So I have now been here for two and a half weeks, and what a two and a half weeks that has been.
We did two weeks of training with our amazing Ugandan counterparts, and first thing this taught me is one - never judge a book by its cover, and two - the british media is so incorrect its unbelievable.
If you watched Bob Geldof's band aid you may have lumped Africa together, you might view the whole continent as starving orphans and you might presume they all have Ebola.This is wrong. Here in Uganda I have been met by some of the most inspiring, work-harding and kindest people you could imagine. I have eaten more carbs than I have ever touched in England, and there is no way I will get Ebola with the safety measures in place. The volunteers, national and international, love chips, Manchester United and dance. Dancing which includes the dreaded bum shake, which is completely beyond my natural abilities. The country is beautiful and full of trees, plants and animals.
After two weeks of learning farming, health education, finance and proposal writing, I took off for the village. Being the only group without a host family, this seemed rather daunting, but thank goodness for Joe and Juliet. We have successfully cooked, cleaned and I managed to get a taxi by myself to Iganga to write this. So bar the massive ant infestation and lack of curtains, we are doing well. We have even managed to painfully carry our own jerry cans of water back to the house and use our pit latrines.
We are attracting a lot of attention in the community. Being called musungo (white person) is an hourly occurrence and you will be followed down the street just because of the color of your skin. I even made a baby cry because I looked so different - haha.
The work is just beginning. We have met with the headmaster, the church leader, the chairman of the parish and some of the youth group leaders. We are so excited to get stuck in and teaching everything we have come here to pass on. The issues highlighted to us are early marriage - with over 40% of S3 (year 10) having given birth; poverty, with many girls getting on boda bodas and getting married to the drivers for the promise of a chapatti (500 shillings); and drug abuse with so many children dropping out of school.
The best thing is that these issues and statistics have shocked us all, and we all want to work our hardest to try and make a difference.
So with this I will say bye bye and hopefully will be back next week to fill you in on our first week in the community, beyond meetings and playing football with the children.
