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IN THIS ISSUE

• Carol Dilworth sent regular reports from her mission in Africa
• Bruce Galway and Bill McNair comment on items from the last issue
• Betty Audet forwards an example of a senior moment
• Dick Monaghan sends another story about a similar moment
• The editor wonders if those drugs are really necessary
• Bill McNair and Bruce Galway suggest sites

Carol Dilworth recently returned from a trip to

UGANDA

She explains her reasons for the trip: In 1999 a Canadian couple visited eastern Uganda with friends who were building a secondary school there to replace one destroyed by Idi Amin´s troops. One Sunday, the couple attended a nearby Anglican church. After the service, members of the local Youth Group asked them to help construct some buildings. The buildings would be used to make money to renovate the church, which was built in 1925. The couple decided to help. Their family and friends contributed to the funding; the Youth Group provided the labour; and the couple returned to the site every year. By 2006, three buildings, along with new washrooms and latrines, were finished.

During the process, some of the young people working on the construction asked for help to pay their secondary school fees. In 2002 the couple decided to help a few students whose families had little or no source of income. They selected three student, and soon realized that the distance from school and the responsibilities at home were not conducive to studying, so they also financed hostel accommodation. By 2006, up to 45 students were being educated through the fund that the couple established. The students attended secondary schools and colleges, and one student was at university on scholarship.

I began helping a young fellow with his secondary school fees through this project in 2005. In 2008 I was one of several sponsors who accompanied the project´s founders to eastern Uganda, where I met "my" student. He has now finished secondary school, and other sponsors are helping him with the fees and expenses for nursing studies. This year I began helping a young woman who will graduate as a professional chef next year.

In February I returned to Uganda with the project´s founders. One of the project´s university graduates took me to visit local communities to see their efforts to become self sustaining, and to discuss community health issues.

If you wish to help with the school fees and expenses, kindly write a cheque payable to Harcourt Memorial Church, clearly marked "Uganda project", and mail it to the church at 87 Dean Avenue, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1L3. All of the amounts raised are used for student fees and expenses. Tax receipts are issued for donations.

Here are some photos and reports from that trip: click any photo for a larger image.

January 29: A little surprise at the airport last night: our hotel closed for renovations in December, despite all the written confirmations of our bookings for rooms and airport pick-up. One of the parent company´s employees was at the airport so he arranged for a taxi for me to one of their other hotels. The other four arrive tonight and will be met and brought here.

I´m going to change money, pop into a bookstore, drink lots of bottled water, and generally veg today - midnight temperature was 24 and humid. We go to Murchison Falls for two nights - a bit of time being a tourist - and then to Mbale on February 2 to meet with all the students.

Newspaper headline today is that the government is funding Grade 9 students; it seems to be based on a needs (and other?) test; 418,000 students qualified. I have no idea how these numbers compare to Ontario´s.

R. Kelly ("I Believe I Can Fly") also arrived at the airport last night, for a show in Kampala tonight.

Off to start my tan....

February 9: There have been many surprises during the past two weeks.

Overall there have been many more highs than lows. This trip is profoundly different from my first visit, physically and emotionally. I gather from Aljizeera that everyone is snowed in and that my Toyota is a death trap, so I may just stay....

First, the lows. We all took a booster of the germ preventative instead of a full dose because we´d all had the full dose in 2008. It appears that this is no longer enough, because so far three of the five of us have fallen ill. Nothing serious, but unpredictable and very tiring. Also, the internet access seems to work every three or four days in a good week. I´m the lucky one - the others have been using my email address because Yahoo and Rogers are not working for them. That´s it for the downers.

You will see many of the highs via the photos. Fortunately we are pooling our shots because I get so excited at what I´m seeing that I forget to use the camera, or I press the on/off button and don´t notice. You will be amazed (me too) at how close we got to two female lions. One had just killed a baby oribi (singular: oribus?) so she was pretty happy. (The crunching sound was disgusting. I told her to pick on someone her own size.) Nevertheless she stood up twice with her back to us, swinging the kill. I don´t know if that meant "leave me alone" or "you´re dessert." I did manage to get some photos. However, the view of the crocodile that suddenly projected itself into the Nile opposite our (relatively small) boat will have to remain a fond memory.

This was all in the first weekend at Murchison Falls. I have a photo of the place where you turn left to get to the national park. The road that continues north leads to Gulu, where the Lords Resistance Army was based (they raid orphanages to recruit shooters; Idi Amin and Milton Obote were from Gulu), and then onto the Sudan.

