'Welcome Our Dear Visitors'

Last Saturday I met up with other VSO volunteers from Mbarara and the neighbouring district of Bushenyi for a cluster group meeting. There are 4 VSO cluster groups in Uganda, the idea is for volunteers to meet regularly to support each other and it's a good excuse to have a few beers together. The clusters are given a budget from the VSO programme office to undertake some kind of community-based project activity.

The Mbarara/Bushenyi cluster are supporting a youth group, called the Kyabugimbi based Twerunguure Group, for disadvantaged young people. It's run by a guy called Amos, a colleague of 2 of the volunteers who work at a teacher training college in Bushenyi. The kids get involved in music, drama, craft making and horticulture. Many of them don't go to school because their families or guardians haven't got the money to pay for uniforms, books, pencils etc. Amos wants to raise funds to allow these kids access to school, so our cluster group decided to donate money (650,000 Ug Shillings, about £220) so they can build a chicken house, buy chickens and sell the eggs.

Above: Amos (centre) with some of the other VSOers

So on Saturday we went to visit the group, to tell them we would be supporting their efforts and to discuss plans for the chicken house. The kids put on a some entertainment for us to show off their singing and musical skills! I recorded one of their songs - 'Welcome our dear visitors' a well known song throughout Uganda.

Below: Danny presenting a dummie cheque to Amos

Below: Kids playing the adongo, it has a lovely sound, a bit like a harp.

Below: the youth group meet on a Saturday at a local school











Below: recording of 'Welcome our dear visitor' - the little girl in the blue dress was a real sweetie, I love her dancing!

Last week I was given my HCU work contract and my official work title - Community Development Co-ordinator (!), though to VSO I'm a Nutrition Advisor. It's not unusual for volunteers to find themselves doing something completely different to what VSO had intended, though I am responsible for putting together a nutritional education programme. I can't say I knew a lot about community development when I started but so far so good. My first community-based training event takes place on the 20th July - the handcraft flower-making project that I've been working on, which is part of HCU's income generating initiatives. I'm going to be doing the 5 days training myself, along with the community members. Well, I figure if when I return to the UK I can't find a job I can always fall back on my flower making skills......though I might have a problem sourcing banana fibres and maize husks in Birmingham! When I've told some people about the project, they ask about ' plain and wholemeal flour' - there are usually a few giggles when I tell them it actually making 'flowers'!

Above and below: the banana fibre and maize husk flowers

The project office is based on the edge of the university campus in Mbarara and it's quite common to see all sorts of drills and parades on the sports fields, but yesterday's was the funniest I've seen so far. I spotted the university groundsmen and gardeners, dressed in their uniform of navy tunic and trousers doing very serious drill exercises, while one of the local policemen shouted out commands, banging a stick on a plastic jerry can as he went along. But the most amusing thing was the gardeners were parading round with hoes on their shoulders!! When I asked what this was all about, I was told it was good for discipline! Do you think the Birmingham City Council gardeners would be up for a bit of Ugandan discipline before they start work every morning??!

I'm off to Kampala this weekend to meet up with some volunteer friends from Masindi..... looking forward to pizza and ice cream!! Then next week I'm doing motorbike training through VSO, it's not something I've ever considered doing before, but I was asked if I'd give it a go as it means I can get out into the community more if I have my own transport. I've been assured that I'll be given a light bike, a scooter-type I think, I was a bit concerned about having anything too heavy because of my wonky knee. Watch this space..............

Anyone for a cup of tea?

Until last week I'd only ever seen images of tea plantations on TV or the side of a box of Tetley tea bags. I was visiting a group of HCU CORP's in Mugyera, a very remote parish in Bunyaruguru County in Bushenyi district, one of Mbarara's neighbouring districts. This is the only county that the HCU project operates in outside of Mbarara district, it has high rates of childhood malnutrition and is also quite densely populated. On the way there we drove through numerous tea plantations, ranging from small locally farmed plantations to massive ones stretching for miles, owned mostly by large tea producers. I met up with Apuuli, a HCU trainer who was doing some income generating training with the CORP's. The training was held outside the village church, beside the local primary school. The village was really remote, we drove up an incredibly steep dirt track -I thought Nasser was taking me to the end of the earth, I was convinced there couldn't possibly be a village at the end of the track - but there was!

