From October 11th until November 26th 2010 I was an intern with Childine Uganda.Childine Uganda is located in Mityana, West of Kampala, the capital of Uganda. It isabout 70 kilometres from Kampala city center. A two hours drive by minibus, becauseof the very bad roads.Childline Uganda is a very small, local organization. There are about fivepeople ‘fulltime’ working for the organization. They cooperate with other organizationsin Mityana. The most import goal of Childline is: “Helping people lead better lives.”The main activities of Childine Uganda are education about hygiene and sanitationand education about HIV/AIDS. For me, it was a bit unclear how they get theirfunding, however I did understand that they didn’t receive any regular funding.
I was the first non-African intern working for Childline. For the people in Mityanait was very special to see a mzungu (white man) in town. So when I went on thestreets there were a lot of children yelling and waving to me. When I started with theinternship, there were about eight other interns from Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda.The other interns lived in two very simple rooms, of course without toilet, showerand gas for cooking. My room was situated near a complex where other Childlinemembers live. Together with the others interns we prepared diner (local style).
At the morning we started with a breakfast (two parts of cassava and tea) at theChildline office in Mityana. Office is a nice word for a small, dark room with a veryold computer. Often it was unclear what we would do during the day, however ata certain moment during the morning this would be explained. Often we went to apart of Mityana for education about hygiene and sanitation. We just visited randomhouses to speak to the people who were at home. We checked the situation, forexample if the latrine and the ‘shower’ were clean and if they had drying racks andmalaria nets for their children. A couple of times we went to schools in the Mityanaarea for education about body change and HIV/AIDS.Most of the time, we went back to the office at the end in the morning. So we workedonly 2 or 3 hours per day. After ‘working’ we went to the local rolex shop for lunch. Arolex is chapatti with two eggs rolled into it. The rest of the day there was not muchto do in Mityana except relaxing with the other interns and buying and preparing foodfor diner.
As you can read, working for Childline was a bit disappointing because there wasnot much to do. After a week, I didn’t think I would be very happy to stay there sevenweeks, so I spoke to the Childine director and we agreed that I would also staysome weeks in Kampala. In Kampala I could try to find some recourses for fundingfor Childline. I found some potential funds for Childline, one of them was the DutchEmbassy in Kampala. However, I doubt that Childline can get the appropriate fundsin the future.Maybe the last week of my internship was the most fun, because we did more work(cleaning of the local hospital, counseling of HIV/AIDS patients) and there were twonew interns from Denmark. However, also these two Danish girls and a Dutch girlwho was arriving a short time after then, didn’t stay at Childline Uganda. There was
simply not enough work to do and the communication between Childline staff and theinterns was pretty bad. Often we did a lot of waiting and when you did criticize theway things went, they didn’t really listen or respond.
Living in Mityana however was a unique experience. It was a rural area with a lot ofpoverty and very friendly people. Being together with the other interns was awesome.Especially because I learned a lot about life in East-Africa and the differences amongthe East-African countries.
They weeks and weekends I didn’t work in Mityana, I stayed at the Aiesec MC Housein Kampala. The MC House was a nice big house, surrounded by a large wall. Apartfrom the interns, the people of the Uganda MC also lived in the house. From theoutside the house was very nice, however all the money went to the rent of the houseand it seemed that there was no money left for furniture. It was nice to stay there withother (mostly female) interns from all over the world. The people from Aiesec Ugandawere also friendly and hospitable. An exception was the very, very bitchy Germanfemale president of Aiesec Uganda (none of the interns liked her).Almost all of the weekends I went with other interns to beautiful places in Uganda. SoI managed to see al lot of amazing places in this really beautiful country. Togetherwith other interns I also went to the Aiesec conference in Kigali, Rwanda. It wasawesome to visit this very special country. I experienced that Aiesec in East-Africais really different from Aiesec in The Netherlands. They have a lot of special habits,like dancing together and using Aiesec language. So, after two days conference,I wanted to do something else, and together with some other European guys wevisited very impressive genocide memorials in Rwanda.
After seven weeks, I went to Kenya for traveling. I’ve been in Nairobi, Mombasa,Lamu and the Maasai Mara. It was really nice to see and experience anotherbeautiful country and to meet a lot of fellow travelers.
I can write a lot more about my 10 weeks staying in East-Africa. About the veryfriendly people in Uganda, the beautiful environment, all the special animals I’veseen, the way of living in Africa, the horrible traffic, etc. Being in Uganda, Rwandaand Kenya was a fantastic experience I’ll never forget.
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