Day 4 - On the road...

I mentioned that we went for a celebratory drink with the whole team last night.  David arranged things nicely and we had a great opportunity to interact on a casual basis instead of in a formal setting.  One interesting is that Ugandan families are usually large by Canadian standards with most having up to 8 children.  There was an interesting discussion about the responsibility to have children as its the children who will contribute to the future of the family and the community.  Education is very important and their older children are mostly in post secondary education. 

Today we travel to our various field locations.  I’m going to a town called Lira with a population of about 30,000. This is one of the larger communities in the county of Lira.  Before we left Isaac wanted to stop and see his uncle who had been in a car accident in Lira but was transferred to Kampala for surgery.  That brought up the opportunity to talk about medical insurance.  Very few have any and those who do generally get it from their employer.  As an example UCA provides medical for its employees but only for the employee and not family members.  For everything else the family pays the costs so when there are medical issues like Isaac’s uncle the family comes together and pays for the treatment.  This is often a significant hardship.  His uncle is out of the hospital and staying with a relative so I got the chance to see a typical Ugandan home.

Well, it’s been a long day of traveling as we didn’t get into Lira until after 9 and it was raining hard for the last 1 ½ hours and the driving was difficult.  Off to bed for me and I’ll see what tomorrow holds. It should be interesting as it’s a statutory holiday (a Muslim celebration for the harvest – I think it must be like our Thanksgiving).