Eight weeks in

Rhona - 25/11/09
Last week we had our second in-country training course now that we have had a chance to get started in our placements. It is great meeting up again, especially with those who are up-country and came back to Kampala for the week. As expected, there is a mixture of feelings about placements, and we feel really fortunate to have such a well-structured and well-resourced organisation and to have been able to slot into our roles so quickly, especially as we are just here for one year. Some people have gone to organisations who have simply no money at all to do anything, in some cases even to pay their staff who have been waiting for their salaries for a few months. Some organisations are only interested in getting money from the volunteer and assume that the volunteer will arrive with money, laptop for the organisation etc.  One couple are staying in a very remote area, Bwindi Inpenetrable Forest, and are living in a house with no water or electricity. They also share the house with two others. They are near a “trading station” where subsistence farmers sell some surplus, perhaps three tomatoes or a few bananas. Their nearest food shop is two hours away by very rough track. They have no fridge so cannot keep food. However, the location is magical and they are working in Bwindi Community Hospital which another VSO volunteer, Paul, has transformed over the past three years. The website is worth a look.
Another woman is doing a short-term assignment in a remote area for eight weeks. She is a social work manager and is writing a proposal for a district during a secondment supported by the Welsh Assembly who seem to send people all over the developing world to carry out short-term very focused work.
Many of us are in Kampala, with the rest scattered to the east, west and south. The war in the north seems to be stopped and many people who have been displaced are now returning. VSO is planning to work in the area and are particularly looking at community-based health, so any public health nurses or district nurses would be welcomed.
Although it is recognised that young organisations with few staff require volunteers to do some hands-on work, the main aim of placements is capacity-building within organisations. A few people are working only at a strategic level.
On Wednesday evening we had a dancing session, with a dancer who performs at the cultural arts centre and a band of drummers. It was great fun and very energetic.

 
 

 We had some good evenings eating and drinking and then said fond farewells to some people who we won’t see again as we are all finishing at different times.
On Sunday I was at a meeting of discordant couples (one HIV+ve, the other –ve) who had taken part in an eight-week intervention from March – June. They look at protecting the negative partner, disclosure to family and friends, supporting the positive partner etc.  We were doing follow-up questionnaires six months after the intervention finished. They are all continuing to meet in small more local groups. The counsellors who ran the intervention completed the questionnaires with about thirty couples. It ran all day, with a stop for lunch. 

 
Kampala has been “a chilly 23º” and there was an article on the fashion page of New Vision about winter outfits to cope with the cold conditions, including boots and body warmers.
I now have a  young Ugandan woman working with me, she has just finished an MSc in public health in America, has come back to Uganda and is looking for some experience before applying for jobs. It is great having someone to do the more hands-on work on the studies that are on-going and I can look at more strategic issues, such as research governance and building research capacity and strengthening links with academic institutions.
We are going to Jinja at the weekend to celebrate Bobby’s birthday by visiting the source of the Nile and staying at a nice lodge. It is our first venture driving further afield than Entebbe, and we are ready for a bit of exploring before our guests start coming. Hamish and Morven leave for their African adventure next week and we can’t wait to meet them off the bus from Kenya on 22nd December.

Planning and Partying the Reach Out Way

Rhona -
Saturday 14th  November
I had a busy time the week before last at work. There was a three day strategic planning workshop to discuss the external evaluation of Reach Out and plan for the next five years. The organisation has grown exponentially and has far outgrown the plan which was supposed to last until 2011, so it was time to take stock. As well as the three linked sites, there is now a separate one 100 km from Kampala. It is interesting that Reach Out is described as a low resource model, but providing a holistic service to very poor people where there is no welfare state is very expensive and poses questions about how far the organisation should go to provide food, school fees, microfinance schemes etc. On the other hand, if families have no food, what is the point of giving drugs? Also some of the activities which caught our imagination and more importantly  the eye of potential donors, such as the piggery run by grannies looking  after orphans and the tailoring workshops are not necessarily cost-effective but could be worthwhile loss leaders to attract funding for other activities.
The three days gave me a chance to talk to the academics from Makerere University Institute of Public Health who carried out the evaluation and discuss possible collaborative studies. There is a collaboration among the Institute of Public Health and the Faculty of Social Science at Makerere and Reach Out and some other organisations set up with the aim of increasing research capacity but it seems to have lapsed a bit. We now also have meetings of a research capacity group and they would like to start a journal club, which I’m happy to do, though I am unsure that anyone will have time to read the papers. Although English is the official language and everyone speaks it at work, it does seem very much like a second language when used both in speech and written, and people seem to struggle a bit with reading it, even those who are obviously very bright. 
 
