Hello everyone, sorry for the delay in our updates. We are a walk and a 25 min. bodaboda (motorcycle) ride from the nearest connection. You can expect our next post around next Sunday, on our day off.
The school and dorm where we are studying is located in the Rakai district of southern Uganda, near a small town named Ssanje and not far from the border with Tanzania. Most of our fellow students are Ugandan and many have given personal testimonials describing the impact that climate change and petroleum scarcity is having on the region. Though we are presently in the ‘dry season’, rain has been frequent and has caused severe flooding in some areas. As well, the price of manioc (cassava), a staple food, has quadrupled in the country recently due in part to a fuel shortage. Our course instructor, Rosemary Morrow, has travelled here from Malawi and Cameroon and reports of food scarcity due to fuel shortages in those countries as well.
It is clear that less wealthy countries such as these are suffering from the effects of a changing climate and overdependence on oil earlier and in more pressing ways than we. It is also evident that it is our highly consumptive lifestyles that contributes most to these problems and that probably the best way that we can help remedy the situation is to live more simply and consume less ourselves.
