The Alongside Africa Uganda team organised a great sports day today to bring together partners and friends from around Kabale town.  Amasiko played hosts to teams from Amazing Love School, Grace Villa and GMDU.  Sports included football and 100m and 200m for boys and girls and a tug of war.

Each of the participating organisations won in at least one category but the real winners were all the children irrespective of origin as everyone enjoyed a day of fun and exercise, not in the least dampened by the rain.

The event gave an opportunity for the different organisations to get to know each other better, share ideas and plan for greater collaboration in the future.

 

After a welcome day’s break at Lake Bunyonyi over the weekend Monday found the team back out on the road for another field trip, this time to see how our micro-finance programme, Obumwe (which means unity) is operating. As always, this was a long but rewarding day. Our first port of call was at the home of a group which we reached via some heart stopping dirt tracks that would be all but impassable after rain. The name of the group translates as the ‘group at the top of the hill that is growing’, and this pretty much summed them up. The group of 47 people received a loan of one million shillings (around £250) in July last year. They used half of the loan to purchase six sheep and the balance was added to their existing savings pot and lent out to members of the group. Nine months later and three months after repaying their loan they are able to show a cash surplus and have bred an additional nine sheep which together brings their net surplus to a little under one and a half million shillings (£375). There are many city investors who would give their eye teeth for such a rate of return. Their current goal is to provide every household with a sheep to ensure the sustainability of the community.

We visited an addition four groups at two venues, two who are half way through their loan periods and two who have applied for loans but not yet received them. As is to be expected not everything runs smoothly and in the course of the day we came across various issues that we will need to address over the next week or so, but that is why we are here – to celebrate the positive results and to work with the team to improve those areas that are not running as smoothly as they could do.

One of the founding principles of Obumwe was that we should be channeling our funds through women’s groups or groups led by women. The wisdom of this was bourne out again for us today as we found the most successful groups are those run by women and those that give us most cause for concern are run by men.

At a personal level it is really good to see our team working so well together and finding their feet in this strange environment where everyone is well outside of their comfort zones. Each of the team members has learnt a great deal about Africa and themselves and some of these lessons have been very difficult at times, but everyone has come through with flying colours – we are proud of each and every one of them. From today different team members have been going in different directions to work on projects that have most captured their imaginations, from participating in a workshop on how to improve and grow Obumwe, through teaching at Amazing Love School, to decorating the Amasiko Drop-in Centre.

Lastly, we were delighted to hear yesterday evening that Hassan, who we featured in a blog post last Friday, now has a full time sponsor!

Yesterday was another day of excitement, joy and sadness, as so many of our days in Kabale tend to be.

We started the day visiting our good friend Blasidia who is a severly disabled seamstress. We brought her a sample bag that we would like her to reproduce as a way for her, and the friends that she teaches, to earn some income. For our part we hope these bags will appeal to shoppers in the UK who can now have a small folded bag in their handbags for when they visit the supermarket.

 

From here we went to visit a community group of women and men who farm passion fruit, honey and tree tomatoes. This group is the recipient of an Obumwe Micro-finance loan which they have used to boost the value of their own savings fund. The group of 32 meet once a month; at these meetings they contribute around 4,000 shillings (about 90p) to their savings fund. The Obumwe loan coupled with their self-discipline and perseverance has allowed them to accumulate a fund of 6,000,000 shillings (more than £1,200). They now have a large passion fruit co-operative and around 30 active bee hives. As well as being a very successful group we can attest to the fact that they produce very sweet passion fruit and heavenly honey!

We then travelled on across some challenging roads to visit our friends at the Graeme Naish Memorial School. Alongside Africa has supported this school for many years, primarily because we love the way that the community does so much to help itself and does not rely on aid. In addition, they go out of their way to support a local Batwa community, who are usually shunned by other tribes. In fact, the head girl of the school is a Mutwa, which is a great achievement.  Every time we visit the school we find that they have achieved much; this year they have rearranged their very limited space to accommodate a new P4 class. They have also acquired an acre of steeply sloping land upon which they plan to build dormitories for boys and girls and teachers accommodation, which will allow them to expand beyond P4 and provide better facilities for the teachers.

In the spirit of walking alongside our partner organisations in Uganda we agreed to fund the roofing of these new structures once the community has levelled the land and built the foundations and walls.

It was lovely to be able to see most of our sponsored children there and to be able to hand over gifts to the children and the school. In discussion with the school management group, PTA and teachers we identified the biggest challenge of the school as that of teachers’ salaries. Teachers at the school earn around 80,000 shillings / £20 a month, compared with teachers at state schools who earn 400,000 shillings / £95 per month. The ability of the school to pay higher salaries and so attract and retain more staff is directly related to the number of children that we sponsor there. At present this are only eight and this needs to be doubled.

On the way back to Kabale we stopped in at Blasidia’s tiny workshop again where she had the first sample of a shopping bag ready for us. It was exactly what we wanted and so we have placed a sizeable order with her – watch out for these on our return.