Coffee making, egg hunting and language learning....

 

I spent Easter weekend at Sipi Falls. In Eastern Uganda, on the footfalls of Mount Elgon, there are three waterfalls (imaginatively named "Sipi 1", "Sipi 2" and "Sipi 3") and some stunning views looking out across Uganda.

 

In theory, Sipi is a 4-5 hour drive from Kampala. However, travelling on Good Friday morning is a bit like travelling anywhere on a bank holiday in the UK, only slightly worse. We travelled by public bus, which was super cheap and totally fine (apart from some confusion in the morning when Gladys from the bus station called us at 6.30am to say that the 8.30am bus we were booked on was about to leave and so could she book us onto the next bus that was leaving at midday. We headed to the bus station regardless and got on a bus just before 8am.  Never quite worked out what was going on there...). However the roads were very busy and it was raining and not much works here when it rains. So it took us 3 hours to travel the first 30km....

 

We stayed at Moses campsite, which has brilliant views of Sipi and the surrounding landscapes:

 

 

The campsite's picnic benches!



 

 

Looking out across Uganda.

 

 

Sipi 1 (I think..!)

 

 

 

 

 

The campsite was a really great place to just relax, read a book and look at the views. It had a little bit of a Fawlty Towers feeling to it, mainly I think because Moses' brother who ran the site seemed to spend most of his time in the local village, drinking Waragi (the locally distilled brew here in Uganda). Once we had gotten over the initial challenge of there not being enough places for us all to sleep, it was all fine.

 

The other group on the campsite were VSO volunteers who were on placements across Uganda, mainly in the north. Two of them I had met before. Russ I had met in Kidepo (at the time, his brother was visiting. For Higham people - his brother lives in Milton Keynes, is a chemist and was friends with William Steele. Random). Ian I had met in Café Kawa, my local café that I have recently discovered joins up with the wine shop next to them on a Wednesday night and sells wine at 4000 Ugandan Shilling a glass (£1...!).  It was really interesting chatting to them and finding out what projects they're all working on. Four of them had taken voluntary redundancy or early retirement from local government before coming out here, including Greenwich.

 

We went on a four hour walk to view all three falls. It was really beautiful, if a little tricky at times (despite walking very slowly downhill and with a stick, I still managed to fall over...). Here are some pics:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Baby chameleon!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We also took part in a coffee tour. Coffee is Ugandan's main export (for anyone that's interested, coffee is the main export at 55%, then fish, tea and tobacco) and the areas around Sipi sell locally and also export fantastic Arabic coffee. The tour took us through the whole process of making coffee. First the beans are picked:

 

 

 

 

and left out in the open to dry for around 3 weeks (this bit had obviously already been done by the time we arrived!). Then, the beans are shelled by pounding them: 

 

 

 



 

 

Then they are roasted:

 

 

 

until they look like this:

 

 

 

pounded again to make the powder:

 

 

 



 

 

and then boiled and simmered:

 

 



 

 

to make one of the best cups of coffee I've ever tasted!:

 

 



 

 

We also had a look round at what else was growing on the farm:

 

 

Matooke (like plantain, this a staple in the Ugandan diet (I eat it for lunch every day!))



 

 

Massive avocadoes  (I'm about to eat one of these for my lunch!) 

 

A chameleon (doing a bit or a rubbish job at camouflaging himself!)

 

We also had a little walk round Sipi town and ate there a couple of times (rice, beans, g-nut sauce and greens of course!). The "town", like lots of Uganda towns and villages is a street of small shops (all with mobile phone company branding), local food places, a church and a boda station! Plus plenty of cows, goats and street dogs:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back in Kampala, I have just started a course to learn Luganda. English is the official language in Uganda, but of the country's 33 indigenous languages, Luganda is the most widely spoken. I'm taking a course for two evenings a week for eight weeks at the Goethe-Zentrum institute (the German Cultural Centre). There are seven of us in the class and we're just learning the basics at the moment. I've so far learnt how to say my name, where I'm from, what I enjoy doing etc and I can count to ten. Isaac, our teacher, includes lots of games into the teaching (like bingo, speed dating...) so it's quite fun and we have homework after every lesson. Our last homework was to learn how to say our phone number in Luganda. This was a bit of a challenge given that I didn't actually know what my number was! I'm finding the pronunciation quite tricky though so we'll see how it goes.

 

 

At Hands for Hope, we've just finished our first term. We fundraised to run an Easter Egg hunt for the nursery kids and also some activities over the Easter holidays. Some staff from BA bought some crème eggs and mini eggs out with them from the UK. Thanks to everyone who donated. We held the hunt this week and it great fun. The children very rarely get to eat chocolate so this was a real treat for them. Here are some pics: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Go!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are about to start our holiday programme for all the children for two weeks before the second term starts. It is actually against the law in Uganda to run educational activities during the school holidays and we get special permission from the ministry to run the programme. The activities include lots of games, arts, dance etc as well as health talks and it's really important for the children as they continue to get two meals a days and are kept away from the dangers of the slum.