Murchison Falls National Park is one of 11 national parks in Uganda. It is ranked as the best one for bird watching (451 species, but the experts are not totally agreed). Queen Elizabeth NP has over 600 species, but Murchison has species unique to the country. Fortunately, I brought my East Africa bird book and binoculars and was able to record 30 species.

We stayed at a lodge in the park. The power was on from 5:00 to 7:00 a.m. and from 7:00 to 10:00 p.m. One of the reasons for the early bedtime was that Cape Buffalos grazed on the grounds overnight so we were to go to our cabins after dinner and stay there. I woke up about 11:00 p.m. and heard their teeth grinding, the same sound as a giraffe chewing leaves. They must have been the small buffalos that we saw by the road the next day because the big ones appear too ungainly to wander among buildings. We did see a big one in the Nile.

On Monday we returned to Kampala and then Tuesday we came to Mbale. That was two days of long rides on sometimes potholed roads, through red dust, and it was so good to get here. There was a group from Wales at the Sunrise Inn, so we lived out of our suitcases until Day 11 of the adventure before we moved into our regular rooms. The Norben students had to come back to get clothes because the hockey bags all stayed in storage until we could unpack properly.

My travel companions who began this work eleven years ago are working so hard, from 9:00 a.m. to sometimes after 7:00 p.m. It clearly energizes them to talk to their beloved flock. Fortunately, the local committee has become more involved in the day-to-day issues and was able to deal with some items before our arrival.

I´ve run out of coins and time so will sign off until another time.

To be continued.

CORRESPONDENCE

Bill McNair writes: In the article you wrote about comedians from earlier years, you forgot a program that came out of Toronto called "The Happy Gang" - another good one to add to your collection. One of their acts involved a lady called "Nattily Attired".

ED. NOTE: Of course I remember the Happy Gang. They were one of the bright spots in the anxious war years. For anyone interested in refreshing their memory of them, go to

Bruce Galway is another of those who delivered newspapers when they were young: Where we live, the large Toronto daily papers are delivered by adults too. Well, I assume they are adults because I am never up when they arrive, and the person drives a vehicle, although I did see her in January when we got up at 5:15 a.m. the day we left for Florida.

However, we also get a more local paper called Whitby Today, which is delivered by teenagers. The paper is actually "free"; however you are asked to pay the deliverer $2.00 a week, which is collected every three weeks by the carrier. The catch is that $6.00 all goes to the carrier. Interestingly, the publisher of the paper is Metroland Media Group, a subsidiary of the The Star.

When I was kid, I delivered the Toronto Star plus the Star Weekly with the Saturday paper. I got 1/3 of a cent for each paper delivered, which cost the subscriber three cents/paper. I was paid 2/3 of a cent for the Weekly and it cost 10 cents. I had that route long enough for me to pay back a loan from my Dad of $39.00, which covered the cost of my first bicycle.

IF YOU MUST HAVE SENIOR MOMENTS, MAKE THEM MEMORABLE!

Betty Audet forwarded the joke to a friend about the elderly Florida woman who returned to her car after shopping to find four males in the act of leaving with her vehicle. She drew her gun out of her purse and screamed at the men to get out of the car. When she tried to start the vehicle, she realized she was in the wrong car.

Her friend wrote back: That reminds me so much of what Don and I did one time. We had a brand-new car in a very strange metallic deep mauve/brown. We were in Florida, and parked it in the lot with hundreds of others and went to the dog track. There were 12 races but we left after the 10th, walked to the car, and got in. I was surprised that Don hadn´t locked it, but said nothing.

The new car had bucket seats and gear shift on the floor, but didn´t have any type of storage unit/arm rest like the old car had, so Don had designed and made one.

As we got into the car, Don said that he could have sworn that he had locked the door. Then he said, "Somebody´s been in this vehicle!" He hit the roof when he realized whoever it was had walked off with our new storage box, complete with all our tapes, etc.

He picked up a cell phone from the floor and noted that whoever it was, was in such a hurry that they had dropped their phone. We glanced in the back and complained that our jackets were missing.

All of a sudden we looked at one another and the grim truth hit us ... this was not our car.

We could see our own parked three down the row. You never saw two people exit a vehicle so fast in your life.

Dick Monaghan forwards another example of

A SENIOR MOMENT

"$5.37." That´s what the kid behind the counter at Taco Bell said to me. I dug into my pocket and pulled out some lint and two dimes and something that used to be a Jolly Rancher. Having already handed the kid a five-spot, I started to head back out to the truck to grab some change when the kid with the Elmo hairdo said the harshest thing anyone has ever said to me.

He said, "It´s OK. I´ll just give you the senior citizen discount."

I turned to see who he was talking to and then heard the sound of change hitting the counter in front of me. "Only $4.68," he said cheerfully.

