Back to Uganda for a few days

We have successfully returned from our trip to Dar es Salaam.  We almost missed our flight, but the ticketing agent was gracious and let us check in late, and we just made it onto the plane.  So the return trip was much quicker!

On Tuesday morning, those of us who are putting together the Vocational Training School went to see the school at the Dar base.  They have a carpentry training program and a tailoring program.  The man who runs the programs is Tanzanian, and he basically started everything by himself.  The base had a building that he could use, but he had to gather all of the supplies and materials and put together the curriculum.  So it was inspiring to hear that someone else has started with very little and is now running a successful program.  

The program at this base is different than ours will be... His programs are two years long, and the goal is that each student should be able to start their own business at the end, not just be employed by someone.  It is also not residential, so his students don't live at the base.  But it was helpful for us to talk to him about the challenges of running a training school, the challenges he faced when he started, how to prepare things, and how to work with the local government to get curriculum.  In order for the students to get certificates at the end of the program, your school has to follow government curriculum and allow the students to be tested on various subjects. 

Two of the others in my group are interested in maybe starting a clinic at our base, so they were busy touring the clinic and talking to the doctor from Dar's base.  

I think one thing that all of us were reminded of during this trip is that starting anything new, especially here, takes a lot of time and endurance.  I think we all realized the need for serious preparation, both for the school and the clinic.  People will come to these establishments with an idea in their mind of what they will receive, and we want to make sure that we can provide the right things. We don't want to be in such a hurry that we end up doing things half-baked, or saying "Well it's good enough for now" too many times.  Many things on our base are done that way, and we are starting to see its negative effects.  It is better to put in preparation time and start later than to start soon with "good enough" supplies and then fail in the middle of what you're doing. 

Anyway, it was a good trip to Tanzania.  I already miss it, because I much preferred to be surrounded by the Swahili language than the Lugandan language.  The areas that we were in seemed more developed than Jinja and its surrounding area.

But, I'm only here for a few days, and then I am off to Rwanda to visit the base there, ask some questions about their VTS, and also to do some personal research about orphanages and other ministries.

Wednesday we all took a beach day, and it was nice to enjoy such a beautiful place.

Today has been filled with laundry and preparation for my trip to Rwanda.  I'm very excited for this trip, because everyone says Rwanda is so different than Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, etc... I think I'll update again after a few days in Kigali!