A bit of planning ahead

I arrived in Uganda last night after a pretty uneventful trip, and 2.5 films watched / worked through / dozed through!

It’s lovely to be back, and an added bonus is that Tim Hall, the UK director of Link International is here as well. Link Int is the partner that we do all our Uganda work through, and is run over here by the wonderful John Njendahayo. Tim is equally inspiring and its been great to spend the day with the two of them, visiting different projects of Link Int whilst also planning and chatting through about future CRED teams here as well as the folks who arrive tonight.

The over-riding vision of Link Int is to support local communities to support themselves, and to promote sustainability in all they do. So today we visited a number of projects including a community dental clinic that has been built over the past 6 years (I’ll tell you the story of that another day, as it is a remarkable example of teenage passion turning into something incredible), a biofuel project (otherwise known as ‘poo-power’), a couple of little, and a third not so little, rural primary schools, and the Acholi quarters.

All lovely people, devoted to their work, doing brilliant things in tough situations with very little other than real basics. Lots of smiles, hand-shakes, singing from children, cries of ‘Muzungo muzungo’ – I love it!

Off the back of today, we now have initial plans in place for two teams coming next year. The team next October will be running basic literacy classes for Acholi children and adults who have not had the opportunity to go to school, but are very hungry to learn  - our team will give them the basics as well as doing games, arts and crafts, and learning from the Acholi ladies how to make paper beads

The team in November, amongst other things, will make interlocking, environmentally friendly bricks, and then use them to build the walls needed to partition a big room into a classroom and library. So by the time that team goes home the school will have a library and the place where the books are currently stacked can become a room for two more children to stay in as they live too far away to come in each day.

Brilliant projects, giving real tangible benefits to the local people, and at the same time transforming our young people as they engage in projects in areas of great deprivation and have their value-systems challenged and their perspectives changed. Exciting times ahead!

But for now, the team are due to arrive in a few hours, so it is off to the airport to get them, and embark on a wonderful week in a beautiful country.