Blogs from Kampala, Central Region, Uganda, Africa - page 20

Can you have religion without hate? The church, here in Uganda, has taken another big step towards increasing the amount of hate in the world. There is a witch hunt going on now for gay people. That's right - in a country where people die daily of HIV, malnutrition and malaria, people are rising up to combat the horrible evil of homosexuality. This country can't rise up as a unified population to fight corruption, which affects them on a daily basis and keeps them from getting badly needed services, and it can't train teachers. However, it can mobilize people in an instant to hunt down gay people, who are having no effect whatsoever on their lives. Maybe if there were more trained teachers in this country, you wouldn't get idiotic responses like this to a newspaper ... read more

Okay, so I still have about 5 weeks remaining in my fellowship here in Uganda, but I don’t think the title would have sounded good if it was something to the effect of ‘11 down, 6 to go.’ Am I right? Well, it has been an extraordinarily long time since I have provided an update. My last update had something to do with my time in Jinja on vacation. Since then, I have been back to Jinja, met with people at major international health organizations, and…well…work. Having 3 projects really is quite difficult. I think that I do have enough time to tend to each one of them with good attention, but maybe I haven’t quite done that. I have had the opportunity to visit people at the World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control ... read more

For those of you who have been waiting patiently for more Simmy...... read more

Made it in one piece back to Kampala and I've attached myself to a computer in an attempt to answer weeks of unanswered emails and sort things for the next part of the trip. I'm so excited about this fast internet and I think I'm going to have a very early night! Got a bit of a nightmare packing situation, I've got to get rid of stuff else it won't all fit in for the next part of the trip. Although what amused me, when I was packing I gave some of my clothes to the guys to give to their sisters etc, and I was about to throw out a battered pair of broken flipflops I brought here for 1500UGX which is about 40p, the guys were horrified at the waste and insisted that I ... read more

As I was writing this, there was music going on in the background. Every so often they have a group come and play drums and do some dancing. Its kind of cool. If I ever get bored or need a break, I can always just take a peak outside. The group is actually pretty amazing. Many of them have HIV/AIDS, but they help so much to embody the mission and objectives that TASO wants to get across not only to those people who are living with HIV/AIDS but also to the rest of the world that you can live positively with HIV/AIDS. As most of you may know, getting HIV and then progressing to AIDS was almost certainly a death sentence before the advent of antiretroviral medicine. But not through that alone do they intend to ... read more