Visiting Day

This Sunday (5.11) I joined a good friend of mine to visit her sister, that is studying at one of the schools here in the district. Visiting day is a big day here in Uganda. If you have a child in a boarding school, as many of them do, you can only come and see your child on those visiting days. At this school, visiting is limited to three times in the year! Makes me understand why this is a big day.

This photo is taken later in the day. As I was waiting for someone, I went out and enjoyed my time with the children!

A visit to a refugee camp 3.11

Suddenly Thursday night, Anne and I got the opportunity to go to a refugee camp we’ve been wanting to see. So we left early Friday morning with the bus, and we’re picked up in Mbarara for the next 2 hrs stretch. (The camp was only 60km from the border of Tanzania)

After passing through Isingaro Headquarter District, we were very close. “Everywhere from here is actually part of the camp”, we we’re told. Even after we entered the base camp, it was almost hard to believe (because it didn’t fit into my image of a refugee camp at all, from what I’ve seen on TV from home. The land they were scattered over was huge, so there was no chaos with tents and people everywhere, and there were no food ration ques…)

This is Nakiwaru, the biggest refugee camp in Uganda. There is living somewhere between 22 000- 30 000 refugees here. Most are from Rwanda and Sudan, but they also come from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, Somalia,
Tanzania and Kenya. What might also be special with this camp, besides the big size, is that most of the population has actually lived here for at least 10 years, so most of them are more or less settled.

Even local Ugandans are living in this area. Almost the only thing that differs them from the refugees, in terms of living, is that they are free to move out of this area if they want…

We we’re very privileged to be driven around in the camp by one of the camp leaders. So many interesting things he told, about the people, the different lifestyles in the camp etc.

There are only 4 primary schools in this whole camp. In one of the schools, there are more than 3 000 children. And the number of teachers in that school is only 14!!! Count how many pupils each teacher must have! (Not to mention all the languages the children in the classes would speak)

On this tour, we had a flat tire 3 times! The third time, we we’re stuck in a camp for the “newly arrivers” for very long. I enjoyed the time with children. Tried to teach them some Norwegian song with movements (almost didn’t matter if it was in Norwegian, there are too many languages here for everyone to understand anything anyway…) And then they sang. And sang, and sang, and sang…!

The children really were fascinated with this strange, white skin. I once counted about 10 different children hands touching just one of my arms. Ah, I still think a lot about this day in the camp. When we were there, a family from Congo had just arrived, and we brought them to the “arrivers’ camp”. Hm, you look at all the children and people in the camp and wonder, what have you gone through, what history brought you here… and what will the future bring...

One time when I was standing with a group of children around me, there was one very small baby, sitting bare on the ground, crying loud. I tried to pick it up, and some others tried the same. But it refused to be picked up, and just continued crying. I felt so helpless and starting looking around, asking: “Where is the mom, where is the mom!” The sad answers I got in return were; “No mom, there is no mom”…

(Photoes:
1. Anne sitting in the car, while the guys were fixing on it
2. From Isingiro District, on our way to the camp
3. Some of the settlements, from one small part of the camp)

Where do we start...

Anne and I have now started some of the office work we’ll be facing here. Filing 2000 rapports on school children (that are representing their school for sponsors in Norway). Taking the 2000 photoes to attatch to the reports. And make 2000 christmas cards ready for sending.


We started with this pile, which is only papers from 1 out of the 7 schools…

Ah, the power is back (after 5 days with problems) and I will again to to write. This Sunday we tried to attend a service at a local church we found last week. We were told it started at 9. When we arrived 9.20, there was no people there… A sign outside said the service started at 9:30. Then we met someone who said that because of rain it was postponded until 10. We arrived at 10 and then there were only 5 people present… This service lasted around 4 hrs, so when I my head around half way into the meeting, most people were finally present.










Some photoes from our walk to a neighbour city, Ishaka.
This week Anne and I are participating at some seminar StrommeFoundation is holding at the 7 schools they are working together with. For me, the highlight was in the breaks, when I went into the schoolyard and practiced my few runyankole words with the children, and made them teach me some more. Before I knew it, I was surrounded by 2-300 children. So many smiles and curious faces. How strange, but what joy!

Orire gye! – A greeting we finally start to be familiar with here. I am now sitting in our livingroom in Bushenyi, looking out over the beautiful hills to be seen outside our living room.

I arrived in Uganda Tuesday last week (10.10.06). We were then 6 Act Now’ers that stayed in Kampala together for the first tree days. There we met with some of our supervisors, went to the Norwegian Embassy, and to see the Stromme Foudation Office.

Aerobic class at the rooftop for the Act Now’ers and the staff members at SF.

Then we departed to our different practice places. Anne Margrethe and I are now in Bushenyi, a smaller village about 5 hrs drive south-west from Kampala. This first week we have mainly been taking some language lessons in Ruanyankole. And just to give you a small idea of what that looks like, this is how you say “nice to meet you”: Nakushemererwa kuka reba…

Yesterday was our first day out visiting some schools. What a strange feeling to have 5-600 expectant children looking at you with curious faces. We came there with our supervisor and a reverend, to meet with the staff and children, and to hand out some new testament Bibles.
Afterwards we got to spend some time in different classrooms, where we later might do some teachings ourselves.

Sitting patiently listening, until the heavens opened, end we all had to run inside to get shelter from the rain.

Holla

Been postponding for so long, but finally there was set aside time to get this page up and running. As most of you know, I again took a year off from my studies to do something different- yes, it has somehting to do with Africa... The flight takes off on Oct 10th, and I’m heading for 6,5 months in Uganda. I will do my best to fill you in on a little of my life, and I greatly appreciate hearing from you too!