Sipi Falls and Village fun

Hello! We have had a really busy week or so and have had no time to use the internet. It’s been great. At the end of last week we gave our first “empowerment” workshop on proposal writing. That went really well considering we don’t know much about it ourselves! We did some research and presented it to around 20 teachers and headmasters. They praised us on our teaching so that was positive.

At the weekend we went over to the Kenyan border (but still in Uganda) and visited a place called Sipi falls. It was gorgeous, with 3 main falls. There were 7 of us and it was great to see a different part of Uganda. It was so green and quite cold! We went on a 5 hour trek which was hard core (it was meant to be 4 but we were pretty slow), I was helped up most of the way by a local boy, he was pulling me trying to make me go faster, then charged me at the end! Ha! I found it quite funny really and probably couldn’t have done it without him.

This week we spent the first couple of days in a village called an hour outside of Mukono. We were there to help to lay the foundations for a new classroom. It involved a lot of digging. It was mainly the mothers of the children that turned up to help. That is something I have noticed in Uganda, the women do most of the manual work. It may not be true all over Uganda but it’s definitely the feeling I’m getting here. Every time I had a go at digging all the locals were laughing at me. When I asked Frank why he said they didn’t think mazungu’s worked that hard, so then I felt I had to show them I could and now I am in pain.. with blisters! On the second day we ran an educational session on HIV awareness to all the parents. It went really well and they were asking so many questions. Some were really good questions but quite scary. It made me realise how important The Youth League’s work is. We are going back to the Village in 2 weeks time with the Ugandan Red Cross to do some HIV testing. Almost 30 people put there name’s down to be tested so hopefully most people will turn up.

It was fun in the Village but hard work. We stayed with the headmaster and his wife and about 8 kids. I was pleased to get back to the guest house to have some space. Today we have been working on a blogsite for the organization. (I’ll put a link from mine when it’s done) and also applying for funding. It’s quite a relaxing day before we go off to another village tomorrow.
Amy xx