A week ago on Friday we had Reach Out annual day our, to the beach at Lake Victoria. Every department had to do a skit on Positive Living (with HIV/AIDS) and Africans need little encouragement to act, sing and dance. It is the rainy season just now, though the rain is sporadic and mainly consists of downpours followed by more sunshine. However, at one point we were all huddled under a gazebo and it was rather reminiscent of happy holidays on Bute in the 1950’s ( I was very very young then!). We decided to drive down to Entebbe ourselves as we correctly thought that we might be happy to leave before the end. In fact we got quite sunburnt in the queue for lunch, being two of three muzungus out of three hundred we forgot that we have “special needs” when it comes to sunshine. Interestingly, there was only one man other than obby wearing shorts, and many women were all dressed up in their formal dresses, and certainly would not have managed a game of rounders to finish off. Ugandans love to party and they don’t need alcohol to get going.

Anyway, we left when Bobby’s legs had had enough sunshine and the dour Scots in us had had enough partying. Just outside Entebbe were stopped by two very pleasant policewomen, who showed us that we had been speeding, just past a sign. Given the absolutely appalling driving in Uganda, and the road accidents that are so commonplace, it seemed ironic that Bobby was stopped, and we’re not sure he was doing 69 km instead of 60. The situation was difficult and we had our first experience of the Ugandan  police as described to us before we arrived. 
 
In anticipation of the visitors we are expecting we have started sorting out the second bedroom and today went to buy bedlinen and towels from a nice Ugandan shop and went to a lovely craft market behind the National Theatre and bought some batik wallhangings to make the house more homely. We also discovered that our one chest of drawers is riddled with woodworm and unfortunately Kampala markets don’t have the same guarantees as John Lewis. 
This week we are having our second week of VSO in  country training where we have a chance to discuss our placements now that we have been here for a few weeks. We are looking forward to meeting up with the other thirteen we arrived with and the six others who came later. The Kampala based people meet up occasionally but we have not seen those who are up-country, including a young couple who have gone to Bwindi Impenetrable Forest (the name says it all) which is very remote and are living in a house with no water, sanitation or electricity, and are an hour from access to the most basic foodstuffs. Our lack of hot water may seem trivial by comparison in a few days.

The harsh realities of Ugandan lives

Bobby -
Friday 13th November
This week has given us cause to reflect on some of the differences between life in Britain and life in Uganda. On Monday at morning reflections it was announced that the son of the vice president of Uganda had been killed in a car accident. On Tuesday morning it was announced that a member of the Reach Out staff had been involved in a Boda Boda (motorcycle) accident while making her way from one Reach Out site to another and had smashed her arm. Rhona has seen a boda boda driver being knocked off and the executive director also collided with a boda boda and had to take the driver to hospital with a broken arm. It is a very common and often the only means of transport but they drive recklessly and there are many accidents. There is a nursery school in the same compound as Reach Out and many three year  olds arrive by boda, with up to four children on each one. On Wednesday morning it was announced that the son of a member of staff had died in the operating theatre after a car accident. Ironically the person with the broken arm didn't get to theatre as planned because the surgeon was operating on the car accident victim. Road accidents are very common and a major cause of death in Uganda.

On Tuesday, as we settled in for the evening, we received a request to take the landlord's 21 month son to hospital as he had fallen and cut his head badly enough to need stitches. This required a half hour journey through Kampala. I've not driven much at night yet but couldn't turn down the request. Day driving in Kampala is an experience that I may get used to but night driving brings another set of challenges. No street lights, the many potholes are more difficult to avoid, in the busy centres pedestrians are difficult to see, dazzling lights or no lights on approaching or parked vehicles. However the thing that scared me most was the antics of very young children (possibly age 2 upwards) on a large busy junction. As we waited to turn right the children approached the drivers begging for money. This was around 9pm and they were wandering up and down the middle of the road. I was cautious enough  when moving off but when you see the children round a large articulated lorry the situation seems intolerable. We don't know how these children live, if they have adults in their lives or if they receive any care.