I got a really enthusiastic welcome from the group, they were very happy to hear me speak the few limted phrases that I have now learned in Runyankole (the local regional language)! Though it's bit off putting that whenever I say anthing in Runyankole people just laugh, so I'm always left guessing as to whether I've said something inappropriate or misprounced a word!! But I'm assured by Nasser that people are just surprised to hear a 'muzungu' speaking the langauage and they really appreciate the effort. On my way to and from work I always try (! it's a difficult language) to say hello, good morning, how are you, in Runyankole to the people I meet along the way. Yesterday evening I said 'agandi' (how are you?) to a guy I recognised - he burst out laughing, actually he laughed like a girl, so much so that we were both laughing in the end - when I asked why he was laughing, he said he was just so shocked and hadn't expected me to greet him like that!

The CORP's are really keen to get involved in the flower-making project that I'm organised - I'm hoping the training will start mid-July. They have an endless supply of banana fibres and maize husks, which is a good start, it just remains to be seen if they can find the money for the training, it's 10,000 UgSh (about £3.50) for a total of 5 days. But they also have to fund their own transport and meals, which is often more difficult.
School children at the local school - they get very excited when they see a 'muzungu', even more excited when the muzungu has a camera!

Picking tea on a plantation in Bushenyi district

Tea plantation

Lake Rutoto, known as Lake Africa by locals as it is shaped like the continent of Africa - I tried to get a photo of the lake from Google Earth, but it was taking 4 hours to down load so I gave up in the end.....!

A crater lake in Bunyaruguru county

Pretty in pink!

Left: Bernard and me - the 2 yr. old son of one of the village CORP's. He took a shine to me once he realised I had homemade cookies in my bag!




Below: Schoolboys carrying handfuls of fresh cow dung (you read correctly!), it's mixed with water and spread by hand on the dirt floor in each classroom at the end of the day - it dries and seals, keeping the dust down.









Left: The last hour (5-6 pm) of each school day is spent cleaning the classroom - the kids take out all the desks and benchs, sweep the floor, then spread it with the cow dung.

Below: Angela, one of the HCU health workers administering de-worming tablets.

Below: Teenage girls (14 yrs.) in the final year of primary school - they were great fun!

Below: Sharing a packed lunch - cold matoke and beans wrapped in banana leaves and boiled cassava - they offered to share it with me, I'm not a big fan of matoke so had some cassava instead.

Below: Classroom and staff room

Below: Two more classrooms, there are 4 in total - the school has 370 pupils.

Below: Raising the Ugandan flag. The kids sitting under the tree were doing a mid-term RE exam.

The photos were taken at Nyakatugunda Primary School, where HCU staff were giving out de-worming treatment to school kids and mothers with young children who came by on the day. The teenage girls were getting tetanus jabs - they were only given to the girls not the boys, apparently the girls are more likely to get injured than the boys (?!) as they have to fetch water and wood, dig in the fields, prepare food etc. Ugandan girls and women have a very hard life.

I had a really good day there, the kids were great fun and they looked wonderful in their bright pink uniforms - school uniforms come in various bright colours, orange, yellow, purple, turquoise blue, lime green. The kid's ages varied from about 4 - 14 yrs. - the class they are in depends on their level of ability, so kids of 8/9 can be in a class full of 5/6 yr. old. There were girls of 14 yrs. in the final year, they probably hadn't been able to attend school because of lack of money or illness, and so had fallen behind or started late. Some kids (4/5 yrs.) from the nearby nursery school also came for de-worming - they all stood in line in perfect silence waiting to get their tablet, I've never seen 30 or so 4 yr. olds behave so well, though I think fear probably had something to do with it, their teacher had also given them a good talking to before they arrived!

The school was on top of a hill and miles away from the nearest village, so the majority of the kids had to walk 1-2 hours just to get there. The day starts at 8.30 and finishes at 6.00, the little ones finish at 1.00. The children who lived within walking of the school went home for lunch (they get 1 hr.), the others bought a cold packed lunch with them. Ugandans are not lovers of cold food, but these kids don't have a choice. I was really interested to see what they were eating, as part of my role at HCU is to develop and implement a food education package for young children and mothers. The children sat on the grass in small groups to eat - some had brought food, others hadn't, but it didn't seem to be a problem as they all shared whatever they had. I was quite impressed by the range of food, I thought it would be just matoke (it's quite hard to stomach when it's hot, let alone when it's cold!), but there was boiled cassava and sweet potatoes, pumpkin, beans, some aubergine and dodo (bitter leafy green veg, bit like spinach). It was all packed in little plastic buckets with lids, some of the matoke was wrapped in banana leaves - the kids placed the food in the centre, helped themselves with their hands and once one lot was finished they started on the other. Some of them were drinking water from jerry cans (unfortunately it hadn't been boiled, even though they knew it should be), while others were drinking 'porridge' (not as we know it) - it's a thickish drink made by boiling water and mixing in millet flour - it looks revolting to me, but it's highly nutritious so I'm told, but hen I've never been a fan of porridge in any form! The food was prepared at home the night before either by the older girls or the mother.

