Walk to Bethlehem Week 3 October 5 Through October 11 at the End of Week 2, We Had Reached Jinja, Uganda at the Northern Shore of Lake Victoria
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Walk to Bethlehem Week 3 October 5 through October 11 At the end of week 2, we had reached Jinja, Uganda at the northern shore of Lake Victoria. This week we have had 34 participants and we collectively walked 784.4 miles, which is an outstanding number! Plus, we had 332 miles left over from the previous week. Before we talk more about Jinja, let’s get an overview of the country of Uganda. The map below shows Uganda’s boundaries and neighboring countries. Uganda is in east-central Africa. It is about the size of Great Britain and is populated by dozens of ethnic groups. The English language and Christianity help unite these diverse peoples, who come together in the cosmopolitan capital of Kampala. The Swahili language unites the country with its East African neighbors Kenya and Tanzania. “Uganda is a fairytale. You climb up a railway instead of a beanstalk, and at the end there is a wonderful new world,” wrote Sir Winston Churchill, who visited the country during its years under British rule and who called it “the pearl of Africa.” Indeed, Uganda embraces many ecosystems, from the tall volcanic mountains of the eastern and western frontiers to the densely forested swamps of the Albert Nile River and the rainforests of the country’s central plateau. The land is richly fertile, and Ugandan coffee has become both a mainstay of the agricultural economy and a favorite of connoisseurs around the world. Uganda obtained formal independence on October 9, 1962. Its borders, drawn in an artificial and arbitrary manner in the late 19th century, encompassed two essentially different types of societies: the relatively centralized Bantu kingdoms of the south and the more decentralized Nilotic and Sudanic peoples to the north. The country’s sad record of political conflict, coupled with environmental problems and the ravages of a countrywide AIDS epidemic, hindered progress and growth for many years. Yet, even so, at the beginning of the 21st century a popularly elected civilian government ruled Uganda, which had attained political stability, had set an example for tackling the AIDS crisis that threatened to overwhelm the continent, and enjoyed one of the fastest-growing economies in Africa. Uganda has a population of 40,367,000 people. Left, flag of Uganda The tropical climate of Uganda is modified by elevation and, locally, by the presence of the lakes. The major air currents are northeasterly and southwesterly. Because of Uganda’s equatorial location, there is little variation in the sun’s declination at midday, and the length of daylight is nearly always 12 hours. These factors, combined with a fairly constant cloud cover, ensure an equable climate throughout the year. Most parts of Uganda receive adequate precipitation; annual amounts range from less than 20 inches in the northeast to a high of 80 inches in the Sese Islands of Lake Victoria. In the south, two wet seasons (April to May and October to November) are separated by dry periods, although the occasional tropical thunderstorm still occurs. (I hope you brought a raincoat with you!). In the north, a wet season occurs between April and October, followed by a dry season that lasts from November to March. This is the explanation for all the rain we have been encountering on our pilgrimage! Now some of you may be concerned about encountering wildlife during our walk. Lions and leopards are now present mainly in animal preserves and national parks, but they are occasionally seen outside these places. Hippopotamuses and crocodiles inhabit most lakes and rivers, although the latter are not found in Lakes Edward and George. Mountain gorillas, chimpanzees, and small forest elephants appear only in the extreme west. Elephants, buffalo, and the Uganda kob (an antelope) are limited to the west and north, while the black rhinoceros and giraffes are confined to the north. Zebras, topis, elands, and roan antelopes live in both the northeastern and southern grasslands, while other kinds of antelopes (oryx, greater and lesser kudu, and Grant’s gazelle) are found only in the northeastern area. So, we may see some Hippos, crocodiles around the lakes we will be near on our walk. We will be careful not to get too close to their habitats. We may also encounter elephants, buffalo, kob (pictured above), rhinos and giraffes but we will be cautious with them as well. When we arrived in Jinja at the end of week two, we really didn’t explore the first town we entered in Uganda, Jinja. We went to mass on Sunday morning at St. Joseph’s Cathedral Rubaga Parish in Jinja This is the oldest Catholic Church