The day the baboon stole our lunch!

OK I admit it, this particular trip isn’t 100% work with no play - although I must admit that I feel so blessed to have such an amazing job that I wouldn’t complain too much if it was all work. Having Tim, Rozzie and Natalie around this week has meant that I have taken some down time to enjoy being family again, and it has been a really special time for us all.

After 3 days exploring projects and places in and around Kampala, Tuesday saw the 4 of us embarking on the 5hour drive to Murchison Falls National Park. The first 4 hours were pretty straightforward –leaving the city behind and finding the gaps between towns getting bigger and bigger, and the road getting straighter and straighter as there seemed to be no reason for it do anything other than go directly from one point on the line to another.

After 4 hours we reached Masindi – the gateway to Murchison Falls National Park – and that’s about all it can boast really. A pretty non-descript town and the point where you make sure you have enough fuel for the time in the park, and then wave goodbye to tarmac and embark on 42km of dirt road until you reach the actual entrance gate.

Theoretically those 42km should have taken 1 hour, and in actual fact they only took about 1.5 hours, thanks to the skillful driving of our wonderful driver Hakim. We’d been driving about 20 minutes when we came across a truck laden with freshly cut sugar cane that had got stuck right across the single track dirt road, and was well and truly going nowhere fast. It was one of those situations where you know there is nothing to do except sit it out – no alternative route, no tow trucks, just lots of locals giving thoughts on what to do, and one frustrated truck driver trying to dig the road up enough to allow the wheels to get some traction and escape.

After 30 minutes of watching the inaction from all angles, Hakim decided enough was enough and he wanted to get us to Murchison. And, with all the skill that he has when it comes to driving (and he has a lot), he managed to manoeuvre our vehicle through a space that really didn’t look big enough, over muddy ditches that had floored the truck, and back onto the road.

And so we got to Murchison Falls – named after some very impressive thunderous waterfalls at one end of the Park, who in turn were named after Mr Murchison who was president of the National Geographic Society at the time that they were discovered by a Mr Baker – explorer commissioned by the NGS back in times gone by (end of history lesson – I stopped listening to the commentary on our boat ride after that!)

Having gone and checked out the Falls from the top, we went and checked in to the lodge where we were staying – very pleasant but clearly in the ‘off-peak’ season: we are the only guests, and the electricity only works from 5.30 – 7.30am and 7.30 – 10.30pm! But it has a pool, and is very pleasant, surrounded by beautiful grounds, with lots of small-scale wildlife to keep us entertained eg lizards doing press-ups (no joke), weaver birds competing for best nest, and an orchestra of cicadas.

Today (Wednesday) was our full day in the park, so we went off on a game drive in the morning. Hakim enjoyed the drive as much as we did, especially the moment when we found the giraffes – his favourite animal. We were really lucky to see loads of animals including elephants (plus babies), lions, giraffes (plus babies), warthogs (plus babies), hyenas, buffalo, hippo, and countless species of antelope (plus babies). Then there were all the different birds from bee-eaters to weaver birds to kites to hornbills to storks and eagles. And all in a land that was bursting into new life as the rains are just starting, and the dry brown is being replaced by verdant greens and succulent shoots on the plants; a very special time that we all enjoyed very much to say the least.

In the afternoon we went on a boat ride and saw more wildlife from a new perspective. That was fun, although the boat we were in did sit very low in the water and Frederick our boatman did have a tendency to let the engine cut out just as we were getting close to hippos (with their babies), or crocodiles. Fred would be enthusiastically telling us about some bird in the distance, and I’d be watching the nearby hippo or crocodile slip silently underwater, and spend the next bit of time wondering where the danger creature had gone, and if it was checking out the underside of our boat! But as you’ll have realized, we all came back safely and maybe I should give Fred more credit for knowing his job properly and being more in control of the boat than sometimes it appeared!

To end, the story that accompanies the title of this blog, as I suspect this is a story that will get bigger with every telling – so this is the true account!!

Between game drive and boat ride there wasn’t time to return to our lodge for lunch, so they had packed us up a boxed lunch each and we instead spent the free time at the much closer, very nice, and too expensive for us, Paraa Lodge. We availed of their free internet, had a soda each, and just chilled out, before eating most of our packed lunches.

Rozzie had left some of her lunch to eat after the boat ride, and it was sitting in a box on the seat between her and Natalie at the back of the MPV that we were travelling in. After lunch we drove down to the area where the boat rides go from. We had 20 minutes to kill, so Hakim parked in the shade, and we just rested in the car with windows and doors open due to the heat.

