“By dignity, I mean the high place attained only when the heart and mind are lifted, equally at once, by the creative union of perception and grace” – James Thurber

“When all this started, I asked myself, ‘Am I going to withdraw from the world, like most people do, or am I going to live?’ I decided I am going to live-or at least try to live-the way I want, with dignity, with courage, with humor, with composure.” – Mitch Album

“I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, human liberty as the source of national action, the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas” – JFK

We arrived in Jinja, Uganda, for our final volunteer project of the trip. Jinja sits on the north western part of Lake Victoria and it is the birth place of the Nile…the longest river in the world. We came here to work with Kyabirwa Primary School which is the most remote rural primary school outside of Jinja.

After a grueling 17 hour bus ride from Arusha, Tanzania, we arrived in Jinja. As you know by know, I despise long bus rides so I decided to pop two sleeping pills. Well it didn’t knock me out and I remained in some weird realm between sleep and consciousness. I felt like I was hallucinating and Jamie said I wasn’t making any sense. It didn’t help that the guy next to me was consistently trying initiate a conversation with me the entire way. I exchanged contact information with him to try and finalize his attempts at a conversation. Apparently, according to his emails since, we had a pretty interesting conversation. It must have been because I can’t recall.

Anyway, we arrived at Jinja and negotiated a ride to the rural village of Kyabirwa. Driving through the country we were immediately impressed by lush green countryside. We arrived at the school and met our volunteer contact, host and project manager Moses Owino. He directed us to his house nearby and we left to get settled in. We arrived at Moses’s house, it was the main house with an adjacent concrete structure for housing volunteers. Moses’s house was one of the nicer houses as many of the other houses in the village were still mud huts. We then met a fellow volunteer staying at Moses’s from England, named Rachel, and the majority of Moses’s family. And what a family Moses has!! He and his lovely wife, Florence, have 5 children of their own and take care of 4 additional children along with Moses’s sister Agnus. It was the like living with the Brady bunch on a giant farm. Later we were also joined by another volunteer from Ireland name Aine (pronounced Onya). To accompany the family was a host of chickens, a 3 legged pig and its three babies, a few goats, and a couple cows. We were surrounded by banana trees, papaya trees, 6 foot tall corn and scores of potato plants. We were also surrounded by giant trees housing an unfamiliar fruit called jackfruit, which was a giant spiked fruit that could easily kill a person if it unluckily fell from its 25 foot perch in the tree (I wonder how many people die from jackfruit every year in Uganda?).

Anyway, I was reminded of my Uncle Rob’s farm in Illinois minus the tropical fruit. Do you remember when I told you that people make the place…not the other way around? Well, Uganda is a prime example of that. These people, often complete strangers, showed me so much genuine, unconditional love that I will always hold a special place in my heart for these people. The very large Owino family welcomed Jamie and I as part of their family and I feel comfortable saying that they are my family in Africa…because I love these people as if they were my part of my family.

The first thing that struck me after a few days was the red dirt. The red dirt is everywhere and it gets consumes your body. You try to fight it but you quickly realize that you are so outnumbered that you succumb and accept it. We were also in malaria country. Which was quickly apparent when on fairly often basis it would be reported that some children in school had contracted malaria. However, Malaria is effectively combated here…they have medication that will cure the illness in a couple days…they even have a local natural plant that is supposed to cure malaria as well. I think our western, naive approach to Malaria is laughable. We come armed with giant bottles of hardcore medication with the instruction of taking these damaging drugs for 10 weeks (as in my case). The malaria medication we take is awful!! I consistently have crazy dreams and it makes you very sensitive to the sun and it messes with your stomach and liver. We do get quite good entertainment by recounting our crazy and weird dreams every morning. Like how I had a dream on how I figured out Robbie Dapper’s wireless code at is house….?! So every morning we would spend 20 minutes applying a first coat of DEET and following with a second coat of sunscreen. By the time I walked out to work, my skin was so sticky that leaves were sticking to my body.

I keep digressing…sorry. Let’s talk about what we did for our volunteer work at the school: We were assigned to the much-needed task of giving the school a face-lift. We were to repaint the entire school and repair dilapidated concrete. The whole process took the better part of 3 weeks. When we completed the work at the school had striking improvement on the exterior.

The primary school consisted of three buildings not bigger than the ‘temps’ often used in American high schools, yet they housed 1,200 children. There were 17 teachers assigned to educate 1,200 of Uganda’s future. The teachers were, for the most part, dedicated and seemingly talented in their field. In particular, I was impressed with Moses. Where most teachers of his tenure in the US just repeat the same lesson plan every year, he nightly write new lesson plans sometimes combining 4 books to comprise a new blitz of education on the young Ugandan children. But no matter how dedicated some of the teachers were there was no way to police all the children…they are severely outnumbered. You see, in Uganda education is a privilege not a right, but it was inspiring to see a majority of these kids thirsty for the chance at knowledge. Most often a class of 100+ in a room, no bigger than a typical classroom in the US housing 20 students, would be quite-as-a-mouse, steadily absorbing the lesson being taught. These kids are holding on to hope and have dreams of being doctors, engineers and pilots. These kids put in a full day’s work at a young age. They typically go to school from 7:30 am until 5pm with one cup of porridge to attempt at filling their stomachs. After school they go to work at home…working in the fields or fetching water from the Nile. The Nile is most often at least a half a mile away from the villager’s houses and these kids would trek 20 liter Jerry cans both ways to supply their home with water for drinking, bathing and cooking. We helped out and let me tell you it is not easy work:

