Sorry its taken a while to get a new update together but access to the web is as you can imagine a bit patchy in Uganda. There is a internet café in the village however their server struggles to cope with the number of power cuts we have (4-5 a week) and so this is written from a Irish Bar in Kampala. A brief update then -

Life in Kayunga (our village)
It’s taken a good couple of weeks but we’re pretty much settled into the village and the house is starting to look good since we took delivery of a second hand sofa set and coffee table. Our home therefore is looking and feeling much more habitable. We’ve also invested in a laptop which means Jo can get some work done (no computers or power in the office) and we can watch DVD’s in the evening which is welcome entertainment as there’s not a lot to do in the village. Dodgy DVDs are aplenty in Kampala so we are currently working our way through the second half of the Bond films starting with Octopussy which cost about 3 quid for the lot. The village is quite rural as you can see from some photos we took out walking the other day.

Jo’s Work
Has been quite challenging to say the least. Most of my time has been spent trying to understand what they do as an organisation the rest trying to manage the expectation that I have come with a magic fundraising wand to bring loads of cash in a few days. The office is a small room, 2 desks, 2 chairs and a wardrobe (my filing cabinet) there is no power, one person to work with on a day to day basis and no Pret around the corner - a million miles away from CRUK. Saying that I feel I am making a little progress. I’ve had a really good meeting with our chairperson who seems bought into my ideas about getting them “fit for fundraising” - just getting some basics in place so they can plan some projects to fundraise for. Liam has been helping out one day a week in planning these projects and writing business cases. We will also look to train the organisation in fundraising and project management to try and ensure their projects are a success in the future after we have left. First up is a project to teach disabled people agricultural skills so that they can produce their own food and sell their produce for an income - I’m learning fast.

I’ve also had an eye opening trip into one of the local villages we cover. On the back of my employers motorbike, into the most beautiful scenery and dirt track roads. I meet the chair of the local school who takes me for tea at his home. It’s the smallest, sparsest home yet he serves me milky coffee (my first latte for a month!) in his best china. The three of us (me, boss, chairperson) get on the motorbike (me sandwiched in the middle) and head further into the village to go to the local school. I think I am being taken to a school for the disabled that we work with but I am taken to a mainstream school (although think bare, windowless building) where the entire village comes out to meet me. They want to build a school for disabled children - ahhh it makes sense now. I am told by my boss to make a speech to the village and the 30 or so very excited children - nothing like prior warning! I talk a bit about myself, what I’m doing etc, try to get across that it’s a really big ask to build a school and probably beyond me but I can see if there’s other ways I can help. I am given bags of fruit to take away with me including 4 six foot sugar canes - we spend quite a while discussing how these are going to get back with us on the motorbike. The three of us and the fruit head back to chairman’s house for lunch. A few villagers join us. As the guest I am given the largest portion of food and every new bowl of rice or potatoes that is brought out is handed to me. I struggle through a few plates. There are several remarks about how little I eat - I am the smallest person there!

Heading back we talk about the level of disabilities in the village. There are many disabled people and disabled children. In the district my organisation covers they estimate more than 70,000 people are disabled and services are lacking across the board - it’s a massive challenge. We decide that the school is too big an ask (the government can barely provide schools with 56% of the total population of Uganda under the age of 18). We do think we can help with some other requests and hence the agricultural project. We can look into training some of the disabled villagers in agriculture, they can then begin to grow food for themselves and maybe even sell. Bingo I have a project.

Liam’s School and Sports Day

My life of leisure got boring after about 45 minutes so in addition to helping out Jo at WADUP I have started volunteering two days a week at a school for orphaned children called Kabalagala Community Academy (KCA). Whilst I don’t have any teaching experience they are grateful for any assistance so I have been tasked with improving the teachers IT skills, helping out and eventually running some Maths and Science lessons, bringing some new ideas to PE and helping the eldest pupil (17) in learning the basics as he has only been at school for 4 years. This is quite a lot so I am being kept busy in my two days. The kids are great, really friendly and playful. Some think I look like Jesus. I am trying to manage their expectations of me. The teachers are also a great bunch and I am finding the staff room chit chat very amusing, even when it is Lugandan.

In my first week at the school KCA had their first ever Sports Day. In true Ugandan style we only found out the events that were due to take place the day before so spent the whole day preparing the children in the field in traditional events such as 100m sprinting, relays, Egg and Spoon race and the Sack race. Other events included musical chairs, filling of water bottles and Getting Ready for School. The last was Jo’s favourite when she came down to watch as it involved the children getting fully dressed and brushing their teeth with the neatest and fastest to finish the winner. There were three schools in total and one of the schools KCA was competing against were twice their size which meant we had no hope in the Tug of War as their older kids were twice the size of ours! Having said that the kids did brilliantly in bringing home a stack of medals and finishing a very close second to the bigger school. The teachers and I were thoroughly proud of them all and we all went home very happy.

Painting at Mulago hospital
The VSO volunteers organise themselves into clusters. We are part of the Kampala cluster. The aim is to meet every quarter, make sure everyone gets to meet each other and feel supported. We’re a really big cluster and it seems to work well. Our cluster has been organising some community work as a group - it’s painting a ward at a local hospital. We’re told to don old clothes for the weekend - with only a handful of outfits it’s a bit hard to pick an old one! The ward we are painting at Mulago hospital is for malnourished children. Even though this is the recovery ward some of the kids still look pretty ill, they are just babies or toddlers and look so small. Some of us go and pick them up and cuddle them for a while - they are skin and bones. One of the little boys is called Brian. His mum is dying, she has Aids. He’s about to be an orphan. One of the nurses in our team is talking to the hospital director about getting him into a local orphanage. We decide to take it in turns to visit him and take him some clothes and things this week.
Even in sombre settings we have a good weekend. And have more paint on us than on the walls. We paint the walls in multi-colours and a local artists draws African scenes on the walls which we colour in. It looks really good when we’re finished if we do say so ourselves.
Saturday night we have our first taste of Kampala night life. We end the first day painting with a few well deserved beers. Then head for a good dinner and some wine - it’s been a month without wine! A group of us then head over to Iguana’s a local night club. Before long one of the VSO’s has introduced Liam to the manager and DJ and there’s an offer of a DJ set on a weekend!