Working in Gulu

This week I travelled to Gulu in the North of Uganda with two Ugandan colleagues to meet and introduce myself to the staff at 4 of the partner organisations. Everyone was very friendly and welcoming. We looked at the monitoring forms which are due back straight after the new year break, the minimum governance and financial requirements for funding being introduced for all partners and the financial systems in place at each of the partners. It was good to have the opportunity to discuss the challenges the partners are facing and think about ways I can help set up systems to make things easier. This week I need to create a template for re-profiling their second year budgets and plan a timetable of visits for the new year to spend a longer period of time with each partner. I think I'm going to be getting to know Gulu much better!

We travelled up on Monday, allowed a day to meet each partner, and travelled back on Saturday. Thank you to my colleagues for being such good company and for teaching me more about the Ugandan way of life. I've been introduced to a range of Ugandan foods this week. A traditional Ugandan lunch includes several types of carbohydrates, matoke, posho, sweet potato, potato, rice and chapatis with either fish, chicken, beef or goat. An alternative to the meat or as a side dish is beans, assorted types of beans in a tomato based sauce often including other vegetables. Matoke is a staple made from green bananas and posho is made from cornflour.

VSO have a significant presence in Gulu with an office there and several international volunteers based in the town. I got in touch with a Gulu based volunteer I had met in Kampala and we met up with several of the other volunteers at a restaurant for dinner on Wednesday night. A bit challenging as it had rained heavily during the day so the road to the restaurant was flooded meaning we had to go around a different way. It was great to meet up with the volunteers in Gulu and I'm sure I'll see them many times on my travels to Gulu.

Deserted Gulu streets in the rain

While I've been away 'up country' my sister in law has visited Glen's mother and step father back in the UK. They have been looking after the teddy bear that Glen gave me for my 22nd birthday, who is simply called 'Bear'. Bear has obviously been having some adventures with his 'aunt'!