#action sitaru

[littlebigafrica]

Volunteer Journal: Week 6 in Bukhura

When we first arrived on placement we were pretty scared of the hills in our village, cooking our own food, and of course the latrine! Now six weeks later we have legs of steel, we (mainly Astrid) can snap up scrumptious chocolate pancakes on the sigiri and our lovely home is decorated with all of our nick-nacks and our Scottish and Ugandan flags. 

The people we have met in Bukhura are by far the best thing about our village experience: from carrying bags of cement on their heads  across the valley, to lending us a grill so we can cook our own maize – they have helped us a great deal. We now truly feel part of this community – having been to a burial, a birth ceremony and half of the homes in the village for a spot of Uganda’s famous  posho or matooke. At our final church service both Helen and Astrid were crying in front of our whole congregation as they were so sad to be leaving! 

Ollie has given his much loved cap to our cool wee friend Isaac from school, Kirstie sang a song written for us by two children (Helen and Mangolet) with them in our living room. At James’s premature farewell party (he left to travel to the USA to start his third year international exchange) we had volunteers and locals alike all pulling out their most impressive dance moves late into the night (although ‘late’ for us in Bukhura is 10pm...!)

None of us can quite believe it is finally time for us to go! We are all very proud of the work we have achieved here and we know that we have left a legacy with our water tank, protected water source, newly constructed stoves, teachings and many friends and memories.

[littlebigafrica]

Volunteer Journal: Week 5 at Samaali

This week on placement has been mercifully busy and incredibly fun. We barely had any time to stop and think and take it all in with everything we have all been doing. Our highlights include training our now very capable and hard-working stove committee and watching them build really good stoves. We also enjoyed painting our water tank, finishing our teaching, cooking dinner for our friends and watching Lottie and Liam have jiggers removed from their feet. We continued to struggle with working with Ugandan time but nonetheless we have completed everything we set out to!

[littlebigafrica]

Volunteer Journal: Week 5 in Nabyoko

This week has been a busy one – with us starting painting the water tank and construction at the water source all at once. It's great to be so busy but we have been a little concerned that we won't fit everything in! We also continued with all of our lessons with the pupils at school, which are going excellently! Our pet piglet fell down the latrine but she seemed quite happy as she even tried to go back down the hole after we fished her out.

[littlebigafrica]

Volunteer Journal: Week 2 at Samaali

The second week of placement has been one of tremendous highs but also of some serious lows. We were to begin making bricks for our water tank but multiple things got in the way. On the first day we found out that the machine had been taken to the wrong village and some of the materials were quite far from the school, so we could only do a half day. The next day our engineer didn't show, but our headmaster who had been in contact with him assured us that he was arriving imminently and that we should start. We foolishly agreed. Then the machine malfunctioned and the Ugandans tried to fix it. By this point (too late, of course) we realised we had done something really dumb so told them to stop and wait for Debs and the engineer. To cut a long story short, the whole brick making process turned out to be quite stressful but it worked out in the end. 

Teaching has been going well but very slowly as the school is quite chaotic and it is hard to set in stone when we can teach. The stoves have been going exceptionally well with us showing/teaching people how to mix the mud. We also started to protect our water source on Saturday which was fun. Great turnout from the community so the work was getting done very rapidly. We felt a bit redundant as our hoeing and cement mixing skills had nothing on the locals’, but they appreciated our presence and laughed at our attempts to help.

One new challenge for the week has been THE RAT. It got in one night (we think it was attracted to the very huge and smelly jackfruit which was given to us by our neighbour) and we tried to track it down but to no avail. We borrowed a cat from someone in the village and tried to lock it inside our home for two days but it escaped! In its dramatic flight for freedom it jumped down over poor unsuspecting Lottie’s head and scampered away. Since then we have struggled to find the rat but have been keeping food tightly locked away. 

Despite the tank issues, morale has vastly improved this week, partly due to adjustment to Ugandan life and partly because the project is moving along. MOSTLY, though it due to improvements in our cooking. We mastered chapati and beans (both staples here) and it is amazing how powerful a mood-booster, a good supper is. After a few days of boring and dry jam sandwiches, we've moved on to g-nut pasta for lunch. The avocados here are INSANE – so huge and creamy. As well as food, we have started playing games in the evening which has proved to be perfect bonding experiences where we learn more about each other (sometimes a little too much). Ruby has a wealth of games in her repertoire, some of which include two truths and a dare, the love-hate game and articurades (an amalgamation of articulate and charades). All in all, it has been another good week.