Picture the scene: Hakim had gone off to chat to some fellow Ugandans, taking the keys with him, Tim was in the front passenger seat, I was on the middle row, Rozzie on the back row, and Natalie standing outside by the single back door (one of those sliding ones that is level with the middle row of seats). We are all chatting when Natalie mentions a baboon is coming closer. Then it changes its mind and Natalie looks away but when she looks back it is coming closer again.

At that point she gets in the car and shuts the door, and Tim shuts his door. Hakim has the keys so we can’t close the windows, but to be quite honest it all happened so quickly that I don’t think we’d have had time to do anything anyway.

Suddenly the baboon is on the bonnet of the car, and seeing Tim in the passenger seat goes across the windscreen to the driver side, and in through the window!!!!!!! Tim is out of the car faster than you can say ‘get out’ and Natalie isn’t far behind, thus opening the middle door and providing an escape route for the baboon who is slightly alarmed to find himself inside a car with mazungus!

Not as alarmed as Rozzie and I who are trapped in the car as the baboon is between us and the door. The baboon looks at me, and I can’t remember what I do, but all I am thinking is ‘Rozzie is trapped in the back and I don’t know what to do but I really don’t want to upset this baboon or it could all get nasty’.

Thankfully the baboon decided he didn’t want to take me on in a fight (read into that what you want), and then, possibly prompted by Rozzie’s scream, decided to leg it out the door – but only after he had grabbed the box with Rozzie’s food in it from the back seat.

He was out the door with the box before the scream could bring any Ugandans running (although they did appear quite quickly after the event), and our final view of him was as he sat in the distance enjoying some potato crisps and homemade pancakes!

So, next time anyone goes to a wildlife park and sees a sign that says ‘keep windows closed’ – my recommendation is to follow the instructions. Thank you Lord for keeping us safe, but I’m happy not to test out the friendliness of any more baboons! Can definitely recommend Murchison Falls National Park as a destination in Uganda though – a wonderful few days away.

Alex and Emmanuel – the personal face of development

We went to Jinja today – the second largest town in Uganda and about 75 miles from Kampala. There were two reasons for going there I guess: firstly it’s a well-known tourist spot, so a good enough reason for a family on holiday to visit it. But it is also on the itinerary for one of the CRED teams in October so with my team’s coordinator hat on I had to do a risk assessment and plan the finer details of what the team would be doing on their visit.

One of the key reasons that Jinja has developed into a tourist location is that it is situated on the banks of Lake Victoria at the point where the mighty River Nile starts its journey north until it enters the Mediterranean Sea. Thus Jinja is officially known as the Source of the Nile.

As far as that goes, there’s not actually a lot to see apart from a lot of water that somewhere stops being Lake Victoria and starts being the River Nile. But one of the tourist industries that really built up around it all was the ‘Nile Adventure’ industry, including a lot of white water rafting due to the presence of a 7km stretch of the river that had a series of pretty impressive rapids that people would raft down with great delight and fuelled by a mssive surge of adrenaline.

The main place to do this rafting, and an area of outstanding beauty, was the Bujagali Falls located 10km downstream from Jinja, and the point where the rapids were really really impressive. I have been there several times – not to do the rafting (too much of a woose for that!) but to enjoy the beauty, majesty and power of the Falls, and also to watch others who are braver souls than I, as they hurtle down the rapids.

Today, when we visited, it was a very different scene that greeted us. Gone are the rapids, gone is the rafting and gone are most of the tourists – arrived is a massive great hydro-electric dam, a flooded valley, and some pretty fed up locals.

Uganda is a developing nation, and understandably is keen to find ways to increase its revenue as well as achieve secure sources of energy. With all that energy contained in the River Nile being right on its doorstep, it is no surprise that it is harnessing the power, and using it not just for domestic power but also as a precious export.

Of course this has been done time and again, all over the world, to various degrees in the name of progress. But today was the first time that I actually met people who had been affected by it, and heard their story – it brought a personal dimension that I’d not encountered before.

Alex, and his brother Emmanuel, have lived all their lives in and near Bujagali Falls. The water has been their permanent friend, as well as provider of food, and source of employment. Before the dam was built, Emmanuel earned money as a white-water rafting guide, and Alex was known as the ‘jerry-can man’ due to his ability to ride the rapids sitting astride a jerry-can! Indeed I remember seeing him in action, and afterwards he would come out of the water and chat to the tourists and live off the tips that he was given. Both of them made a reasonable wage out of it, and enjoyed what they did.

