Sunday 30 July 2006

I have a song to sing

Woke this morning with the song "Lord you have my heart, I will search for yours" singing in my head. We headed of to Lungujja for church and Pastor Steven preached on Isaiah 6 - Here am I send me. The song absolutely fitted with what he had said so.... when he had finished (and he didnt know) having first got Gordon up to the front for a tumultous welcome, he nodded to me to join him as well. Sister, he said, do you ahve a song! So off we went.... although i have a sore throat i managed to teach them the words and the tune and it was beautiful.... their african voices are wonderful, the harmonies and sounds of their voices are moving and as the last line of the song says "we saw His glory here" - amazing. Afterwards one of the other girls on the team came and said that she had been singing it to herself all week and had wanted to teach it to the church.... it was a real blessing.

Then i helped cook lunch, sat on the floor outside in the searing heat I rolled out chapatis and chatted with the other women. A delicious lunch followed and then following long discussions on health and lots of other stuff ( we are planning a health seminar for tomorrow) we headed back to our guest house. Bex and Ems have gone back to lungujja for the night - Ems is having her hair braided whihc apparently will take 6-7hours and tomorrow she is going out with Juliette who is an Environmental health inspector, to visit latrines .... um, rather her than me and fortunately her camera does not have smellovision !!!

Saturday 29 July 2006

Its not what you know, but who you know

Last night we met up with our friend Aaron. He is the Provincial Secretrary of the Church of Uganda - that means he is in charge of the running of the church and answers to the archibishop. he is also a director of the main hospital here. so he is arranging for gordon to visit and meet with a range of drs who he wants to meet. Aaron also introduced us to sue - she is the secretary to the Archbishop of Canterbury and is hear planning the next Lambeth conference. A lovely lady, we shared a nice breakfast together and she has gieven us lots of useful contacts for helping with our projects. Anyway, tomorrow we are off to lungujja to see the new door and plastered walls paid for by st marys church uttoxeter via emily and no doubt a loud and excited celebration!

by the way, I have been invited to come back next august/september to speak at a christian confernence for 1000 women. I think i may have accepted by not actually saying 'no'..... however, I have been praying about it and have in mind to bring a team of several women who can help lead a mission here. If you think you might be one of them, please pray about it and get in touch.... you will know who you are!!!

Its not what you know, but who you know

Last night we met up with our friend Aaron. He is the Provincial Secretrary of the Church of Uganda - that means he is in charge of the running of the church and answers to the archibishop. he is also a director of the main hospital here. so he is arranging for gordon to visit and meet with a range of drs who he wants to meet. Aaron also introduced us to sue - she is the secretary to the Archbishop of Canterbury and is hear planning the next Lambeth conference. A lovely lady, we shared a nice breakfast together and she has gieven us lots of useful contacts for helping with our projects. Anyway, tomorrow we are off to lungujja to see the new door and plastered walls paid for by st marys church uttoxeter via emily and no doubt a loud and excited celebration!

by the way, I have been invited to come back next august/september to speak at a christian confernence for 1000 women. I think i may have accepted by not actually saying 'no'..... however, I have been praying about it and have in mind to bring a team of several women who can help lead a mission here. If you think you might be one of them, please pray about it and get in touch.... you will know who you are!!!

Ubumama

You may know that in April Gordon and I went to Chicago to an arts and health conference. at the confence i went ot a workshop sponsored by the WHO about a project which is trying to address the issues effecting maternal mortality . In sub-saharan africa 1 in 15 women die in childbirth, in the uk this figure is probably less than 1 per 2000 births. (guestimate) In Uganda last year 6000 women died giving birth. the project called ubuamama is encouraging women to talk together share their stories and together to try and address some of the local issues which effect this dreadful statistic.

