Windesheim student Jurriaan Peters (23) is in Uganda for his internship, aiming to help increase food security in rural Uganda. He is reporting to the win’ about his experiences abroad.
It has been already over a month that I’m in Uganda! What a great time it has been. I have learned eating the local food (Maize pocher and beans), I learned to bargain and I drive like a Ugandan by now (Dutch roads will be tricky when I’m back):
I was forced to learn how to kick start a car, drive with not-working gearboxes and experienced that pushing a car to start is extremely normal.
During my work here learning about farming practices in het region, what struck me most was the friendliness of farmers in the district of Bukomansimbi. I loved the gratefulness of farmers, they made us feel like we honoured them by visiting them. After the first day of interviews we came home with two eggplants, two capsicums and a jackfruit who were given to us by farmers.
Jackfruit & eggplant & paprika
We spoke with shops who sell farm supplies, farmers’ organisations and other stakeholders in our research. All of this to gather more knowledge about the current situation here. Next to hard work in the burning sun, we had the opportunity to visit multiple beautiful islands in the weekends.
One weekend we visited lake Bunyoni near the Rwandan border, where we met another project team from Windesheim working on a coffee project in Rwanda, this was a happy relaxing weekend with old Dutch (and German) faces again, weird to see similar faces on another continent.
Lake bunyoni
The weekend after we rented a car to drive from Bukomansimbi to Fort portal (a 6 hours’ drive through a very rural part of Uganda towards the border with Congo). We were promised that the car we hired was in a good state.
It was not…
On our drive to Fort Portal basically everything that could break broke. I almost killed a goat who walked on the highway at night, we got a flat tire, the hydraulic oil of our steering wheel was leaking, the gearbox broke when in Fort Portal (pff, lucky us). After we fixed all of this, we had to repair another tire, and to finish it all off, the battery broke.
Broken tire
After a whole afternoon at the car maintance shop, we drove back on Sunday. In the morning we found out the car battery broke again, so we had to jumpstart our car. After fixing this we started driving, only to have a the car break down again in the middle of nowhere 3 hours later, somehow we got it to start again, only to get stuck in the mud one hour later. Driving here is a challenge.
For now I am realising my time in Uganda is coming to an end already, in three weeks I will have Christmas at home again, I have mixed feeling about leaving here. However in one month my adventure in Hong Kong will start, so that is something else to really look forward to.
Jurriaan Peters is third year student Global project & change management
