Kara drove us north of Busingiro (our first trip north) and Karongo in her Land Rover Discovery to visit three schools selected for Roots and Shoots on Tuesday. That’s the name of Dr. Jane’s international conservation education program, one we are helping to launch in Uganda. It seems at times to be in competition with the Disney sponsored program but in true African fashion, no donation is turned away. R&S is a self-initiated and self-directed program and our job is to help the teachers get if off the ground. It focuses on projects that will benefit wildlife, the environment and/or the community. All but one school is right on the road and the other is accessible only by foot or motorbike. Kara nearly mashed the LR trying to negotiate a muddy section and I ended up walking half a mile to the school.
Amnon reported in today with malaria. I hope the chlorquine works as quickly for him as it did with Vincent and Passy. Almost everyone we know has had it except us. We take our pills every week and always sleep under bed nets. Five hundred Ugandans die each day from malaria and we don’t want to be another victim.
Vincent and Passy painted the classroom floor alone and what a difference it makes. Everyone’s attitude has improved since NFA came through with some back pay for the guys. While Connie did laundry I built shelves for the storeroom then took my bike north to the scene of Kara’s run-in with a hidden stump, searching in vain for pieces of her bumper. Off-road driving is not her forte.
We were awakened around 2AM by frantic drumming and chanting from the nearby village. We surmised, correctly it turns out, that it was a funeral but both of us had fleeting visions of an attack by panga wielding locals. The villagers refrain from working until the funeral is finished, hence the moonlight wake.
I scrubbed the red dirt from my boots and set them in the sun to dry where they attracted a flock of yellow butterflies, some species of sulfurs, setting up what may be the photo of the Ugandan portion of the trip. It would have been a great time to have digital.
