The Long Road to Ntungamo

So lately we have been planning our final week in Africa. Duane will be staying behind in Narok, Kenya to conduct the final HIV seminar. Saturday we hope to do a short safari in the Maasai Mara, which is a national park with plenty of wild beasts of the field and of the air. The Maasai people are probably what you picture when you think of African tribes. Sunday afternoon Beth and I will make the 2-3 hour drive ~60 mile drive to Nairobi. We will stay the night somewhere and catch a 0700 bus to Kampala, Uganda. This trip is approx. 450 miles and is said to take anywhere from 12-22 hours! Traveling is so unpredictable in Africa. We may have an uneventful trip with only a hot, uncomfortable ride lasting 12 hours. Or we may have to change buses two times, get held up while a herd of cattle mosey their way across the road, turn around because the dirt road washed out, or get robbed by bandits, which could last 22 hours. All things we have either experienced or read about people experiencing on trips like this. I am also very curious about the border crossing from Kenya to Uganda and getting our Visas there.

Once in Kampala we will stay at a hostel that we have been to before (we may see a flushing toilet!) for a night and get up early again to catch a bus to Ntungamo. This trip is something like 200 miles and should take "6 hours". Once we get to Ntungamo we can settle in and relax for the night. We will then get up early to catch a ride to Mbarara where we will meet Compassion staff. They will take us the rest of the way to the village where Naturinda Emmanuel lives. We get to tour their child development center and then visit with Emmanuel and his family for about 4 hours. We have already been to a child development center (essentially a school run by Compassion for the neediest children who can then be sponsored) and met many wonderful children in the program, but meeting the little boy that we are actually paying for to go to school and get a full meal every day and receive Christian teaching who otherwise would not be able to have any of that, will be incredible.

We will then head back to Ntungamo, and spend the following day visiting with our friends there. The next morning we get up early and do the trip back to Kenya in reverse. Hopefully we will get to do some shopping in the big Kampala markets. When we get back to Nairobi we have to find Duane, spend the night somewhere and get up early to go to the airport and fly home, via Nigeria.

...its best that we just stay positive about the potential for issues in that week.

Clifty Falls State Park

Josh, Andrew and I went to Clifty Falls State Park last weekend. It is really a great park, a real winner for Indiana. A bunch of waterfalls, and a long trail that is literally just the creek bed. We had to cross over it numerous times. I am not sure there is a better park in Indiana, but I'll try to find one. The trail we were going to start on was closed due to landslide, but the park redeemed itself.

Flight Itinerary

So it definitely feels real now. The plane tickets have been purchased and boy, is it going to be rough. Upside: including connections, we will be touching ground in 6 different African countries. I am a map nerd so that excites me a great deal. Downside: 21 flying hours from Indy to Zambia, 18.5 flying hours from Kenya to Indy.

Here is the scoop:

Getting there
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Friday, May 16th
Indy to Atlanta - 1:34
Atlanta to Dakar, Senegal - 8:55 (landing at 4:40am Senegal time)

Saturday, May 17th
Dakar, Senegal to Johannesburg, South Africa - 8:35
Johannesburg to Lusaka, Zambia - 2:00
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Zambia to Kenya
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Saturday, May 31st
Lusaka to Johannesburg - 2:10
Johannesburg to Nairobi, Kenya - 4:00
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Getting home
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Sunday, June 22nd
Nairobi to Lagos, Nigeria - 5:00
Lagos to Atlanta - 11:55
Atlanta to Indy - 1:40
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*Collapse*

That is only 5 weeks, not the 6 we were originally planning. We were trying to plan a trip to Ethiopia for the final week, but it didn't work out. That means I don't have to go back to work a day after we get back. Wooh frequent flyer miles!

Counting down...

Zimbabwe

I hope this isn't a trend that we will see repeatedly in African countries over the next few years. Or maybe I do? Zimbabwe just had a presidential election. Like Kenya, the opposition party claimed that they had defeated the long time leader. They still have not released the official results after days of waiting. Some speculate that the president is intending to rig the outcome (as he supposedly did last election). In Kenya, they had weeks of tribal violence until the two leaders decided to form a unified government to stop the violence. Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe, 84, has been in power for 28 years. In that time, Zimbabwe's economy and life expectancy have become some of the worst in the world. The inflation rate is at 100,000 percent! Life expectancy is 39.5 years.

This is bad because, if more situations turn out like Kenya's, there will be violence. In these cases, it seems like the leader on the way out does not want to give up command so easily, and can often refuse to step down. In Kenya, around 1,000 people were killed due to violence related to riots and clashes between tribes. So if Kenya can erupt that quickly into killing, what can happen to other countries where tensions are even greater?

On the other hand, if Mugabe steps down peacefully, the new leader (likely Morgan Tsvangirai) will have a chance to turn things around (like Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf in Liberia). I think the US is willing to help out, as this NPR article suggests. Zimbabwe can become a partner with the US and other UN nations again after they had originally avoided dealing with Mugabe when he became increasingly more oppressive to the people. He is currently not allowed to travel to the US or many European countries.

The tragedy is that in so many of these countries, a leader gains power through a military takeover of some unpopular leader, and has widespread support of the people in the beginning. But as the years go by, the leaders rig elections, give more of their supporters "elected" positions of influence and find more ways to oppress the citizens. The country's economy fails, the people suffer horribly and this leader becomes worse than the former.

Frustrating...