Filipino vols south of the border

An outdoor barbershop, Kabale

Hermie is a math teacher at the Kabale Core Primary Teacher's College. She lives in-campus in a newly-built staff house.  She

Hermie's house

cooks using charcoal inside her house because the outdoor kitchen is too cold.  I told her that she could die of suffocation and not malaria because the smoke fumigates her house.  Hermie's family in Cagayan de Oro was a victim of Sendong; their house and wealth all swept away.

with Eve in Kisoro

African men are easily attracted to her not only because of her well-chiseled face and expressive eyes, but also because of her long, straight, jet-black hair (very unusual here).  Kabale is 6 hours away from Kampala, and 2 hours to Rwanda.

Lake Bunyonyi at Hermie's

We haven't met before but when she came to pick me up at the bus station in Kigali, there was no mistaken that it was her, and it was
me.  That is how I first met Angel, another VSO volunteer from the

Angel and Eve in Rwanda

Philippines.  Angel teaches biology at the Kavumu College of Education, a good 2 hours from Kigali.  She also lives in-campus.  One of the schools that she visits is on top of a mountain and she reaches the place as a passenger in a commuter push bike.  Many a times she had fallen off the bike, but she still maintains

Angel at "home"

her poise in her high-heeled shoes.  She tells me that she is thinking of extending her stay for another year because she loves her job and loves the place.  I won't be surprised because she has also found a small Filipino community in Rwanda. 

Lake Kivu at Angel's

Well, it looks like these ladies are enjoying their volunteer life in Africa. 

Forgettable coffee-making

Coffee-making wares

Back home we pay over 1USD for Starbucks coffee that the company claims mostly comes from Arabica beans and fair trade Africa.  Here in

Dried beans

Uganda, a coffee-producing town is Sipi whose mountainous elevation is home to Arabica.  It is ironical because most people

Pounding the beans

here and in most of Uganda are not coffee-drinkers; they prefer tea with sugar, and you probably

Re-husking

know the colonial bonds.  The common way of serving their premium coffee

Roasting sans ventilation

(called local coffee) is instant and without cream and sugar.  It tasted awful and the coffee is not soluble;  the powder is either floating or sedimentary.   Well, coffee to them is meant to be

Grinding machine

exported as beans to be enjoyed by the western world  that has equipped themselves with a grinding machine, press, drip, brewer, an espresso/cappuccino

Ready for instant coffee

maker, to extract the wonderful taste and aroma.  Absent those gadgets, I have to contend with Nescafe or those Ugandan beans exported to and processed in neighboring African countries and  imported by Uganda.  They are expensive and limp.

The awful coffee experience

I still prefer the brewed Batangas coffee at home.  Good to sip or pour over rice with corned beef and dried fish.  Back home.

Jacent in Nakivale

Jacent on her motorbike

Nakivale is a camp where over 63,000 refugees from Rwanda, Ethiopia, Somalia, DR Congo, and Burundi are given resettlement facilities by Uganda and the UN High Commission for Refugees.

Boots and umbrella

Her picture-book bed

Jacent, together with two other Filipinos work on a livelihood project there.  There are other organizations with their volunteers and staff working in the camp.  Jacent was in my batch of volunteers who left Manila for Uganda.  Her first job was teacher-educator under the Special Needs Education program, then later on transferred to the resettlement project.  Her current location is in Isinguro District which is about 6 hours by bus from Kampala.
She is quite fashionable and sticks to her beauty regiment despite the mosquitoes and fleece squatting in her accommodations. 

The camp residents

I am quite amazed at how she moves about in her motorbike.  I caught her on camera crossing a shallow stream, feet off the pedals 

Common kitchen with vols

with the motorbike running at a slow speed.  She could be one of the Hell's Angels doing a stunt. 

Inspecting the project

She even wanted to maul a meat vendor who charged her the price for 5 kilos, but gave her meat weighing 5 pounds.


She is fun to be with and has that infectious laughter.  I know that she cries once in a while, but most of the time, she is just bubbly.

Dodging streams and potholes

From the American people

Back to the digital divide

One of the good things that came my way in Gulu was that our new office building is/was internet-enabled, both wireless and wired.  Every room has a cable port and on each floor, a router.  As an appreciation for my good fortune, I decided to adopt the place and give it some of my time and attention.  I pop-in there to help the administrator lay-out the place, craft public notices and simple operational and security guidelines, show how to carefully dust the tabletops, monitors, and cpus, and hide those unsightly cables.  I was inspired to transfer my experience and knowledge in running

Made in the Philippines

a computer center especially when the back-up power supply was
installed for the site.  I hanged a wall calendar from the Philippines and  even gave the unique Philippine-made feather dusters.  Whenever I have visitors in our
office, I will always show them the lab

The ladies are gone

with the 20 sets of computers and computer tables all engraved with the phrase USAID - From the American people. Today, less than 2 years since its inauguration, the facility is

Manila wares

under-utilized because its services had been scaled down due to overhead costs.  Few ports are now active and the wireless local area network just serves one floor.  The wall calendars and the dusters are still there as a memory of what it used to be.  

I wonder what the American people would say now.

It was good while it lasted

A day with the President

The President's platform, far beyond

Gulu was the host of Uganda's national celebration of Labor Day.  President Museveni was the Chief Guest.  He travelled almost 300 kilometers from Kampala with his entourage of 4 black SUVs, some of which were mounted with rifles.

Parade in review

The main spectacle was the parade in review, but the President inspected the ranks aboard an open vehicle; much unlike other heads of state who walk.  The military corps occupied the grounds for the whole duration so the public was very far from the stage and could hardly see what was going on.  An unusual thing I noticed

The elderly

was that the speakers face the President and not the public.  The President had a special stage and he spoke facing the people but he was sort of enclosed and recessed in that distant seeming bullet-proof platform.  The parade was impressive because of the sheer number of labor organizations that participated.  I was

People with Disability

mighty proud of Gulu's presence.  I asked some white-collared workers why they were not in the celebration and the common reply was it is always a hassle to attend functions where the President is present.  It is probably true.  Spectators are not allowed to bring cameras so the photos here were taken with my mobile phone. 
People were at Kaunda grounds from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. with neither food nor water.

A boy lying in the foreground.  Lifeless?

I wished President Museveni had the time to mingle with his people and shake their hands.  I would have wanted to shake his hand, too.

The beautiful sky of Gulu on 1 May 2012