by Chuck DuVivier

Our travels started in the early morning of January 9th in San Diego. We flew to New York, then Brussels, then Nairobi, with the late night arrival at Entebbe, Uganda.

We were met at the airport by local Rotarians who drove us the 40 kilometers to the Africana Hotel in Kampala. The darkness along the road hid numerous pedestrians and we had several near misses.

We did see our first African wildlife along the road, a genet that dashed across the road in front of us before disappearing into the brush.

Despite being tired from our long trip we stayed up until 1:30 am. (January 11) before going to bed.

The next morning we started with breakfast at 8 and left the hotel a little after 9. We took the road South-West toward Masaka but turned off to Nanziga, a community with 4 villages. The village we stopped in has about 2,600 people according to the 5-year old census. Recently it has been determined that about one third of the people in the community are orphans as the result of HIV/AIDS and conflicts in the North.

Here the Shadowridge (Vista) Rotary Club and the Kampala Rotary Club have a Matching Grant project that will pump water from a spring at low elevation up to a school near the village crossroads. We took a long hike down the hill to visit this spring and a fish pond but then we had to hike back up the hill along the path that everyone must now take when they fetch water, a slippery, unpleasant and time consuming task.

We then visited Nanziga Orphan Support Efforts (NOSE) to have a school tour and a singing presentation from the students. The school has 400 students or which 50 are orphans. The students were away until Feb 5, the end of the "summer break".

We then headed back to Kampala. The weather is warm but not hot and not humid. The equatorial sun is intense. The countryside that we were passing through was densely populated but rural and agricultural. The land is fertile and lush with crops mixed into the recently overly thin forest.

Predominant crops are cassava, sweet potatoes, yams, green bananas for matooke, ground nuts, mangoes, paw paw (papaya) and jack fruit. There are few signs of crop storage, as something is always available throughout the year.

Next we stopped at Mugwanya Summit College, the school of Rotarian Martin Kiyaga who has visited San Diego in 2001 with the Group Study Exchange program. Clubs from District 5340 did 3 matching grants in the past at Martin's school: a computer lab, science laboratory equipment, and a rain water collection system.

After the school tour we had lunch in the shade of a white leafed king tree which we were told are planted throughout the country wherever the king goes for a ceremonial visit.

After lunch we headed a short distance North of Kampala to the Buloba Health Clinic, a project of the Mengo Rotary Club. Here we provided a $1,000 District Simplified Grant for dental equipment. This clinic is still being built but has a dental camp once a month which is well attended.

From here we took a short drive to St Stephen Hospital, the recipient of another $1,000 District Simplified Grant. This money was used for an incubator for their lab.