Uganda

Aug. 6, 2009

Boarded the plane in Johannesburg yesterday afternoon, about 32 hours after leaving Halifax, and found myself in the aisle seat next to a stout couple. BUT – plenty of empty seats on the plane - and as soon as the seat belt sign went off I zipped back and snagged an EMPTY ROW OF 3. Bliss! Sat in the window with my computer bag beside me, then laid across the seats and snoozed a while before the descent into Entebbe.

Arrived on the tarmac just before dark, and my bags both arrived! (but with a broken clasp on one). Customs man let me get my letter from FAOC out, but then never even glanced over it. The guy who was meeting me failed to show on time, but the Forex booth was open, so I changed $20US into 38,000 Uganda shillings, and by that time Walter had arrived.

To Green Valley hotel. Old colonial house style, power off, but after a goodish while they got a generator running. I was able to check my email, then ate a bowl of mushroom soup, as they claimed to have no veg and no fruit (except papaya – not my favourite), and I wasn’t up for meat and chips. Frank, the owner is away, and according to Ludo, another guest, the place goes “down” without him.

Nice, though, with a cool verandah to sit on, a quiet location and a small but thickly treed yard. Claire called to make sure I got in and I broke the news about the semen – still in Halifax. I chatted quite a while with Ludo, who works for MSF, just returned from the DRC. Then retired to my large room, with fan and screened windows. Stripped the thick plush blanket off the bed and slept 12 hrs. like a baby.

Sat. the 8th - slept in late, but still got an omelet for breakfast (perfectly plain, since I failed to ask for anything in it). Then got a “special hire” into Kampala, which left about noon. The driver was Silas, a student at Mkerere U., and younger brother of Frank. Stopped first at Stanbic for money (the max being 350,000, a bit less than $200). The drive is only about 40 km.,, but the traffic coming into Kampala so bad, that it took nearly 2 hr., and at the end we were sitting in jams for some time. Discussed many things with Silas, including Ugandan music – he gave me a list of names to look for, but said he’d talk to his DJ friend for some music to take home.

Met Claire (Dr. Claire Card, the leader of the vwb Uganda project), her son and husband, and Simon, a Brit whose field is GIS (geographic information systems), at the guest housing at Mkerere – nice apt., where we paused for a cold drink and a spoonful of yogurt before mashing all the baggage into the vwb vehicle. In we hopped – Claire driving, Simon in front, me and 12 yr.old Ryan in the back.

Off on what turned out to be a 7 hr. (280 km.) trip to Mbarara. Slow exiting the city (shades of Limbe), but then a fairly green and rolling African landscape for many miles. Seemed actually a little less littered and slightly more prosperous than the Malawian highwayscape. Narrow road with no shoulders and eroded edges, plenty of big overloaded trucks. Papyrus swamp for a stretch, tall, tall grass with large tufts on top. Trading centres with bright pink buildings interrupting the brown. Dark caught us still well out, but finally rolled into Mbarara after 9, where we found the rooms Claire thought reserved, weren’t. She called Hilda, the FAOC program manager, who walked over and took us up the road to a slightly more upscale place that accommodated us. Big rooms with posh furnishings and TV, but no fans, and the shower with no stall – just sprays all over the bathroom. Found out subsequently the latter are de rigeur here (unless very high end).

Hilda is a slender and very pretty young woman who speaks excellent English – she has a university degree in social work, and is the main woman at FAOC, the Foundation for AIDS Orphaned Children. We all went for an African-style buffet (meat, potatoes, beans with cabbage, chapati).

Monday, August 10 – first day in the field.

We started off at the main office for FAOC – the Foundation for AIDS Orphaned Children, where Claire reviewed records while Hilda showed me around and described the organization. FAOC began in the late 1980’s, with Italian funding which was originally used to pay school fees for children. Subsequently, universal primary education came to Uganda, and the organization’s focus shifted to other types of support. FAOC works in 9 parishes in Mbarara district and generally begins with existing women’s groups, many of them formed to pool resources to pay for funerals (“Let’s Bury Ourselves” groups). Core funding nowadays comes from the McKnight foundation, a US and UK based NGO. Much of the focus is on HIVandAIDS education and facilitation of VCT – voluntary testing and counseling.

Hilda lives at the office, as does a housekeeper and one of her numerous children, Anthony. Anthony is 9, but looks about 4; he suffered a broken leg when very young, which subsequently developed osteomyelitis – bone infection. Unable to walk, he also failed to attend school or even be well fed. In the last year, one of the vwb sponsored interns took the initiative to have the boy brought into Mbarara town and to a clinic to receive treatment. He is now running (with a bone fixation apparatus in place) and receiving ongoing treatment – he attached himself to Ryan and also loved sitting in the vwb vehicle!

