganda. I just figured that as long as I was in Rwanda, I might as well visit them. The school year had not yet started and they brought a bunch of people together for more of a performance than to get any work done. They were lovely, danced and sang nicely, and left me with the feeling that I hadn't really learned a lot of what really goes on there.

We went to visit a Millennium Village Project (MVP) to see if we could find a way to participate in their project. The MVP project was started by Jeffrey Sachs, a visionary economist at Columbia, who thinks that poor, backward villages can be made to be self-supportive if a minimal level of health, education, and social services are provided in a holistic, intentional way. He believes that large financial aid to a country is misplaced and that small amounts to particular regions are better used.

I spoke to one of their education officers the day before and then we went on a tour of their project the next day. The education officer had no camp experience, but got the potential that camp would have in their project. He loved the DVD and was quite excited about it by the time I left.

The MVP tour was eye-opening. We went to the school, where MVP supplements what is already there. They build extra classrooms, toilets, a soccer field, etc., to provide a setting where every child can attend and have a moderate student teacher ratio (50:1 is their goal).

The health clinic looked excellent, clean and orderly and people were being served and tested. There were good facilities for matters running from cuts and bruises to AIDS.

The startling conclusion was to a village that had Hutus and Tutsis living in small houses (huts) close together. The woman we visited, a Tutsi, had seen her husband and children murdered. The man who had killed them lived next door and came over to meet us and chat! Now that's truth and reconciliation!

There seems to be quite a big difference between the two countries next to each other. Rwanda is the most densely populated country in Africa and, while the cities are not wildly crowded (at least where we were), there are people everywhere--on the slopes of the mountains at the national park, up the beautiful, vertical hills that permeate the country ("land of 1000 hills"--a gross understatement), and on the roads between settlements. They transport all kinds of heavy things (potatoes, bananas, charcoal) on bikes or on their heads, often for long distances.

The 90 minute drive from Kigali, Rwanda, to the Uganda border was quite lovely. It went along a long valley that was covered in tea cultivation--for about 20-30 miles! Amazing. It was cooperatively farmed as the owners of the relatively small plots worked together on several.

As soon as I crossed into Uganda, the tea became bananas. Everywhere.

The first lady is in Parliament and represents the district that I was visiting with Africare. When she's in town, there are no hotel rooms, so they put me in a hotel 65 kms (39 miles) away. Not too bad, except that the road is paved but looks like a mine field after the mines exploded. The trip takes an hour and a quarter. And the road is packed with large, tippy, overloaded trucks carrying bananas. Quite a sight.

Uganda Part 1: Africare in the field: The first day with Africare was quite wonderful. We started with a meeting at their office in town (the one where the first lady is their representative). There were 8 or 9 people from Africare at the meeting, representing the 5 areas in which the COPE Clubs work--capacity building of the communities, education for orphans and vulnerable children (OVC), life skills and health, income generating activities, and agriculture.

The Project Director had an excellent power point of the project and we discussed some of the things they do with the children and with their Caregivers (parents or foster parents).

I then told them about camp and showed the DVD. They loved it and immediately saw what it could bring to the COPE Clubs--mostly an excitement and a focus that the children could later weave into the clubs.

One of their group is a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) assigned to Africare. She and her husband are from Austin. Yea! He played college ball at UT and pro football for 2 years with Seattle and San Diego, and they have been in Uganda for 5 months. She has a camp background and was a great supporter. The others are all clamoring to come to South Africa to be at Camp Sizanani.

They also have lots of ideas of where camp could be held in Uganda. Most schools have sleeping accommodations and they were talking about which would be best. Lindsey, the PCV, lives next to a church, and her husband runs a Saturday youth program for about 250 kids, so she wants him to learn more things to do with his group.

We ate lunch and then went to one of the clubs, about 45 minutes away. They had a lot of songs, complete with some dancing and lots of hand gestures. They had songs made up in appreciation of what Africare has done for them. All the songs had AIDS themes and how they were going to survive. Of course, I had to get up to join the dance at one point and the crowd loved it. They had about 50 kids, 20 caregivers, and 10-20 kids who hadn't joined the club but who were interested.

After we left this rural community center, we visited a child head of household and his younger siblings, who was a success story sponsored by Africare. The parents had died of AIDS and the father had left/sold the land and house where they had been living, so the kids were homeless.

Now, with Africare support, the older one (17) is back at secondary school, has a bike for the 5 mile commute, and the middle one, tested and found to be HIV+, is on antiretrovirals and is doing much better.

In the morning of the second day with the Africare field people, 5 of us went to a community of some 300 orphans and their caregivers. It was a community event, sparked by Africare's income generating arm. They have developed a dried fruit business for the banana growers. I won't bore you with my new-found knowledge about the process, or how many kilos of bananas it takes to make 1 kilo of dried, but it was interesting and the bananas (two kinds) very tasty. Even better, they have a national and international fruit producer buying all they can dry.

The kids sang about AIDS and how it wrecks their family and the lives of those around them. This time, they sang in English and one of the girls wrote a poem, also in English. The singing wasn't as good as yesterday's, and their faces looked very sad and lifeless. They were more than an hour off the main road. It amazes me both how bad the secondary and tertiary roads are and how many people live in those areas. I expected we would find gradually fewer people as we continued to drive inland. Instead, we came across towns as big as if the main road had been there.

