Where did Bulisa Project start?

In 2006, my wife and I met a person, an American priest [Jim Short] who lives in Uganda. He said mass [at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Monterey]. We met with him afterwards and started talking. We told him our plans were to do missionary work. He said there’s plenty of stuff to do in Uganda. One thing lead to another. We were going to do a project with the Episcopal Diocese in Uganda, but it got bureaucratic, with red tape.

We met a government official when we first went to Uganda and he started talking about locations he knew of that desperately needed help. We founded Bulisa Project in 2006 and [January 2009] will be the fourth trip – just me and my wife – and then we hire people in Uganda to help us do the work. I brought two carpenters last year. The Rotary Club and St. James Episcopal Church in Monterey [our church] helped us raise money. We did a show last year, too. I’m a musician in town and I talked to some of my musician friends. I play bass with John “Broadway” Tucker and, in Carmel Valley, stand-up bass in The Hay Boys bluegrass band.

Do you preach or try to convert the villagers?

We don’t preach the gospel to villagers. Some evangelists feel the Bible says you’re supposed to do that. We’re there to improve their services. They’re quite spiritual over there. There’s Catholics, Episcopals, Muslims, some voodoo type stuff. The English were there for a long time, brought the Episcopal church in 1940’s; the Catholics are all over the place.

What languages do they speak in Uganda?

English is the official language and there’s 45 tribes and they all have their own language. If you’ve been to school, you probably know Eglish. Where we work, one in five children have been to school. They have to have money to go to school. Medical treatment is not like here. If you can’t afford it, you just die. Since this little village is so isolated, the clinic there has become important because it’s the only one for 100 miles. When we adopted it, there was no water, the roof needed repair, the furniture was stolen. Do me a favor and encourage others to see the movie on our website [http://www.thebulisaproject.com]. It’ll give you a good idea of what it’s like.

What’s the most difficult thing about doing what you do over there?

The most difficult thing was watching people die, especially a baby because they don’t have incubators. If a baby’s born with respiratory issues, they don’t have any way to help them. It’s a government facility, but they don’t get anything from government except medication every two months. My wife’s a nurse. A lot of our year gets spent planning. What’s realistic with our time and budget.

The planning is a b*tch and everybody knows that. But the emotional trauma is the most difficult. [The villagers] will walk a couple days to get to clinic. A lady who had polio just crawled into the clinic on her belly. They don’t have wheelchairs or crutches and they gave her a stick. We’ve done things that given people hope. As of last year, we got the water fixed. That was awesome. It was like magic. The whole clinic just changed, transformed, and became more important the minute that water came out of the tap. The water had been broken for so long, they didn’t know that’s what sinks were for, that water came out of it. Lot of singing, praise, dancing. We get a lot out of it as well.

What do you hope you accomplish next?

We have potential for photovoltaic solar, and we’re going to hire an engineer in the capital and put it back together – for lights, mainly, and equipment. They have inoperable stuff donated by different countries. They have a generator hooked up to surgical center, but they don’t always have fuel. They have boxes of surgical stuff, equipment they don’t know how to use. It’s a miracle stuff gets there in the first place. I have experience with [solar].

It’s an eight-hour drive on dirt roads. There’s a village called Mulini three hours away with hardware and groceries. It’s like working on the moon or something, it’s so isolated – I don’t even know what it’s doing there. The Red Cross drilled a well, so that’s good. That’s the beauty of it, too, everything’s natural, it’s simple – no pesticides, fertilizers, the food’s good. They get fish at Lake Albert. But if you get sick, chances are someone’s going to die. We’re already funding some orphans over there – there’s a lot, with the death rate. There’s a lot of kids don’t have place to stay and they go hungry a lot. There’s a man who goes out to feed the orphans every night, Andama Midary.