I forgot to say that the day had an interesting start - I had a proposal of marriage form one of the school teachers!!! When I declined his offer and said that his current wife might take issue with him taking a second wife, he said 'oh it's allowed here'. He said he wanted a muzungu wife, but in fact he really wanted the money he thought a muzungu wife would bring, though he did offer 2 cows for me (not a lot really!). After joking with him for a while, he told me I was 'too lively', I asked if that was a bad thing, he said 'no it was good'!

Some of the lessons finished at about 4.15, the children played games for a while and then had to fetch water in jerry cans from down the hill for the school and to tidy the classrooms and the compound, finsihing around 6.00. Once they arrived home an hour or two later, I was told they would be expected to get fetch wood and water for the family,look after the younger children, help prepare supper which they probably wouldn't have till about 9.30/10.00, do their homework and then finally sleep! Nasser (HCU driver) told me that children growing up in a rural community in Uganda have a very hard life, he said life gets easy when you become an adult.

Unfortunately while I was at the school I witnessed one of the teachers beating some of the school children with a tree branch. Uganda has a child protection policy but it's not enforced and even though it's illegal for teachers to hit children, they usually get away with it unpunished. I asked some of the Ugandans if it was their child what would they do, but they didn't think there was a lot they could do. It was a difficult situation to be in, but I wasn't in a position to intervene, as much as I would have liked to.

Even though the school children seem to have so little and their life is hard they continue to smile and laugh, they love having their photo taken and squeal with delight when they see them!

House photos - Mbarara

My new (pink!) house

I was really lucky to find this house - it's compact and bijoux, as the agents would say! But it's comfortable, well maintained (a rare thing here) and in a nice quite location.

Above: Living room and kitchen - I now have an oven (hooray, it's a real luxury here!) and 4 gas burners, a big change from the 2 burner table-top gas stove I had previously. I made some chocolate brownies to bring to work today, they're going down very well!

Above: Main bedroom - the other bedroom is a mess at the moment, so no photo!

A week of new experiences

The'Tippy Tap' - this is ingenius, and such a good idea! It’s a simple water dispenser which enables people to wash their hands without wasting water. It consists of a plastic jerry can with small holes pierced in the lid, which releases a small amount of water - just enough for a clean hand wash - each time it is tipped by pressing on the ‘tap’ (a stick attached to a piece of rope), when the ‘tap’ is released, it swings back to its earlier upright position. a block of soap is tied on to a piece of rope and covered with the up-turned bottom half of a small plastic bottle (to protect it from birds). The 'Tippy Tap' are used in villages where there is no running water, to encourage people to wash their hands after using the latrine.

I've been in Mbarara 2 weeks now, I'm enjoying being here and am settling in well. Mbarara is very different to Masindi in many ways (it's considered the 2nd city in Uganda) - it's far bigger, with lots of shops, especially mobile phone shops, the main street is lined with them! There's lots of traffic - motorbike boda bodas, cars and numerous lorries carying vast loads of matoke (green, plantain-like bananas - the staple food for this region). It's a nightmare trying to cross any of the main roads here - there's no such thing as traffic lights, although I've seen one zebra crossing, not that any of the drivers take much notice of it.

I moved into my new house last week and it's feeling like home already -it's a small 2-bedroom house, but it's quite cosy and 'homely' - I'll put some pictures on my next posting. I've settled here much quicker than I did in Masindi, where even after 4 months my house never really left like 'home'. The house is on the edge of a small valley, it looks down onto the River Rwizi - there are avocado, orange, mango and matoke trees outside my front door - Bearwood will seem very dull after this! Oh, there's also a wood-burning pizza oven in the garden - not tried it out yet, but I'm intending to at some point.

Work at Healthy Child Uganda (HCU) is going well - I've been given 4 projects to work on, all of which are urgent, so I was told! My offical title is Nutriton and Food Advisor, but basically I'll be involved in a wide variety of project activities - one of which is planning and organising flower making training for people who live in the parishes where the project operates. Now, firstly, I here you ask what has that got to do with food and nutrition and secondly, what do I know about making flowers out of banana fibres and maize husks - well more than you'd think as of this week! It links in with promotioning income-generating projects in local communities, the aim being that if people are earning a secure income they can provide for their families and can afford to feed them a good and balanced diet and keep them healthy.

