Cheese from Gulu

Glen and I both spent the last week in Gulu. I was travelling alone for once so Glen came with me in the vehicle. I still can't quite get used to the luxury of being driven whenever I go away. However, with the state of the road to Gulu I was very grateful to have a professional driver. The first half of the journey is ok, once you've got through the Kampala traffic. But the second half! First there are the road works around the Masindi junction with single file traffic and driving on very dusty gravel, then a section that hasn't been fixed at all and is a very bumpy murram road.

After that most of the rest of the journey, around 160km, is on disintegrating tarmac. Generally there is a strip of tarmac in the middle, roughly wide enough for a single lane, with rough edges and mud either side. But there are sections with big potholes right across the road. So it's a stop, start drive braking hard and then bouncing through the pothole! It gets even more interesting when you meet oncoming traffic. The general rule in Uganda is that biggest gets priority. So we had to dive for the ditch whenever we saw a lorry or a speeding bus coming towards us!

Gulu is in the North of Uganda on the road heading to South Sudan. This is the area that was badly affected by the LRA conflict for 20 years from 1986 to 2006. Life is gradually returning to normal in the area with people back home recovering their land and starting their lives again. But there are still lots of challenges with conflicts over who owns the land and a generation who missed out on education. The town is now a bustling place with a growing population, shops and markets. Everywhere you look are NGO offices, although apparently a lot less than there were and many NGOs are now pulling out, their work (or funding!) completed.

I visited one of our partner organisations to work with them to complete a bank reconciliation and cash count for the end of March and set up a template to use for future month ends. We also completed the redesigned quarterly monitoring form, including reconciling their reported expenditure for the whole period of the grant and a forecast for the April to June quarter as well as their actual expenditure for the January to March quarter. All a bit of a challenge when there was no power for most of the first day and then it went off again over lunch on the second day. Luckily there was a generator at the hotel so I was able to charge up my trusty laptop each evening.

Glen went with one of the other VSO volunteers to a vocational training institute just outside Gulu. He had a interesting couple of days sitting under the mango tree discussing science, motor mechanics and engineering with the students and tutors. They run courses in welding, metalwork, carpentry, plumbing and electronics as well as the motor mechanics. They have a bakery and are also experimenting with cheese making. We came home with a gift of a cheese! This is a real luxury in Uganda and is only available in the big supermarkets and delicatessens and is very expensive!

We are now enjoying cheese omelettes, cheese with avocado and tomato, cheese on toast and just cheese!!