First Day at RWO

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Today was my first day at RWO. Sorry for the long post feel free to skim. If nothing else I think this will help me to remember my time here.



Fortunately, last night I was able to get a good night’s rest so I was ready to take on the day. It was cool enough at night that I could sleep under a sheet and I also have the bug net up around my bed. That said, I still have quite a few bug bites. I am going to need to be better at keeping up with my bug spray. Contracting malaria is not on my bucket list for this trip. Though everyone that lives here has had it a few times and they are very good at treating it naturally or at the hospital.



Power outages are a common thing here. More often than not it goes off in the morning and comes back on sometime later in the day. So I am advised to charge everything overnight.



We started our morning with ginger vanilla tea and sweet bread. The taxis here are mini vans with 4 rows. They drive down the road and people flag them to stop and then tell the driver where they need to get off. It took us about 15 mins to get to the office. We started the day with a morning meeting with the team. The co-founder Claire as well as their communications/marketing director and the community outreach manager. One of the areas that Rita (the community outreach manager) focuses on is working with the families of the girls who stay at the shelter. The girls cannot stay at the shelter forever so Rita works with the family to try to prepare them to care for their daughter/niece/grand-daughter again. Hope feels that the intense poverty coupled with many children per family has taken the family’s drive to be good guardians away. There is so much time spend on maintaining shelter and having food that parenting takes a back seat.



The cost of school (there is no option for free school) can be prohibitive to many families. For example; a mother and step daughter stopped in the office today. Mom makes $35,000 per month as a house maid. This works out to ~$120 USD per year. School cost $150,000 per term (here they have 3 terms as they have less time off than the US). This works out to ~$125 USD per year. The mother is 20 years old with two children of her own and two step children. It is easy to see why all four of her children do not go to school. RWO has secured a scholarship to pay for the eldest daughter’s tuition, but there are still additional needs such as uniforms, books, school supplies.



The natural next conversion that is had is about family planning. There is still a lot of resistance in the villages to have any form of family planning. There is pride that comes to men having as many children as possible. But, there is no shame in the men not being able to provide and care for the children. Because of this, the men do not want to use, or have their wife/girlfriends use, any form of birth control. RWO is working to education not just women, but also young men about family planning and slowly change the cultural desire for men to have as many children as possible.



After our meetings we did some banks (more later about their cash economy). We also had lunch, KFC is quite popular there, in the botanical gardens along Lake Victoria (Ugandans call it Nnalubaale). It was a great respite from the heat.



Hope’s friend and board member Irene came back to the house with us and made a great dinner. Hope tells me Irene makes a mean slow cooked pork rib and has promises to make it for me. Dinner was served with warm Uganda gin and it actually paired nicely even though I don’t normally care for gin. Hope being the gracious host that she is tried to make ice cubes for me. I knew that this must be a first for her because she thought they would be frozen after an hour. If the power doesn’t go out I might have ice cubes for breakfast!

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