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Children at Bushfire
Ironing with a charcoal iron Greetings from Uganda!
For those who don't know, I (Gerry) am here for 6 months working with our great old friends, Sam and Eva who run an organisation called 'Uganda Family Resource Link'. They have done wonders here (the project in the village is called 'Bushfire'), within 2 or 3 years they have built 4 homes for 60 children-at-risk (mainly orphans), staff houses, a huge community-cum-church hall, a farm, a medical clinic and they are half way through building a primary school! It has grown so quick Sam feels somewhat overwhelmed and was keen for me to come and help organise things and give some management advice. I like the idea of being a management consultant and charging thousands of pounds per week for my services! But then that would be slightly unethical given that lunch and dinner here normally consists of beans and rice. I've eaten so many beans now that I could generate enough wind to power the whole village community!
Talking about alternative energy, I am keen to help Sam look at ways of making the project sustainable and it's something I hope I can learn myself as I go into my research phase of my
Masters in Development Management. I also secretly harbour a desire to be a 'social entrepreneur' like Sam so I'm hoping he can teach me a thing or two.
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I think the first step to being a social entrepreneur (there is a problem for me with those two words 1. I am not social and 2. I am not an entrepreneur!) is establishing some soundbites (like evangelicals "God is Great" or politicians "Pointing the way forward"). My first one on the long road to being a social entrepreneur is "Those who want to succeed will find a way, those who don't want to succeed will find an excuse". I saw this on the back of a t-shirt one of the staff was wearing at Bushfire. I do want to succeed and I will find a way!
I am staying in Sam and Eva's house and I am lucky to have a room to myself. I was not looking forward to the 2-inch cockroaches who unnervingly scuttle around the room at night, but fortunately there hasn't been any so far. There has
however been a mouse keeping me company (did I mention thet I'm here alone?). Denise texted me to say I should call it 'Denise'! After much deliberation, however, I decided on killing it (no reflection on Denise!), that night I found it curled up sleeping on my trousers, so I got the top of my soap holder and jumped on top of it, then put some heavy books on top of it and left it for the night. Sure enough it was dead in the morning! This was a very small, slow mouse, in fact I thought it might have had an AIDS related illness! Anyway, feeling chuffed that I had connected with my assertive inner-self, I went to bed the next night, only to discover that a larger, faster mouse had replaced the minnow! Survival of the fittest, I suppose! Worrying that this might be a trend (I kill the mouse and the next one gets bigger until giganticus mousis takes over the room and I get eaten) I left the mouse and christened it 'Denise'!
I've been here 4 weeks now and feel quite settled, thoroughly enjoying the hot weather. It's been great to meet lots of
Kids from nearby village
Expressing some amazement at seeing a white man driving a van! old friends and the Ugandans are always friendly and hospitable. One day I feel completely useless and can't contribute anything, the next day I feel excited and optimistic, so lets hope I get more of the latter overall.
Today I drove to Jinja, the nearest town, to get my computer cable fixed, then drove to the village, Bulange, where the project is located, almost 2 hours drive into the bush, and then round lots of other villages as we had to speak to the village leaders to ask them if we could do a community survey for the new clinic. It's amazing driving through all these villages with their little mud huts and people queuing up for water at boreholes, as white egrets fly overhead. At best, it's a quiet rural idyll, but it also belies a cruel poverty-sticken underbelly, where babies die of diarrhoea because the family could not afford charcoal to use to boil the contaminated water. At the end of the day I drove the van home again, by which time it was getting dark, and the roads are truly awful with huge potholes everywhere. We got held up in a traffic jam as a huge
tanker lorry had flipped onto its side. I was exhausted when I got home to my beans and rice!
At home in London I was wanting to do something meaningful and worthwhile but also exciting. As Paul Tournier calls it, 'adventure'. I'm reading his book again (having first read it over 20 years ago) 'The Adventure of Living' which Sam has a copy of. It's all about that. He thinks it is an instinct. It starts with a sharp curve of excitement when we start a new adventure, then levels off as organisation kicks in. As one adventure dies so another one has to begin. I do feel now I am on an adventure.
Amidst adventure, of course, there is routine. The rhythm of my day is something like this: Up at 8am usually, for breakfast (I always have 4 slices of toast with Blue Band margarine which is second only to Lurpak in my opinion, and Mt Elgon fresh coffee, which I've decided is second to none, the Bodum I brought from Britain is a life saver). The toast is always ready prepared for me. Lunch is normally around 1.30 and it's usually beans and something. The
young people do absolutely everything in the house including all cooking, clearing up, cleaning house, washing clothes and ironing, and looking after the kids. The difference between them and Western teenagers could not be more different. Certainly makes adult life so much easier. Dinner is around 7pm. Nobody eats until I have started! Electricity goes off every third day ('load shedding' or is it 'shed loading'?). Everybody spends the evening (at least until around 9pm) in the living room/kitchen. I talk or read. Work happens inbetween meals! Work varies. As I said one day is productive the next one seems it isn't!
One of my main tasks is to teach about planning and management. You could say planning is a problem here or, at least it is very different! The way of doing things here is to start and take it from there. You do things as you encounter the need for them to be done (I guess we would call it 'reactive' as opposed to 'proactive'). And there lies my problem, trying to teach about planning isn't just educating, it's a major cultural and worldview shift. But as part of my new soundbite routine I'm not using the
word 'problem', it's now 'opportunity'!
Merry Christmas to everyone!
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Roger Wells
non-member comment
Bushfire Visit
Great pictures, great work being done at Bushfire. Gail and I visited November 2005. We still have vivid memories. I saw Gerry just befire he departed. We look forward to greeting Sam and Eva shortly at Heathrow.