Grania: Some Final Thoughts

Now that we are on the road I have finally had an opportunity to try to digest everything that’s happened during the last fourteen months. I have found the last few weeks, with all the good byes, house-packing, shipping things back to the UK, planning our trip, not to mention hand-over my job, very stressful.

While chilling out in Zanzibar and gorging ourselves on delicious sea food (tilapia is lovely but if that’s your only fish for a year it gets a little samey!) I have been thinking a lot about our time in Uganda and getting all gooey-eyed over it.

The VSO mantra is “Sharing Skills, Changing Lives”. I think they mean that we share our skills and change other peoples’ lives, but I don’t think that’s what happened with me! I think its been much more Ugandan people sharing their skills and changing me. Some examples…

The importance of greeting

I arrived fresh from London, ready to achieve, Achieve, ACHIEVE! Back home I would regularly start meetings and conversations with a “To Do” list or even fire off a request for something from the person. This is how we work in Britain, but in Uganda they haven’t been corrupted by that. The greeting is still important: before you reel off a list of Things to Do, you must always say hello to the person, enquire how they are, and maybe follow up on their family or ask more questions on their health.

I have to admit that I have really struggled with this, as I always want to get down to the ACHIEVING! Some people in the West say this is part of the problem – that the developing world is too slow, too tied up in rituals – but I disagree. This year I have felt that I have really got to know people, and I don’t think this is something that has stopped me achieving things, in fact due to the increased knowledge of people it has helped me to achieve things.

Stress Less

Arriving from the hectic world of the west, everything is Go Go Go. In Uganda, you cannot maintain this for long without going mad. No one else is running at the same pace as you so you have to start to s-l-o-w d-o-w-n. This doesn’t mean that you don’t do anything and ignore all deadlines, but if you are struggling to meet them, rather than pull all-nighters and lose sleep over them, you should maybe just extend the deadline. This translates into a much nicer working day. You always stop for lunch. (I went from never having lunch to always having lunch – and have the extra half stone to prove it!) And any time I worked through lunch – which was rarely – people offered to help so that I could stop for a rest. This has to be interpreted carefully as it can be taken too far but I think in the west we too have taken it too far but in the wrong direction.

Family

‘Family’ in Uganda is an elastic term and often very confusing. For example, our askarii Paulo seemed to have many mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters… until you realise that ‘family’ for him encompasses everyone with a genetic link to him, as well as people from his home village. Thus, “occasions” such as weddings, funerals & introductions are very important – they are well attended by everyone and in this way family ties are maintained and strengthened. The strength of ‘family’ is shown when death occurs and orphans are absorbed by close relatives and happily and openly accepted into that family. I have many cousins, many of whom I haven’t seen for years, and that is thought of as very unusual in Uganda.

Hopefully I have managed a few sharing skills, but I know that I have been changed much more than any change I have facilitated. As this is going to be my last post on Uganda (we are now well into the next phase of our trip) I will allow myself a little indulgence – I wouldn’t change any aspect of this time working and living in Uganda for anything. And Thank You to everyone we have met and worked with for sharing your welcome and changing us both into hopefully nicer people!