We’re looking into starting an orphanage in the area. We’re going to do a feasibility report to see how to sustain it. We’ve been advised against it from people there, but I’m not sure why. If you lose just one parent, you’re considered an orphan in their culture. It’s hard to find anybody you can trust to spend the money the way you want, so that’s why we go personally. The goal is to expand the water system at the property, put in solar, and take a few suitcases of prescription and non-prescription medicine and hope like hell we can get them across the border. The customs people take the medicine and sell them. There’s a lot of placebo drugs. A lot of the contractors they hire to bring drugs in get them from China or India, sell them to the Uganda government, which distributes them, and they have to effect because they’re fake. We’re talking about simple stuff like vitamin C.

We’re supposed to be going to Honduras for a project I’ve scouted. We’ll probably go [to Uganda] one more time after this trip, and rebuild an orphanage down there. These are just words right now. It doesn’t become a reality until I buy the plane ticket. You throw down the credit card and think ‘Oh, it’s really happening.’

Do you tell the villagers about where you live? Do you show them pictures? What do they know about the United States?

We don’t show pictures. Our culture is widespread. Bulisa doesn’t know anything about the United States. Maybe for selfish reasons. It might be cruel. Because we’re white, they think we’re rich. We are, by their standards, but not by our standards. If you’re privileged over there, the U.S. is a destination you might find yourself. It takes money. There’s hardly any commerce. You see thousands of people standing on side of road, idle – that’s their life. There’s a lot of happiness there, it’s a simple life. When the people are healthy and have their families, they’re as happy as any American I know, maybe more. When they’re sick, the whole family gets sick. They don’t have nurses. The family cares for the patient, everything except administering the medication. We gave them beds but they wouldn’t get in the bed because their culture is to lie on grass mats on the floor. We insisted they use the beds, for disease control. We bought 50 mosquito nets in the capital because they have major malaria.

A lot of aid is sent to Uganda; a lot is stolen. You can write a whole book about it. If you’re lucky enough to get a government job [in Uganda], you steal all you can because at any time the government may change. It’s a rite of passage to build a house and buy a Landcruiser. It’s different there. When they steal, they’re just trying to feed their family. Not that it makes it right. They see it differently. People here usually steal because of drug problems, not to feed themselves.

How can people donate to the non-profit?

People can drop donations to the store, like last year. People want to hand the money to someone who’s going to go and someone they trust. ‘You’re looking at the guy who’s going to do the work.’ People who feel like they can’t go, they go with us in a way by donating. A lot of people [in the States] want to donate stuff, but we can’t carry a lot of stuff, there’s no room; but they can drops checks to Bulisa Project.

The store is Spas by the Bay, across from Embassy Suites Hotel, or corner of Canyon Del Rey and Del Monte [10am-6pm Mon-Sat, 236-9138]. I’m not trying to promote my business by doing this, it’s more of a convenience. We usually go to the Dollar Tree and load up on toys. We try to inject as much money as possible by buying the [villagers’] goods like artworks and bracelets, a cloth they make of tree bark they paint on, and hiring them. There are more ideas than time and money. Last year we collected eyeglasses and got 600 pairs. There were people [in Bulisa] who can read, but couldn’t because they couldn’t f*****g see. Here they are in this country with no TV and nothing to do, and they couldn’t read. So everybody [tried] on the glasses and when they found the right prescription they were overjoyed.

What’s it like when you come back and you’re in the U.S. again?

When we come back, the first thing I do is vow I’ll never go again – it’s so frickin’ hot and miserable. It’s hard to sleep, hard to work. Usually after I’ve been home a couple months… There’s such a disparity between our society and theirs. We’ve been blessed. I’ve never had to fight in a war. My kids are grown. [My wife and I] wanted to give back. It really fills our hearts up.

Do you stay in touch with anyone in the village?

We have a couple of the [clinic] staff members we talk to, like one of the guys we trust with money, Andama. He’s the one helping to feed those orphans. You would have to see this place to get the full flavor of what I’m talking about. It’s out of a movie. There’s a lot of huge animals around – elephants, giraffe, baboons. Most of the bigger animals are confined to the national parks. It’s really lush. It’s the biggest bird habitat in the world. It’s hard to get mail there. You have to drive two hours to pick up your mail, but Andama can go to the library and check his e-mail. When we send him e-mail, we don’t get a response for a couple of weeks. But we know why.

Bulisa Project, 236-9138, www.thebulisaproject.com