In the Namuwongo slums, 3-year-old Robert carries a bucket of water he fetched from a well in the African summer heat and looks up to see a man holding a camera pointed at him.
The man with the camera is Jeremy Goldberg, who graduated from the University last fall. He's one of the co-founders of the University of Texas chapter of Students of the World, an organization that arranges travel around the world for students in an effort to educate them on global issues.
Late last July, four University students, along with students from the University of Michigan, traveled to Uganda in Central Africa for a month-long trip to see the country in vivid detail.
"In Namuwongo, I spoke with a woman whose son was mentally and physically handicapped," he said. "She explained that she's been selling maize, so she can raise money to get him the medication he needs. Before I left, she gave me a note he had written. The note said 'It makes me happy that you care. I want to see you again.'"
Uganda has a population of 25 million, half of them children, according to the CIA World Factbook.
"I was just amazed how many people were living along the road or walking down the road ... just the number, the masses of people we were passing on the highway," said Goldberg.
Goldberg said the group was greeted with hospitality.
"They have very little, but they're willing to give you all they have," said Goldberg.
Courtney Spence, an Austin native, started the original Students of the World at Duke University in 1999.
"It was a time when everyone was talking about globalization," Spence said. "There wasn't an outlet for students to 'act globally' instead of just 'thinking globally.'"
Since 1999, the group has organized trips to Russia, Cuba, India, Peru and Mexico, although the Uganda trip is the first that included UT students.
Uganda is fighting a massive HIV outbreak, a devastating war and crippling poverty. By 2010, Goldberg said, life expectancy in Uganda will drop from 40 years to just over 30.
But there have been improvements. Uganda has the most significant reduction of the HIV infection rate in all of Africa, said Yoav Kaufmann, a UT graduate and co-founder of the UT chapter of Students of the World.
"The most important thing, I realized, is that [Uganda] realized the disease is really a disease. Once a country realizes a disease exists, then they can start to fight it," said Kaufman. "Everybody knows someone who died from the disease or who's sick."
Kaufman, who is currently applying to medical schools, said, "I'd like to go back some day as a doctor."
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