Hello and greetings from the glorious, green country of UGANDA,

I am presently sitting in the Cafe Royal (an Indian owned cafe in the centre of Kabale). It has taken me around 1 hour to get onto the blog site to start typing due to the ridiculously slow internet, let’s hope it doesn't cut out on me.

There is so much to say, but I have to put it down so I better start straight away:

Grace Children's Village (GCV)

Our project is so unique in its ideas and self-sustainment qualities brought to the table by David Bakeine, our host, who is very experienced in tourism and similar aspects. For example, the dreaded long-drop, we have five in total used by the children and the staff of GCV, so you can imagine there is a good amount of waste! The David's however, has had the idea of separating the urine and the faeces. The urine goes to a jerry-can connected to the toilets and when full is poured on the crops as fertilizer. The faeces drops down into pits which can be opened from the back of the block, ash is thrown in and in 6 months time it is ready to spread on the farm. We were involved in the construction of toilet covers, so a cover is placed over one of the two toilets in a cubicle therefore giving the project a constant supply of fresh fertilizer all year round! How very clever.

Wilfred (standing left) teaching the families who want to
raise the pigs.

Other interesting things happening at GCV is the pig project. GCV (luckily for me) is the proud owner of around 4 sows, 2 boars and 10 piglets (there is one more piglet who always runs around outside the pen, very amusing to chase it around for a bit). The pig project is a scheme that sends one pig to a family to raise and breed piglets. After piglets are born (around 12 in a litter) they are given back to GCV therefore increasing the amount of pigs for sale. Each pig in Uganda would sell for about 10,000 UGS. The pigs that \David breeds sell for around 50,000 UGS! So in order for good rearing practices to take place, Wilfred, and contact of David's who knows a good deal about pigs gave a talk to the families wanting to look after a pig.

This allows proper rearing practices to take place, which in turn produces better pigs leading to more money for the project. It also allows for those who cannot pay for the fees for schooling at the nursery and primary school to use the piglet as payment seeing it is around 40,000 UGS to pay for the child’s education. In addition, it teaches the family some important skills in order to produce their own food as the project is going to develop so that the family is also taught the importance of pig waste to produce good quality vegetables and fruit.

Sam and I completed a goat shed last week, just waiting for the goats now. David has made sure there is enough feed and water for the goats to survive. So we are excited to have another addition to the cow, many pigs, and the mass of chickens that already reside at the project.

Children receiving letters
from sponsers.

Sponsors: Letters have been distributed to the children. Some letters and pictures are returning to us so as soon as we have then all back we shall send then off to Sue and David.

Yesterday was the beginning of the Saturday lessons. Sam is conducting football and other sport activity lessons, while I shall teach the children drama and acting. I hope to put on a nativity at Christmas. I have around 20/22 children to control and I will find out who exactly will be my little drama Queens and Kings tomorrow after a meeting with Mr Ronald the Head teacher at the school.

Accommodation

This is the big moving in week. The finishing touches are being added now, such as the plaster around the windows, doors and vents. Cleaning the floors was a breeze due to our Top Class (the age group just below Primary 1 who I teach) team of sweepers and scrubbers kindly put together by Mr Innocent teacher of P1, assisted by Sam and Miss Sarah, who I assist in lessons. This made the job much faster and gave us a great feeling; that we were part of the community and they were lending a hand to make the job easier for us. We are just one big Basigi family (the local clan, the biggest in Uganda). Tomorrow we hope to go down to Kabale to collect materials to hang on the walls and some more furniture to make the grey rooms a bit more homely. Photos of the friends, lovely Sophie and family will be blue tacked to my wall. The Arsenal flag will go up for Sam (sorry for the present league position), he is still a strong supporter!!! Sam and I have had the idea of the ‘Volunteer’s Wall’ so any person who stays at GCV can right on the wall there name and a small comment. Then when we return in years to come we can see the huge number of helpers that have added to the project.

Kabale

Sam playing for Kabale football team.
Getting stuck in there every Sunday!

What a fantastic setting we have been placed in. The scenery is phenomenal, with lush rolling hills as the back drop and a busy high street, which holds surprises in all the back alleys and markets snuggled away down small alleyways (perfectly safe by the way). The fruit and veg market shopping was so exciting as it was the first step towards independence; trying to work out how many kilos we needed for the week (it is all done in 1/2s and kilos), which vegetables to buy for the tasty stew Mama taught me. The sounds of the market are wonderful. It is a battle field of bartering, buying, selling, conversations between locals and the fruit sellers or the mumblings of the terrified volunteers trying franticly to work out the conversion rate and avoid the sellers seeing how much they have in their wallets. There are internet cafes but the internet and electricity is so unreliable that updating this blog has even taken me around 3 days! Skype has worked (JUST) around about twice but this weekend has been particularly bad. Really annoying when I can’t speak to the people I want and when I do it is crackly. But we must deal with it. At least we have internet sometimes!

Bubaare

This is the trading centre just down the road from GCV and our first place to go for small supplies. Big amounts of money attract a lot of attention so we are wary of how much we buy down there so we are not seen as the rich Muzungu only here to bring in wealth and not here to help the community in terms of education and physical work. The first day was a bit daunting for everyone simply stared at us as we walked through the town together, it was the weirdest feeling.

Now it is better as we have shown our faces a bit more, the local language is become more understandable and fluent with us, we are getting to know the prices for things and starting to learn names of people around the community. Such as Bishop, who calls himself ‘School Truck’ as he is the one who walks some of the children down to the centre at the end of school.

Me and our friend Ronald, we are the
warriors of Bubaare. Picture was taken
while we were working on reducing the
slope (left of picture).

Arod and Andrew are the two boys who have befriended us and show us around sometimes, teaching us Rohega (the local language) and taking us fishing with Dan, another friend who has been so warm and welcoming like so many others in Uganda. Of course, we still get the calls of ‘Muzungu, Muzungu! I see a Muzungu!’ from the children in the houses or on top of the hill leading down to the centre, but we just call back ‘How are you?’ prompting the reply ‘I AM FINE! HOW ARE YOU?’ in the rehearsed way that all the children seem to speak in.

So I hope you have enjoyed reading the first of many installments to come. Please keep reading and be patient with how long the posts take. Internet is a funny thing!

Stay Cool, won't you


Liam and Sam

P.S. Please have a look at the Grace Children's Village website at http://www.gracechildrensvillage.org/ and browse there newsletters, one shall be update soon.