They also give out scholastic materials to the children. They honored me by having me give the first six sets of materials to the six children who are the leaders. There were 12 pens, 12 pencils, and about 12 notebooks. The children were very proud of their materials and will, I am sure, keep them guardedly and carefully. It's quite amazing how basic the assistance has to be. Without these simple materials, these children would either not go to school or would be ostracized or sit outside.

After shaking hands all around and being welcomed in a procession of speeches, we left. I was ready to call it a day. Instead, we ate at 2:30 and then went to another fruit drier (pretty much the same, except they had been there longer), and then to the inauguration (launch) of the constitution of yet another fruit drier cooperative. This was a big deal, as about 75 people were there, a plastic tent-like roof had been installed and benches were placed under it, and the local "speaker" (that seems to be an official title) was the guest of honor. Of course, the Africare people spoke as they initiated it all, and because I was there, I had to speak again. They seemed pleased that I was there from the US and would attend their ceremony.

Then we went back to the Africare office to debrief on the two days. They had already written to the people in DC saying that they thought that camp would fit into the COPE Club format perfectly. They are all trying to find funding to come to Camp Sizanani in December. A Peace Corps Volunteer couple, Lindsey and Brock Edward are planning a trip but need Peace Corps permission. They think they'll get it.

The initial part of the Africare involvement went beautifully. I also love the grass roots way they operate. Their personnel are in the field a lot. The local people know them well and are trained by them. I also like the way they look at the entire child and stay with the children as education, health, psychosocial problems pop up. They are much more holistic than we are at camp. They will be excellent partners if we work out the details.

Uganda Part 2: Kampala Africare and other groups. I met with the Africare director, Tony Agnosi, and the Africare Regional Director, Ruth Mufute. I also met with the Peace Corps Director, McGrath Thomas (who is going to be the PCD in South Africa beginning in January), Willie Salmond, Director of Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, and two women with a group called Health Child, which is interested in camp.

Each meeting is a story in itself, but suffice it to say that everyone seems to love what we have to offer and to know about us. There is a great need to network. For example, Willie runs an annual camp for children with AIDS. He didn't know about the COG camp (see below) and they use the same camp site (and pay almost twice what we pay in South Africa!).

I also went about 4 hours to Mbale and then a few kilometers up the mountains to meet with and stay with a community of some 800 Black Ugandan Jews, who are also interested in having a camp. They are a lovely group and have a nice private school where Jews, Christians and Muslims all attend very happily, peacefully, and cooperatively.

Their morning service was lovely, as they scampered to get a minyan (quorum) of 10. It's supposed to be 10 men, but they were hurting and got a few women. Of course, I had been sitting on the women's side of the synagogue, but everyone was too polite to suggest I move. I also was asked to hold the torah toward the end of the service (a great honor) and almost dropped it as it is rather lopsided at this time of the year and was very heavy in one side.

My other trip was to Jinja, a city less than two hours from Kampala, and is reputed to be the source of the White Nile (the Blue Nile starts in Ethiopia). I met with a group called Children of Grace (COG).

They work with a health clinic that does both HIV/AIDS testing and counseling and nutrition. They also work with orphans and caregivers to get the children in school (with uniforms and school supplies), keep them healthy and take them to the clinic when they are ill. COG also promotes income generating activities, such as dried fruit (different ones from the Africare group), charcoal bagging and selling, small gardens that provide needed healthy foods, sack gardens (sacks of soil that are seeded to grow so people who can't get around much can tend to a garden), pigs, cows, and chickens raising. The nutritionist went with us into the community.

It is exhausting to see the complete involvement of the wonderful people from the NGO who work at all levels with the people being served and makes me realize how relatively simple and uncomplicated our program is.

COG is faith based and operates out of the US. They have had two camps for some of the HIV+ children they serve. They have been pleased with the camps, but they want to send one of their leaders to Camp Sizanani for more exposure to a more professionally run camp. Hearing how they run camp, I can't wait for their person to be trained.

For example, there are about 20 Americans who fly over to run the camp in January. It seems more about gratifying the Americans by making them feel important, than it is about empowering the Ugandans to run the camp.

Part of the adventure was getting Titus, the person who is coming, to the South African Chancery in Kampala to try to get a visa. The South Africans have made him jump through a lot of hoops that weren't on the written forms, but I think he will be able to come. Now all we're waiting for is his plane ticket.

As I have been hearing about the number of groups working with camps, I received an e-mail from a Kents Hill School graduate, who will be graduating from Wellesley this school year. She wants to come to Africa to work in camps. Among other things, she seems interested in going to several countries to find out what is happening. It would be nice to have her work with us to do a census.

It has been very productive. I think our ties with Africare are solid. They will be preparing a grant request from US AID in June and want us to be part of their request. It will involve writing up what we can do in terms of assisting them in their program of COPE Clubs.

The Peace Corps Director is interested in having PCVs work in whatever camps we establish here. She sees it as a great way for greater depth of understanding the local culture and people.

South Africa is probably going to be a little anti-climatic after all the excitement of being in two new countries, but I'm looking forward to "going home" to Camp Sizanani.

All the best,

Phil

Last Updated on Monday, 05 October 2009 11:02

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