This is the blog for Rhona and Bobby Hogg's VSO experience in Uganda. In August 2008 we applied to do VSO and, following an assessment day in London last October, we were accepted as volunteers . Because of the strong Scottish links, we had set our sights originally on Malawi where we spent a week in June 2008 but joint placements are difficult to find and in February we agreed with VSO to open up the search. At the end of March we were delighted to be offered placements in Kampala, Uganda. We are to work for a HIV and AIDS initiative called Reach Out Mbuya (http://www.reachoutmbuya.org/) where, we hope, Rhona's community nursing experience and Bobby's IT experience will prove useful.

We are due in Kampala on 18th September and have committed to spend a year there. We are very excited about the prospect of living in a very different part of the world and working with Ugandans who, from many reports, are fun to be with. We expect there to be many challenges but our stay in Uganda should be immensely enjoyable.

We are indebted to VSO for giving us this opportunity. Our preparation, including 2 training courses in Birmingham, has been excellent and we are confident about the in-country support that we will get from VSO in Uganda. I understand that it costs VSO around £15,000 to support each volunteer. If you would like to make a donation to support our placements in Uganda please visit the Just Giving site through the link opposite.

Tuesday, 17 November 2009

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.
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