Back to work

After an exhilarating day with the gorillas we went back to work the next couple of days some of the things we did are explained below, sorry about the length of this blog but I feel that all these issues need explaining:

We visited a women's collective who made sanitary products (sorry boys). Women in Uganda do not have sanitary towels the same as in the West, in fact they never used to have them at all. A project has been started to make and supply sanitary towels for women by buying yards of material and making something that looks like a pad but is made out of material with a bit of plastic in it (and little padding for absorbency).

We also visited a school (although the kids were on summer hols), but met the ladies that are farmers who had never had any education (it is now compulsory for all children) but a community project had adult literacy classes and the ladies, who can all now read and write meet monthly to discuss things that they are doing to help improve their lives.

Girl power!

Then it was off to help ladies do gardening, this is a community project to help people to become self sufficient. We had to help clear the garden first and use that as fertiliser, then we had to prepare the ground and plant onions, carrots and avocados. These women work from 8am in the morning to 7pm in the evening with only a short lunch every day of the week with babies on their backs, while their husbands sit around drinking - I have a feeling Stewart is already selling the house so that we can move here 😉

  

This is supposed to be a holiday!

We also went to the Potter Village Baby project. This is a project where babies are taken to if the mother dies in childbirth or the baby is abandoned for some reason (unmarried mothers, birth defects). The centre looks after babies until 18 months, but tries to get the babies back into the extended family if the mother dies or tries to find the family of the baby if it is abandoned. If they can't reintegrate the baby back into the family the child goes to an orphanage but nobody adopts children in Uganda so they stay there until they can be put to work.

Many women die from infections in the state hospitals, some from going into labour miles away and having to walk to the hospital giving birth and dying on the way and others from post pregnancy complications. Apparently men will not look after their own children if the woman dies and will only take them if he remarries! Of the 12 children in the centre 11 mothers had died and one was abandoned.

I did meet one handsome little boy though - how can you resist him?