Pearls in Africa - news from Uganda

I’m now two months into my placement with Send a Cow Uganda and I can’t believe how quickly the time’s gone! I’ve mainly been working on developing a strategy for fundraising in Uganda (from funding bodies etc), which has been very interesting and we hope – fingers crossed - might prove fruitful.

There have been so many extraordinary moments that it’s hard to know what to blog about, but one little girl stands out quite clearly: Jamila Katende. We met her on a visit to SACU farms in Mokono, just outside Kampala, where she lives with her parents and her twelve siblings. Jamila had been born with a muscularly degenerative disease that rendered her unable to move. When she was five, her very hard working parents were given a cow from Send a Cow Uganda: three months later, Jamila walked for the first time. Had her parents been able to reach, or even afford healthcare, Jamila would never have had difficulty moving in the first place, but the protein the milk provided gave her such strength that to look at her now, you wouldn’t know there had ever been anything wrong.

I know I might seem a bit biased, but to see the projects first-hand never ceases to amaze me. The results they are achieving and the impact they are having is really quite extraordinary: lives aren’t just changed… they’re transformed!

In between visiting projects and working in the office, I’ve found time to visit some of the wonders Uganda has to offer: I’ve spent a weekend at the source of the River Nile; stayed on an island on Lake Victoria and even popped up to Zanzibar for Easter weekend.

Uganda is proud of its Pearl of Africa reputation, and there can surely be no more deserved a title: I’m going to find it a very difficult place to leave.