One week...

So this past week has been busy. One week to go is crazy! Last weekend was St Paddys day so we had a celebration. Was fun. Been training all week and enjoying our last couple of weeks in Iganga. Really don't want to leave this place. I feel settled and ready for another 3 months. Why does it have to end. It has been an adventure and made me really think about my future career.... Anyway these are some pics from the last week. Will blog tomorrow with more restless work!

St Paddys day celebrations. Guinness took a bit of a battering...

Bujigali Falls on the Saturday evening. Went swimming in the Source of the Nile during the day. What a place.

This is the sunset.

Annie and Toria at Bujigali Falls on the Saturday.

 I have been doing work as well! The past week we have spent training the focal persons for our Respecting the Rights of Women and Children campaign. These people will be the one's in the community co-ordinating our efforts and reporting back to NGO Forum on any activities they perform.This lasted we days and by the end the 14 in attendance were ready to start on their volunteer roles.

One of the facilitators training the focal persons on children's rights.

Some of the local kids outside the training venue.

 

The 14 focal persons in training. Was an interesting experience.

We had a Fida facilitator come in to facilitate a session on the rights of women.

CV and Proposal Writing Event

So yesterday, Friday 16th we held a CV writing and Proposal formation session at our Youth Resource Center aka 'The Garage'. We put out radio adverts and posters in the local University to try and entice the youth to come along and learn. As this was quite a specific skill sharing event we didn't expect high numbers. In the end we had 17 youths which was a really good number for the session as it felt that each individual would take away something from the lesson. First we ran through a basic CV (we created a template CV handout with tips) and then asked them to write their own. We went round helping them to do this to ensure they created it in the correct format. Then we taught them about cover letters and what not to do! The proposal writing part is key for university students who take modules in this area so we ran through another handout on this. Then we split them into two groups and we helped them to come up with a fake proposal. Overall all this skills seemed to have benefited them and we hope that they all learn't something. They were very happy at the end and came and thanked us all for the session! Here are the pics: 

The students registered upon entering and were given the two handouts, pens and paper.

Tom running through an example CV up on the board.

Two students writing out their template CVs.

Flavia running through the ins and outs of a cover letter.

Tom and I facilitating the session on Project Proposals.

One group that had split off to create a fake proposal.

The other group that split up to write a proposal.

Sarah, Flavia and I trying to cox ideas for the proposal out of the youth.

Alex and I looking dapper.

This is all the members of the office and those who helped run the sessions. We had t-shirts  printed for our YRC which all the staff are wearing.

This is another group picture by the signpost advertising the YRC outside the NGO Forum Office.

 

Overall a great session! Happy St Patrick's Day. Come on England. I'm going paddle boarding.

Latest from Iganga

I thought I would add some pictures to show the latest developments in Iganga. We celebrated International Women's Day last Thursday, where all the men did all the duties for the women for the day. The three houses came together and the lads cooked everyone a big meal which for the first time in a while included meat. We also were in the field last week interviewing people for the position of focal persons in our new programme of uplifting the rights of women and children. We asked questions and scored them on their responses, whitling down 45 applicants to 14 successful people. I also attended UDHA's arts and crafts day they held for the youth which was really fun. All the youth were making mothers day cards and were having fun. Here are the pics:

Two local teams were playing a football match near where we live. Turn out was crazy.

Pretty much all the students from the two schools were their watching.

This is one of the potential focal persons that we interviewed.

This is the interview panel. Everyone from the office was involved in the selection process.

A back shot of those involved. Pretty daunting for the applicant!

This is the next day of interviews, in a different sub-county.

This is one of those days in the compound after work when everyone is relaxing and making dinner.

The men hard at work preparing the meal for the ladies on International Women's Day. Alex is cutting cabbage while Joseph (in the background) is chopping tomatoes.

I was on the green's front.

Sylvia couldn't stop herself from getting involved. To be fair we did need her help!

UDHA's arts and crafts day. The youth were making posters and cards for the walls.

Sarah at the welcome desk and the younger youth trying to see what is happening!

Railway tracks

As I mentioned in my last blog post, some of us (crazy crazy people) decided it would be a fun idea to hike 45km from Jinja to Iganga. There are many factors to take into this. 1. Trains (Turns out that only 2 trains run a day and there so slow you know they are coming. 2. Heat (The Sunday heat wasn't that bad and around 1pm we had a nice rain shower to cool us down). 3. Distance (We never really thought about the distance just ploughed through. 4. Terrain (Going on train tracks might be considered flat but you are essentially walking on rocks the whole way so not the best idea). Despite all this it was a lot of fun and we did make it to Jinja (outskirts) after 10 hours walking. On arrival at the bar where we planned to finish I managed to catch the last 30 mins of Manchester United destroying Tottenham Hotspur so a good day all round. Here are some pictures from the hike: 

This is the team at the start of the tracks in Iganga.

This is what our terrain was made up of. Looks pleasant now but believe me on your feet its a nightmare.

There are lots of people walking from village to village on the tracks, this particularly lady was carrying bananas on her head.

One of the trains that we encountered along the way.

This was where we stopped off for lunch. With a view like that, why not!

This is the team who undertook the crazy hike. From top left: Marion, Toria, Pheobe, Alice, Tom,  Myself, Theo and Sarah R.

When we reached the midpoint town we had lots of kids following us for about half an hour down the tracks. 

Thought I might as well get in a picture with them. They love to pose for pictures and then go wild when you show them the picture.

Like I said they like to pose....

We directed them all to jump at a certain time so I could get a  nice picture. It kinda worked.

These are baby sugar cane fields. This is the drainage basin of Lake Victoria so the land is so fertile for farming.

To round off the walk we had Roll Eggs. They are pretty much my diet out here. Omelette with tomatoes and onions wrapped in a chippati. Lush.

Sipi Falls

After all the work we have been doing in Iganga, we thought we should try and explore Uganda a bit on our days off (aka the weekend). We heard about this place called Sipi Falls that had a set of waterfalls around 3 hours to the East of where we live, near Mount Elgon and the Kenyan border. It was really cool! We left early Saturday morning and stayed in mud huts in this campsite and came back on the Sunday. We hiked both days for about 5 hours to see the falls and other sites in the area. It was a nice weekend to get away, didn't rain and was beautifal scenery as you can see from some of the pictures. I have 3 weeks left in my placement now which is a sad thought but we have a lot of work to be getting on with which I will update you with on here. Also yesterday a small group us of hiked for 45km along a railway track which was awesome. I will put those pictures up tomorrow.

Staple diet when travelling. Beans and rice. Nice and filling.

This is the view of the landscape from near to where our campsite was. Pretty sweet.

This is a hut that the villagers used to store food and sometimes live animals.

This is Tom, Theo and I at the base of Sipi Falls.

A nice flower for which I do not know the name of.

The first of the waterfalls in the region that we explored.

This is a small swimming pool that we came across and duly swam in. You could do some small rock jumping as demonstrated by this child.

This is me at the top of one of the waterfalls. Felt tempted to dive in but was too dangerous.

This is the behind the same watefalls. Everywhere we went we had a collection of villagers following us and cheering us on when we went swimming.

This is the group who went on the adventure to Sipi Falls.

Some of the villagers in the area who sat down with us for lunch. They were cool.

This is me at the point we watched the sunset. That was sweet.