Before that, though, Hands for Hope is closed for a week and all the staff get a week off. I'm looking forward to spending it in the land of 1000 hills.....

A long trip north and a short trip south...

A long trip north....

Last weekend, I travelled to Kidepo Valley National park in Uganda's remote northeastern corner, on the border with South Sudan and Kenya. It has some of the most amazing landscapes I have ever seen with rolling savannahs, incredible views of mountain ranges in all three countries and is seemingly uninhabited.  During our game drives and safari walks we saw hardly any other vehicles and very few people. It does, however, host 77 mammal species and around 475 bird specie (including 56 bird of prey).

One of the reasons very few people visit Kidepo, is that for many years,  travel to the park (except by a very expensive chartered flight) was long considered dangerous and difficult. The road via Gulu was closed for almost 20 years because of the Lord's Resistance Army. The alternative route through Karamoja posed the risk of travellers becoming entangled in inter-tribal cattle rustling (and, with it, unsupervised AK47s!)

The complications across both of these routes have now been removed and the areas are safe to travel. In addition, the roads were improved (to some extent...) as part of the park's 50th anniversary in 2012, making the park more accessible.

We took route via Gulu on the way there, which was around a 11 hour drive.

Stopping for burgers and pizza in Gulu

After leaving Gulu and heading further north, the scenery became increasingly beautiful and this was our view on arrival at our camp in the park, as the sun was setting:

We stayed in bandas:

and had various visitors to our camp, including zebras:

patas monkeys:

and a family of warthogs:

There was also a shell garage at the camp!:

We spent two days in the park with our very cheery guide, Sam:

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On the first day we went on an early morning and a late afternoon game drive:

The park in the early morning sunlight

An oribi

Waterbucks

We saw a herd of elephants, including some baby elephants. The mother elephant, however, being protective of her babies, took a dislike to the safari vehicle in front of us and charged at it! They drove off pretty quickly. We found this all quite amusing (until we remembered that we had to drive along the same track...!)

Kidepo apparently has the largest number of buffalo of anywhere in Africa. This is not a surprise as they seemed to be everywhere and, at one point, we were encircled by them!:

A monitor lizard

We saw several lions basking in the sun. These were brothers and sisters, from Tim's pride (Tim being their Dad) and are aged 3 years old.

We soon noticed that the male lion looked quite thin and poorly. The following evening we saw the same lions again, this time lying under a tree (known as a "sausage tree"):

By this time, a guide had been out to see the lions and was of the view that the two male lions were suffering from TB. The following day they were to be treated (done by a stun gun, from a distance to knock them out, and then several injections). We watched the lions for quite some time and it is amazing how they seem completely unbothered by us in a vehicle nearby, staring and taking pictures.

We saw some amazing birds during our time in the park. I couldn't quite capture them on my camera. However, my favourite was the  Abyssinian Ground-Hornbill. I've stolen a pic of this from the internet...(all the other pics in this blog are real though....!!):

On our second day, we went on a three hour walking safari:



All of us on the walking safari

Me on the walking safari!

We were told lots about some of the brilliant flowers and plants. Here are a few of them:

Whilst studiously avoiding any buffalo (who go slightly crazy when confronted by a human on foot), we did manage to get really close to several animals. Standing opposite a giraffe and her baby was pretty incredible:

and we walked towards these zebras:

"Zebra crossing" (I don't think I'll ever tire of that joke...)

In the afternoon we drove to the north of the park, to try and spot some ostriches and go to some hot springs.... We did spot a number of ostriches in the distance. The hot springs were, however, a bit of a disappointment (kind of more like a sulphur puddle...)!

More remarkably, in the early evening, we climbed up a rock (I say climb, I think I was crawling...) with a cool box and some beers to watch the sun set over the park. Our guide had to lead the way as he said lions often sat on the rock...

 

Our safari van from the top of the rock

On day four, we headed back to Kampala, this time via Karamoja. We stopped on the way at Kaabong, not far from the park and the home of some of Juliana's family. They were very welcoming and hospitable and served us chicken with lemon and salt (a surprisingly brilliant combination). They also gave us gifts to take back to Kampala, including fresh mushrooms, lemons, eggs, nuts, necklaces and two live chickens. So we had two extra passengers for the remaining 14 hour drive.

The route back was longer than on the way up and we were slowed down by a few storms (and at times, a slight uncertainty with directions...), but it did give us the opportunity to travel through Karamojo, which was stunning. We travelled through vast, semi-arid plains, with villages home to the pastoral Karamojong people, similar, in many ways, to the Maasai of Kenya.

 After a stop and a curry in Lira, we arrived back into Kampala at sometime after midnight..

A short trip south

Much less spectacular and nearer to home (about 10km from the centre of Kampala), the weekend before, I went to Ggaba to check out the fish market and auction and take a look at Lake Victoria.

