Trip to Suubi Children's Village.

On Sunday we jumped in a dilapidated private taxi and made our way north to Suubi Children's Village, a 45 minute drive from central Kampala. It was fascinating to drive past villages situated by the roadside, getting on with the business of daily living.  At Suubi, the village is built on a big hill.  At the top of the hill we some could see for miles around and got a real sense of the size and lushness of Uganda. We also found some impressive buildings, which we discovered are classrooms, administration and church buildings. We started the morning with a very lively church service, Uganda style. Wow. The girls and I had a riot. Unlike our churches back home, the people of Uganda praise and worship with abandon, using their whole bodies. Yes folks, these guys know how to dance. A joyful experience. After the service we went to view progress on various construction projects, then made our way down to the children's homes.

Suubi is currently home to 1300 plus orphans between the ages of 2 and 18. Each house has a mother who is allocated 8 children to care for. The scale of the village is impressive. There are numerous projects nearby, such as a fabrication plant and masses of greenhouses.  The buildings look new but they are modest in size for 8 children. When we drove down the hill, swarms of children started pouring out of the brickwork. They ran up to us, eager to be picked up and interacted with. It was a little daunting to have heaps of bodies grabbing at you, your bags, clothes, accessories. I was very popular for my sunglasses and the clip on my bag. All of the children vied with each other for turns putting on the glasses and doing up the clip. These children have very little by way of personal possessions. The smallest of trinkets were grasped tightly and proudly shown off to us -  a hair tie, a small sticker, a coloured piece of string. So much need and yet, they are now blessed in comparison to what they had prior to being cared for by Watoto.

Next we did a tour of the Suubi babies home, which is mostly inhabited by children who are over the age of two and have been transferred out of the main home in Kampala. From herethey are assigned to mothers in the main village, when space and time allow. Again, an impressive building and set up, but void of any stimulation for growing minds. Having said that, their basic physical needs are well provided for. Because I have decided to stay in Uganda for the bulk of my trip, it is possible I will work at the Suubi home and village for a month, on rotation, depending on the allocation of all current volunteers and the needs of each home for volunteer support.

So far this week, I've only spent a day working with the babies. The rest of my time has been filled with orientation, welcome breakfast at swanky Cafe Java and, most exciting of all, meetings to get a volunteer project underway which is very close to my heart.  I am marvelling at the timing of my visit here. For the first time ever, Watoto management have got volunteers together and made them responsible for developing and implementing a learning and development curriculum. The key difficulty in doing this is trying to get the very overworked nannies on board, so that the quality of the programme is sustainable in the longer term. So it looks like we'll be working on the planning phase of the project for the rest of the week, then spending the next few months implementing it. This will allow us to have better quality time with the bubs and therefore be more effective during our time here. I'm really excited about this prospect. Again, in my element. Perfect timing, perfect place.

As a side note, following the terrorist attack in Kenya, we have also received news that terrorist threats have been posted on Twitter for Kampala. Security has been massively scaled up on response. I am completely unconcerned at this point. I am being extremely careful, but have a strong sense that we are okay for the moment. I'll be more concerned when the threat dies down and the security is scaled back some.  Having said that, I still feel I'm in good hands. I've got work to do.