A Day in the Life of a VSO Volunteer

Yesterday was a fairly typical day. There was the VSO Volunteer Committee meeting in the morning, which I'm a member of as I'm the Chair of the Kampala Volunteer Cluster. So I headed up the hill in search of a boda to the VSO office, which is in the opposite direction to work.

I should explain that I am using bodas again at the moment as the RAV 4 decided that without Glen to keep it in order it wouldn't start. We decided there isn't any point in trying to get a mechanic for the last few days before I fly back for Christmas. The car is safely in the compound and will wait for us both in January.

So I picked up my helmet (white full face!) and walked up the hill from the flat in search of a boda. I was lucky and met one before I got to the main road. This got me to Tank Hill 15 minutes early so I decided to check out the gift shop there, which I have passed so many times but surprisingly never gone inside.

Tank Hill, VSO on the left, Tank Hill Parade with the Italian supermarket on the right.

In Uganda greeting everyone is a very important part of social life. Not just friends and colleagues but everyone you meet, especially if you want to buy something from them or travel on their boda. 'Good morning Ssebo, how are you?', 'Fine, how are you?' 'Good thank you. I need to go to Tank Hill Parade!' After a bit of haggling over the price (3,000, no 2,000, 2,500?, no 2,000 is a good price!) I climb on the back and off we go. I still haven't got over the need to hold on tight to the bar at the back and never feel quite secure, especially over the road humps!

After the Volunteer Committee meeting, some of the volunteers decide to go for lunch together. Because we are based all over Uganda it's always good to meet up and compare stories. This time we were laughing about the amount of Ugandan English and Ugandan habits we have picked up and how strange everyone at home will think we are when we greet everyone and ask after their health!

After lunch and a quick trip to the supermarket it's back on a boda and on to work. There's a theatre festival on in Kampala at the moment and several people were heading to the National Theatre to see a play at 4. Sadly I have too much to finish before I fly home to take any more time off.

There is another downpour in the afternoon but luckily after I'm safely back at my desk. It's a daily occurrence at the moment, the sky gets very dark with rumbles of thunder and then the rain starts. It's almost as if someone is emptying buckets out of the sky.

I leave work shortly after 6 after getting an e mail follow up to Thursday's meeting and various monitoring spreadsheets e mailed out to partner organisations. Luckily by then it's stopped raining but it's very wet and muddy underfoot. I'm carrying my helmet, which acts like a magnet for every boda in the vicinity. However, I decide against a boda as I want to find a pineapple and some milk from the roadside shops on the way home. Also bodas when the roads are wet and muddy are not necessarily the best option.

Halfway home I'm passed by a pick up truck with stacks of speakers, loud music and a man with a microphone speaking in Lugandan. I've no idea what it was about but it was unbelievably loud close to.

Milk and pineapple bought I'm home just as the sun is setting. As I head back down the road to the flat the people in the village at the top are all saying 'hello' and 'how are you?'. The children call me 'Muzungu!' The young adults 'Maama!' Several people have asked 'Where's Mr?'. It's just not possible to be incognito here, just by being white we stand out and people notice what we do.

The pineapple needs preparing straight away. It's fantastic to be able to get super fresh produce in season, pineapple, avocado, mangos, bananas, tomatoes etc. So it's a simple supper of pineapple, cheese and bread (I know, I bought that cheese at the Italian supermarket again!)

Next Friday I'll be back in the UK. It will be quite a contrast from my final Friday of 2014 in Kampala.

Learning About Sustainable Agriculture

I spent last week in the remote West Nile region of Uganda at a meeting for the partner organisations involved with the Sustainable Agriculture project. It was a good learning opportunity for me and I now understand this aspect of the programme much better.

We were based at an Agriculture College, which delivers residential training to young farmers on all aspects of farming. As well as basic courses in sustainable agriculture they also offer courses in livestock management, farming as a business and bee keeping.