I stood there stupefied. I am 57, not even 60 yet! A mere child! Senior citizen?

I took my burrito and walked out to the truck, wondering what was wrong with Elmo. Was he blind? As I sat in the truck, my blood began to boil. Old? Me?

I´ll show him, I thought. I opened the door and headed back inside. I strode to the counter, and there he was waiting with a smile.

Before I could say a word, he held up something and jingled it in front of me, as if I could be that easily distracted! What am I now? A toddler?

"Dude! Can´t get too far without your car keys, eh?"

I stared with utter dismay at the keys. I began to rationalize in my mind. "Leaving keys behind hardly makes a man elderly! It could happen to anyone!"

I turned and headed back to the truck. I slipped the key into the ignition, but it wouldn´t turn. What now? I checked my keys and tried another. Still nothing. That´s when I noticed the purple beads hanging from my rearview mirror. I had no purple beads hanging from my rearview mirror.

Then a few other objects came into focus. The car seat in the back seat. Happy Meal toys spread all over the floorboard. A partially- eaten doughnut on the dashboard. Faster than you can say ginkgo biloba, I flew out of the alien vehicle.

Moments later I was speeding out of the parking lot, relieved to finally be leaving this nightmarish stop in my life. That is when I felt it, deep in the bowels of my stomach: hunger! My stomach growled and churned, and I reached to grab my burrito, only it was nowhere to be found.

I swung the truck around, gathered my courage, and strode back into the restaurant one final time.

There Elmo stood, draped in youth and black nail polish. All I could think was, "What is the world coming to?" All I could say was, "Did I leave my food and drink in here?" At this point I was ready to ask a Boy Scout to help me back to my vehicle, and then go straight home and apply for Social Security benefits.

Elmo had no clue. I walked back out to the truck, and suddenly a young lad came up and tugged on my jeans to get my attention. He was holding up a drink and a bag. His mother explained, "I think you left this in my truck by mistake."

I took the food and drink from the little boy and sheepishly apologized.

She offered these kind words: "It´s OK. My grandfather does stuff like this all the time."

All of this is to explain how I got a ticket doing 85 in a 40. Yes, I was racing some punk kid in a Toyota Prius. And no, I told the officer, I´m not too old to be driving this fast.

As I walked in the front door, my wife met me halfway down the hall. I handed her a bag of cold food and a $300 speeding ticket. I promptly sat in my rocking chair and covered up my legs with a blankey.

The good news was I had successfully found my way home.

FROM THE EDITOR´S DESK

Today I finally got around to renewing my prescriptions for supposedly preventative medications.

My doctor told me my blood pressure was that of a teeny-bopper. That was when I told him I had not taken the pills for that condition for two weeks. He was surprised, but then he said the drug had other good effects besides lowering blood pressure. "If it only affected blood pressure," he said, "then I would say you could safely discontinue its use. But it can also help prevent crippling strokes which could cause you to lose your independence.... So what do you want to do?"

Of course I did not have the necessary background to make that decision, so I had to submit to his expert opinion, which was that I should continue with the drug.

I told him that I was upset every time I saw the bill for the various medications I take, which is about $535 for 100 of each. He replied that he appreciated my concern because he helps to fund the health care system, but said there is no way to put a price on independence and health.

My concern was exacerbated by an article in the paper this week that said the prescribing of drugs has risen much faster than the population has increased, and with the imminent addition of the baby boomers to the ranks of the retired, those costs are going to go through the roof. It is small wonder that health care absorbs such a large part of our nation´s wealth.

The article also maintained that drugs are now being prescribed on a preventative basis for people who are well, who may never need them. Perhaps there is a need to prescribe medication for people who have already had a stroke or heart attack, or who suffer from diabetes or arthritis or one of the many ills that afflict us, but is it really necessary to give drugs to healthy people?

"Drugs are poisons with some good side effects."

THIS WEEK´S SUGGESTED SITES

Bruce Galway suggests this 104-year-old live movie taken in San Francisco just days before the great earthquake of 1906. It was taken by a camera mounted on the front of a cable car:

Pat Moore forwards the URL for a video in which Celine Dion appears to sing a duet with Elvis. This is an impressive use of modern-day technology to create a hologram which brings Elvis Presley in front of a live audience:

Pat also sends the URL for a video of a prototype of a proposed new laptop from Germany:

Kiran Bir Sethi shows how her groundbreaking Riverside School in India teaches kids life´s most valuable lesson: "I can." Watch her students take local issues into their own hands, lead other young people, even educate their parents:

For an article on the benefits of laughter, go to http://arunaurl.com/3flb