So, i have brought ubumama to uganda. In lungujja Pastor Steven allowed me to speak at all the church services and to encourage women to come.... i reminded them of psalm 139 where we are told that God knows us when we are formed in our mothers wombs and so as well as each child being important, so are mothers. Genisis 3 v 16 tells us that God told women that childbirth would be painful but not that they would die.... and so we began.....on Thursday and Friday afternoon over 30 women with their children came and together we shared our stories of childbirth. From our stories we have designed and are now creating individual embroideries which celebrate the birth of our children..... a real arts for health workshop!!! I provided the materials and the wonderful women who it is a privilige to work with are sharing their stories. It is one of the most moving things i have ever done.... it is unusual for women to talk in the way they are beginging to and so we are coaxing their stories out of them, some of them so sad and difficult it is hard not to be moved. In the short term we may not be able to find solutions but my long term hope and prayer for these dear sisters is that they may continue to meet to sew, share and trust each other with both their difficult issues and their celebrations. One woman is expecting a baby any day, her 6th, so please pray for her safety and that of her child.... I will update you when we know.

Cows, chickens and computers

My time in the last two weeks has been completely filled. In retrospect its hard to describe exactly what i have done but a quick summary would cover inspecting all the projects The Kabanda Trust has funded. this has involved spending a lot of time (!!!!) going over the intracies of each with both Charles the headteacher at Nanasana and Pastor Steven at Rock of Joy school run by his church. We have also started to do some forward planning and thinking rather than facing issues as they rise, hopefully this will enable us to be more organised in the future. Our discusssions have ranged from the purchase of cows and milk production (Fliss the cow who my neice funded last year by raising money at her school in gloucester and now has calf named Bell and is producing vast amounts of milk) and Ann who TKT funded earlier this year. On Tuesday we are going to buy the next cow to be housed in the impressive shed mentioned earlier......

My knowledge and expertise on broilers (chickens you feed up to sell to eat) versus layers (lay eggs .... obviously) is now second to none and the purchase of a computer for one of the schools is proving quite a challenge! They have a bench with 6 computers lined up on it which all look as though they came out of the ark. Only 1 of them is functional and as no-one in the school knows how to use it, it just sits with the others literally gathering dust. the teachers very enthusiatically explained to me how these computers could be used to teach the children to type !!! no comment........ anyway, we have just arranged for two teachers to take a computer course so that they can in turn,w ith the help of Topi our administrator here who is a computer wizz, teach the other teachers and then we have planned a programe of teaching which will introduce the children to a computer whihc actually works.... PRAISE GOD!

At the weekend we ventured to jinjja for a two day break where Gordon joined us. He and Ems then risked life and limb whitewater rafting - it was definitely a once in a life time experiance for me. The others and i went and watched at Bugugali falls a grade 4 rapid and i remembered why i was never doing it again. Although i do have to admit to an adrenalin rush as i watched my nearesst and dearest enjoying the thrill..........

Water, water everywhere......

Two weeks later... thank you to all you lovely people who have been reading my blog and feeding back. Today is the first time that i have been able to access my blog to update it. this is mostly because of the vaguearies of the electricity supply here. Any time i have managed to get to an internet cafe my priority has been to keep up with the work i am doing here and not to chat... so SORRY.... if you would like to catch up do look at Bex's blog (link from mine) as she has been writing more regularly.

Anyway, just to entertain you water is also an intermitant luxury. One day last week I got up at 7 for a shower to find that the water was off. the day continued and returning to my room hot and sticky from a long hard day at school overseeing the projects and struggling to keep up with the language, i undressed (no dont think about it) and rushed enthusiastically into the shower room ( well ..... there were a few tiles on the walls) only to find i had left the tap turned on and there was water everywhere. Undaunted i turned the tap off adn proceeded to clean up a bit..... then i turned the tap back on and guess what, YES, in that 5 min the water had gone off again!!!!

so, now we have moved to other accomodation for the second part of our stay and the water supply is less intermitant but is always cold. So i am learning in all things to be grateful.... at least we have water... sometimes!

Friday 14 July 2006

Rock of Joy


It feels like its been a busy day and yet we havent done that much! This morning we all (bex, ems, jayne, kate & I) got a taxi to Lungujja to visit the Rock of Joy School. What a welcome!! Smiling, shouting, orange school uniform clad children everywhere absolutely beside themselves with excitment at our arrival. The whole site has so changed - with money donated through our Kabanda Trust by churches, schools and individuals at home they have been able to extend the school buildings and build new classrooms, put a fence around the site, and have now taken over another building next door to provide sleeping accommodation for some children

Eventually we managed to peel ourselves from the children and went into the house for excited greetings from Pastor Steven, his wife Gladys and all the friends and family- my first task as doctors wife was too run the morning clinic! The first patient was my daughter Lizzie and Amy who have bad tummy upsets - they need some antibiotics and sweet drinks with salt. Next was the sadest story of a little girl Carol aged 8 who has been left with her aunt and the aunt beats her. The poor child had the most appalling swollen infected lip whihc was clearly agony for her - a quick consultation over the phone to the real doctor and she had antibiotics and ibuprofen... such a sad sad thing and it is accepted as the norm by most people.

