Kangulumira

I love getting out of Kampala when I can, in a very similar fashion to how I love getting out of Melbourne to hit the countryside for a break.
Kangulumira is a village that is 45 minutes north west of Jinja (where the mouth of the Nile River is, and also Uganda's second largest population centre.)
This first picture is a discreet hip-snap looking at maybe 100 kids milling around a stage. The stage is a publicity thing for MTN, one of the telecom providers in the country. This is the main street. I like the villages because the streets aren't so overcrowded and narrow.

We went to visit a lady called Ali, who works for Peace Cor in Uganda. They seem to be a reasonable organisation. She is trained in chemical engineering, but doesn't plan to go back to it anytime soon. She is working as an educator in all the local schools, about health and other topics. This picture is taken from her back doorstep, she just has a simple little place. In the background, you can just see the little naked boy playing, classic Uganda!! Little nudie's everywhere. Fair enough when they only have one set of decent clothes, keep 'em clean as long as possible. It's also classic that he is lucky to be 2 yrs old and is playing almost completely unsupervised.

So I took some snaps of the local kids I was playing and interacting with while there. This first pic is of Titus building a little house for chickens, similar to the ones in the above photo. He was using a very sharp machete about 6 inches from his bare feet. It was fun watching him build, because he was quite skillful. He originally comes from Mbale, so he knew Luguso, which I knew one greeting from Maz. But he also speaks Luganda and English. Talented 13 yr old! The other kids are his brother and two other neighbors.

The next snap is of some kids who live right next to this guy I got to know briefly. His name is Jimmy and he lives in a tiny little place and goes to school in Kangulumira. His parents are still back in the village with the rest of the kids, and his oldest brother is trying to earn money in Kampala to be able to get to university, which is a hard target.


And Marvin is my little mate. We didn't do so much talking but he seemed to like hanging around with me. Probably because I'm a white skinned anomaly, but I like to think there was also a deep bond of mateship forming!! There is so much potential for ministry to children here, they often have absolutely nothing better to do than roll a tire around or play with a stick. So plenty of room to build friendships, play football and teach them the love of Christ.


Finally, Kangulumira is one of the largest pineapple growing areas in Uganda, and they export to Kenya and Tanzania, so I thought I should include a shot of some pineapples in their natural habitat. :)

I came on Friday, left early on Sunday morning for Mbale via Jinja. The Friday night was the heaviest rain I've ever seen!!