Best and Worst Experinces in East Africa

Best and Worst Experiences in East Africa

12^th February 2007
In the great tradition of repeating stuff that I have done before, I present my best and worst experiences in East Africa. The West African list can be found here, and the Philippines' list can be found here.

Some of the experiences I have had have been quite humbling and moving. It doesn't seem quite right to describe them as "best" as they were quite upsetting, and it seems equally foolish to describe them as "worst" because I learned so much from them. These experiences get their own special "best and worst" list.

Experiences that make both lists

Kitgum
Kitgum. The place where everybody from aid workers to casual friends to my own government warned me to not go to.

Kitgum. The war zone in the north of Uganda.

Kitgum. The place whose people I have come to love.

I think my good mate Chris described his time in Kitgum as his best and worst experience in Uganda. It's not hard to see what he means.

My first trip to Kitgum was the most intense. Harrowing stories from the Grassroots Uganda ladies, IDP camps and night shelters have a way of getting to you. Throw in an exorcism and you have the complete experience.

Kitgum was, without doubt, both my best and worst experience in East Africa.
Rwanda
While no one can ever fully comprehend the horror of 800,000 people killed in one hundred days, the mass graves, preserved bodies and moving memorials all helped me understand it just a little better.
The Good Shepherd Orphanage
It must be hard for a lot of parents in Africa. Despite your best efforts, your children are hungry, lack an education and seem to be forever suffering from malaria. And then you yourself die, and if you're lucky your children are raised by one of your family members.

If you're no so lucky though, your children either end up on the street or inside an orphanage.

The kids at the Good Shepherd Orphanage are amongst the truly downtrodden of Africa. I can't imagine they hold out a lot of hope for the future. The corrupt administrators of the orphanage do not help the situation.

I remember watching this little girl from afar. She had only been in the orphanage for a couple of days and just look so lost. She spotted me looking at her and a shy little smile spread across her face.

On a positive note though, my mate Meran Chang is doing some good work for the orphans from afar. Check out her blog here, and the orphanage web site here.
The Kibera Slum in Kenya
Lotsa poor people crammed into a small area. One million of them in fact. Hard not to be moved by such a place.

It reminded me a lot of the Buduburum Refugee Camp in Ghana, where I volunteered at for two-and-a-bit months

Top 10 Best Experiences (including the four above)

The whole GrassRootsUganda.com thing
It just felt good to complete a project such as this.

It is still continuing in Africa even though I am not there. That's cool.
Meeting up with Rose
It may seem a bit odd to rate meeting up with just one person so high on my best experiences, but I'm gonna stick with it.

Rose is an exceptional person. Without her, I would of never of gone to Kitgum, never of gotten GrassRootsUganda.com off the ground and never of met the wonderful Pittek ladies.

During my last weeks in Uganda, I moved into Rose's house and helped her prepare her organisation so that it can receive GVN volunteers in the future. This would provide her organisation with some much needed funds and volunteers to help out. A volunteer followed after me and there is already much interest from future volunteers.

It felt good to help Rose in such a way.

I think the complete lack of adult friendships in Ghana made me appreciate the friendship with Rose even more.
Making friends all over the world
Always high on my "best of" lists. The friends I made are too many to list here.
MACRO camps with Hippy and Sporty
While I was somewhat disappointed with the lack of direction and organisation of MACRO (so much so that I eventually left and did my own thing), I thoroughly enjoyed my times with Lee and Ciarra on these camps.
Man Camp
Just plain old fun. The only down side was a complete lack of antelopes for me to kill...
Murchison Falls Safari
Good stuff, though I suspect this is where I caught my malaria, which brings me to my worst experiences....

Top 10 Worst Experiences (including the four above)

Getting Malaria
Ugh. Truly awful.
Public Transport
I turned my safety awareness switch to the off position when I arrived in Uganda. I figured I was spending six months here and if I started stressing about my safety on public transport, the I would be forever freaking out about it.

As I came towards to the end of my stay, I began to dread every ride on a taxi or boda-boda.

I saw so many serious accidents while in Uganda. Overturned buses, taxis with the top sheered off, head on collisions. The list just goes on and on...

The taxis in particular got to me. The drivers maximize their profits by:

Cramming in as many people as they can into their taxis to maximize the money per run.
Drive as fast as they can to maximize they number of runs they can do a day
Keep the taxis in a sorry state of repair. Repairs cost money and will reduce your profit.

Isolation and no community
This is a funny one. During my time developing GrassRootsUganda.com, I spent a lot of time hovering over a computer in some Internet cafe. While I actually quite enjoying applying my mind to something and giving it a much overdue workout, it was a little isolating.

I also spent a lot of time zipping in and out of villages sort out stuff for GrassRootsUganda.com. While it was fun hanging out with the ladies for a little bit, I never really got deeply involved in a community. I like getting involved in communities, so just a little disappointing.

This disappointment in lack of getting involved with a community is probably somehow related to the wonderful community I was involved with in the Philippines.

I did, of course, get involved with the volunteer community, which was great.
Mosquitoes and Ankles
I hate mosquitoes. Even if you put the whole malaria thing to one side, the little gits seemed to be forever attacking my ankles. Evil bastards.
Dirty Feed and Mud
When it rains, Uganda gets very muddy and it started to really bug me just before I left. Tramping through mud to get anyway can get annoying.

One of the weirdest things I noticed about being back in New Zealand was how clean my feet were compared to Uganda.
Squat Toilets and Bucket Showers
They just got to me in the end. I never felt clean after a bucket shower and it was just a pain traipsing down the steps at the guest house to relieve ones bladder in a dirty latrine.

Once I discovered the benefits of empty water bottles, I did not find myself negotiating the steps quite so much...

It is refreshing to note that mental problems do not get a mention here as they did in both Ghana and the Philippines.

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(c) 2005, 2006 and 2007 Malcolm Trevena.
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