Parish of the Diocese of Jinja, (1901) which contains a place of worship and the seat (also known as the Cathedra) of the Bishop of the Diocese of Jinja The Parish has 5 centers comprising of 24 village churches. They are managed by leaders and catechists in the absence of the Priest. While the outside of the church is traditional looking, the inside was decorated a bit differently. But if you look closely at the picture on the right you can see the essential items of mass are present. Jinja had the second largest economy in Uganda. In the past, factories chose Jinja as their base because of the nearby electric power station at the Owen Falls Dam. Since the early 2000s, the economy of Jinja has picked up steadily. The main economic activities take place in the central business district. A new market for fresh produce was completed during the fourth quarter of 2014. The facility can accommodate up to 4,500 vendors and cost US$13.7 million to construct, with a loan from the African Development Bank from 2011 until 2014. The biggest local employer is the Kakira Sugar Works (KSW), a member of the Madhvani Group of companies. KSW is one of the largest sugar factories in East Africa, employing over 7,500. The factory burns bagasse byproducts from sugar manufacturing to generate 50 megawatts of electricity for internal use and sale to the national grid. Multiple companies have their headquarters or major plants in Jinja or surrounding area, such as the Nile Breweries Limited, MM Integrated Steel Uganda Limited, and Bidco International Oil Refining Company which maintains a palm oil factory in the city. The Qaddafi Barracks, an institution of the Uganda People's Defense Force (UPDF), are in Jinja. They are the location of the Uganda Junior Staff College, one of the about a dozen military schools in Uganda. The area is also the site of the Uganda Senior Command and Staff College, another UPDF institution, located in the Kimaka neighborhood about 3 miles north of Jinja's central business district. Jinja is commonly regarded as "the adventure capital of East Africa" due to the very many activities in town that one could engage in, especially for tourists. Local attractions include white-water rafting the "Source of the Nile", and Bungee Jumping. While a few intrepid members of our group wanted to Bungee Jump at the falls, Your Tour Director was having no part of that activity! Here is a YouTube link if you wish to get another perspective on Jinja. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8cQCB6uYSo We came to Jinja specifically because it is a main source of the Nile River and we began following the Nile, which we will do all the way north to the Mediterranean Sea. When the Nile leaves Lake Victoria it is called the Victoria Nile, flowing some 300 miles. It flows northwest over the Nalubaale and Kiira dams at Owen Falls, through Lake Kyoga, and past Masindi Port and Atura. In its lower course the Victoria Nile is impeded by a series of rapids culminating in the Kabalega (Murchison) Falls )pictured below) on the edge of the Western Rift Valley. At the northern end of Lake Albert it forms a swampy estuary. The Victoria Nile flows through Lake Kyoga to Lake Albert, and then as the "Albert Nile" it continues to the border with South Sudan. 1041 miles from Jinja to Khartoum, Sudan. Lake Albert is drained to the north by the Albert Nile, which is known as the Al- Jabal River, or Mountain Nile, after it enters South Sudan at Nimule. The map at right shows the route of the Nile from Jinja to the Egypt-Sudan border. Now there aren’t a lot of cities or towns along the Nile in Uganda, since 84% of the country is rural, but we met many friendly people as we walked along the river. We met lots of fisher folk and farmers who were happy to give us a place to sleep and to provide us with food and water. From Lake Albert we followed the Nile, now known as the Albert Nile into South Sudan. Our first stop there was at Juba, the capital city of South Sudan (left). Until 1956, Juba was in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, which was jointly administered by the United Kingdom and the Kingdom of Egypt. British hopes to join the southern part of Sudan with Uganda were dashed in 1947 during the Juba Conference, which resulted in an agreement to unify northern and southern Sudan. In 1955, a mutiny of southern soldiers in Torit sparked the First Sudanese Civil War, which did not end until 1972. During the Second Sudanese Civil War, Juba was a strategic location that was the focus of much fighting. In 2005, Juba became the interim seat and the capital of the Autonomous Government of Southern Sudan after the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (before the agreement, Rumbek had been the proposed interim capital).