Streets bursting at the seams, traffic creating a chaos of cars unbound by lanes, motorcycles and bikes swerving in and out between cars, filling any gaps and space that exist on the roads, cars spewing thick clouds of black smoke, police in their berets whistling loudly with arms waving hastily as if it is going to make things move any quicker, large hordes of Matouke (plantain) traveling on bikes and trucks, grassy nooks with ladies selling bags of groundnuts and the most random trinkets, Matatu (small buses) with the coach screaming locations loudly from the window, Maraboo storks awkwardly flying (looks like a mix between a giant vulture, a pelican and a flamingo) perching themselves on the most fragile branches, people dressed in the most professional business attire, zebra crossings (cross walks) with people dodging traffic like we’re part of the frogger game, security guards everywhere you look sporting a rifle, shotgun or AK47, lovely red dust everywhere, pot holes and speed bumps making any transport journey a case for minor whiplash… hahah. this is Kampala. A place I have truly come to love. A place where the chaos seems to bring me to a deeper state of peace, where with all the hustle, bustle and busyness, one can detach and observe. It is exciting, enthralling and forever a surprise around each corner. I wish I could better articulate and describe this place. This place of ultimate beauty and excitement.
On a completely random note, I may be going up to visit projects next week for a week or so. I will be traveling up to Nebbi and Arua (check out a map on google image). It’s my hope to become acquainted with the field officers, further understand the implementation side and where things can be improved/where new opportunities exist, get a deeper view of the beauty of the countryside and the hearts of the people, do an ad hoc assessment of the impact of tractor use on soil compaction, nutrient leaching, sub soil fungal networks, biodiversity, erosion, etc through interviews with non project farmers (currently the project wants to pilot tractor use to upscale production, but an environmental assessment has not been done and thus this is on hold. I really would like to know the impacts and be able to advise whether tractor use would be viable both economically and environmentally for the given context). Should be an exciting trip and will be really nice to get outside the city and see the Uganda I have been told so highly about.
Will keep you updated on things.
Love ya lots
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment