Blog2

It is a week I have been to Uganda. On the first three days, all our nine interns stayed in Kampala downtown New City Annex Hotel. I got here one day later then other girls. I was really tired when I got here on the first day. George took me to the KWTD at Kampala office. The lady in the office, Rehema, gave me a little orientation of Katosi Women Trust Development. Also I got the chance to read the annul report of KWTD and other documents. I slept early on that day. I woke up early on the first three day at 6 and spent the early morning to explore Kampala. Around 7, there was almost nobody on the street except the newspaper-sellers. Almost all the shops in Kampala didn’t open until 8:30. Uganda used to be an英国殖民地, so in the street I saw plenty of British things: their British English-spelling such as “colour” and “honour”, their banks such as Barclays. On the second day, four Katosi interns went to get a formal orientation from KWDT. In the orientation we knew that KWDT have many different projects. Each of them has already developed really well and helped local women a lot with empowering them especially in financial parts. They emphasize a lot on water and sanitation project. With the help of KWDT, those local women built rainwater-harvesting tank and latrine, learn basic hygiene knowledge and get training for the optimal water management.
On the Sunday, every intern was taken to their office. Lauren and I are in the Kampala office. It is a nice office and a nice house. We are going to both live here and work here for two months. We went to walk around the office a little bit. Our neighborhood were all surprised to see “Mzungus” (some of them recognized me an Asian and called me “MChina”) walking around. The scene around here is really nice. Kampala is a city on seven mountains. We walked to the peak of one of the mountains near our office and we see the whole scenery of old Kampala.
Our job, mostly paperwork, in the office is to find grant and apply for them. To me it is not an easy task because I’m not interested and not good at English writing. At first I was assigned to write an application for Climate Initiative. Since I learned some basic knowledge of microcredit and attended some monthly meeting of women microcredit in Ghana, I asked whether I can search and write proposal for microfinance groups. Rehema said good but it was just a little bit hard to find grant for microcredit.
June 3rd is national holiday and we got a day off. Lauren and I took a boda-boda to town. We went to the craft market. Everything there is so cute there. I think I will buy a bunch of souvenirs from here to my family and friends on the last few days here. On the weekend we went to the town again to see Avery and Colleen and plan our trips on the rest weekends in Uganda. I can’t wait to travel in Uganda!
In Uganda, I think I have already lost a sense of time. Everyday after a days of work (5pm), in the evening, we may walk around, talk, read some books or just do nothing and sit. I like this kind of leisure life here!