One of the other projects that I'll be responsible for is developing and implementing a nutrition and food education package - I mentioned in my previous posting that there are major issues concerning child malnutrition here even though the region produces vast quanties of fruit, vegetables and milk and has a good supply of meat and fish, many of the people have a really poor diet - the vast majority of people in the local villages eat carb-laden matoke (steamed and mashed green banana) at least twice a day everyday, somtimes with beans if they can afford them. There is a real need to educate people about eating more nutritious foods, their reluctance is often down to negative superstitions and traditional beliefs. It'll take some time for me to get this up and running as I need to do quite a bit of research about the eating and cooking habits of local communities and to see first hand what they have available to them. I'll also need to liaise with pediactric staff at Mbarara hospital - there's a feeding centre there that treats large numbers of malnurised children on a regular basis. I'm hoping to get involved in promoting solar ovens as well - I haven't seen one in action yet (hope to soon), but have been told they are really effective and obviously are cheaper to use. Most rural people cook over a wood burning stove, while in more urban areas people cook with charcoal, both of which are expensive and not sustainable.

The project has 350 trained volunteers working throughout 18 parishes over 2 geographical districts, these volunteers are known as CORP's (Community Owned Resource Persons). They're village people who have been trained in basic child health care and are responsible for registering all children under 5 yrs in their villages. They get involved in all sorts of community-based initiatives, such as mobilising childhood immunisations, mosquito net education and distribution and implementing income-generating projects. They monitor these children regularly and pay close attention to children who are underweight or are at risk for other reasons such as chronic illness, disability or being orphaned. They conduct home visits where they educate parents and pregnant mothers.

Last week I got my first taste of working in the 'field' and got to witness the CORP's in action - they has gathered in Bushwere, a parish about an hour's drive from Mbarara town, way up in the mountains and surrounded by vast banana plantation (I now know how to tell the difference between a matoke banana tree and a sweet banana tree!). I went along with Angela, one of the project trainers, to observe a session on gender issues and poverty analysis to a group of CORP's as part of the Income Generating training they were doing. There were 18 people all gathered together in a small mud-walled room - the training was conducted in Runyankole, the local regional language, so other than the odd word I didn't really understand much, but still it was really interesting, especially when the men and women had to list all the work activities they did each day. The women's list far out-stretched the men's - many of the men saw themselves as the head of the household who's responsibility it was to 'plan' but they weren't too keen on the actually 'doing' - this was down to the women, who cleaned, washed, cooked, fetched water, looked after the children, dug, planted and harvested the crops and went to market! There was also a fascinating discussion about poverty and what it means to be poor - Angela asked the group if they considered themselves poor and I was amazed that the majority of them said they didn't, as outwardly to me they appeared to be incedibly poor! They felt that because they had land,(often this is just a tiny patch) and their own house (usually 1 or 2 wood and mud-walled rooms) they could grow enough for their families to eat and provide shelter for themselves.

PHOTOS:Income Generating training in Buswere parish - held in this mud-walled house, where one of the participants' lives. No need for lecture theatres and power point presentations here! The trainees were doing group-based activities sitting on the grass outside the house.

The following day I went to a Health Centre 4 (health centres are graded from 1 - 4 depending on the services they offer and the type of medical staff employed there) in Bwizibwera parish. The health centre had recently won a HCU competition as the best health centre in it's catagory and I was there as a representative of HCU to present their certificate and prizes. Just before I presented the certificate to the staff I was told by Nasser, the HCU driver that I'd have to give a 10 minute speech (they LOVE speeches here!), this came as a bit of a surprise to me as I knew very little about the centre and had been briefed that all I needed to do was thank them for their hard work and say well done! With the help of one of the health workers, who's also a HCU facilitator I managed to make my 'speech' last just under 5 minutes - everyone seemed happy and I was relieved!

PHOTO: Bwizibwera Health Centre staff with their winning certificate and prizes.

Developments.......

Once again it's been ages since I've 'blogged' - when I started my blog my intention had been to 'post' regularly but unfortunately I'm not so good at making time to sit at my laptop to write about my experiences - I never was one for lettering writing even before blogs/email came along! I much prefer to have a good natter, not so feasible when the majority of people reading this are half way across the world! Anyway, I'm going try from now on to make more of an effort (!).

