April 3rd

I'm back! Sorry for my long blog apostasy. So much to catch up on and so little time tonight.

We went on the family trip to the game park. To be honest, I'm not a huge fan. Zoos are way more efficient and a whole lot cheaper. The facilities are all geared toward rich tourists who pay an arm and a leg to take pictures of animals whose photos are already on the internet. My dislike of safari's aside, we had a lot of fun as a family.

First we went for some chimp tracking. Normally you pay lots of money to go through the government, but we just paid some guy who knew about a forest with chimps. Obviously, stealth is vital in chimp tracking, something our family of seven struggled with. The whole time the chimps were howling to warn each other about our location. The rainforest echoed with their calls. Way cool. Finally we got a good look at one of them, staring him/her in the face for something like 8 minutes. Although that probably would have satisfied our family, that wasn't good enough for our tour guide. He said he needed to find 3+ together to call it a day. Realizing that that just wasn't going to happen with all seven of us, him and I set off into the woods, leaving the rest of my family behind. Suddenly we hear "Ahhhh! Get them off of me! Run, run, run." Unmistakably my mom. After "tracking" them, we found them in mud being attacked by ants. That was the end of chimp tracking!

Field and fields of Indian owned sugarcane, filled with lowly Ugandan workers. And in the middle of it all, a processing factory. A powerful testament to the type of exploitation that permeates Uganda. This investment in high tech machinery has undoubtedly paid sizable dividends to the Indian share holder, leaving the local almost exactly where he started, and in many ways, worse off. With nearly every piece of land producing sugarcane, you either leave the land of your ancestors or you submit to the low wages of the company. Where you used to be able to work hard farming what ever you wanted, now you are stuck at a fixed wage doing a work that will probably never change in your life time. Hoping to move up the corporate ladder? Better give up. Unless your daddy has a big name or was Indian, you're probably out of luck. And then managers complain that their workers are being lazy.

The power of money in 3rd world nations amazes me. These people have resources coming out of their ears but can't export any of it. The villager can produce kilo's of bananas more than his family needs, but will always sell them for dirt cheap to people who have the same access to bananas. Then comes the question: If all of my hard work is providing me so little in return, why work? That question pops up again when you realize that Uganda is a country practically living the law of consecration. You have more that other people, you share. The success of this law is held back by selfishness, just as it was in early church history. However, instead of seeing a people unwilling to share, you find a people depending on others to share. By choosing not to work and progress financially, you are selfishly cheating the system.

Uganda has oil but, as rumor has it, will probably end up paying Italian engineering firms a huge share (up to 40%) of their profit to extract it. Why not buy the machinery and train workers themselves? They don't have money. People find out you are funding the construction of some far off oil rig while their kids are dying of malaria and you'll no doubt lose political support (Again we return to unwillingness to delay gratification, a huge problem in Ugandan).

Enough of Uganda's problems, and back to my life. After chimp tracking we went to the park and saw lots of giraffes, gazelles, warthogs, baboons, elephants, water buffalo, water buck, etc. We got stuck behind an elephant that was chilling in the middle of the road. Dad got impatient and tried to sneak up and pass it. The bull turned to face us, flailed his ears and threw up his trunk. We thought we were finished. Anyway, it didn't charge and we got out safely. There was also this massive waterfall where the whole Nile river hurtles through a gap of 20 feet. And that's about all from the trip.

I've connected with a nurse from Utah who will be doing HIV stuff on Thursday. I'm going to help with triage and some testing. I'm going to do the same with another organization next week. SO excited.

Gossip is a huge problem in this area... my next post will have to focus on that one. I need to hit the sack.