A huge percentage of Ugandan people rely on subsistence farming to support themselves and their families. A lot of the farming knowledge that would normally be passed from generation to generation was lost in Northern Uganda when families were broken up during the 20 year conflict. The partners I work with are trying to replace this knowledge with training, both in groups and on site. They also provide some seeds and other inputs but the intention is always as a boost to start people, not so they become reliant on the hand outs.

Another challenge is climate change. Farmers say that the weather patterns are changing noticeably here in Uganda with the rainy seasons starting and finishing later. They are noticing dry spells when there should be rain and then heavy rain which washes everything away.

We started with a tour of the college looking at the information about soil analysis, lots of different crops, the bee keeping training area and the livestock area.

Upland rice, nearly ready for harvesting

A row of pineapple plants

Cotton

The new chicken house - these really are organic free range chickens!

On the second day we went on a trip to a nearby village to hear first hand from the farmers. Most of the group travelled on the tractor and trailer but they insisted I went in the 4*4 car!

The village meeting tree!

It was great to talk to the villagers. Most of the men had only a few words of English and the women spoke no English at all so it was good to have an interpreter. It was shocking to see the women sat on the dirt floor behind the men sitting on the chairs, with the one exception of a female spokesperson. All the women could see was a row of backs! We tried to get the view of the women but they were too shy to speak. Most of the work seems to be done by the women, including guarding the crops against the frequent raids by a nearby troupe of baboons. This makes it difficult for the women to participate in the monthly village planning meetings as they have to be with the crops. Although one of the men explained that he did guard the crops if the woman was sick or away from the village! So still some work to do on gender main-streaming then!

On the final day we heard the initial findings of a botanical study of the area commissioned by my placement organisation. We heard about the many plant species in the area, including 4 on the global list of threatened plants. The most important plants for the local economy are shea nuts, mangoes and avocados. But many of the trees are threatened with 80% less woodland than there was in 2000. The main reasons are clearing woodland for agricultural land, fuel for cooking and tobacco curing and charcoal burning. These people need to make a living but if a way to stop the deforestation isn't found soon then these trees that are so important for their livelihoods will be lost.

On Friday morning we packed our bags to head back to the main road and a network signal so we could catch up with work, friends and family. The college location has virtually no internet signal and a very limited phone signal so we were looking forward to getting back in touch with the world. However, first we had to negotiate the mud road, which, with the heavy rains while we were at the college, had become nearly impassible. The shortest route to the main road couldn't be used, even by a 4*4 vehicle so we had to go an extra 20 km around. I was very glad I didn't have to drive!

What would you pay for a 4 wheel drive experience like this in the UK?

Au Revoir Glen!

So after 362 days in Uganda Glen returned home to the UK in the early hours of Friday morning. The return portion of his air ticket was only valid within a year so he had to leave or buy another one! The flat feels very empty and also surprisingly large on my own. But I was in Uganda on my own for over 6 weeks at the start of the placement so 3 weeks this time won't feel so long.

Some pictures of our year in Uganda:

Glen outside Namirembe Cathedral just before Christmas

Getting rather too friendly with a baby elephant at Entebbe in Febrary

Murchison Falls at Easter

With our sons at Lake Bunyoni in June

Pizza by the beach in Entebbe after tracking down the Shoebill in July

Heading up Wanale Ridge on Mount Eldon in October

I'm also counting down the days until my flight home for a month over Christmas. We will return together early in the new year for another 9 months. How will I feel when I get home? Will I look forward to returning to the sunshine and my wonderful friends and colleagues here in Uganda? Or will I be having so much fun with our friends and family in the UK that I won't want to come back? It certainly looks like the first few months of the new year are going to be incredibly hectic at my placement - is that good or bad? I like to be busy but work here can be too busy!

I'm certainly looking forward to seeing everyone in the UK and we have a lovely schedule of visits, parties and meals with friends lined up plus a family Christmas in a cottage.

Integrating Programming and Finance

This week we held the large residential training event that I have been planning for the past few weeks. We took over a hotel in the north of Kampala with the wonderful name of Nob View! Three people were invited from each partner organisation, the Executive Director (ED), the Programme Officer (PO) and the Finance Officer (FO). The training ran for 3 days, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday with Monday and Friday available for travelling as many participants had to travel a long distance from other parts of Uganda.

