First let me offer my apologies for taking so long to get this updated. You'll notice that I've changed the name of the blog to '5 Mzungus and a cow'. You're probably saying, "Uh?" Well, you'll have to come back to read a future post to get the meaning of the name. All will be revealed in time.

Below I've captured only up until my first day/night here at the orphanage, but will cover the rest - up to the present - sometime this week. There's a lot here already and I figured it would easier to read 'in chunks'.

March 3rd, 2012 Kigali, Rwanda


I touched down in Africa. As we arrived late at night and I had an aisle seat, I didn't see anything on approach. Now on the ground I looked out the window and got my first glimpse of Africa - a Martinair cargo plane.  An airport is an airport is an airport. Oh well, I have 6 moths to see the place I guess.

March 3rd, 2012  Kampala, Uganda


Touched down in Kampala. A long journey almost over.  I felt like I'd been travelling for a week. I got through immigration, got my visa and then picked up my bag....it was there...phew, the first moment of truth passed. I walked out and hoped that the rest of night would go as smoothly. There were a lot of people  standing inside the terminal holding placards with names on them. At first I didn't see my name and I thought, 'Uh-oh'. But then I noticed that there were more waiting outside and there was one holding a placard with my name on it...phew...second moment of truth.

 The first thing I noticed when I stepped outside was the heat. The second thing was the bugs. The heat was welcome. The bugs...not so much.  I was introduced to my driver and off we went. James from IVHQ called the guy's mobile and asked to speak to me, I guess to reassure me that the guy was legit and was going to take me to the hotel. James said that he would come to see me in the morning.  So far so good.

The drive from the airport to the hotel took about 30 mins and was an interesting and, as it turns out, fitting introduction to traffic and driving in Uganda. No lanes to speak of and even if there were I'm not sure anyone would take notice. Driving on the other side of the road to pass on a hill or on a bend? Why not? Speed limit? What speed limit? People walking along side and even on the road itself - which is a main highway - motorbikes darting in and out of traffic.

But the place was so alive! There was activity everywhere - music blaring out of clubs as we passed, people out and about everywhere you looked. Women cooking in big pots right by the side of the road.

We got to the hotel and  I staggered into my room so tired and ready for bed. I had no Ugandan shillings and no small American bills so I ended up giving the guy a $20 US tip. His face lit up like he'd just won the lottery.

The room was small, but clean. It had a shower, which I desparately needed, but decided would have to wait until morning. I threw my stuff down, got undressed, climbed under the mosquito net and into bed for what I thought would be a good night's sleep. But Mother Nature had other plans.

It took a while for me to fall asleep, but when I'd finally managed it I was woken by the sound of a torrential downpour and the loudest thunder I have ever heard in my life! I've been in some thunder storms in my time, but nothing like this. One crack actually made me jump like a bomb had gone off in the room. I love thunder storms, but this startled me so much that I couldn't really fall back to sleep for quite a while.  I tossed and turned for a while, fading in and out of sleep until a rooster finally woke me for good. I didn't know it at the time, but this sort of established the template for what my nights in Africa would be like....at least so far.

March 4th, 2012 Kampala, Uganda


I had breakfast in the hotel which was pretty good actually. An omelette with onions in it and some bread. Coffee was a jar of Nescafe and hot water in a pink thermos, but that's ok, it was welcome. I needed the caffeine as I was pretty much running on adrenaline by this point. I'd been so tired already before I even left Canada - not having slept much that last week - so I was seriously sleep deprived.

I sat out in the gardens for a while as I didn't want to sit in my cramped little room by myself all day. I didn't know how safe the neighbourhood was so I didn't want to wander off either - not until I'd checked it out with James first. So I sat there with my little journal and just enjoyed the sunshine and the smells. This place smells like Ireland, at least what Ireland, and more specifically Belfast, used to smell like when we were there as kids. My sister and my cousin will know what I mean by that. That mixture of earth and burning coal and wood. I found myself taking great comfort in the familiarity of that.

James and Joyce came to the hotel to get me and take me to change some money. It was good to get out for drive and to stretch my legs a bit. Later they introduced me to another of the volunteers and took us to dinner in the local 'mall' which is popular with the westerners who live in the area - it turns out that we were in a suburb of Kampala where several international universities are located so there are a lot of westerners who teach and live in the area.

I spent the rest of the evening in the hotel hanging out with the other volunteers, taking advantage of the free wifi in the hotel and trying to get geared up for our orientation the next day. I had hoped to catch up on my lost sleep from the night before, but that was not to be. This night it wasn't the rain, but a strange cocktail of barking dogs, roosters with no sense of time and the high pitched whine of the mosquito that buzzed around my head all night - thankfully on the other side of the net. Second night in Africa, second night getting very little sleep - definitely a pattern developing here.

March 5th Kampala, Uganda


We had our orientation with James and Joyce at the hotel. We were told that contrary to what was in the IVHQ brochure, we would not be staying with a host family, but would be staying in a 'guest/volunteer house'. "Ok", I thought...no biggee.

It turned out that 3 of us were going to the same place and the other 3 volunteers were going to an orphanage about 6 hours outside of Kampala in Fort Portal - close to the border with the Congo.
We hopped in James' truck and off we went. He had to stop to buy supplies (paint, brushes, rollers) along the way so we got to see more of the outskirts of Kampala. It was a very quiet ride....we were all just soaking it in. The tin shacks, the falling down shantys passing for shops and homes. People everywhere....just everywhere. On the roads, in the alleys, in cars, on motorbikes, on foot - just teeming with humanity everywhere you looked.

