Not long after
we arrived we met Rogers, a previous Mbale CAP employee and regular contact of
ILO-ers gone before who invited us to visit his community, Nauyo (Na-ooo-yo).
This is a slum area on the edge of Mbale, so we were keen to go and experience
a different side of life here. There is a balance of not feeling like you’re just
being nosy and looking at how people live their lives here versus using the
opportunity to better understand the issues and situations people are facing
and where possible make connections to potential solutions. Rogers volunteers
with his community council to network and start initiatives to benefit the
community’s health, education and income generation etc. We’ve since been up a
couple of times, both very different experiences!
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| Pre immunisation clinic |
As people know
June has a medical background I’m quick to point out that I don’t (in case they
need to ‘borrow me’ for an emergency delivery – its been known to happen!) and
I was assured that none was needed for our first activity. A short trip to
Nauyo later and me and June spent the next hour and a half popping Vitamin A capsules
closely followed by worming tablets into the mouths of 200+ primary school
children and those attending a mother and baby clinic. That really brought home
the contrast to life back home. Our children are not subject to the same degree
of risk of disease or poor standard of nutrition that we need such treatments
as regularly. But the children here arrive with a smile and they'll be back for more of the same next month
We went back
this weekend to spend some time at the Children’s Centre, playing games and singing
songs for the afternoon. June had brought a parachute with her that’s she’s
using at Bushikori so we took it along for the afternoon. There are 37 children
who stay in the dormitory here. These currently range from 11 months to teenagers, all of
whom have lost their parents or been abandoned in the community. Where possible
the centre try and find the wider family to look after them, otherwise they
stay at the centre with Grace, a local lady who volunteers to stay with them. We’re
not calling it an orphanage as there is a stigma attached to these children
when they go out to school or the community so Charles the Community Group
Chairman has renamed it the dormitory and the kids are a big happy family.
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| Children's Centre |
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| School work on the walls |
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| Always fun with a parachute! |
Not long after
we arrived we met Rogers, a previous Mbale CAP employee and regular contact of
ILO-ers gone before who invited us to visit his community, Nauyo (Na-ooo-yo).
This is a slum area on the edge of Mbale, so we were keen to go and experience
a different side of life here. There is a balance of not feeling like you’re just
being nosy and looking at how people live their lives here versus using the
opportunity to better understand the issues and situations people are facing
and where possible make connections to potential solutions. Rogers volunteers
with his community council to network and start initiatives to benefit the
community’s health, education and income generation etc. We’ve since been up a
couple of times, both very different experiences!
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