Being careful

So I know many people are concerned about the attack here during the World Cup game.  The bombings killed at least 74 people in 2 different locations.
They were clearly aimed at Ugandan people, and leaders in El Shaabab, the Sudanese terrorist group had threatened retaliation against Uganda for its peace keeping force that is supporting the current Sudanese government.  Burundi is next. 

The headlines are a bit dramatic from what we can tell.  The mood here is mostly sad.  There is some increased security, but certainly nothing that seems extreme.  As the students from Simmons have joined us, Simmons is quite concerned about all of our safety, as are many of all of our families.  We have been assured by the US Embassy that we are safe in this hotel.  The current agreement between Simmons and Hugo is that we will not go out to other public places, other than the agencies that we are visiting.  Most particularly very near the hotel there is a very nice garden/park area with many nice cafes with different nationality foods.  We are staying put at the hotel.   

In the meantime we have visited a couple of very interesting places.  Yesterday we went to the Foundation for Human Rights Initiative http://fhri.or.ug/ , a Ugandan NGO, that is very active in a number of important areas.  The director, Mr. Livingstone Sewanyana, gave us a wonderfully clear socio-economic-political context for all that we have been seeing.   Much of his focus is on the problems of having a president who, without constitutional term limits, has served for about 24 years. 

Elections have been highly influenced by Museveny's determination to have no parties, and also some rigging.  Corruption is rife.  He contends that there is plenty of money coming into Uganda to address the majority of its economic, social, health, and infrastructure problems, but is skimmed off by corrupt officials.  Corruption is an enormous problem.  There will be elections in February of 2011.  There finally are parties, and it is anticipated that it will be a very tense time here.  We go by the election commission almost every day and it is walled off and heavily gaurded. 

On a much more hopeful note today we visited a school called "Music for Life Primary School" http://africanchildrenschoir.com/home on their new campus on the outskirts (I think) of Entebbe overlooking Lake Victoria.  It is a gorgeous location and by Ugandan standards this is a very plush school. It actually has flush toilets which is very unusual. The children who attend here are orphans of one sort of another, although they almost always have an extended family caretaker (remember that it takes a village to raise a child).  Most of them have lost parents to HIV/AIDS but some have also lost parents to  violence in the northern part Uganda. 

This program provides a fairly rigorous education, but is far better know for the chorale groups that they send around the world.  This year one appeared on American Idol, singing with Josh Groban.  We went to their assembly which was a wonderfully spiritual "devotional" and then we had to sing a song for them.  This was a not so wonderful rendition of "This land is your land".  Pathetic might have been a better characterization. 

We were each assigned us a student to tour us around to the class rooms, the facility, and their dorms.  The dorms, one building for each gender, were arranged with bunk beds in a fairly small room sleeping at least 10 children each.  The beds were neatly made, draped in mosquito netting.  Hard cement, very clean floors.  The children each had a small round plastic sink under their beds.  Their clothes were hanging out to dry on the nearby chain link fence.  Each child has an uniform and one other change of clothes.  That is it.  We ate lunch with the children: posha and beans.  This is sort of like grits with baked beans (not as sweet) poured over them.  It wasn't bad, and had a few vegetables in it.  I could probably eat it once a week, but twice a day would be a bit much. 

The kids are incredibly polite and gracious, but all of them have trauma histories and go home for "vacation" to very rough circumstances.  The headmaster is a Canadian who came for two years 5 years ago.  Most funding comes from the US and Canada, but has dropped off significantly in the past few years. This explains the limited diet, as other diets are just too expensive for 150 kids and the staff. 

This is a tiny taste of what we have been up to, hopefully capturing some flavor of the experience.  We are about to have a debriefing meeting in which we will also learn of any changes of plan for our remaining time in Uganda.  Know that I will not do anything foreseeably stupid.