The work is non-stop…just trying to maintain a suitable quality if life. I often felt bad when we were fed first and the family would often have to wait until 11pm or so to finally eat…but that is the custom here…your guests eat first and then the hosts eat next….just another example of love consistently demonstrated by these people. Florence (Moses’s wife) would spend all day cooking to feed all the children and volunteers and each time we ate, the food was made with the freshest ingredients and it always was delicious.

I was very interested with Uganda’s history and its current state and I talked with Moses at great length about it. My interest was sparked from being involved Invisible Children and watching one of my favorite movies of all time….The Last King of Scotland , if you haven’t check out either of those…you need to. Anyway, I remember Invisible Children shedding light on the fact that very young Ugandan children were being kidnapped from their villages and turned into bloodthirsty soldiers by the vicious and brutal terrorist organization the Lord’s Resistance Army. However, I was disturbed to learn that first person to use children as soldiers was Museveni, Uganda’s current and long standing President. However, the LRA were the ones to take the child abduction to whole new brutal level, (wikipedia states, “Many of these children were put on the front lines so the casualty rate for these children have been high. They have often used children to fight because they are easy to replace by raiding schools or villages”). Museveni holds rigged democratic elections in which he always wins and, to the outside world, give the appearance of Uganda being in the state of democracy. But in truth Museveni holds to the principle, “I came by the gun and I will have to leave by the gun”. As Moses described, the country is increasingly getting frustrated with Museveni and he thinks eventual outbreak of another war is imminent. We must pray and fight for these wonderful Ugandan people!!

There is one clear commonality I see in midst of all the history of conflict…these people are fighters. But fighters in a good sense, they are fighters for improvement. And this is what has struck me most and it is the biggest thing I have learned from these people….the struggle for constant improvement. The Japanese have a word for it, Kaizen, which literally means the focus on continual improvement, and it is used everywhere in their personal lives and business. Tony Robbins (ya, ya…I know) refers to it as CANI…Constant And Never-ending Improvement. This, my friends, is exactly what these Ugandan people work for everyday…Constant And Never-ending Improvement. Moses is such a prime example of this. He looks to improve something in that school, in his community…EVERY DAY. He is relentless, if there is a road block in accomplishing his goal…he finds another way around it. Sometimes, the government does not give the school money on time (often a whole term late) and the school is expected to operate and teach 1,200 students on ZERO money. Moses doesn’t accept that…he goes out and raises the money. He has a commitment to improvement, the improvement of his family, his school, his community and his country; and I admire and will emulate this. I think this is the biggest lesson we all can employ in our own lives…continual improvement.

Robbins talks about the Japanese word of Kaizen and explains that, “the Japanese understand that tiny refinements made daily begin to create compounded enhancements at a level that most people would never dream of“.

He continues with: “The only security in life comes from knowing that every single day you are improving yourself in some way, that you are increasing the caliber of who you are and that you are valuable to your company, your friends, and your family. I don’t worry about maintaining the quality of my life because every day I work on improving it.“  I like that!! And Moses lives it. These people have had a few setbacks but they won’t lie down for anything…they have dignity in everything…and I think that is pretty sticking cool.

So what do you say? Are we going to stop worrying about keeping up in the rat race and start focusing on unique improvements in our lives? I hope so. If you don’t know where to start, start by turning off the TV and reading a book about something you are interested in or what to improve on.

I love you guys.

God bless,

Ryan

If you want to get behind Moses and his cause for improvement you can go to the school website: Kyabirwa Primary School Project

I can attest he is a good man and he is doing big things with little resources. This is a local Ugandan run project and I think it is much more important to directly help these types of projects out…before the large international organizations. As with any large bureaucratic organization…a lot falls through the cracks.

There is also an organization called FUND-A-FIELD that is based in California that is building a soccer field for Kyabirwa Primary School…what a gift!!! I was so impressed that they had reached out all the way to a remote village outside of Jinja, Uganda, that I pledged to get involved. They apparently also drew some inspiration from Greg Mortenson. If you don’t know about Greg Mortenson…read his inspiring story about building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan…the book is called Three Cups of Tea. Greg is waging the single most effective anti-terrorism campaign…completely autonomous of the government. Read it! Jamie, Koye and I have all read it.

CHECK OUT SOME OF MY FAVORITE PICTURES (to tie you over until Jamie gets his superior photography up):

Eric, Ryan, Jamie and Me with our hats from Zanzibar:

Eric on a Boda Bodo in Jinja:

The girls helping Jamie clean his shoes and feet from mud:

The Pigs:

Messing around after school:

The Kids:

The Kids watching me clean my hands:

The students swarming Jamie trying to see his pictures:

Jamie, Rachael, Me and Aine – All the volunteers (at our last dinner together):

Moses (on the right)!!!

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