Blogs from Uganda, Africa - page 6

I learned late in the day yesterday that today is a National Holiday. So RWO is closed and our classes are canceled since the women would likely not attend anyways. Today is NRM Liberation Day. It is a national holiday in Uganda observed on January 26th each year. The Battle of Kampala was a battle of the Ugandan Bush War that took place Jan 17th – 26th1986. The National Resistance Army attacked and captured the Ugandan Capital of Kampala from the Ugandan National Liberation Army. As a result, the Ugandan government was deposed and replaced by a new one under the current President: Yoweri Museveni. The ladies slept in a bit so I sat outside and caught up on work from home. Then we had breakfast in Entebbe with a few of their friends overlooking the ... read more

Happy New Year is what has been said all day long here as today is the official opening of Uganda after two years of shut down. Up until now, many businesses have been completely closed while others have had limitations. There has also been a curfew for the residents. If you were caught out after 8pm the police could stop you and ask you why you are out. I learned that the going rate for a bribe is just about $12.00 or a $50,000 shilling note. The cops don’t make change if you offer less than $50,000. I heard that there is already big celebrations happening in Kampala to ring in the ‘New Year’. We had our Monday morning meeting and then I went to start working on the sewing classroom. We have 6 manual sewing ... read more

Today we met with the first group of women again. This lesson was about savings or as we called it 'Pay Yourself First'. We went over the road blocks to saving, opportunity cost of saving and why we save: emergencies, short term goals and long term goals. Last time the budget game went pretty well so I did another similar game. We split them into four groups. Each group had a different sized pig bank of savings. They needed to decide as a group how they would spend their savings and share with the class. We found that these women mostly focus on short term goals. But, this is because they have never been able to make enough money, or save enough money to have bigger goals for themselves. Soon I will start meeting with them ... read more

Today was the first day we have had rain here and it slows down commuting similar to snow at home. The bodas (scooters) can’t run and the taxis have a much slower go at it. We had planned to take a taxi to work, but Irene picked us up in her car instead. Mondays are our meeting day so we started the morning with a full office meeting to go over what happened last week and what our goals are for this week. Majority of the girls with sponsorships for their school fees are back at school. We have a few remaining girls, but most of their issues are with the family. I will be meeting with the women on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday this week. I am also going to start working on some marketing and ... read more

Today was a great day with the ladies. In the morning Hope wasn’t feeling well so she went to the doctor and I worked on lessons plans from home. Irene took me to the office around 11am so I could print material for the lessons. We grabbed a Rolex for lunch, but this time we added in a pork sausage link. It was a great addition. We joined the ladies in the afternoon for their first official lesson. Today’s focus was on the fundamentals of a budget. You will see in the picture of the chalk board that we needed to start very basic. Needs vs Wants, Goals, and Surprise Expenses. Once we got going the ladies started to understand the concepts. Ugandans learn Lugandan (the local language) at home and then when they go to ... read more