Uganda: On the Nile thousands of kilometres from Egypt

From Uganda 2012

We started the day from the community of Kamuli in the eastern plain of Uganda. While our bus was being repaired, we took the opportunity to visit a nearby private primary school. In Uganda, all schools, public or private, require the students to wear school uniforms. All children are required to go to primary school, but considerably fewer go to secondary school and far fewer get to college or university. The forty students in the classroom that we visited, attend school from 8:30 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. with meals provided. We have been extremely impressed with the emphasis on education in Uganda.

We then drove for several hours through the verdant plain we had experienced yesterday. There were some differences today. Along the paved roads we could see teams of oxen pulling plows, larger fields and larger houses. Once we left the highway, farming was again done by hand (primarily by women and some children) and many of the houses had thatched roofs. But today many of the roofs were thatched with papyrus.

The source of the Nile is a river that enters Lake Victoria at the city of Jinja. Our travels today took us through that river valley. It moved us to realize that there were so many fields of the papyrus that the ancient Egyptians had used to make paper, and yet we were in Uganda thousands of miles from Egypt.

At the end of our drive we again found hundreds of smiling students, parents, teachers, and volunteers patiently awaiting our arrival. In this case, the distribution was in a public primary school and we felt that the teachers were just as excited as were the students. We were thrilled to listen to 500 happy children presenting their joyous songs to us and to Canada.

We do our very best to explain to everyone, that everything we do, especially the photographs, is to ensure that, as you intended, your gifts are reaching truly deserving children.

Tonight we settle in to the city of Mbali which will be our base of operations for the next three days.

Peter Adams and Bob Conway
for Team Uganda 2012

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