Adventures in East Africa (Part Two) - Friendly Uganada

We've been home for a few days since touching down to some colder English winter weather, spending the first few days in Bristol in our caravan, which was a tad cold but the warm welcome we received from Chris and Claire and our wonderful Grandchildren made it worth bearing the chilly nights. We are now in Aylesbury catching up with some friends and family prior to our Christmas celebrations with Tim's parents, Sister, Brother-in-Law and niece in Northampton which we are really looking forward to.

As promised on our last blog post we are pleased to provide a further update on our recent travels to Eastern/Central Africa and this second post picks up on the work we were doing in Uganda with the charity 'Every Life' (EL).

Life up your head!

This was our third visit to Uganda and other than the challenges around entering and exiting any African nation via an overnight flight we had a great time, the people are so friendly, other than when they get behind the wheel or handlebars of a motorised vehicle, and it was with excitement that we looked forward to teaching the Emerging Leaders 'Leadership for Life' (LfL) programme to the staff of EL who we'd shared the programme with earlier on in April this year.

Our good friend and ex-Village of Hope volunteer, Emma Podmore, welcomed us from Entebbe airport, and after a near on two hour journey across Kampala we arrived in Bweyogerere and our hosts, Tim and Anna's, home, who are in fact next-door neighbours to Emma and Drea, and have a beautiful son called Jonathan, who happens to be bestfriends with Drea's daughter Teagan.

Andrew and Olivia running the refresher
at the Hope Center

After a weekend settling in and planning for the next few days, we awoke to sunshine on the Monday morning and joined the 25 staff from the EL team who we would be training to become trainers of the LfL programme. These amazing people were to be taking the whole week off of their daily duties and came from every department, from finance, HR and other office staff, to those working on the ground in the slums where they run social and health related outreach day in day out.


These days were full on, and unfortunately the weather didn't hold and were interrupted by the seasonal rain, which lashed down so hard at time we had to abandon the tent which had been installed on the project managers site, and by our food and drink breaks. 

training inside a container

These times were a highlight of the day as we shared wonderful meals together, local Ugandan food including Matoke, Groundnut (G-nut) sauce, Mandazi, Chapati, and or Pork or fish.


We worked through the four modules of the programme, Lead Yourself, Lead Your Team, Lead Your Finances and Lead a Project, with us demonstrating the activities, stories or actions and then giving time for each group or couple to read through the manuals and then deliver the sections back to us all for feedback and critiquing. 


The staff worked so hard and by the end of the week we were truly confident that each and everyone of them was in a position to lead a LfL programme themselves, working in couples, as we do, to share this with those that they work with in the slums around Kampala as well as within their own lives, teams and daily life of the EL organisation.

Tim's running partner 

Tim managed to get out for a run on a couple of occasions, joined by the onsite security guard who guided him around the tightly packed homes on the red soiled side roads that surrounded Anna and Tim's home. This proved to be a challenge as his times weren't as quick as when in England, however after looking at the data it was hardly surprising as Kampala sits at over 4,300ft above sea level, but to be able to run at ease through some very poor and needy areas was an eye opener into the daily struggles that people have to go through to get clean water or keep their belongings clean.

African drummers

We were able to attend an amazing evening of local East African drumming and dancing, with incredibly supple young people performed dances from Kenya, various regions of Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. The biggest drums were saved till last and other than the pogo dancing men from Kenya those drums from Burundi were to be the highlight of the evening.

Team building day at the Family Center

During our second full week we helped Emma run a 'team building' day at the EL 'Family Center' which is situated above the stunning tea plantations on the Jinga Road to the east of Kampala. The day was very successful and we encouraged the staff to use their leadership skills to work together at the various activities, including a 'capture the flag' wide game, plank walking and egg and spoon obstacle race where teams won points for good teamwork as well as winning the events!

murchison falls 

We also ran a 'refresher' day, inviting around 30 of the Every Life 'Community Champions' who had attending our LfL earlier on in the year. This was an opportunity for a couple of the EL team to share what they had learnt on the Train the Trainer week with these people, for us to see them in action and for us to hear the stories of the people who had put the leadership principles into their own lives since we were with them earlier on in the year.

These stories always encourage us, be they large or small, and they give us confidence that what we are sharing is making a real difference in peoples lives and we will share some of these on a later blog post to encourage you all too.

It wasn't all work work work, we did have weekends off and we took the opportunity of being in one of the leading nations for wildlife viewing as we made our way north to Murchison Falls National Park where we not only spent an evening at the falls, which are some of the most powerful in the world, but took a trip up the river Nile to see the falls from below, however the highlight of the trip was our self drive safari in Emma's little Toyota Rav4.

lone girrafe trying to get some time
on it's own

We took the small car ferry, big enough for eight lightweight vehicles, (or two cars, a huge lorry and a JCB digger which made the short trip across the Nile with us)! There were also many many footpassageners who joined us to the northern banks where we enjoyed a day driving along some very sandy tracks, through vast savannah where we spotted huge groups of giraffe (we think around 200), down to the banks of lake Albert where we saw a number of Hippo wandering around out of the water during the day, which is quite unusual, and herds of elephants which ambled across the tight tracks in front of our vehicle.


All in all we had a wonderful time and feel that our investment into the Every Life team will pay off as they then share the LfL programme into the communities that they work with in 2018 and we hope to be back one day to hear of the stories that will come out of their interventions.

our overloaded car ferry!

Thats it from Uganda for now, our next post will include our overland trip from Kampala through Rwanda to Bujumbura in Burundi and the work we did there with Simon and his connections via the Great Lakes Outreach (GLO).

Maz, Emma and Tim at the falls

We wish you all a very merry Christmas, wherever you are in the world and will hopefully update this blog with a further post before the New Year and before we fly to South Africa on the 7th January!