Life is often harsh here. Although there is supposed to be free education, and in some rural areas schooling is free but very inadequate (100 children in a class and teachers who spend much of heir time doing other jobs), in  Kampala the schools are fee paying. We have work colleagues in their 20s who have had to shoulder family responsibilities from their early teens. We know of one man in his twenties whose parents died when he was fifteen leaving his 17 year old sister, and his four younger siblings, the youngest two years, and himself, to fend for themselves. That these colleagues have responsible jobs, pursue their education at weekends and care and support their younger siblings is evidence of their strength of faith and resourcefulness.

Seven weeks in

Rhona -
During the water and power cuts a couple of weeks ago, while we heated the water from the jerry can on the two burner gas stove, it did occur to me that I could be sitting in Edinburgh with all mod cons, reading the Saturday Scotsman, drinking real coffee, and looking forward to a night out at the Lyceum with friends, perhaps followed by a trip to the Sheraton, the main attraction for me at the moment being the idea of the beautifully appointed and sparkling clean ladies room! I have stopped complaining about having no hot water as having no water at all is unpleasant, especially when you don't know when it is coming back on. We now have a large stock of jerry cans, in different colours, and the landlord’s father lives nearby but his water supply comes straight off a hill and he rarely has cuts, so we have a back-up plan.
However, the magic of Africa and the Ugandans does make up for the "challenges" and we are really enjoying what is a big adventure. Work is really busy for both of us, and contrary to the advice we have had to take
things slowly and spend the first few months observing etc, the organisation have a clear idea of what they want from us and realise that we are here for a year and we need to get going. Bobby has come at a
very opportune time, as they are installing a new computer system  and has become everyone's new best friend. He is busy working with an IT consultant, and has had to go straight from retirement to high-pressure working.

Although there have been research studies going on in Reach Out, they have not had it co-ordinated, and so have created a research section (me) and a research capacity group (me and a few others, who don't
really know much about research). The organisation are very go-ahead, and people are very bright and committed. However, time management is an issue, meetings start very late, and I have noticed that nobody wears a watch, there are no clocks and no-one had a diary. Also there are few phones, which rarely ring, and there never seems to be any mail. Everything is very ad-hoc and important meetings seem to happen without any warning or preparation. But they are so nice and courteous, and ask about all your family and care about people as individuals. They have very soft, gentle voices and even in an open-plan office it is very quiet, with the odd person singing (mainly hymns) as they work at their computer. Sometimes after lunch it all get a bit soporific. People don't really have leisure activities, apart from following football, if you ask them what they are doing at the weekend they don't seem to get it, though most go to church on Sunday. Many are studying in their spare time. Nor do they go on holiday as we do, they just rest. But a lot of what surprises us is really how people lived in Scotland two generations ago, people toiled and rested, and lived in very
basic accommodation.
Last week I went to a meeting for discordant couples (where one is HIV +ve and the other –ve). I just went along to meet them, as they are taking part in a  research study, they were very welcoming and the staff were as usual really kind and warm. We got  a matutu (a minibus taxi) part of the way and then walking a nice route the rest. We were delayed by heavy rain and hailstones, of course we thought it was all normal, but in fact our verandah roof has holes in it, and some houses were damaged.
We have Hamish and Morven arriving on 23rd December, the best Christmas present I can imagine (unless they arrived with David and Kelli in tow). Allison and Alison are planning on coming at the end of January and Donald and David in mid-February. There are a few other provisional bookings and tentative enquiries. So this weekend we are sorting out the second bedroom and going shopping for bedding in the market, which sounds good, but my haggling is so bad it would probably be as cheap to get an order from John Lewis. There are 3,000 US to a £., but we reckon that Ugandan salaries are about a third of ours in the UK, so for example, wine which is considered expensive here is 18,000 US for a very ordinary bottle, which is £6 to us, but probably to a Ugandan is equivalent to £18 to us.
We are enjoying having our vehicle, it makes life more convenient and gives us freedom at weekends. We bought it from Danny and Annie, VSO volunteers who have just returned to Dunoon after two years in Mbarara, upcountry, and who we met briefly after we arrived and before they left. I found their very good blog really helpful when we were getting ready to come, and hence we decided that we should do the same.

We have discovered a short walk up the hill to back of the house. This picture is the view from the top over to Lake Victoria.