Shelves of books and records, two desks and walls covered with education posters fill out the front room. “Stop sexual exploitation of children”, “True manhood means protecting yourself from HIV”, a Farm Africa poster on dairy goats. The office suffers from the usual challenges faced in Africa: the large sign in front has been taken down because the Mbarara town council wanted an exorbitant fee to allow it; a craft stall in the yard remains unfinished for the same reason. The electric power to the office has been cut off because the line serviced 3 households, one of which has failed to pay their bill. Computers have therefore been moved to another site, and the excel spreadsheet listing all the FAOC goats was not immediately available.

Buyinza Boaz, the Executive Director of FAOC stopped in briefly, but was on his way to the burial of his father. Funerals in Uganda, like most in Africa, take place at home, and are large family and community events that go on for some days, entail much ceremony and expense, and take precedence over other planned activities.

The government livestock farm (NARO – National Agricultural Research ) is just up the road, and handily, produces all the liquid N in the country, stores vaccine for the project in their fridge, and provides some other services. We stopped in and spoke to Betty, the technician who runs fecal checks at our request, and arranged to pick up vaccine early the next day.

Then dressed in our best and jumped in the SUV with Hilda, the housekeeper, and an elderly lady who also requested a ride to the funeral – 7 in the little Suzuki. All roads out to the parishes lead first to the wild west town of Kaberere, a bustling trading centre where big lorries load up matoke – the fibrous bananas that, cooked, form the commonest staple of the Ugandan diet. From there we passed over many kilometers of bumpy, dusty roads up into the hills, to deliver gumboots to the last 2 paravets to receive them. Mbarara is the heart of the Ankole kingdom, with a pastoralist heritage, and the dry, dry hills are severely denuded from deforestation, overgrazing, and the recent drought. Short grass gives way to bare rock in many places on the hillsides. Lower down the slopes and valleys are planted everywhere with bananas, with some coffee and cassava interplanted. Houses were mud brick or wattle and daub, covered with plaster and roofed with metal – not much thatch seen in this area.

With the windows open to receive the breeze, our dressy clothes were streaked with brown by the time we met the smiling young women who are the contact farmers/paravets for the area. These farmers are chosen by their group to receive some extra training (from vwb volunteers), and are set up with basic vet supplies so as to be able to respond to requests for simple veterinary care. Gumboots worn without socks in the heat seem less than comfortable to us, but the paravets prize them, to save their shoes in the rainy season, and also as marks of their status. For their services in checking animals and administering treatments, they should receive a small call fee and enough markup on drugs to enable replacement of supplies – though some farmers pay in goods if short of cash. Sadly, one pair of boots turned out to be two lefts – presumably another paravet is in possession of two rights.

Finally arriving back at Boaz’s mother’s house, we joined the large crowd gathered for the service. Our coming attracted attention, and chairs were found and passed back for us. Several family members in turn stood and spoke by the lavishly decorated coffin. Our presence was mentioned – in English – at one point, and we were requested to stand and wave at the crowd. Men and a few women started paying visits to a family member receiving donations and noting down the names in a book.

A pastor eventually led a prayer and a song, and the coffin was lifted and carried away with the immediate family following. Various of the FAOC farmers greeted Claire with smiles and hugs as the rest of us dispersed, but before we reached the car, we were drawn aside to where a meal was being served to the guests of honour. Mashed matoke, pochu (maize porridge), rice, beans, goat meat, and bottles of water were handed out, and we sat on a wooden bench and ate with our fingers after the obligatory rinsing of hands in water poured from a plastic jug.

Tuesday we struggled through a very long day visiting all the goat farmers (13) in a certain parish – quite widely spread, it meant hours of driving on very dusty, bumpy roads, piling out and into raised goat houses, to boost vaccs (the main enterprise), also check all the goats for mucous membrane colour, deworm a few where it appeared necessary, take a few fecals, treat one respiratory disease, and so on. Attempted to tag a new dairy-type buck; unfortunately the tagger seemed not to work and after 3 attempts to pierce the poor guy’s ear, we had to give up. Looked at forage gardens. Most of the goats are not dairy goats. We were accompanied by Hilda, also a paravet/”supertrainer” (one of two paravets chosen for advanced training) named Ibrahim, and the paravet/contact farmer for that parish, Miriah, which meant 7 in the SUV. In the afternoon we stopped for a big meal at Miriah’s, as her family had prepared a feast we could not refuse, which at least provided a break in the hottest part of the day. The usual hot dishes, including a delicious cabbage mixture, and also sliced fruits and avocado. Back around 6:30 after unloading and cleaning gear at the office - Claire still had to run up the road to drop the vaccine back at NARO for cold storage.

