This week I've had a short trip up to Lira for the Land Platform. The journey from Kampala takes about 6 hours with a very bumpy piece of road in the middle with lots of potholes. So quite a challenge to travel for a one day conference! Therefore the Platform meetings start with lunch on Monday and finish with lunch on Tuesday to allow everyone to travel to and from their base and only use 2 days from the week. It also has the bonus that we all stay overnight at the hotel so can have additional time to get to know each other and talk around the subject that doesn't happen in the one day conferences I've attended in the past.
The Platform meetings bring together people from NGOs, local and international, local and central government and traditional leaders. There were also quite a few people doing PHDs around land issues and land rights from all over the world. So it's a very interesting and diverse group coming with different backgrounds and knowledge levels but sharing a common interest in helping to resolve some of the land issues in Uganda.
The meeting followed up on the trip to Kasese I was lucky enough to go on in the middle of February and thought about how the learning from that trip could be applied. We also looked at the National Land Policy recently developed.
It's good to start to understand what some of the issues are and also what some of the budget lines mean and how the funding relates to the work the partner organisations are doing.
We finally left Lira just after 3pm yesterday and I arrived home about 9.30, although I was the last one to be dropped off as I live nearest to the office. It puts a whole new perspective on travelling from York to London for a one day conference. The luxury of an intercity train!
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