Then a very excited Pastor Steven showed us round - and well he might be excited. God is so blessing what they are doing - from 15 children two years ago they now have 240 children for whom they provide free school. The money some of you generous people have donated is so gratefully recieved - they have desks and benches for the children to sit at, black boards, uniforms, sportswear and text books and the teachers are so encouraged to know that people are supporting them. the excitment and enthusiam of everyone was tangible and the way they are develoing the school is amazing.

Lizzie and 10 of her friends from Bristol University Cu have been there for nearly three weeks and they have been working so hard. Recently Pastor Steven has been able to rent a building behind the school and the girls have been working to turn it into a boarding house.

Thursday 13 July 2006

Smiling faces and dust

I had forgotten that one of the first things that grabs you when you arrive in Uganda are the smiling faces - everybody is so friendly and because we are white wants to try and help us or speak to us or just practice their English. The second thing I had forgotten is the dust, a rich, thick red dust that gets everywhere, consequently i have a really sore throat this evening, but hey...

I am here with four others, Bex my daughter, Emily who is 17 and studying for her A levels before going to do medicine, Jayne who is a childrens worker with north staff youth for Christ and Kate a friend of jaynes who is an actress. We arrived late last night after a long journey via Dubai and Addis Ababababa as the captain said (if he cant get it right who can?) and were all fairly exhausted. Today we headed into Kampala to get orientated, on a matatu which is a public minibus whihc should seat 12 but takes as many as they can pile in - for the equivalent of 20p you travel quite a long distance. Money changing and some lunch followed after which we all headed to Nansana Royal Primary School.

An exciting experiance for Jayne, Kate and Ems who were feeling a bit lost and disorientated as the children just won their hearts - their happy smiling faces and pure pleasure at seeing us was a real joy. We toured the building, admired the new cow shed with its concrete storage tanks for manure and urine (ummm not sure that much detail was necessary) and stood under a tree whilst the children seranaded us with a song welcoming us to their school.

Next week the work at the school starts. The girls are gonig to do a whole series of craft and teaching sessions based on noahs ark. Kate is going to do some music and singing with a couple of classes and I am going to meet with staff and head teacher to review and plan things with the trust.

We have come up the hill to a guest house for supper and emails.... so, having read my emails, I'm going for my supper! Tomorrow we are planing to visit Lungujja and have a first look at Rock of Joy school -more smiling faces no doubt!

Monday 10 July 2006

Planes, pumps and roast magpie

We fly tomorrow afternoon at 2.00pm from Birm to Dubai then an 8 hour wait (umm...) before onwards via Addis Ababa to Entebbe. Bex & Emily Wilson who is coming with us (daughter of Jules and Trish for those who know them) have just spent a happy hour cramming 140 pairs of plimsolls into a bag for the flight - an interesting experiance!

Yesterday our appreciation of wimbledon was somewhat interupted by a bird in the back of our gas fire. A call to the gas board today enlightened me that this was an emergency. Within 25 mins a the gas man called, somewhat dauntedly removed gas fire and a dead magpie!! just as well we didnt need the fire on - has anyone ever tasted roast magpie?

Thursday 6 July 2006

A New Discovery

Yesterday I spent an interesting 45 mins with James from BBC Radio Stoke talking about what we have been developing in Uganda and learning how to use a digitial voice recorder which the BBC have lent me! The plan is that I am going to make an audio diary of our up and coming visit to be used on one of their programmes.... so listen for this space :)
And so the idea of blogging.... James's suggestion.... apparently means I dont have to email and I can transfer bits of my journal, recordings (if I dare share them) and photos so that you can see them! So here I am having a go. Bex has got me started and been inspired to do her own blog so have a read and get her view on it all as well!