The gang went for supper together, but I declined and got dropped at the Lake View hotel, so I could work on my computer and eat a salad.

Wednesday, August12

Out early, with the aim of visiting all 9 parishes to tag, deworm and vaccinate the most recently distributed dairy goats. We stooped at Coopers in Mbarara to borrow a tagger, as the vwb one was failing to properly secure the tags, and were allowed to take it without a deposit, the result of the good working relationship between the agent and FAOC/vwb people. Our first stop in the countryside was in Kasaana parish, at the holding of Ceceilia, an elderly grandmother now living alone in her house beside the school. Previously she was looking after several grandchildren, but these have returned to their mothers. Cecilia has a number of goats that had been put out to graze, but the one dairy goat was present waiting for our visit – a healthy-looking doe probably about 8 months of age. She wondered if she should take the goat to the buck, and the doe did look a reasonable size, but needed some time to acclimate to her new environment. Asked for her record book, the lady first claimed not to have one, then to be unable to differentiate it from her other books. Subsequently she did produce it, but no information had been recorded – the latest batch of goats seem somehow to have been handed out without records or preventive health treatments.

The goat was tagged with the FAOC tag, drenched with dewormer, and injected with clostridial vaccine, and the information recorded. The schoolchildren were all out in the yard, having just received their report cards for the semester’s end, and we had a large audience until a bigger boy herded them away with a stick! Then Claire asked to see the forage grass Cecilia had planted. Hilda explained that she said she had just come from the field, she had a headache, and the grass was too far away to take us there. Apparently, though, she had given the same answer when the goat was delivered to her, “and as she is old”, said Hilda “so of course we respected that.”

All the women are supposed to plant some napier grass as forage before they receive their goats, and we weren’t quite satisfied with that answer. “We’ll go ourselves” says Claire. “She can just tell us where”. No, was the reply; it’s too far and you won’t be able to tell which is mine. We persisted, however, and after a moment Cecilia acquiesced, and set off a great clip up the steep hill, with several boys in tow.

Up we all climbed – through a small grassy plot, then into the matoke, where the litter of leaves and stem on the ground (put down to preserve moisture and soil quality) made the walking slippery and a bit awkward. Fatigue and headache nonetheless, Cecilia strode out in front, with the rest of our party straggling behind, sweaty and out of breath. We came after a bit to a drainage ditch – moister than the surrounding soil - green and brushy below, with a respectable stand of napier grass clumps – some of them a bit overmature looking. The napier will grow to over head height, but is most nutritious and productive if cut down at 1 to 1 ½ meters height.

“How can she bring the grass from this distance?” I wondered. Her grandchildren come and cut the grass and deliver it before and after school, she said. Claire said that we (FAOC staff or vwb volunteers) would help her plant some close to the house, and discussed the optimal stage to cut. The napier is easily multiplied by planting offshoots, and with the rains expected soon, the best time to plant is close at hand.

Our next stop was in Kikokwa parish at Director’s mother’s place, where we attended the funeral two days before. The lady has been keeping one of the original breeding bucks, as well as a newly purchased younger buck. Both appeared in good condition, but the older buck had had a long period of ill-health, and the decision had been made back in February to castrate him and sell him for meat once recovered – prices being higher for castrated males.

The burdizzo castrator works bloodlessly by crushing the spermatic cord, but one testicle had failed to atrophy, so Dr. Card injected local anaesthetic and repeated the operation on that side. Plenty of young men were around, but some initial reluctance to hold the buck was expressed, before one came forward – breeding age bucks being quite sticky and smelly!

The younger buck, a handsome fellow, was tagged and treated. The plan was to move him to another parish to replace a buck just tested positive for bucellosis. The back of the Suzuki was well lined with banana leaves (large and broad), a few handfuls of grass put in, and the buck loaded. He was surprisingly calm about the whole operation, and munched contentedly as we bumped along to the farm of Safina, one of the trained paravet farmers. We did not go in here, just off-loaded the buck, and Safina and Janet, another FAOC farmer, greeted us at the roadside. We all stood around munching crackers, groundnuts (peanuts) and avocado for lunch, just beside a number of large matoke bunches lined up for pickup and transport to market.