But then the dam came, and the valley was flooded. The water level rose by 25m, most of the islands that were dotted within the river disappeared, and Emmanuel no longer had any white-water rafters to guide, and Alex and his jerry can were made redundant.

Chatting to them today, they said how they had been given a small amount of compensation - $500 total. Not very much for the loss of a livelihood, but thankfully they were smart enough to invest the money and bought a simple boat that can seat up to 15 people and with that they are slowly building up a business in boat rides around the area.

We gave them some business today, and had a very pleasant hour or so being guided past submerged islands, with just the tops of the trees sticking out, and seeking out some of the birds that live along the water’s edge. Four varieties of kingfisher, plus cormorants, herons, storks, smaller birds, monkeys and even a monitor lizard were spotted, and the lads delighted in telling us all everything they knew about each species.

But we also went past people trying to eke a living out of the remaining bits of their land – the land that was the higher ground, and is now at water’s edge. Farmers growing their daily food on land that is very steep and precarious, when once they had had good land that gently rose from the riverbanks. And of course in this country where 25m is a lot more than the length of some people’s plots of land, there will be many families who have lost all their land and are now living somewhere new, starting again with trying to make ends meet.

In this time of climate change and increased greenhouse gases due to excessive consumption of carbon fuels, the need for alternative energy sources is more acute than ever. And as Uganda seeks to develop itself as a nation, it is good to see how hydro-electric power will be aiding that, rather than fossil fuels. It could be said that it would have been irresponsible to do otherwise. But it adds an extra dimension to the whole story when you meet some of the victims, and the situation moves from being a faceless case-study of international development, to a personal story of survival.

Thanks to the entrepreneurial spirit shown by Alex and Emmanuel I’m hoping they’ll do OK. Oh that it might be so for all the other families affected by the big new dam at Jinja.

A dental clinic with a difference

Yesterday, I shared a bit about the Acholi community – a tribal group living in very poor conditions in Kampala but, through their links with John Njendahayo, and therefore the international teams that John and Sophie host, are gradually becoming able to move from unskilled laboring in the nearby quarries to making a living from the paper bead jewellery that they create.

Eradication of poverty through empowerment and sustainable means is a key thread that underlies all of John’s work over here. He himself comes from a very impoverished start,  and his story of how he got to where he is now is in itself an incredible testimony of God at work in John’s life. A subject for a blog another day!

But today we visited a project that exemplifies magnificently how John is putting into practice the sustainability side of things in all he does.

Maya is a rural community near to Kampala,  with no electricity or running water. The people live subsistence lifestyles, and monetary income is very little. Some years back, John was part of a conversation that led to a vision for developing a community health facility in a rural community, and for one reason and another it ended up being in Maya

The project is still being developed, and over the past few years of visiting John, and taking teams out to work with him, I have had the privilege of seeing it grow, and hearing John talk of the increasing number of sustainable elements he is bringing to it.

The overall vision is to have a dental clinic, a medical clinic and a maternal health unit that will not only provide a safe environment for delivery of babies, but also run ante-natal and post-natal clinics, cervical screening, immunization programmes for under-5s etc. A big vision – but who achieved anything worthwhile by dreaming small!

And so far this is what has been achieved: the buildings for the dental and medical clinics have been completed, and the the maternal health unit is built, with a roof on (complete with some really neat bats in the eaves!) although still needing the final finish.

The dental clinic has been treating patients for 4 months now, and progress is being made on the medical clinic front. The maternal health unit obviously will take longer, but some interesting conversations with other stakeholders are already taking place about its use.

But the really impressive side of things is the sustainability of it all. The clinic has solar panels to power the various bits of dental kit, and the water is all rainwater that has been harvested and stored in massive underground tanks. The water is pumped from the main storage tank low down up to the header tank by a pump that runs on a stepping system ie it has two footplates that act like a stepper machine, and as the operator stands on them and steps up and down the water is pumped up to the higher tank. Brilliant – no fuel except human energy to make it function, and I love the idea that the doctors could actually prescribe time on the stepper pump as part of an ‘exercise on prescription’ programme!

So, we have solar energy and rainwater harvesting, and then there is biogas for heating the water for the pressure cook to sterilize the instruments. The biogas comes from the two cows kept in the compound, and the bi-product of the biogas is manure that they use to put on the crops that are being grown in the garden to provide a range of organic fruit and vegetables for the local people.

