Reaching The Half Way Stage

It’s the half way point of my time in Africa and I can’t quite believe it – time is flying by! It’s been two weeks since I finished my trip and went back to Bajjo and I’m back in the groove of washing out of a bucket, cooking on a coal stove and of course using the long-drop (which now has a resident GIANT rat living in it…honestly how do rats and cockroaches live off the rubbish that our bodies throw out?? – it amazes me!).

It was a great feeling to walk back into the village after 4 weeks of being away – kids screaming, running up to me, carrying my bag and welcoming me home. Karl and Anna had been busy whilst I was away with the help of two of their friends, who had been to visit for a couple of weeks, and Vincent (our local employee). The netball court is now fully operational and is proving a great success with the women playing every night. I even had a game last Sunday – my first ever game of netball – and it definitely changed my opinion that it’s just a girly game of throw and catch…it also confirmed how tough the local women are – I left the field at the end of the game with blood dripping down my leg!! A 5-a-side football pitch (complete with wooden goal frames) had also been marked out in my absence and is proving as popular as the netball…and volleyball is now a regular community event on Sunday afternoons.

The library opened just before I left for my trip and is turning into quite a focal point of the village. We are renaming it a ‘resource centre’ as we seek to provide more facilities (the sports equipment is hired from the library and arts equipment is available for anyone who wishes to draw at the weekends). We have a new employee, a 16 year-old boy called Innocent, to work in the resource centre. Unfortunately his family cannot afford to put him through secondary school (a common problem here - primary school is mostly free in Uganda but you have to pay to attend secondary school) so he earns small amounts of money doing manual labour whenever he can. He has been really helpful since we have been in Bajjo so he was first choice when we started looking for someone to manage the resource centre.

In the first week that I was back one of Karls friends, a girl called Mandy, came to stay and we spent a number of days painting African animals on the school. It’s really brightened the school up and everyone in the village seems to love it! During the school holidays (school starts again next week) Karl and Vincent have been running the Whizzkids HIV prevention programme in Bombo (involves teaching about HIV prevention and life skills using football skills training as a communicator). Karl helped to write the original programme in South Africa 3 years ago and is still heavily involved with the Whizzkids organisation. It’s a great programme and, following the pilot in the school holidays, we are hoping to integrate it into the schools sex education syllabus across the schools in Bombo town (a small town 3km away).
We have also been busy writing a proposal for our next big venture - establishing a free weekly outreach health clinic in the village. Currently the only health service available to residents is from the mid-wife who lives next door to us – but she operates a private service so drugs for Malaria (which is prevalent in the village), HIV/AIDS and TB are only available at a cost to the villagers (many of whom can’t afford them…and yet first line treatment for these diseases is supposed to be provided free by the government). In the time we have been in Bajjo at least 5 people have died of malaria and 3 of HIV – so it’s a big problem. There is supposedly a free government-run health clinic in Bombo, but it is in the grounds of a large army barracks and locals report that they are routinely turned away from the facility having been informed that the hospital is for army personnel only (which is not the purpose of the clinic, it is supposed to be for the community – but you just don’t argue with the army here!!). We met with village leaders and Justine (the midwife who is keen to get involved and offer her services for free one day a week) and have had a number of meetings with a project manager from AMREF about the support the organisation might be able to provide. AMREF are a Kenyan based organisation that work throughout East Africa on projects focusing on health issues. I did some work for them in their London office before I left for Uganda – and this link is proving invaluable as it would be a big challenge (although it’s still bloody big!) to set-up a health clinic without the support of a large organisation like AMREF.

I also continue to garner interest in setting up an income generation project with the women in the village to produce crafts and sell them to muzungu in Kampala. I visited a group of women in a neighbouring district who have set up such a group to find out how they operated and ran their cooperative. We have interest from one of the backpacker hostels in Kampala to set up a stall and sell the goods from within the hostel, which would be fantastic (we can get 3 or 4 times the price from a muzungu for the goods, than we can selling to locals in the local market!!).

I had two great bits of news this week – the first is that a good mate of mine – Mr Jeremy Katz – booked his flights to come out here in November and live the African life for a couple of weeks…and the second is that my Mum came true on her wish and is also flying out to visit the village of Bajjo with her partner in October! It’s going to be quite a shock for her as she has not been outside Europe before - the locals are already already getting excited at the prospect of meeting my mum!! Don’t be scared mum, you’ll be fine!

One, not so good point, is the discovery that Bird Flu seems to have reached Bajjo!! All 5 of the neighbours chickens caught some kind of disease recently and had to be killed…this being Africa the birds were cooked up and eaten straight away…”isn’t there a danger that whatever disease your birds had may be passed to you when you eat them” I asked innocently – laughter and a “don’t be silly” was the response I received…6 new chicks were born last week – and all already look ill…this evidence in conjunction with the comments from a manager at a backpackers hostel in Kampala about the severe lack of chickens from her suppliers and the sudden increase in the price of both chicken meat and eggs suggests there is something happening to all the chickens in this country…hmmmmm...!!

So, at my half way point, it’s a good chance to reflect on what we have already achieved in Bajjo; a netball court, a volley ball pitch, 2 football pitches, a drumming and dance night, a resource centre, a painted school, regular football and netball training, adult English classes…and not forgetting the writing and running of our recreational and HIV prevention programmes…not bad for 3 people! It’s also a good time to share the discovery I have made - the key to increasing the speed of development in Africa…and it’s not the traditional view of NGO’s and charities – I’m thinking outside the box – some may call it radical – but it’s a simple 3 step plan and involves distributing the following to every household in Africa:
1) A washing machine(!)
2) An oven(!)
3) A refrigerator(!)
Soooooo much time is spent by the women and children in rural Africa performing the household chores of hand-washing the clothes, cooking on charcoal stoves and gathering food every day that there is almost no time for anything else (no time for the kids to go to school, no time for the women to work and earn money). Having the 3 utilities would immediately free up huge chunks of the week and would give a massive boost to the economic development of the continent...of course you also need a regular power supply and running water for this to work…and need to ignore the environmental impact that millions of additional refrigerators, ovens and washing machines humming away on the African continent would have…so I’m not saying I have all the answers, but it’s just a suggestion that I thought I would throw out there!! Incidentally if anyone from Whirlpool, Hotpoint or SMEG are reading this then perhaps you could suggest it in your next corporate citizenship meeting!!