27-30 July

Solomon and Martin brought us back to Kampala after we had a morning meeting with Bwonyo Bosco, the District Educational Administrator for Lira. I met with him last November and felt he was a very good administrator. We had another positive meeting on this morning, and he was happy about the concepts and plans of the Unity Project.
We returned to the Fairway, as it is a reasonably priced hotel. Fortunately, this trip took the expected 5, and not 13, hours of travel!

On Thursday, John had several meetings with people who could potentially help us figure out partial funding. I went with Solomon and Martin to the Curriculum Development Office and picked up the teacher’s curriculum objectives for English, history, biology, and entrepreneurship (the latter I gave to John) to begin looking at ways in which we might integrate the Unity concepts with the curriculum. In the evening, we met Cornelius and Betty from Makerere University for dinner to review how our past week went. They are also interested in learning more when we return.

Friday morning, John and I met with some of his friends in Kampala who took us to my hotel in Entebbe. They also have some contacts and ideas for funding. It was a pleasure to rest in the quiet of the Boma and try to catch up and review our work over the past two weeks and plans from here. John expressed his gratitude for the trip, and we talked about how we would continue once we had a chance to catch our breath and review what we found on this trip. He left just after 8pm for his return flight, and I got an early bedtime, as I leave at 5:15am for South Africa in the morning.


Saturday: Travel to Jo’burg was uneventful, and I arrived at Nelspruit at mid-day for a couple days of r&r before continuing to the educational conference in Maputo. Being so close to South Africa’s famed Kruger Game Park from Maputo, I decided to pay for a mini-vacation of 2 ½ days on safari. The drive to Sabi Sands was lovely. In the beginning, it reminded me so much of New England, with the rolling hills, small mountains, lakes, and trees. There were hectares and hectares of Cyprus trees planted for paper, followed by pines, then banana trees, citrus trees, and occasional palms. Then we came to the bush. En route we saw some impalas and other deer-like animals.

Idube Game Reserve is quite beautiful, and also quite back to basics. Yes, I have hot water! And a beautiful room. But only the briefest internet access, and no radio or tv in my room. It will be refreshing. Tonight I ate with 12 others around the boma. Most are leaving tomorrow afternoon – I hope others replace them! For now, I am dead tired after another full day of travel and look forward to just crashing for a good night’s sleep.