The photo is of me and Grace, the son (yes, it's a boy's name here) of a Dutch friend from Masindi. We were on our way back from Mbarara to Kampala last week and stopped at the Equator - Mbarara is in the southern hemisphere and Kampala is in the northern hemisphere. It's one of those obligatory things that every tourist who visits Uganda has to do!

Quite a lot has happened since my last posting...... I finished working at the hotel at the end of April. It was really hard telling the staff that I was leaving, many of them were quite upset and really wanted me to stay - staff morale is very low and times are hard for them. I wish I could have done more for them but unfortunately the situation was out of my hands. I'll keep in contact with many of them though and hopefully will have the opportunity to visit them in the future. Although my placement in Masindi didn't work out, which was disappointing, I made some good friends there, both Ugandans and other VSOers - I'll miss them all.

The last few weeks had been quite unsettling - the thought of having to start over again in a new place was hard, but I'm certain I want to stay in Uganda and do my 2 years as planned. So sadly, after packing up my house I left Masindi last week and am now staying in Kampala. I've been looking for a new placement and think I've now found one, which fingers crossed should work out ok.

I'm hoping to move to Mbarara, about 4 and half hours SW of Kampala, (Masindi was 2 and a half hours NW of Kampala) next week, with an organisation called Healthy Child Uganda - check it out at http://www.healthychilduganda.org/. It's a community-based partnership that works with local citizens to identify and solve the problems that most impact their children’s health. They focus on healthy practices such as immunization, good nutrition and preventing disease, training volunteers to recognize and treat sick children within their communities. The project gets most of its funding from Canada and has very strong links with the University of Calagary - it's was set up as a partnership between the University of Calagary and Mbarara University if Science and Technology. I'll be involved in lots of different activities, such as community visits as part of a community-based food education programme, training trainers to work with village people re. nutrition and health, there's also work to be done with Mbarara University setting up a adult trainers curriculum, advising villagers on setting up small businesses selling local produce. Mbarara is a nice place, much bigger than Masindi, it has more of a large town feel to it. There are lots of other VSOers there and many other ex-pats working at the university, it's location is also good for travelling with some really good national parks within easy travelling dsitance.

Other than my original placement going 'pear shaped', I'm enjoying Uganda, life here is so different, but I'm feeling settled now (job aside). It's a beautiful country, there's so much to see and do. The people are great, they're always really welcoming - they have so little and everyday seems to be a battle to make ends meet and to survive, but yet they have tremendous hope and are always smiling.

At the moment I'm in Kampala - VSO arranged for me to stay in a small studio appartment while I wait for my next placment to be sorted. Kampala is a crazy city, the traffic is unbelievable (there is no such thing as Rules of the Road here) and the fumes from numerous poorly maintained vechicles are choking. It's not really a city for sightseeing as walking around is not really an option, even though I have been, much to the amazement of the staff at the VSO office - Ugandans are not great walkers, if they can afford to, they'll travel by boda boda (small motor bike taxis or bicycles with a padded seat on the carrier) or by matatu (small mini buses that are usually stuffed full of people). I was fortunate in Masindi that it was such a small town so it was possible to walk everywhere.

Lake Albert photos

I've had two trips to Lake Albert recently - I visited Butiaba, a fishing village on the shores of the lake at Easter with some VSO friends. It's about an hour and a half's drive from Masindi and an interesting place to visit - it's usually incredibly hot and dry there but fortunately it wasn't too hot when we went. Not surprisingly the majortiy of the people who live there make a living from fishing tilapia or Nile perch. The area seemed incredibly poor with most of the people living in small mud huts. The local kids got very excited when they saw my camera and wanted to be in every photo. Ernest Heminway is known to have stopped in Butiaba to recover after a plane crash close by. another claim to fame for the village is that the movie The African Queen was filmed nearby in the 1930's. Lake Albert is situated on the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Fishermen repairing nets on the shores of Lake Albert

Young girl with tiny baby on her back!

A Maribou stork, (centre), two ibis (left) and some white herons (right)

Over the Bank Holiday weekend at the beginning of May, myself and two VSOer's from Masindi stayed at the Lake Albert Safari Lodge for 2 nights - it's further down the lake from Butiaba, about a 3 hour drive from Masindi. The lodge is situated in the Kabwoya wildlife reserve and is perched on the side of a cliff looking down onto the lake - it has fantastic views of the Blue Mountains on the other side. There were lots of babaoons, wart hogs and small antelopes around the lodge - I had a wake up call early one morning from one of the baboon, it was banging against and trying to open the sliding doors of the banda I was staying in, fortunately he didn't mange to open it!
Blue Mountains of the Democratic Republic of Congo in the background