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The Toro Kingdom

After spending the morning in Mityana and the USMC health center we drove further east, to Fort Portal in the Toro Kingdom. The people in this part of Uganda revere a hereditary monarchy. The current king is only twelve years old.

We travelled to Bukuku, a rural setting several miles outside Fort Portal, in the foothills of the mountains, to see a program training youths to deliver peer-to-peer education on reproductive health issues.

After the welcome song shown above, the young people introduced themselves and we reciprocated. The next hour and a half was a dialog in which we heard about their concerns, including the fact that condoms were not available as they had been in the past.

I was particularly impressed by the young man in the corner of the room. He's the one wearing a shirt and tie (the tie's not visible in the photo) and sportcoat. He is looking over the right shoulder of the man with a red t-shirt. When this young man got up to speak he leaned forward slightly, put his hands on the back of the chair in front of him, and spoke slowly, in rich, measured tones that would have impressed any jury in any courtroom in the world. His presence made me realize that, in Bukuku and all the other remote, poor places in the world that are like Bukuku, nature will hand out the same distribution of genes, and of talent, as she does anywhere else. So there are young men and women in the Bukuku's of the world who, in other circumstances, would be much better educated and have many more opportunities. But if you are poor and born in Bukuku, and you are talented and you get a chance to speak about condoms to a visiting delegation, then that is what you do, that is where you show the talent that you have. I hope he becomes a leader in his community and that he is able to make a difference.

So poverty creates suffering , but it also creates waste, the waste of unknown talent such as the young man in the corner of the room, in his second-hand suitcoat that was too big, and his tie that he'd tied carefully, out of respect for the visitors from America.

Later that afternoon we visited another health and youth education center. These children are watching a puppet show telling how a woman is attracted to a man and has to persuade him, successfully, to practice safe sex.

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