Jenny in Kampala

Saturday 15 February 2014

Paintings and parties!

Since I last wrote a post, the new term has started at Hands for Hope. So the children are in the room next my office every morning, learning english, singing, chanting and (occasionally it seems!) writing quietly in their exercise books! Here’s a picture of them enjoying a dancing lesson:

Our afternoon programme has also started. This is for young people who haven’t been to school and they are mainly taught basic numeracy and literacy:

The afternoon programme.

I’ve been spending my time learning the ropes, meeting people and doing a handover with Tammy. I've enjoyed having several introductory meetings with people including those who run other community organisations, head teachers and the police commander for the area. One thing I've noticed is that most people seem to look at me perplexed when I say my name is Jenny. It seems that Jennifer is quite a common name here, but nobody has heard of the name Jenny!

I've also visited a number of schools and vocational colleges that we support children to attend, including taking some back to boarding schools for the start of term (some children board due to particular needs they have or because their situations at home are so difficult). This has also involved some "interesting" journeys across town in matatu's (essentially shared taxis/ overcrowded mini-buses!). I'm not sure I'll ever get used to the chaos of the traffic here....

This week has been Tammy's last week at Hands for Hope and I take over fully on Monday. The staff, children and families are very sad to see her leave. As well as a really fantastic leaving do with the staff , the nursery children enjoyed making Tammy a hand print card. See some pictures of both below:

Gilbert enjoying the painting!

The staff party at the guest house:

Preparing chicken and chips for everyone... (due to the frequent power cuts a lot of the cooking here is done stoves outside)

A few people have asked what we eat at lunch at work. Every day we have rice, beans, cabbage and matoke (plantain), occasionally g-nut sauce (a pink sauce made of peanuts, which I wasn't a fan of start with, but now I'm kind of addicted to) and meat on a Friday! Tammy, Hildah (the staff member I share an office with) and I often have a mid-morning treat of a samosa from the shop next door. They cost 300 shillings each (17p) and are brilliantly tasty and greasy! I also quite like a "rolex" from time to time - a local street food that's a bit like a pancake with various fillings - great for a hangover....

Out of work, I've started going to yoga classes every week, have tried out the local swimming pool and even been out running a couple of times - though the heat combined with constantly needing to dodge bodas, man-holes and goats makes running here slightly less relaxing than running around Greenwich Park! I tried out the cinema last weekend and saw 12 Years a Slave (great but bleak, if you've not seen it) and have also been to a quiz night at Bubbles (Kampala's main Irish bar...). The winning team has to write the following week's quiz so I was quite glad we totally lost (the round on infectious diseases was particularly fun...).

We also went out for sushi, drinks and brunch last weekend for Tammy's birthday:

At Yujo, the sushi restaurant

All day Sunday brunch

Tonight I'm looking forward to dinner and drinks with Sam, (who some of you will know), who used to work at Newham and is over in Uganda with his (new) work and on Monday I move out of the guest house and into the flat, where I will be for the rest of my time here.

Monday 3 February 2014

More Hands for Hope things and a trip to Jinja.

I thought I would write a bit about my time at work since my earlier update a week or so ago. I’ve done two full weeks at Hands for Hope (HfH) now. The first week was the final week of our holiday programme for the children before the school term starts next week.

The nursery children playing during the holiday programme.

On the final Friday, the children took part in a talent competition “Namuwongo’s got talent”. The contest latest about five hours and I was one of the judges. Here are a few pics:

After the competition, a number of children were given prizes in recognition of the performance across the whole 6 weeks of the holiday programme. They were given pens, maths sets and exercise books, which they were really pleased to receive.

As well as running the nursery and supporting children through primary school, HfH supports vulnerable families in a range of ways, particularly in the area of health. I have visited, Little Light, a health clinic that HfH partners with – providing accessible health care to those living in the Namuwongo slum. HfH also works with partner organisations to train members of the community to be peer educators. Last Saturday morning I attended a session the peer educators were delivering to young people from the slum on sexual health.

I’ve also spent more time with the social work team in the Namuwongo slum (and have also been to the Nsambya slum, whose families HfH also supports) and visited a number of families. I’ve been learning about some very complex and challenging cases and the team do a really fantastic job at supporting the families who are in incredibly difficult circumstances.

HfH currently runs its nursery and offices across two building, based a 15min walk apart. We are currently trying to raise enough money to buy a new building, which will not only save money, but will also be more fit for purpose and enable us have more space to increase our community work. We have £25,000 left to raise (that’s 100,000,000 Ugandan shillings…. – trying to work with budgets in such high numbers is quite interesting….). I’ve been to visit a couple of potential sites and am quite excited that I will be involved in the (fingers crossed!) completion of this project over the next year.

Finally, I briefly visited the Ugandan national library as they donated some books to us. At HfH, we run a community library, containing about 3000 books and used by the families we work with as well as local schools:

On the non-work front, I’ve just spent a lovely weekend camping in Jinja. Jinja lies about 80km from Kampala and is famous for being the source of the Nile. Here are some pics:

Today at work - at HfH we work with three children with disabilities. I'm going with them today back to their school in Entebbe. In the evening I'm off to a yoga class nearby - my first attempt at any exercise since I got here...

Monday 27 January 2014

Exploring Kampala....

So, aswell as working in the day, I've been exploring my neighbourhood and new City in the evenings and at the weekends. Now I'm getting more used to the traffic chaos, I'm enjoying walking around my new neighbourhood.

Namuwongo market area

I've been struck by how friendly everyone is. My walk to work in the morning takes less than 5 minutes, but during that time, I'm greeted by about 20 people all saying "hello, how are you?, are you fine?" It's a bit of a contrast to my London commute...!

I've been spending some evenings relaxing at the guest house:

and am getting used to the (currently) fairly frequent power cuts:

A slightly freaky photo of me reading my kindle during a power cut...

Other evenings, I've been out and about. Little Donkey is a brilliant Mexican restaurant up the hill from where I live:

Further afield, I went to a nice steak restaurant last week and also to a BBQ on the other side of town up the hills, which was fantastic fun. I also went to a Jazz bar called JazzVille last week, only they had stopped playing jazz! - but it was a nice bar nonetheless:

Enjoying the beer (but no jazz!) at JazzVille

I'm also (very slowly) getting used to the boda-bodas (or motorbike taxi - called boda-bodas as they originated as bicycles with large panniers, used for smuggling goods across borders via rural footpaths (border-border)). To help with this, on Sunday, I went on a boda-boda tour of the City. Here are some pics: