Jim Schroder's Travel

Home
Trips

Select Page

Uganda

Uganda is a country in East-Central Africa. It is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the south by Tanzania.

The southern part of the country includes a substantial portion of Lake Victoria, shared with Kenya and Tanzania. Uganda is in the African Great Lakes region. On September 18, 2019, I departed San Diego to Los Angles to Amsterdam to Kigali, Rwanda arriving 34 hours later in Entebbe, Uganda and Kampala . What a long trip. The official languages are English and Swahili. Beginning in 1894, the area was ruled as a protectorate by the UK, who established administrative law across the territory. Uganda gained independence from the UK on 9 October 1962.

The period since then has been marked by violent conflicts, including an 8-year-long far right military dictatorship led by Idi Amin. Additionally, a lengthy civil war against the Lord's Resistance Army in the Northern Region led by Joseph Kony, has caused hundreds of thousands of casualties.The current president of Uganda is Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, who came to power in January 1986 after a protracted six-year guerrilla war.He has since eliminated the presidential term limits and the presidential age limit; due to the nature of Ugandan politics, this effectively makes him president for life.

Unemployment rates today 2019 are a staggering 40%. Rwanda in comparison is 7%.

Uganda is one of the poorest nations in the world. In 2012, 37.8 percent of the population lived on less than $1.25 a day. Despite making enormous progress in reducing the countrywide poverty incidence from 56 percent of the population in 1992 to 24.5 percent in 2009, poverty remains deep-rooted in the country's rural areas, which are home to 84 percent of Ugandans.

People in rural areas of Uganda depend on farming as the main source of income and 90 per cent of all rural women work in the agricultural sector. In addition to agricultural work, rural women are responsible for the care taking of their families. The average Ugandan woman spends 9 hours a day on domestic tasks, such as preparing food and clothing, fetching water and firewood, and caring for the elderly, the sick as well as orphans. As such, women on average work longer hours than men, between 12 and 18 hours per day, with a mean of 15 hours, as compared to men, who work between 8 and 10 hours a day

To supplement their income, rural women may engage in small-scale entrepreneurial activities such as rearing and selling local breeds of animals. Nonetheless, because of their heavy workload, they have little time for these income-generating activities. The poor cannot support their children at school and in most cases, girls drop out of school to help out in domestic work or to get married.

Other girls engage in sex work. As a result, young women tend to have older and more sexually experienced partners and this puts women at a disproportionate risk of getting affected by HIV, accounting for about 57 per cent of all adults living with HIV in Uganda.

Uganda's population grew from 9.5 million people in 1969 to 34.9 million in 2014. With respect to the last inter-censal period (September 2002), the population increased by 10.6 million people in the past 12 years. Uganda's median age of 15 years is the lowest in the world.

Our first day driving around the city of Kakmpala, the capital of Uganda we first stop at the Pingrims center, where the Namugongo Martyrs Srhine is located.

Namugongo Martyrs Shrine (Catholic Basilica) an active Catholic church today.

On 3 June 1886, 32 young men, pages of the court of King Mwanga II of Buganda, were burned to death at Namugongo for their refusal to renounce Christianity. They were Anglican or Catholic. Annually on 3 June, Christians from Uganda and other parts of the world congregate at Namugongo to commemorate the lives and religious beliefs of the Uganda Martyrs. Crowds have been estimated in hundreds of thousands in some years.

Twenty-two of the Catholic martyrs were canonized by Pope Paul VI on 18 October 1964 and are regarded as saints in the Catholic Church. A basilica has been built at the spot where the majority of them were burned to death

Our local guide explained the history of what we were seeing and its profound affect on the people of Uganda today.

He was wearing the most unique cross I have seen on visits to many churchs around the world.

The most prominent shrine is Namugongo which is located where St. Charles Lwanga and his companions were burned.

The Basilica was built in 1965 and completed in 1968. The interior is massive and in a circular form of seating.

The dome inside the Basilica.

A group of students were visiting the Basilica during our visit on a field trip.

[Show slideshow]

1 2 ... 14 ►

© 2025 Jim Schroder