by David Speirs
It’s the people of Uganda who make the country special. Their warm welcomes, permanent smiles and spirit of giving transcend the hardships faced by this African nation and make it a heart-stealing land that demands your return. .jpg)
I travelled to Uganda in September 2007 for the ‘Adventurous journey’ component of my Gold Award. I travelled with a team made up of people of a range of ages from a group of churches in the southern suburbs of Adelaide. We went to Uganda to work for Watoto, a children’s charity that looks after AIDS orphans. Sadly there is plenty of demand for such volunteers, 8% of Ugandans have AIDS, a figure which has slowly increased in recent years, after a period of steady decline. I was surprised to find that AIDS was a taboo subject in Uganda – a deeply traditional country – and there was little in the way of public health campaigns.
In the lead up to our trip we had raised nearly $40,000 to pay for the house we were building in a village called Biira. The Watoto model has established villages where ‘mothers’ foster up to eight orphans, providing them with a stable family environment and a village community to be part of. It’s a move away from the lonely orphanage upbringing and it’s nurturing well-rounded young people.
It took us five days to build the house, our team working closely with locals, cheerfully battling language barriers and making great friends in the process. None of us were particularly good at building (speak for yourself my fellow travellers would say) and learning how to lay bricks that were a variety of sizes was a challenge, especially when the daily tropical shower thundered across the countryside and turned our mortar into a runny grey paste.
As well as the building project we also visited a number of orphanages, some which were like scenes out of a Dickens novel. Dark and dank: overcrowded with babies, crying for attention, their nappies damp and their bellies empty. My few minutes inside these walls were the most harrowing of my life. While my stomach backflipped, my heart went out to these children and I felt an overwhelming feeling of helplessness.
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A highlight of the trip was taking part in Clean up Kampala. Unlike Clean Up Australia Day this was no walk in the park. It meant getting down and dirty in the slums of Uganda’s capital city, navigating paths with open sewers on either side, and deciding which of the thousands of pieces of rubbish might make a difference if it were removed. Razor blades, condoms, a dead dog and the hide of a goat were among the worst of what went into our plastic bags. Although it doesn’t sound like a highlight it was, simply because it gave us the opportunity to be part of a community that we otherwise would not have experienced. This was Uganda uncut. But still the people smiled.