A Gratuitous Zebra

We waved goodbye to Lake Mburo with a mixture of sadness (could happily have stayed a week – I do love open space and wildlife) and excitement about visiting Soroti. Yesterday we spent a very relaxing couple of hours cruising down the lake, bird-watching and hippo and croc spotting. It was peaceful and tranquil (its best not to think about the lion – there’s only one, leopards and pythons).  A very happy place to be. 

As we set off for our overnight stop just North of Kampala, I quickly noticed changes in the scenery, and started thinking about the differences in the three Global Care Uganda centres.  The 3 of us passed half-an-hour of our 5½ -hour journey listing our suggestions of the differences between South West Uganda, the capital city Kampala, and Soroti in the North East.

Apologies to Global Care local staff for inaccuracies – this is our personal list. We described Rukungiri as having tall trees, mountains, cold and rain, families living on top of inaccessible hills, Children with Disabilty (CWD) scattered around the countryside ‘in the middle of nowhere’, no transport, Ankole cows (huge horns), daily labour – mostly agriculture, food…yams, pumpkins, not much posho, too many snacks!  Kampala is very different. Its loud, busy, noisy - basically chaotic. People crowd into small areas, there are too many vehicles, its hot and dirty, roads and roadsides are full of people working and hustling. You can eat any kind of food - but you have to look around to find what you want.  Soroti is different again - scrubland and small trees, flat plains, very hot and dry. The Global Care CWD Ark project is focussed in the community of Pamba near the Global Care Centre, so children can be collected by minibus. There are established Disability Support Groups providing focal points for other CWD.  However, there are still transport difficulties, and some families are scattered. Charles and I like the food – mandazi (doughnuts – yum), posho, Rolex (rolled eggs with chapati).

Anyway – the main point is that everywhere is different – you can’t come up with a ‘one size fits all’ solution if you’re working to support people to find sustainable solutions to break the poverty cycle. Since yesterday’s blog, that blinking Live Aid song has been buzzing in my head. I don’t just get frustrated at suggestions that we should all be trying to sort ‘Africa’, like its one country… It’s the assumption that after a brief visit you can either a) make a difference, or b) understand the problems and find solutions. It’s the same throughout the world, individual communities develop around their own individual cultures and identities and when things go wrong, they need unique sustainable solutions to mend and move forward.

In the car today we were discussing differences between Ugandan and UK English. Tom was (I quote) ‘wetting himself laughing’ yesterday at me talking to people on the boat in my Ugandanised English – even after I knew they were from the USA! I’m not completely bonkers, we have to adapt the way we talk.  Every time we said we were going to the ‘boat’, wanted to buy tickets for the ‘boat’ etc, no-one understood us. Tom & Charles tried to teach me the Ugandan pronunciation – they failed! (It’s something like ‘bo(r)t’ - I can’t write it). Then we got onto Geordie – hilarious. Charles made a good stab at, ‘Aya’alreet Pet?’  Think about it – if I wrote this in South Yorkshire or Geordie, how many of my Kent readers would understand?

People ask why we come here – I was asking myself the same question on Saturday! The answer is entirely down to Global Care.  We’ve seen first-hand the difference their work makes in three different countries, and in Uganda in three different centres. We’ve met and interviewed previously sponsored children who started life as orphans in total poverty and are now professionals – thanks to Global Care. We’ve met young people who were born HIV+ who are fit and healthy and educated – thanks to Global Care. We’ve seen children with extreme disability living in harsh and destructive situations learn to laugh and play and go to school and learn to look after themselves.  We’ve watched schools be transformed from disintegrating shelters with local latrines to award-winning thriving communities with concrete buildings and productive gardens and farms.

Why do I want to support Global Care? Several things – Global Care works with local partners with knowledge and experience of their local community, they target the most vulnerable children in any particular community – specific to that community, they aim to involve the whole community, not just individuals. In the case of disabled people, we can’t understand their situation, so we need disabled people to talk to us about what will help them and to drive any development work. We're getting better at involving local disabled people and local and national disabled people’s organisations in ptoject planning. While education for children is often the key aim, the compassion and care of local partners mean children are treated holistically, their whole situation is taken into consideration. That might mean building simple family toilets or motivating a whole community to work with another agency to build clean water facilities.  And there is a real attention to sustainability.  We learnt very quickly when we started coming here that we rarely have solutions – but we can help local staff look at things differently, and we can ask the hard questions. These things don’t happen without donors and we’re slowly learning how to help local partners understand the needs of potential funders and existing donors in terms of accountability and information.

We’ve left Rukungiri with 19 new children we won’t forget, and we’re excited to watch as their lives start being changed.  In Soroti we’re going to visit a new Playscheme for CWD and help the Ark as they prepare for some training in the summer from UK special needs teachers. Different children, different solutions.  

We are incredibly grateful to Global Care. Two retired people who have the privilege of working with inspirational local partners, meeting brave and beautiful children, and seeing fantastic positive change in desperate peoples’ lives.

For more information about Global Care, go to: Global Care UK

And a gratuitous zebra picture!