These really quite ugly birds are Marabou Storks and are very common in Uganda. Here they are waiting to pounce on some fish:

We watched as the fishing boats came in:

and then the fish was auctioned, to be sold at markets and restuarants across Kampala:

We then walked to nearby Muyonyo. Years ago this was famous for hosting royal yachts and, thought by the explorer Speke to be the "Cowes of Uganda". It is slightly less impressive now, but the resort nearby named after Speke, was a nice place to spend the afternoon relaxing (and getting a little sunburnt) by Lake Victoria:

I blogged a bit about Hands for Hope and what we do in an earlier post - see here. Now I've been working here for a couple of months, I thought I would write a bit more about the organisation and also what I've been doing.

My role is to manage the day to day running and development of Hands for Hope. This means managing the staff (there are 17 staff and I manage the social work manager, the head teacher and the administrative assistant), the budgets and finance, overseeing the various programmes and projects and looking at how we can fundraise and develop the work we do. 

We are half-way through the first term of the year. As I've previously said, we run a nursery across two sites and then fund children to attend primary and secondary school. We have also supported some young people to attend vocational school, studying catering, tailoring and motorbike mechanics.

However, Hands for Hope does much more than this; we deliver a whole range of work that helps to support the most vulnerable families living in the Namuwongo slum. I've already posted about some of this work, but below are examples of some of the things we've been doing.

I went to our Saturday programme, which we run every week. We partner with the Sound Foundation, who run singing and African drumming and dancing lessons for the children:

The children also take part in reading and art:

A competition to draw the best Uganda flag!

We work to improve the health of the residents in the slum. Life expectancy in Uganda is just 53 and it is likely that the life expectancy of those living in the slum is even lower. As well as partnering with a nearby health clinic to ensure the children and families we work with receive healthcare, we also  run a programme of outreach events on areas such as malaria, sanitation and HIV/AIDS. Two weeks ago we ran an event with The Ian Hutcheon Clinic for Children, on ear health and deaf awareness. The children received free ear checks and also had their faces painted!:

One of the nurses was telling me that they had seen several children who had ear infections caused by cockroaches climbing into their ears whilst asleep... (most of the children in the slum sleep on the floor).

The birth rate in the slum is very high, with mothers often living in a single room with at least 5 children. A few weeks ago we ran a session with Marie Stopes on family planning:

We also deal with individual medical cases. For example, we are currently helping a little boy called Mark to have a kidney transplant. No hospitals in Uganda carry out transplants and so we are fundraising for Mark to undergo his transplant in Nairobi. All being well, this will take place in June.

We run livelihood programmes for women and young people, to support them to set up sustainable businesses. Through our candlemaking programme, we train young people to make candles and these are then sold to visitors and, when we can, at markets etc in Kampala. We have recently developed a partnership with a social enterprise called Good Glass, which recycles glass (that would otherwise end up in landfill, streams or ditches) and make them into household items and ornaments etc (see here). Our young people have been commissioned to make candles for some of these glasses:

Robert with his good glasses!

We also support women to set up small businesses. Here is Maama Gilbert starting up her charcoal selling business:

 

(often women are known as "Maama (then the name of their firstborn)")

The social work/ outreach team support individual families with the issues they face and we meet weekly to discuss individual situations and how we can support families to resolve them. We hold a termly parents meeting. This term's meeting took place last Friday:

Hands for Hope are supported by many individuals. We have recently welcomed Bernadette and Kerstin from Germany, who are volunteering with us for three months. They are studying a degree in child development at Dusseldorf University and have been helping out in the nursery and at the afternoon programme. 

All of our children are sponsored by individuals paying a monthly donation (we are still looking for some sponsors for this year's baby class at nursery). A number of sponsors work for British Airways and come and visit us when their fleet heads to Entebbe. I've been showing round a number of BA staff over the last month. They kindly bring out donations and things we might need that are difficult to come by in Uganda (jaffa cakes were my favourite!). 

We were visited this week by Dan and Kari from the States, who ran a fantastic yoga class for the children (probably one of most amusing and chaotic things I've seen since being here!):

Some of areas of work we are currently developing include a programme for children with disabilities. These children are exceptionally vulnerable as, to some extent disability is still a taboo here. Disabled children are often regarded as shameful, kept indoors and can be neglected. The issue of disabled children accessing education in Uganda has actually been in the UK press this week. See an article here. Hands for Hope have identified 22 disabled children, they have been professionally assessed and we're looking at how we can support them further. We've set up a parents' support group which is now meeting regularly.

We've also looking at how we can do more to support refugee families living in the slum. At a meeting we held last week in partnership with the Refugee Law Project, many of the families attending had fled the Congo and were living in the slum, without having gained their refugee status and so without the rights and support they are entitled to.  

Hands for Hope have almost raised enough funds to buy our own building so we can house our two nurseries together and have more space to deliver community activity and outdoor activities for the children. Tammy (the previous administrator who did a fantastic amount of work to raise the funds), Joe (the director) and I have been to visit a couple of potential sites. 

So there's lots going on and, although sometimes hearing some of the families' stories and seeing such poverty regularly can be difficult, being with children every day is rewarding and lots of fun and I'm really enjoying the job so far.

If you would like you can get regular updates on what we're up to by "liking" our facebook page here