Blogs from Uganda, Africa - page 143

My new school for this summer is about 11km from Masindi Town. The area is mainly rural, with most people working in farming. The headteacher is Ms Christine Akullo who has been head for 4 years. There are 7 other teachers, including two men. (When I was reading the information from LCD, it all seemed pretty comparable up to this point. Then...) There are 450 children in the school, 103 of these are in P1 (Reception). This class is likely to only have 1 teacher! The numbers decrease going through the ages so the oldest class (P7) has only 25 children. Unusually for Uganda, the girls outnumber the boys in this class. Luckily there is a water tank, though no listing for toilets. You can use a mobile phone but "need to climb a bit"!... read more

Hello! I'm writing this post from a small home in the hills near Mbale, where I've been living with a coffee cooperative family. The internet works via satellite somehow - it's crazy. We barely have electricity, yet here I am writing this! Uganda is really great so far. We're staying with this huge Jewish family. There are 10 original kids and about 20 adopted kids. The newest adoptee (who has only been in the house for one week) is very cute, but very sick. He is clearly malnourished and also has malaria. He cries a lot too. It's really hard to see. The coffee cooperative we're visiting, Peace Kawomera, is based on the idea of different faith communities working together - and so far it seems to be working great. We've visited a mosque (where I ... read more

At various stages of this week some of us have not felt briliiantly - I wasn't too good on Wednesday. But over the last couple of days many of us have gone down either a combination of D & V (but don't worry I won't give too much information! Yesterday was a trip to Jinja (c. 100 km) to see the source of the Nile and the Bujagali Falls about 8 km away. We went in 2 ancient coaches hired from the Makere Uni in Kampala (one an old Leyland) and had a horrendous boneshaking journey which lasted 3 hours there and 3 hours back. Some of the group started to feel rough while there, and felt even worse by the return journey. We took about 140 children and their teachers to the falls, none of ... read more

Where to begin. There's so much to write and so much has happened since we arrived on Friday morning. Such as Stephen Jota not turning up to pick us up because he tough we were arriving at 8.00 pm instead of 8.00 am!! We had to wait an hour or so for him and a friend to turn up at Entebbe with two minibuses and so we had our first taste of Uganda. It was a dusty and scary journey to the hotel in Nansana which is about 2 km from the Stephen Jota Children's Centre. (to be continued, as I've had to leave to go with Stephen somewhere else..... - in fact to a Pastor's Fraternal). continuing..... It certainly has been far from quiet and relaxing. This time in Kampala visiting the Centre has been ... read more

FYI: I will be periodically posting pictures on my yahoo site in a folder cleverly titled "Uganda" http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/leslie_628/my_photos I arrived in Entebbe, Uganda on June 28, coincidentally my 28th birthday, which I celebrated the previous weekend while in London. Some quick background: I am here for 3 months working on a USAID/ JSI (http://www.jsi.com/JSIInternet) Project called UPHOLD (Uganda Program for Holistic & Human Development - http://www.upholduganda.org). It’s a five-year project that ends in September 2007, which supports education, health and HIV/AIDS interventions and programs throughout 29 districts in Uganda. I am working in the M&E (monitoring & evaluation) department. My terms of reference are pretty wide and we are still discussing the specifics of my responsibilities but generally speaking my responsibilities are: revising and editing survey materi... read more