Uganda revisited

This was the fourth visit made by Winchester Rotary to Kasese, Uganda to share and develop the Projects we have with Great Lakes Peace Centre (GLPC) and Kasese Rotary Snow Peaks, which started in 2019 with a visit by myself and Rtn Luke Addison to their second Peace Conference. I visited for the next three years (missing a year due to Covid).

I left on March 23 rd 2026 to spend a week lining up all the Projects and talking with those involved over there locally so when the rest of the team (Kordo, Naz and Zephan Saeed and PDG Caroline Millman from Ringwood Club) arrived on March 30 th we could make a prompt start on the work which we had planned. Unfortunately the Team’s flight was put back by a day which meant an overnight flight to Kigali, Rwanda immediately followed by a five hour drive through to Kasese and then straight into a meeting with GLPC where they introduced the Team to some new Projects, assisting the Gender Based Violence Refuge in Kasese for survivors with their programmes; a Youth led Peace Project; a Business Plan from a young disabled student that has been supported by a member of Winchester Rotary through school and catering college; the development of the Mobile Library Project to promote reading by students. There was much to stimulate the brain and delay the onset of serious jet lag!

The following Day the Team then assisted Rtn Dr Kordo Saeed and his wife Naz with the presentation of a workshop on Antimicrobial Resistance to a local audience of Medics, teachers and social workers which comprised an address by a local doctor, exercises and learning games presented and prepared by Naz with finally an address on the British perspective from Kordo. They had put a tremendous amount of work into the preparation of what was a very informative and interactive day for the local professionals. Caroline and I just acted as moral and admin support!! The cost of the day was sponsored by the Antimicrobial Institute of the Uk who Kordo approached for assistance and we are truly grateful to them for their support.

Over the next few days we attended a number of schools in the area where we have students supported for their school fees by Winchester Rotarians and their family and friends. We spoke to the individual students and encouraged them with advice and also presents and letters in some cases from their sponsors. We also read with them with assistance of Books from the Mobile library and in some instances spoke to individual classes to point out the benefits of education. We tried to make our visits as interactive as possible to give value to our time and that of the students.

As many of you know we run a Music Project as part of the Education Project, whereby we use an interest in Music to draw students into more formal Education for which I raised Funds at my 40 Years in Rotary celebration. We visited one of their sessions which are held on a Saturday morning, discussed the acquistion of more instruments and expanding their Group of 4 boys to 5 to include a girl and also the possibility of their playing commercially as a Band at small events to generate more funds to sustain themselves. They even played at a celebration of Naz’s birthday for which we gave them a small personal fee; they helped generate a brilliant atmosphere which was also helped with a cake baked by the young lady mentioned above aiming to start a baking business.

We also visited a Women’s Group who have been assisted by GLPC for a number of years now and to whom we gave manual sewing machines three years ago to help them provide school uniforms to the Community which are sold and which have enabled them to move forward in their communities. This has now been scaled up as they have been able to train on more sophisticated and efficient machines which are operated by power; we hope to obtain funds to donate more machines to make them even more efficient. This we believe is what the assistance we provide is all about – helping people to help themselves and not eternally rely on charitable giving.

In the same vein we visited a Displacement Camp set up by the local Council to temporarily rehouse residents who had been forced to move as a consequence of flooding. This was in 2001 -and they are still there! We recently enabled them by donating funds to rent land adjacent to the Camp to farm and produce crops. This they have started to do and we saw that the first crop had already been harvested. The idea is that they will be able to utilise the proceeds to pay future rent and seed costs by selling surplus food after feeding themselves; this appears to be going well but we were also able to advise them how they could improve their productivity even further. On a lighter note we celebrated Naz’s birthday with her providing and all of us helping to serve lunch for 200 children in the camp so they could have Meat and Fish as a special treat.

Our final Project visit was probably one of the most important in terms of what we are doing for the area and that was at Rukoki Hospital in Kasese where we are equipping a Neo Natal Unit with over £30,000 worth of equipment through the use of a Rotary Global Grant to enable them to provide a reasonable level of care for premature and sick babies to ensure their survival in an area where infant mortality is very high. We were able to talk with the Doctors and nurses and other support staff and understand how this is going to assist them. We were also able to speak with some of the expectant mothers to see how this can assist them. The Grant has been approved by RI and we are just collecting in all the pledges and all being well the hospital will be able to put in an Order for the items at the end of may so that the Project can be effectively completed during this Rotary Year.

I personally attended 3 Rotary evenings Meetings with Kasese Snow Peaks Rotary and one at Mbarara where I was asked to tell a few jokes as a time filler and ended up telling them about Farouq getting stuck here in Covid! The Team attended one Meeting of Snow Peaks and found the procedures while similar in some respects but very different in others! The main attraction was the guest speaker who was PDG Caroline Millman who used her PhD thesis on the issues of Rotary Membership as the theme of her Talk.

Finally we did find some downtime for some RnR and took our host Afan (who had a chef provide the Team with a wholesome Meal each evening and drove us around the whole time) and his 3 children swimming in a couple of local resorts and also we enjoyed a Game Drive in Queen Elizabeth National Park as well as a River cruise where we were able to see numerous animals native to Africa. I am pleased to say that our guest Rotarian Caroline for whom this was her first trip thoroughly enjoyed her experience and has expressed interest in keeping a continuing connection. We will probably be going again next year on a date to be determined, so if you are interested please let us know!!

For additional photos, see here.