The drive seemed to take for ever. The 'roads' here, and I use that term loosely, are really something. We're in the suburbs of the capital and largest city in the country and there's no pavement to be seen anywhere. The roads are dirt, very narrow and filled with potholes big enough to swallow a hippo. You have to cross on to the other side of the road just to avoid some of them. You could make a fortune here fixing broken suspensions, shock absorbers etc...

We passed through what appeared to be a collection of shantys and tin huts and just as we got to the other side James told us that that was Wakiso, the closest 'town' to where we would be staying. That was a town?

We drove along the road for a little while longer until finally James turned up a laneway and we saw a sign 'Wakiso Children's School of Hope'.

As I said, we were told that we wouldn't be staying with a host family but rather at a guest house. So I envisioned a place with other volunteers from other programs/placements where we would live and from where we would go to and from our placement every day and night. It quickly became apparent that we would be living onsite at the orphanage itself - right in the thick of it. I have to admit that sort of threw me a bit. I hadn't mentally prepared myself for that.

We pulled into the gates of the orphanage, drove past the school and down to where the dorms are for both the kids and, as it turned out, the volunteers as well.

I thought that I knew what to expect. I thought that I was prepared. I wasn't. Maybe I was prepared intellectually, but not emotionally. I knew the kids were orphans. I knew that they had nothing and lived in extreme poverty in startling conditions and I knew that they would swarm us and and want to meet the new Mzungus (white people). I knew all this because I had read about it, seen it in magazines and on TV and the internet.  I knew all this before I came and yet I was totally unprepared for stepping out of the truck and being confronted with the reality of it. Not a picture, not footage on TV, but here..in the flesh right in front of me.

Unprepared for the visceral reaction I would have - the assault on the senses - the sounds, the smell, the touch of the seemingly hundreds of hands reaching out to touch us, hold our hands, hug us. Just get close to us however they can.

I felt like I'd been hit in the chest with a rubber bullet - it took the breath right out of me.

I've heard war veterans  say that even the best movies (e.g. Saving Private Ryan) come pretty close to capturing the sights and sounds of combat, but that they can't capture the smell. And there's something about that missing element that makes all the difference. Now I know what they mean. I have to admit that that's what struck me the most and what I took notice of most of all those first moments.

The kids just swarmed around us the second our feet hit the ground. "What's  your name? What's your name?" from a hundred different directions all at once. 'What country are you from?" We'd say our names and that we're from Canada. They'd repeat both our names and our country back to us and reach out to touch us again. Over and over and over again. It seems like a million times this was played out over the course of those first few hours.

The boys were really forward and swarmed around while the girls were a bit more reserved. Some at first offered no more than a tentative smile. When we smiled back they reached out to touch us.

Most of the kids have no shoes and are wearing clothes which are dirty and torn - some shirts and shorts are barely whole enough to stay on them.

But they all have big smiles and warm welcoming eyes.

We were greeted warmly by the volunteers already here - the grizzled veterans of the place. It was like that scene in Platoon when Charlie Sheen first arrives - all green and wide eyed, just in from the 'world' - and he meets the guys who've been 'in country' for a while.

They took us around and showed us the dorms where the kids live. The rooms are crammed, dark and dank - the beds practically on top of each other. There are more kids sleeping in some dorms than there are beds. The younger ones have to double up. Sometimes they wet the bed and its just left to dry. The smell was overwhelming.

It was all too much. I couldn't breathe. I had to sneak away behind one of the buildings for a few moments to gather myself. I seriously questioned whether or not I could do this. Did I miscalculate? Overestimate the strength I have?

We had arrived in time for lunch, but I couldn't eat. I felt like I could barely function.

'This is going to be so hard', I thought.  Much harder than I thought. It's one thing to come here in the morning and leave at night but it's quite another to be totally immersed in this 24/7.

We were shown our rooms which are basic, but very clean. There's no electricity (wasn't counting on that) and running water only during daytime as the pump is solar powered.

We mingled a bit more with the other volunteers and learned a bit more about the place and some of the kids.

There are 3 programs running here: teaching, orphange and renovation/construction. But because all the volunteers live here, the lines get blurred and everyone just pitches in wherever needed.

Soon it was time for dinner. I had regained some of my appetite, but was still feeling a little shaky. As we sat eating on our porch I noticed 2 geckos on the wall right above my head. I was most definitely not in Kansas any more.

I went to bed still wondering whether or not I truly had the stomach for this and if I could see out the entire 2 months here in Uganda and 6 months in Africa.

I was thinking about the kids. About how they had nothing. And about how we flit into their lives for a few weeks here and there and then we go back to our nice, cushy and comfortable lives. And they stay here ready to welcome the next crop of Mzungus.

I was thinking about about how unfair it is - that some people have so much while others have so little. And it's all mostly an accident of birth. Just as I was feeling really down, I heard singing. It was the kids in the chapel behind our dorm.  They have nothing, they live in squalor, and yet they were singing with such joy in the hearts.

I stood watching and listening from my window for a while and then climbed back into bed. I cried until I fell asleep.