Happy Birthday Uganda!!

Today is Uganda's birthday. And it deserves a party.

To honor the country I love, today we will bleed Ugandan pride. We can do this by learning more about the country while it blows out its 51 candles. Mom, you're older than a country. She's gonna kill me.

For those of you who need to buy a map, Uganda is located here in the world.

So let's get started.

The flag was born when the country was, on October 9th, 1962. When it finally shed its ties from the UK. Black for the people. Yellow for the sun. Red stands for brotherhood. The bird you mistook for the roadrunner is actually the National symbol, a crested crane. Which is also the name of the Women's National Football Team whom we met last year in Rubanda.

Uganda is overflowing with natural resources and valuable exports. Coffee, tea and fish make up $674.9 million of their annual exports alone.The tea is outstanding. I miss waking up to a cup of steaming African tea with goat milk. HEY. I saw you furrow your brow when I said goat milk. Yeah, you. Don't knock it 'til you try it.

Uganda is blessed with fertile soils, regular rainfall, and sizable mineral deposits of copper and cobalt. They also have largely untapped reserves of both crude oil and natural gas. Oil was found in the Lake Albert area totaling an estimated 95,000,000 m3 barrels of crude. Talk about potential.

Each patch is someone else's garden. Man-made streams run through as watering systems. If you think farming is tough work, try doing it on a steep mountain side. Or being the guy who owns the farm all the way at the bottom.

Uganda's economy has continued to grow rapidly since the decade of wars have ceased. Investment in infrastructure, production, exports, reduced inflation, and improved domestic security has helped Uganda grow. In 2006 Uganda paid back in full their debt relief initiatives worth $146.3 billion.

Uganda Telecom is the nation's technology and communication network that serves 10 million subscribers. That's right. Texting and Facebook and Twitter and Wikipedia.

Buying a phone card (taken from Google search)

Uganda has four large railway lines, a comprehensive city bus service, taxi services, and four airports. The largest Airport is in Entebbe (en-teb-bay) where I land.
 

Entebbe Airport (Google image search)

The literacy rate in Uganda stands at 74.6%. With 37.7% of the population living on less than $1.25 a day, this is amazing! Children here read good. (If you didn't catch that, your bad).


Uganda is among the rarest HIV success stories! Read that again! Uganda is among the rarest HIV success stories! In the 1980s more than 30% had HIV, this fell to 6.4% by 2008. Uganda had the most effective national response to AIDS of any African country.

Uganda has a population of 35 million. 49% of the population is under 14 years old and only 4.4% is over 54 years old. The Bakiga (ba-chee-ga) people, my friends in Kishanje, make up 6.9% of the population.

The national language is English, making it easy for me to travel there :) The most widely spoken local language is Luganda. Multiple other languages can be spoken throughout including Swahili, even Indian and Arab languages. In Kishanje, the people I visit speak Rukiga (Ru-chee-ga). Try some of these tongue twisters.

Agandi Hello, how are you.

Nigye (nee-jay) I am fine.

Nebanyeta Tiffanie I am called Tiffanie.

Ninduga America I am from America.

Nibakwetoha? What is your name?

Webare Thank you

Shaka Shaka Smile!

Kare kare Bye bye

 Oreiregye Good morning

Osibiregye Good afternoon

84% of the population are Christians. The most common churches are Catholic and Anglican, with a growing rise in Evangelical, Pentecostal and Presbyterian Churches.

JAM's church in Kishanje

Kampala, the capital and largest city, has a population of  1,659,600. It is home to Uganda's largest university, Makerere (the R's here pronounced lazily almost like L's) University. There are many upscale hotels throughout the city as well as hospitals, malls, and restaurants. Traffic in the city is outrageous. Worse than driving LA's seven lane expressway at 5:00pm on the Friday Labor Day weekend begins. Ugandans can fit 20 to a car, a car that never slows down for pedestrians. Cows in the road with vehicles is normal. No speed limits? Normal too.

Downtown Kampala (Google image search)

Tourist attractions are plenty. The largest national park in Uganda is Murchison Falls National Park. Here the Nile Rive plunges over a 40 meter drop. That's gotta be one of the most exciting white-water rafting opportunities in the world.

Nile River at Murchison Falls (Google image search)

Queen Elizabeth National Park is where I did my two safaris and is one of the most well-known parks. 

Bwindi Impenetrable Forest is a sanctuary for the world famous mountain gorillas. Walk amongst them in their natural habitat. Stare in awe at their opposable thumbs.

Taken from Park's website

Football (our soccer) is the national sport. But Ugandans are also skilled nationally in cricket, rally racing, hockey, and baseball.

National Cricket Team (Google image search)

Food. Mmmmmm. There are many meals served throughout the city and in upper-class restaurants. They have English, Arab, Asian and especially Indian influences. The most common meal throughout the country is the main dish of Matoke (Ma-toe-kay) with stew, beans, rice and goat. Matoke is a green banana that is boiled and mashed. Irish potatoes especially, and yams and cassava are also common. Chapati (cha-pa-tee) is my favorite. It is an Asian flatbread commonly eaten with beef, strew and rice.

Matoke cooked with yam and potato (Google)

Matoke banana uncooked (taken from Google image search)

Chapati mmmmmmmm (Google image search)

Music in Uganda is very diverse as well. Musical influences pour in from all over the world. Michael Jackson is alive in Uganda. So is Tupac. There are other global pop artists singing from radios in the city. Like Britney Spears. "Heeeeet meee babayyyy one more tiiiimmme." It's great.

There is also traditional song and dance. Which is so much more awesome. Learning Rukiga dance was the greatest workout of my life. 

Okay. Wow, that was a lot of information. I hope your brains are exploding because that would be a good thing. For however absurdly large our access to information is, Americans are completely ignorant to a lot of global cultures. Uganda's is spectacular. If you are enticed, I'd love for you to get on that plane with me! We can bungy jump over the Nile. And dance with lots and lots and lots of children. 

Think about it before you book that spring break in Cancun. You know what I mean... that trip you've already done ten times that always leads to bad decisions? Let me plan your next vacation.