Sad Goodbyes and Tree Planting

With just over 6 weeks to go I've started visiting places for the last time. In the last 3 weeks I've made what will probably be a final visit to Gulu, a first and last visit to Kitgum and a final visit to West Nile. Each final visit involves a whole lot of goodbyes to people I've worked with over the past 2 years. I going to miss all of the lovely friendly welcoming people I've met during my time here.

We both went to West Nile last week and were very honoured to be invited to plant a tree each in the College grounds. These will provide shade for classes held outside or for cars parked once they've grown. I planted a mango tree and Glen a nut tree. Glen was much more expert at the whole operation than I was!

The Kitgum trip was for a meeting of the Land Platform and was very interesting with a theme of agriculture and land. In the evening we checked out the bars in Kitgum meeting up with a Kitgum based volunteer and various attendees from the Platform.

From Kitgum we drove back south for an hour and a half over another bumpy murram to reach Gulu.

I've developed a days training on organisational level budgets, core cost budgets and cost recovery methods, including a long case study to work through bit by bit which finishes with a role play of a meeting with a funder. I've added another half day including a more complex example of a grant reconciliation to make a final one and a half day training programme to be delivered 3 times in different places. This time I'm training all of the partner organisations from the three programmes.

I delivered the first set in early August in Gulu for the organisations based in and around Gulu. It went very well, although I'll do some tweaks before I do the next set in Kampala at the end of the month. We invited all of the participants, both resident and non residents to stay at the hotel for supper after the first day and I ran a short quiz. This went very well with lots of laughter and jokes. The prize was a large pot of chocolate, which always ensures active participation!!

While in West Nile we finally managed to visit the fantastic fabric market in Arua that all of the volunteers have recommended. We bought 3 long lengths of cloth to make a skirt or two for me and to take home to use in our house in Poppleton.

Shops in Arua