Monday 27th October

We awoke this morning feeling very much refreshed as breakfast hadn't been until 8am and most had had an earlier night!

For breakfast we had the most amazing African Doughnuts which tasted much like scones but were made of maize flour, wheat flour, sugar, baking powder and water and then shallow fried; with scrambled eggs and everyone ate well.

After the mix up yesterday we had visits to 3 projects to cram into today. We first visited Living Hope which is in the centre of Kampala. Living Hope exists to care for the most vulnerable women in society by helping them rebuild the lives. We were shown around by the administrator, Gladys. Living Hope was born in 2008 an took 900 women on to its program. Women who had been abducted during the civil war; who were HIV positive; who had been made to fight as child soldiers; who had been tortured and raped during the conflict; were all welcomed into the Living Hope family. Its desire is to use trauma counselling both 1-1 and in group situations to enable the women to process what has happened and then leave it behind before moving on with their lives. Gladys spoke of it like their hearts were full of all the bad they had experienced and they wanted to empty their hearts of that so that they could fill it with love and all things that are good. They then teach the women to make products that can be sold such as garments, table cloths, stuffed animals and dolls, peanut butter and Shea butter for your skin. When we arrived into the main room, full of sowing machines they greeted us by making the most amazing noise, like a high pitched battle cry that gave the group goose bumps! They were making stuffed animals that are sold at 20,000 Shillings, the women who makes the animal earns S3,000, meaning that they are learning a skill which makes them money. A lot of the women who Living Hope work with didn't get a full education due to the war or simply because of the view of women in society- to combat this functional maths, english and business skills are taught to all the women. Living Hope currently works with 450 women and seeks for them to be leaders in their community bringing about change in their towns.

The women are also discipled in the Christian faith through cell groups where Sundays Bible passage is talked about in small groups. Many of the women don’t speak English and only speak Acholi, the local dialect, so provision is made for this in all teaching.

Some of the women also have young children that may have prevented them attending such a programme in the past, however Living Hope has set up a Creche for those children to be looked after in while their mothers and learning and working. We had some time to play with the children in the creche which all the group enjoyed.

Then it was on to Llamandera childrens village, Watoto’s 3rd village.

There we were greeted by many children running out to meet the bus, excited to see us. We were hosted in 3 groups of 5, by a family for lunch at which we were able to meet one of the Aunties and her 7 or 8 children ranging in age from 4yrs to 13yrs old. Lunch was a feast of Ugandan traditional foods and placed in front of us were 10 saucepans with lids on, the group held their breath as each dish was revealed 1 by 1. Everyone tried something and most of the group enjoyed a very healthy lunch.

After lunch we played football and games with some of the younger children as the older students had to go back to school before heading up to the school ourselves. Ian and Nathan were shown around the secondary school briefly by Ivan, the head teacher, where they currently have 60 students in 3 classes. Next year they will add 1 more class and the year after that 2 more until the school has 300 students in, the primary school already has a similar number. They are seeking sponsorship from individuals, groups and churches to help the equip a computer lab. The government recently put basic computer skills on the curriculum and the school currently has only a couple of laptops for the staff to use so they want to put the network infrastructure and computer terminals in to enable Watoto children to leave school computer literate.

Our 3rd stop of the day was to the Watoto babies home in Gulu. Here we were shown around by Gertrude. The babies home is organised into 3 stages- 0-6 months(babies), 7-12 months(infants), 12-24months(toddlers) each stage has nurses in it that look after 4 children each and care for their needs. The whole group were really impressed by the cleanliness and organisation of the babies home, the way it was run and set out. Every Watoto project we have been too looks like it has been thought about, they have been built architecturally well with good aesthetics as well as being practical, they also have made lots of green open space which makes the whole place ‘feel good’. By this point it was 5pm and the sun was still very hot so we made our way back to the guest house for some rest and dinner.

Just before dinner the heavens opened and we had the most fantastic rain storm for about 20 minutes- there was thunder and lightening too. Although this looked amazing it may have made the journey tomorrow even more tricky due to the impact it will have had on the roads, we have to wait and see!