Day 25, Breakfast, Global Café, Amuria

Another early start and I had a basinful of filthy water from washing off all the dust that I had accumulated yesterday. Still it was good for the toilet cistern. We went for a proper sit down breakfast at Global Café and I enjoyed beef stew with boiled potatoes. I didn’t enjoy the latte though. Admittedly it wasn’t billed as a latte, but it was a large mug of hot UHT milk that you can add a small amount of instant coffee and sugar to taste. The coffee is pretty rank, Uganda exports most of its coffee, so the stuff that is left for internal consumption is either expensive and terrible or very expensive and apparently good. I’ll need to try more coffee shops in Kampala when I get back. 2 out of 5

The food was pretty good and the quality of the meat surprisingly good, it was lean, not too dry and boneless. It was washed down by a Fanta after the coffee debacle. Fanta here is a vibrant orange and very sweet. Ugandans seem to have a lot of a sweet tooth. The other coffee drinkers at my table had 4 teaspoons and 2 heaped table spoons respectively. We picked up water and glucose biscuits for the researchers and headed to the office for another extended bout of hanging around and doing nothing in the office. Plus ce change plus ce meme chose.

How many Africans? About 19 and 1 Muzungu

Eventually we set off and ended up at Amotoom sub-council office before heading to the nearby primary school where I interviewed the Head Teacher. Amotoom was the northern-most village that we visited and was originally set up as a displacement camp around 2003 as a result of the insurgency of Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army. They haven’t been active in Uganda in the decade since, but are rumoured to now either be in DR Congo or Pointless favourite, Central African Republic. As a result this displacement camp has become a permanent village and its inception is obvious based on how close the homesteads are together.

Group interview session by a borehole

Another survey underway

The Head Teacher told me that 400 of the 600 hundred primary school pupils have lost at least one parent, most as a result of the insurgency and many as a result of HIV/AIDS. He estimated that around 75% of the village had HIV or AIDS. Food security was very poor, most children eat once per day at home.

Amotoom

A few homesteads by the main road

 After the interview we went to the trading post where I had a warm Mountain Dew and sat in between the local clinic where you can get tested for Malaria for 2000 UGX, Typhoid for 2500 UGX, Brucellosis for 3000 UGX, Syphilis for 2000 UGX, HIV/AIDS for 3500 UGX and Hep B for 5000 UGX (4000 UGX = £1 fact fans). Next to the price list was an advert for erectile dysfunction pills, but I don’t see how that’s the biggest problem here.

Driving on the road again

Hills of Karamoja in the distance

A homestead

 There was another long bout of waiting around for the shuttle, so I watched some of the kids playing with their toys. A couple had a stick of wood with some clay covering the centre of the stick with a free-wheeling clay wheel at either end. Some of the richer kids had one long or several smaller sticks tied together to push the axle through the dirt. Eventually we were picked up after I’d had a snooze underneath an mango tree in the grass.

2 classes in progress

Sub-council office

On the way back we made a brief detour at a large gathering that I soon found out was a funeral. There must have been over 500 people there and the funeral was for a women who was a member of a VAD farming groups, hence why we were there to pay our respects. The women had died the day previously of blood loss during labour. Her child survived. Such a terrible waste, but with poor local health care knowledge, a lack of usable blood stocks nearby and terrible infrastructure to get anywhere quickly caused this horrible event.

After the funeral we headed back and bought a massive sack of charcoal and didn’t finish until 9pm. Unfortunately at this time, all the restaurants and cafes in town had run out of food, so we went to the bar where I had a couple of warm cans of beer that were horrible. At least I had 15 minutes of electric lighting to wash off that days dust and dirt.

With Oscar, Projects Officer for Amuria

With Charles, M&E Officer for VAD in Kampala