GuluWalk Day Finallly here!

So the Guluwalk (at least the Amsterdam version) came and went. It was in all an interesting day. One where I was able to meet a lot of people and also see the African-town of Amsterdam. We were in this place called Bijlmer and I had never seen so many black people together since I came here.

I arrived just at 13h00 and found that there were only two people present. The statement made by one of them was about "Ugandan time". We ended up starting the walk at 14h30 or even later... I am not too sure. We walked through a route but strangely it was in a deserted place. Could this have been symbolic of the walk that the children, now called "night commuters", have? I wonder... I was getting a little frustrated after a while because it became a bit clear that while the effort had been made to organise the event, there was not too much focus on little details that make a difference between an event that is ok and one that is resoundingly successful.


















It was not clear exactly which route we were supposed to follow, who would lead the way, who would set the pace for the walking, whether there would be some accompanying music, whether we would give out some flyers to people on the streets for information purposes. These little things would have helped accomplish the mission better.

We, however, were an enthusiastic group and walked the distance and then sat down later on to have a small discussion on what we were doing meant and how we as a collective group of individuals could make our little contribution to helping out the children in Uganda. We also watched the movie Uganda Rising. It was a bit graphic in some places but overall I found it very interesting.

The main question at the end of all this is whether it makes a difference what we did. Does only awareness cause the problem to go away? Does the money contributed make the problem go away? I am not sure I have an answer to that just yet. So in the meantime while I feel this is the only way, I shall keep doing it.

You can look at some other pictures from the walk on my flickr page.