And as if that wasn’t enough to mean this whole project is impressively sustainable, then let me tell you that the bricks used to construct all the buildings were made in an environmentally friendly way – compressed bricks, that are of an interlocking design, thus only needing the occasional bit of cement, and don’t need to be baked in the making, so getting rid of the need for any firewood etc.

I think you are probably getting the hang of why I was so inspired by this project today, and of John’s vision for sustainable living generally, but here’s a final couple of bits of info on it:

The lad who is in charge of feeding the cows, and keeping guard of the building, gets to milk the cows, and then sell the milk at whatever price he chooses, and keep the money as his wages – an excellent example of empowering the next generation!

And when the medical clinic is open there will be an opportunity for an entrepreneurial cook to start up a café using the vegetables and fruit grown on the land.

So, there you have it – a dental clinic with a difference, in the most positive sense. Health care for all, and delivered in a sustainable way; demonstrating to many just how it is possible to move towards a better way of living that leaves an imperceptible footprint on the world.

In John’s words (or at least my version of what he said): “it’s about living in God’s world in a way that shows we honour God’s gifts to us, rather than abuse them, and in so doing show our love and gratitude to God for all He has done to us”.

Pretty good huh!

Back to Uganda, and a very special day with very special people

Today I flew back to Uganda and had the joy of once again being greeted by Natalie at the airport. Then, after a quick drive to the nearby ‘Sunset motel,’ I was able to witness the sweet reunion of Rozzie and Natalie, after 6 months of being apart; and of course Tim and Natalie (but I have to confess it was the Natalie – Rozzie reunion that was most moving!).

So, we are together again, and under African skies – what a perfect combination! Thank you Lord plus plus plus!

The other special people that have played a part in making this day so beautiful are firstly John and Sophie Njendahayo, our hosts for the week, and who are hosting Natalie for her time in Uganda. John and Sophie also host all the CRED and 360 teams that I bring out here, and so coming here for me is like coming to my African home – always a great delight.

John is also the Uganda half of Link International, the newest CRED partner (at the moment!!), and it is through him that I have been able to introduce teams to various projects in and around Kampala that he has initiated. John is an wonderful mix of entrepreneur, inventor, man of faith, and humble servant-heart, and spending time with him is a privilege and inspiration every time; I love seeing how the young people respond to his story, his life, his way of being and his contribution to the world -  it impacts them every time

I’ll tell you tomorrow about the sustainability projects that John has initiated, but today we went to visit the Acholi community – the other group of very special people involved in today.

The Acholi people were displaced from their tribal homelands in northern Uganda during the reign of terror led by Joseph Kony and the Lords Resistance Army. Since then they have been living in an informal settlement within Kampala, with their main form of income being work found in the stone quarries on either side of the settlement. The quarries are fairly narrow, and very steep sided, and I hate to think how many injuries must be sustained as people clamber up and down, getting the rocks that they then sit and hit with a hammer until the pieces of rock are like small pebbles suitable for use in the construction business. Unskilled, thankless work, that brings in just a pittance of an income, and as a result many live in poverty and about 40% of the children can’t afford to go to school

It is in this community that Natalie has been doing some very basic literacy lessons to the children, and although one of the main obstacles has been that the children have no concept of how to behave in a classroom setting, it was clear today just how much she is appreciated by the community.

The Acholi ladies were clearly delighted to finally meet the whole Harrison family, and the fact that Simon, CRED director and visiting Uganda for the first time this weekend as well, was also there, just topped it off!

We all got a wonderful welcome, with singing and dancing from the ladies and then the children, and it was a very special time., including the ladies presenting Natalie with a thank-you gift.

One of the ways that the Acholi ladies are increasingly earning an alternative income is through making paper bead jewellery. Long thin triangles of paper wound tightly round a needle transform into beautiful beads that, once threaded and varnished, make some really lovely pieces of jewellery.

The market for these items is partly through local markets, but also through all the international teams that are introduced to these products via John. Over the years, interest in the beads has grown, and people buy some, then order more, and then other teams come, and then they do repeat orders……Today I heard that the demand has now reached a level whereby some of the ladies can afford to stop working in the quarries, and concentrate on bead-making as their source of income. What wonderful news – no more back-breaking, heartless work. But instead work that can be done at home, that requires skill and creativity, is rewarding, and empowering.  Brilliant!

Life is still far from easy and straightforward for these people – they still live lives that we would consider to be incredibly lacking; but hearing how much progress has been made, partly through the input of CRED teams and the money they have spent when coming here, was the icing on the cake to a very special day.