Kiva Updates From Uganda

In case you're not tuned in to the political situation of Uganda, they just had an election a few days ago. There was a lot of angst about it since it was the first free election in 20-some years.

That combined with the terrible drought that's been going on for the past two years and the intermittent (at best) electricity situation had us pretty worried about our people in East Africa. About three weeks ago we received the following email from our Ugandan partner Moses:

Hello Matt,
This is to inform you that our work is not going to be possible for very long time because of luck of electric power.
The Goverment has announced that due to the low water level in the lake, the power generation has gone very low. For this reason power will be switched off at 6am to 7pm every day.
This has now made all offices to buy their own generators.
For Kiva office, we are in dilema.
Moses.

Since most of our current businesses are operating in Uganda, Matt decided to send Moses money to buy a new generator. That way Kiva users would still be able to recieve updates as to the progress of their businesses.

Then, just before the election we got this letter from Moses:

Hi Matt,
This is to inform you that we have not bought the generator yet because of the total confusion here in Uganda due to the forth coming presidential elections.
There is rampant killings during the campaigns and threteaning violence.
This has caused almost all the business communities to run across to Kenya to wait for us to go through the elections.
Most of all the shops are closed and the prices of commodities have been hiked very much.
We are voting on Thursday this week. We hope to buy the generator after the elections.
Thanks,
Moses.

That was pretty scary. We were all worried for Moses and all of the people who stood to be affected by a situation they had no control over. However, the election seems to have come and gone without devastating upheaval, and we were happy to read Moses' latest email which came last night:

Hello Matt,
This is some few hints of the recent presidential election in Uganda.
President Yower Museveni was declared the winner with 59.96% and the runner up from the FDC party got 39 percent.
Generally right now the FDC party is going to court for they complaint of mass rigging and intimidation of their voters.
Number of FDC voters were put in jail before the election and some were killed by gunmen who are believed to be the supporters of President Yower Museven.
Before thinking of taking the court action, the FDC big shots wanted the re counting of the ballot pappers but the Goverment has refused to allow the re count to be done.
Two days before the election day, soldiers were deployed all over Uganda even deep in the villages to frustrate the campaigns of the opposition.
Generally, the opposition parties feel that the election wasen't free and fair.
The elected president will be sworn in as the new elected president of the Republic Of Uganda in May 2006.
This will all happen if the court does not nulify the election results.
For me as a person, Im very safe and I have not been affected in any way both during the time of campaign and even after the election.
I have received the most recent report that all our beneficiaries of Kiva were not affected in any way. Im rejoicing together with my family.
Im now working very hard for Kiva because we want to catch up with the time that was wasted during the fear of the campaign violence.
I want to thank all of you who prayed for us and all the people of Uganda.
Matt, this is the brief content that I can give you concerning our presidential election.
Every blessings,
Moses.

We are all very relieved to hear that Moses, his family, and all of our Kiva people are safe. It is quite incredible to realize that the headlines from far off places are more than just stories. They affect people's lives in very direct ways, and that fact tends to get lost when you're hearing about it on CNN or reading newspapers. Every day I find that Kiva opens my eyes in some way, and I'm glad that today my eye-opener came in the form of good news.

Posted by flow Frazao on March 1, 2006 at 08:02 PM in Africa, Kiva/VEF | Permalink