Kids these days

I had seen many adult street preachers before, yelling at the top of their lungs on a crowded Kampala streets during the day. I had been told it was kind of a recent trend, but I had never seen a child doing it. The other night, I was at a bar with a friend when two kids, making an awful lot of noise started walking toward the sidewalk terrace we were on. I asked permission to take video before I started and talked to the kid after while showing him the video. He looked to be about 8 or 9, out after dark on a school night, toting an English bible and yelling until he was hoarse about "Jesus!" and "the Lord!" and "Hallelujah!" - though, of course, like any kid his age, he was having a hard time pronouncing that last one. He was wearing his school uniform so I knew at least he was in school during the day. I asked him if he knew how to read English yet, he said no. I asked him if he knew many stories from the bible, he mentioned one that I couldn't quite understand. In trying to find out if an adult had put him up to it, he seemed adamant that it was his choice to be out, in down town Kampala with his friend at 9:00 at night. I gave him some change to get home with public transportation instead of walking. They stuck around a little while, doing their thing, and then made their way up the street, preaching to other sinners.

On! On!

A friend that I made here through Ultimate Frisbee happens to be, from what I have witnessed, the mascot for the local Hash House Harriers group, he’s been doing it since he was a young kid. That, and the fact that my dad was pretty active in the local Hash group when I was growing up made it only a matter of time before I started hashing. For those of you unfamiliar with the group; the lore tells us that it was started in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia by a group of British ex-pats in 1938 as a way to run off their weekend hangovers. For each weekly run, a different path is marked through different neighborhoods by intermittent symbols and splotches in chalk or powder. Some of the intersections contain false directions so when the front-runners (front-running bastards) discover the path is false, they double back and warn everyone that it’s the wrong way. There are also hooks that require the FRBs to double back until they reach the last runner and then start back on the forward path. There are check points where everyone meets up for a few minutes, maybe sings a vulgar song or two, rests a little and then continues on together. I’m actually still getting the hang of the rules but by the time I get baptized with my “hash handle,” the alias that each person gets after they’ve run several hashes, it should be all good. I should also be in great shape; if I haven’t mentioned it already, Kampala is situated on seven rather large hills, this means that no hash is truly complete without a monster climb or two. Following each run newcomers are introduced and made to chug a beer, whoever invited them is made to chug a beer, “sinners” are made to chug a beer, and many people are sprayed with beer or water for one reason or another. This “drinking club with a running problem” has been active in Kampala for quite a while, the runs that I have done so far are numbers 1258-1260 so by my calculations of weekly Monday hashes with once-a-month Saturday hash, that makes about 21 years of hashing here in Kampala. I’m sure I’ll enjoy my 1.

The NGO Meeting

The other day Harry and I went to the monthly meeting of the directors of many different NGOs with offices in Kampala. We had been invited to the meeting by the director of Care Uganda and at the meeting there were representatives of about 15 other NGOs including Oxfam, Christian Children’s Fund and others. We were given a few minutes for Harry to make a presentation on what we are doing here between their discussions of IDP (Internally Displaced Persons - much like refugees but who haven't left their home country) camps, AIDS orphans and how to deal with unwarranted bad publicity from host-country politicians. Harry gave his short presentation and before he was even finished, people were offering to buy the lamps and panels that we had with us. They were very interested in offering the lamps as part of packages for the communities they are serving, especially the IDPs who are receiving assistance to move back home. The directors purchased the lamps so they could test them with their communities but left saying that if they worked out they would be buying hundreds or even thousands of lamps in the coming months, great news for BASE Technologies!

Making Like Moses

The other weekend, on the advice of another ex-pat, my colleague, Harry, and I went rafting on the Nile for the day. We had been told that there were only a couple months left to experience the Victoria Nile in its current state because of a dam they are currently working on that will flood the area, displacing some communities and effectively covering two of the class-5 rapids on the river including Bujagali Falls. The dam is being built to provide hydro-electricity for Uganda and the surrounding countries, though it’ll likely not be nearly enough to stop the power-shedding or rolling blackouts that are common here.

The source of the Victoria Nile (which eventually joins with the White Nile and the Blue Nile to form the Nile in Egypt that we all learned about) is in a city called Jinja, about a 2-hour drive East from Kampala. We got up early, grabbed the sunscreen and shorts that they told us to bring and made our way to town to meet the bus that would take us to Jinja. After a couple delays thanks to a semi that had tipped over in our path we made it to the rafting company campsite. Before we got our boats, there were a couple people who wanted to take the opportunity to bungee jump (another offering of the rafting company’s). Each jumper gets the choice whether or not to be dipped into the Nile and whether or not to be clothed. A friend has confirmed that if your first jump is naked, your second is free of charge.

We got in the rafts and learned the commands that our boat leader would be shouting throughout the day, practiced flipping the raft and then we were off. One passenger in our boat happened to be a relatively experienced rafter – having rafted on a couple different continents, he informed us that he had heard that the rapids we were to be rafting were the roughest commercial rapids in the world. Our guide, a Brazilian, has been traveling the world, finding work as a rafting guide where he can, South America, North America, Europe and now Africa. His reason for being in Uganda at this point was also to enjoy the Nile before it is forever changed by this dam.

During the day we had four class-5 rapids with some paddling, political talk and a lunch break on and island in between. We paddled past boys swimming and playing, women and girls washing clothes in the river, river otters and some truly stunning views. Earlier in the day one of the kids in our raft had been tossed out by a rapid but besides that we had all remained in the raft until the final set of rapids of the day – Itanda – “The Bad Place”. We set out with the goal of no flipping for the entire day, a feat that’s not too easy. We paddled up to it, our guide told us to “get down!” I started to take shelter in the interior of the raft, between the inflatable benches and before I knew it the opposite side of the raft was coming down on me and I was under water, tumbling as if I was inside a washing machine, doing my best not to let go of my oar so it wouldn’t get lost. Eventually my life-jacket popped me up and I scanned the water for the rest of my raft mates. Everyone was fine, some were a little shaken by the flipping experience but I was simply in awe of the river’s power and glad I had the chance to really experience the Nile.