Saturday, January 20, 2007


Notre Dame's President Fr. John Jenkins was in Uganda for a week to initiate Notre Dame's role in the UN Millenium Development village project. Notre Dame will sponsor a village just west of Kampala. The Millenium Development Initiative was started by Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs. You may have heard of his bestselling book, "The End of Poverty." For more on Fr. Jenkins' visit to Uganda see president.nd.edu.



The boy chasing the tire seems to be a national pastime for young children in Uganda. Everywhere you look you see children chasing/rolling tires down the street.

The children of Uganda always seem to be happy and always have a smile on their face. They seem not to know of their plight in life and are thankful for what they have.




Photos of some villagers from Bugembe taking goods to and from the markets.

Below a boy driving his cow around the village and a brave monkey in Kampala that walked into the bar at the hostel we were staying at.


The first two photos in this set are of Lake Victoria which is a gigantic lake that Bugembe Village sits on. The last three are the River Nile.

Wednesday, January 17, 2007




These photos are of Moreau House, the residence of the Holy Cross Community. The house while old and in somewhat of a state of disrepair is an absolute mansion compared to the surrounding residences in the Bugembe village. It seems in Uganda, and especially in the rural areas, that the two most lucrative jobs are either priest or politician as both guarantee meals and a roof over one's head everyday.

The small block house is the "guest house" where Shawn and I stayed while in Bugembe. We had our share of nightly insect visitors such as large cockroaches, other unknown insects and lizards crawling the walls.

The last picture in this set is the house cat. I wasn't a cat fan before this trip...this cat only reinforced that notion for me. (It really does have two different colored eyes)

The following set of photos are from Bugembe. Bugembe acts as one of many trading posts which can be found along major highways in all directions.



More photos from Kampala.



The first two pictures were taken from the top of the Sheraton hotel. These show a nice panoramic view of Central Kampala which is the most modern area of the city and consequently is the most affluent area. As with most developing urban areas, the inner city represents the center of wealth and the out-lying areas are increasinly impovershed.















The last two photos in this set show the business of everyday life in the city. Traffic is largely unregulated and people mill about on the streets.

The following photos were taking on my recent trip to Uganda. I spent half my time in the capitol city, Kampala, which is a city of about 2 million people. The rest of my time in Uganda was spent in the small rural village of Bugembe outside of Jinja town about 5o miles east of Kampala. Jinja Town sits at the source of the River Nile. While in Kampala, Shawn and I stayed in various hostels and while in Bugembe we stayed with the Holy Cross Commumity in their residence.