[littlebigafrica]

Volunteer Journal: Day 6 of Training (Group 2)

As the placement approaches anxiety levels in the group are rising. On Sunday the group training started at 8:30am, we discussed with Debs what we needed to get before placement, and life whilst on placement. This was helpful as it added to our not very extensive shopping list. After we had a few sessions with Bikie, where we discussed Ugandan history and culture, what expectations we had about Uganda and how to plan a community meeting. These sessions were very helpful because as a group we didn't know much about Uganda’s history and this gave us an idea of how to better integrate with the community. 

Lastly before lunch we met with a local headteacher, who talked to us about village life and answered all the questions we had, and he finished by giving us key words and phrases in Lugisu that will ease communication whilst on project. 

After lunch, we all hand washed our clothes which was good preparation for village life. We then prepared dinner by firstly killing chickens. However, Sara wasn't too comfortable with killing the chickens, so she didn't partake in this part of the preparation. We then all cooked the beans, chapatis, vegetables and chicken together, complete with a tasty sauce. This was brilliant practice for us.

Highlights/best moments from today:

Afnane, Laura and Shahid – seeing the chicken get killed, plucking and cooking it. As well as cooking the chapatis from a flour, oil and water mixture.

Joe and Till – killing a chicken and talking with a village Headteacher.

Sara - hand washing clothes, chapati making and being laughed at due to my poor kitchen skills.

by Shahid, University of Lancaster

[littlebigafrica]

Volunteer Journal: Week 2 of Placement in Bukhura

We began the week with a meeting with our LC1, Moses to spread the word about our stoves. We managed to spread the word quite a bit about this aspect of the project. We rewarded ourselves by making some tasty pancakes at home, whilst forming lesson plans and making posters for school. 

We then taught a P.4 class in school and finished up by having a staff meeting with all of the teachers at Bukhura Primary School. We got a little adventurous with our sigiri and tried to make hash browns this week. Then our friend and community member, Robert arrived at our house drunk after drinking some local brew! 

We also went down to Bududa town to the market this week, where we met Debs and Sylvia and found out what Mushytot (James’s village nickname) means. Apparently it means something rude for a lady’s body part. Our success this week has been our WASH club at school, we had our first club meeting and had a very successful poster competition with the pupils. Each submitted a poster in relation to our hygiene and sanitation lessons.

[littlebigafrica]

Volunteer Journal: Week 2 in Bushiribo

Mulembe from BVDA A!

We are: Lucia (we have learnt that Lucy means backside in Lugisu), Norah (Laura), Hannah (Anna), Jack (Jack) and Timosey (Tim). 

It's been another eventful week in Bushiribo! We finished the water source on Friday and it looks great; we have started making bricks for the water tank but the machine broke, (obviously we were too strong); so we are awaiting a new one. We have performed stove making demonstrations and organised more stove construction for this week, and began our wash lessons at school. Phew!!

We visited our Deputy Headteacher, John Boscoe in his village and met his wife Olivia and daughter Hannah at a women's micro-finance meeting. And he had the comfiest sofa to date. Afterwards we visited his home, a permanent house with windows! We each had a hold of Hannah (his one month old daughter who is named after the LBA engineer) and it became too much for Lucy who burst into tears. Olivia made us a delicious lunch of avocado, cassava, beans and chapatis and John Boscoe's passed around his family photos as we finished our tea. He built his house from scratch is 2005 and is still going. Laura tried to visit the latrine for a short call (number one) but was prevented from doing so as she fell in a river of cow dung. JB, being very fatherly cleaned it off but even his kitten would not go near Laura! 

Later we visited Bududa where Tim and Lucy went shopping at the market, while Jack, Hannah and Laura got a boda-boda back home to Bushiribo. Going up an extremely steep hill, the boda-boda driver stalled which led to Hannah and Jack dramatically falling off, then at the next hill the driver made them walk. 

On Sunday we spent a long four hours praising the Lord in Church. It was a good service with great music and our friend Unique was on drums.

[littlebigafrica]

Volunteer Journal: Training - Day 2 - Group 2

Our second day of training began with a second Lugisu lesson/attempt to remember and tackle the basic greetings. By the end of the session we were (roughly) able to hold an entire conversation - from knocking on someone's door to greetings and welcomings. We also learned how to let the community know that we “speak a little Lugisu”, to encourage our community integration. We were then shown how the water tank is constructed and how the spring is protected. With intervals throughout the day, we managed to cover the risk assessment that discussed hygiene and sanitation and many other things. This lesson made us alert to the simplicity of preventative measure we can take to ensure we are all safe and healthy on project. 

We learned about Ugandan culture in more depth by taking part in a true or false quiz. Overall, it was a very intense  but thoroughly interesting day that definitely  made us more confident with regards to living in the community.

By Laura, Lancaster University