Being Helpful: Uganda and Zanzibar

Muriel and I are starting our 4th week here in Africa, which is stunning for both of us. Certainly one of the most positive responses we have seen from any post on this blog, here in Africa or otherwise, has been the one Mu wrote about being helpful on this continent where there is such pressing need for help. We have been keeping our eyes and ears peeled for good organizations to recommend and have two to share below.

The sad reality of aid in Africa is quite messy, with many people and orgs taking advantage of the big hearts and the wallets of Westerners to carve out deadweight loss that goes right into their pockets and not direct to the recipient org. In the below cases, we have strong reason to believe that most/all of the money, support and labor that these orgs receive make their way towards their core mission.

Name: Lake Bunyoni Community Orphanage

What is it: Orphanage in Uganda

Website: http://www.lakebunyonyi.org/ and http://www.facebook.com/lakebunyonyi




Right up front, I need to note that this is not an organization that we actually visited or seen. Rather, the Lake Bunyoni Community Orphanage is the designated receipt of Oasis' (our overland tour company) support and has been pre-screened as a result. For example, any material that is deemed surplus along the journey by travelers (such as pillows and blanketsO will be brought back north to Uganda and donated to this organization. I am sure that we will be throwing in some stuff when we get to Cape Town in a little more than a month.

We necessarily trust the choices and decisions made in this regard by people working here much more than any impression we get in an afternoon or day. We have seen firsthand that our overland tour company has a strong ethic of utilizing local tour operators, encourages travelers to get into the communities where we visit and, in general, has a quite progressive and helpful bent.

The Mission

Our community started to help children, widows and widowers who have been bereaved by HIV and AIDS in the local area. In many cases children are able to live with extended family (Aunts, Uncles, etc) but that family may not be in a position to help with school fees for the child, and in many cases the extended family is situated far from the school requiring the child to walk many hours each day. In those cases we are proud to be able to provide help to those children with school fees, day care and lunch times. We usually have around 10-12 children requiring a permanent home with us, and on any given day over 150 children requiring lunch and other types of support.

It is our great wish to be self sufficient and many local families have joined our community so we can share land for growing our food and share all the many jobs which make life in a community so much easier compared to living alone. For example we have community jobs like cooking, cleaning, building, collecting water and so forth.

How you can help

- Donating: http://www.lakebunyonyi.org/donations/

We are doing well by growing our own food and are thankful for the natural resources of Lake Bunyonyi. We are also able to do a lot of building with locally made materials, i.e. mud bricks and trees! But we do also need to spend money on things like roofing for the new school, and clothes and teaching materials etc.

If you are able to make a donation you can keep tabs on what your money is doing by joining our facebook group where we will post pictures of our projects and our developments...If you would like to make a donation for a specific purchase then of course you can specify that, otherwise cash donations are pooled for the community and the community council (who has a new treasurer each year) will decide how best to allocate funds.

- Volunteering: One commentator on the previous post mentioned their interest in a good place to have a 'volunteer vacation', whereby they would combine tourism and volunteering. My understanding is that a few people have already done this at the Lake Bunyoni Orphanage and had very nice experiences. Here is the link for setting up a volunteer experience: http://www.lakebunyonyi.org/volunteer/, this would be a very a good situation as all of the energies and monies from contributing go directly to this project, which has been growing steadily but patiently. (Also from previous travels, Mu says that Uganda is a stunning country from its capital, Kampala, to its lowland mountain gorillas).

 

Name: Mnarani Natural Aquarium

What is it: Turtle Sanctuary in Ngunwi, Zanzibar

Website: http://www.nungwinaturalaquarium.com/




For those interested in environmental/conservation causes, Mu and i had the chance to see the Mnarari Natural Aquairum in person, as it is located at the northwest tip of Zanzibar. We walked down to the aquarium thinking we would swim with turtles, like others in the group had done the day before. Luckily, we stumbled across Mnarani, a community based natural aquarium, instead of the commercial outfit where swimming was allowed. We learned that Mnarani does not allow swimming because human contact can make the turtles sick. We had to get by with feeding these large, car tire sized turtles endless seaweed, which they can apparently eat up to a hundred pounds of a day. In the main sea water fed pool, the aquarium had about 20 very large green turtles that had been rescued from fisherman. In smaller concrete pools, they also had loggerhead and sawtooth turtles. These turtles will live and rehabilitate at the aquarium until Feb 20th, when there is a large ceremony to set them back to the ocean, far from land.

We were very impressed with the aquarium, especially upon hearing that it started not from the state/local government environment agencies, but rather by local community. They wanted to set up a system to protect these majestic turtles, which can be over a hundred years old. It is far from common to find a conservation program aimed at protecting a vulnerable species that originates from a local, impoverished community.

- Summary of Aquairum, in their own words;

The main target of this project is to improve and increases the diversity of marine turtles which are now is in extinction in the World. The project is going to make regular follow up and supervision of those areas around coastal area of Nungwi such as Kwamwana wa mwana, Sazani, Kikadini, Jomba, Moyuni, Kendwa and Mnemba. The purposes of these to find turtle’s eggs, young turtles and even adult turtles which have been captured by fisherman. Meanwhile, it is going to clean the beaches which surround the conservation area.

How you can help

The aquarium does not have a donation page on their website, but they do have a program aimed towards volunteers. This would be a cool way to experience the paradise of Zanzibar and do some good. I wish that we had done a half day or something while there.

- Volunteering: http://www.nungwinaturalaquarium.com/voluntieer_application.html