This just says it all...

Mwana Mugimu - painting weekend

The VSO Kampala cluster spent an industrious & artistic weekend at the Mwana Mugimu (‘healthy child’) unit of Mulago Hospital, painting one of the wards. We hired a local artist to produce the designs & spent two days sanding walls, cleaning windows & brandishing paint-brushes. The result was, erm, bright & colourful… (!) & a much cheerier environment for some very young, sick & vulnerable children.

The next phase of the project is to design a new playground, but we are also still collecting toys & clothes for the unit – so if you would like any info on how to send some over, please do let me know.

Moonlighting

Having recently joined to Iguana 'team' (I will be working there once a week from October), I spent the day with them at the cosy offshore, Lagoon Resort, on Lake Victoria. Beautiful place for a relaxing Sunday, with kayaking, bbq, volleyball & a campfire. Yes please!

USDC field trip

A small series of pit stops 'up-country' for a work field trip. First a dash from Kampala to Soroti in the east, & then north to Lira & Arua, on the Congo border. The purpose of the trip was to visit some of the construction projects we are funding - mainly resource rooms and dormitories for blind & deaf children.

The trip was also a chance to see rural Uganda up close. We drove through several bustling towns – little hubs of traffic & trade; clusters of thatched mud-hut homesteads & farmland. Amongst all of this, life really seems to take place on the roadside. We passed groups of women with their jerry cans at the water pump, men on bicycles, laden with pineapples, sticks & chickens, about to topple over; children being bathed in plastic tubs or running naked through the bush, chasing old tyres & goats; people carrying all manner of things on their heads; women selling heavy bags of charcoal; palm, acacia, & papaya trees on a savannah landscape.

& I even saw an elephant!