We asked the Executive Directors to attend at least for the Tuesday, although many stayed all week. This gave us a total of 87 participants for Tuesday with 8 staff members and slightly smaller numbers on Wednesday and Thursday. It was the largest training course I've ever organised and the only residential one.

The objectives were around communications and closer working between Finance and Programme teams, Understanding finance for the POs and the role of the ED in financial management.

All of the sessions on Tuesday were for all participants, although we broke into 10 smaller groups for the case studies. After the welcome and introductions we spent the morning talking about the Importance of Financial Management with a special focus on the role of the ED and the Board of Trustees. I had the idea of colour coding the name badges so that these also worked as the key to the group each person was in. This worked really well cutting the time taken to get into groups after the break to work through the case study.

After lunch I led a session on Practical Monitoring and then the Finance Manager looked at Procurement Best Practice. There was a real buzz through all of the sessions with everyone saying that they had found them useful and also enjoyable.

With so many partners together we decided to also offer a social programme, including aerobics sessions in the early evening. On the Tuesday we had a BBQ and a very good Congolese band. With Ugandan weather we were able to hold it outside on the grass by the swimming pool. It was great to see so many people dancing, although the wonderful African natural sense of rhythm always makes the Muzungu dancing look so ungainly. Here everyone, male and female, needs very little encouragement to join in the dancing and we all had a good time.

On Wednesday the energy levels dropped as everyone was tired after putting so much into Tuesday. We split the group into 2 halves. I worked with the POs and some EDs on Understanding Finance, working through the Minimum Requirements as the hallmarks of an effective finance system. My finance team colleagues ran an Excel Workshop for the FOs.

On Thursday morning one of the EDs ran an interactive opening session on reviewing the previous day using an ingenious ball made up with paper and masking tape. You can just see it in the middle of the picture, held by the man with the microphone.

I ran a small session on Overhead Analysis and Full Cost Recovery in the morning. This has not yet reached Uganda but some of the FOs of the larger groups have expressed an interest so I ran through the principles, with a small example, and some of the challenges.

After lunch we had a debate! This has worked so well at the Charity Accountants conferences in the UK I decided to give it a try. The motion was: 'This house believes that coding should be done by the Finance team' and it certainly initiated a lively debate. I was a little worried as it started to turn into a heated discussion about the role of the POs v that of the FOs. But a few contributors pulled it back to the motion being discussed. The motion was defeated and we then considered it again and agreed that both finance and programme teams were needed to effectively manage and account for the programme.

Lots of participants left on Thursday evening to travel back, but a core group of 16 took part in the quiz after dinner with the winning team taking a large box of chocolates and mixed sweets.

All in all a hugely successful conference. I was tired on Friday and just worked a short day reviewing and consolidating all of the evaluation forms. These were overwhelmingly positive about the course, although there were a few negative comments about the venue. One participant described it as the best course so far!

I'll finish with the view from my hotel room during the conference. The hotel was on the side of a hill, in common with many hotels and apartment blocks in Kampala, so the view was spectacular. Great to relax and look at at the end of a long day.

Curtains!

It's been a hive of activity here today. We bought some lovely bright material in the market in Gulu while we were on holiday and we've been busy turning it into kitchen curtains.  We've got one finished and the curtain for the door. The second curtain is my project for this evening!

We decided we need some kitchen curtains now as there are some new houses behind us nearing completion. These have been built far closer than would ever have been allowed in the UK and we sometimes feel we have the builders joining us at the breakfast table!

This is the view from the flat now

And this is the view we had in January complete with a Woodland Kingfisher. He is still around but now sits on the electricity wires at the front of the house.

All of the building work has had the advantage that the road outside, which was challenging when we arrived, has now been surfaced.

November 2013 with a truck stuck in the mud

November 2014

It's only when you put the pictures side by side you realise just how much development has been happening around here in the past year.

Next week is going to be a busy week with the Finance Conference I've been planning and preparing for taking place. We have 87 participants booked in! More on that next weekend.